The Book of Masks (Vol. 1)

Carlos Explains It All

Previously: "Doubles for Pleasure" 

"I won't tell anyone," you say. Who'd believe me? "And, uh, sure, I'm up for some fun," you add.

Well, someone adds it. It's your voice that croaks out the words, and you're vaguely aware that it's your mouth that was moving. But it feels like the impulse to speak was coming from outside you. Carlos wanted an answer, and you gave it to him. But it is as if you are standing outside yourself, watching and fumbling through this very strange scene.

"Awesome!" Carlos grins. "So, I guess at this point—" He glances behind him to stare at the fake Michael, who has been watching all this time with a grimace. "I don't guess we need you anymore, so—"

"Oh, fuck you!" the other yells. "I just got my shit together, and now you're—" But as Carlos snaps his fingers, Hollister drops onto the ground and starts pulling clothes off. "It'd be nice to hang out and goof off for once," he grumbles, "instead of only popping in long enough to—" The rest is lost as it pulls the shirt off. Once he's undressed, Carlos kneels beside him, and with some softly spoken words pulls at his face.

Mike vanishes, and the golem appears in his place.

"Are you going to let me wear that mask?" you cautiously ask, and point.

"If you want," says Carlos. He rummages through the foot locker again. "First, though, you'll want a mask of your own. We all have them, you know, it's what makes you a member of the club." He pulls one out, then pauses. He studies it, and you keep quiet as he does.

"You know, I gotta confession to make," he says. "And I really hope it doesn't change your opinion of us." He looks at you from under a troubled brow. "You have to understand, we were experimenting with these things, and we picked you because, well ... Even then, we were thinking about asking you to join, and so it was just convenient to, um." He trails off.

"What did you do?" There's a pit in your stomach, and it has nothing to do with the hunger that has been slowly overtaking you.

"You remember that day in the portable, when you got knocked out? That was us. Me, actually. I tackled you from behind." At least he has the grace to look very embarrassed. "We got a copy of your face, in a mask. We wanted to—" He scratches deeply at his scalp. "We wanted to see how hard it would be to copy someone who didn't know about the, um—"

"You mugged me?" The accusation comes out as a shriek, and Carlos winces hard.

"We knew you'd be okay," he insists. "We'd all done it to ourselves, it was totally safe. We just wanted to know how someone would react if they got knocked out and then came to again. And then, well ... "

"What else?" Your voice cracks.

"Then we had a little fun with it," he says, sounding properly miserable. "Again, just as an experiment. Philip put it on and—this was yesterday—because you had church he was able to get into your house and get some of your clothes—"

You feel the flush rising up your neck to your face.

"And then while you were here with us watching the movie, he went out— That was the golem that was with us yesterday, that wasn't Philip— Anyway, he got dressed as you and went up to the mall. He ran into Carson Ioeger and James Lamont while he was there, and he hung out with them. They never caught on, but he didn't do anything that'd get you in trouble with them." His brown face has now acquired a purplish hue. "We just wanted to see if we could go out as other people without getting caught."

You cover your face with your hands and breathe in and out. From far away, it seems, Carlos is still talking. "And after that's when we really decided we needed to make it up to you, by showing you all this and letting you join. Because it wasn't fair to you, we realized—"

"And Keith was mixed up in all this? He was hanging out with a fake me, sometimes?"

"Uh huh." Carlos's voice is very small.

"And he was doing all this without telling me about it?"

"He wanted to, but we wouldn't let him. Until now."

Okay, that does put a slightly different spin on it, so your mounting anger recedes, even if only slightly.

As for the rest of it ...

* * * * *

It was probably for the best that Carlos didn't say anything further for a very long time after that. It gave you time to acclimate to the facts he has confessed to, so your head is much cooler when he starts explaining some more things, like the plans that he and his friends have for these masks. "So what we did to you," he concludes, "it's what we want to do to other people, and we needed a trial run."

Your temper cools as he speaks. Indeed, it feels like ice is forming in your chest as he outlines the plans he and his friends have.

They're going to be using these masks to impersonate other people.

Not just disguising themselves as other people. Not just turning themselves into perfect duplicates of those people, and going out to act like those people in front of other people—like they did with you.

No, they're planning to impersonate and replace other people.

And they want you to be in on it. They'll put in a golem to replace you at home, so you won't be missed, same as they will put golems in for themselves.

"So, to help set things up," Carlos says, "you need to put this mask on. It's already got a copy of you inside it, so don't freak out when you see your name is already in it. But we need to put a copy of all your most recent memories into it."

"Do I need to do anything special?"

"No, it's automatic. Also, after you put it on, you'll have the memories of what, uh, what Philip did while he was wearing it. It's like syncing with the cloud, or something like that. Everything you've got up here—" He points to his forehead. "It goes into the mask, and everything that's recorded in the mask goes in you. So, when you wake up, if you concentrate, you'll remember meeting Carson and James up at the mall."

"Huh. That's going to be kind of weird, isn't it? Remembering stuff I didn't do?"

"Yeah, but it feels just like a real memory. You can't really tell which ones are real and which ones are fake." He holds the mask out to you.

You take a deep breath as you accept it. "Do I need to take my clothes off?"

"No, it doesn't copy clothes. That's how come we needed to steal some of yours."

"What's going to happen when I put it on?" You're staring at the name that floats inside it: WILLIAM MARTIN PRESCOTT. "When you put it on me in the portable—"

"Yeah, it'll knock you out, like it did the day we— But it's like going to sleep. Right? It didn't hurt that day. No bumps or headaches. You just get really relaxed and—"

"For how long?"

"About ten minutes. Twenty if we let you sleep until you wake up. See, it takes ten minutes for the mask to copy you, and then you're asleep for another ten minutes or so afterward. We woke you up early that day by holding your nose shut."

"You put on a pretty good act," you tell him. "All acting like you had nothing to do with—"

"Are you nervous? It's like you're delaying."

Do you blame me? "No, I'm not nervous. This is just—"

"Put it on and I'll call the other guys, tell 'em it's okay to come out." He takes out his cell. "It's just us here, right now. They'll bring some takeout, it'll be here when you wake up."

It's funny, the way the prospect of food washes away the last of your reticence. You lay back on the weight bench, and lower the mask to your face.

It's like an anvil settling onto your face, flattening you before sinking into the earth beneath you, sinking and sinking dragging you along with it into a deep, deep hole ...

* * * * *

"We can divide up into teams, if we want," says Philip Fairfax. Expertly he spears up a chunk of sweet-and-sour-chicken with his chopsticks. (The takeout was Chinese food from the Panda Garden Chinese Restaurant.) "Anyone who doesn't want to participate in the long-term play can handle the short-term plays as members of the team."

Fortunately, you know what he's talking about, because he and the others have explained it to you.

To you and Keith, that is. Tilley is here as well. He was looking rather smug at having had something on you, until Fairfax started talking about "long-term plays," and then he realized that he was practically as much an outsider as you are, because he has to have it explained to him too.

"Short-term plays" means impersonating members of the gang: yourself, Keith, Josiah Shank, Michael and Carlos, and Fairfax himself. It means going to school and going home as them, possibly for days at a time.

"Long-term plays," though, are impersonations of other people. And they are "long-term" because, as he explains it, they would involve replacing them, probably for the rest of the semester and maybe for the rest of the school year.

Next: "How to Hide Someone in Plain Sight" 

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"Table of Contents (Vol. 1)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 1)"