The Book of Masks (Vol. 2)

A Final Confrontation

Previously: "Breaking Points" 

"I don't see how we could get Kirkham to go along with this," Caleb says. He taps the open book and the terrifying spell it contains.

"I could hold him down," Gordon says. "What?" he challenges when Caleb shoots him a skeptical glance.

A numb feeling steals over you, as though some foreign spirit has invaded and taken control of your body. You shuffle over to the drawer where you put the last two blank masks.

"You don't have to hold him down," someone says using your voice and mouth. "We could use one of these on him."

Gordon and Caleb exchange a quick glance. "Yeah, but how do we get him out here?" Caleb asks.

"We don't have to. We just take the mask to ... wherever we decide to meet him."

Another silence before Caleb says, "Meet him?"

"Yeah. We tell him we—"

"Who's this 'we' you're talking about?" Caleb challenges.

"Me and Will, cockweed," Gordon growls. "If you're too chickenshit to go along with it." Still, even he looks a little pale.

You draw a deep, ragged breath. "I'll tell him I want it out with him. Just him and me. Up at the school. After hours. And I'll get the mask on him—"

"Thppbt! Right," Caleb sneers. "He'll kill you, Will."

"Not if I'm there," Gordon says. He has turned a long, searching glance upon you. "I'll be there to ref the fight."

"We'll have the rest of the stuff with us—"

"We can do it back at the portables, haul him inside one of them."

"And that's where we do it." You and Gordon are holding each other's eyes, and it's like you are reading each other's minds.

Caleb rubs his temples. "Well, if this is what you guys are all set on doing—"

* * * * *

But are you set on it? You're not sure. But having broached and outlined the idea, it just becomes easiest to follow it. You and Gordon quickly improvise the details while Caleb listens grumpily from the sidelines. Then you part for the night, you for your house and Caleb with Gordon for his.

You find yourself half hoping that Caleb will talk Gordon out of the scheme.

You field some texts from Cassie—which you wince over, and wince over harder when you decide not to reply—and from Keith, who sends a link to a video that he made with some guys up at school for their YouTube channel. You're vaguely aware of it all—it's a movie review channel, and he's doing reviews with them as extra credit in the film class that you and he share—but it strikes you that you've not paid much attention to him in recent weeks, outside of one class and lunch up at school. So you watch the video without paying much attention, then text back to say that it was "cool." He texts back to ask if it's worth sending a link of it to Caleb. When you reply, Sure y not? he replies, Doods busy sucking Gordon's cock. You snort.

Then, instead of tossing the phone away, you call Tilley direct. "So what are you saying this shit about Caleb for?" you demand.

"What shit?"

"That crack about him sucking off Gordon."

"Well, he is. They're rooming together, aren't they?"

"Gordon's just renting a room—"

"Well, I hardly see him anymore 'cos he's always doing stuff with Gordon, it seems like." You're about to retort that Caleb hardly does anything with Gordon when Keith adds, "You too. Motherfucker."

You blink at the hurt tone in his voice. "I don't think we're doing that much with Gordon," you lie. "You're the one who seems to be avoiding us."

"Yeah, well, you blame me? With him hulking it up around you? Jesus." It sounds like he's shivered. "He's a bad influence on you, man."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, where the fuck else are you getting this idea that you can go toe to toe with the psychos at school? The Molester and Kirkham and—" He breaks off.

And Javits? Is that what he was going to say? Seth Javits, of the basketball team, is Keith's special bully. "Gordon gave me some advice, is all," you lamely argue. "It made sense."

"It makes sense if you like getting fucked up. Jesus, I don't even want to be around you any more! 'Case some of them psychos think they should start dishing out to me some of what they're now dishing out to you!"

"The Molester hasn't touched me in a week. It works, dude. If you make yourself more trouble than you're worth—"

"Or, y'know, you could just make sure you're standing where they don't see you and think to make trouble! That's what I do!"

"Well, you do you, man, and I'll do me."

"This isn't you," he protests. "It's Gordon. I told you, he's a bad influence."

You're tempted to tell him that you've now got a key to the gym and the fuck room because you've let Gordon influence you. But you restrain yourself. The last thing you want is Keith begging you to show him the loft and whining when you refuse; or you showing him the loft and getting caught with him there by either Patterson or Lynch.

"Well," you say, "let's do something this weekend. Out in the open someplace, so you can make a quick getaway if you see someone coming for me."

* * * * *

The confrontation with Kirkham is almost alarmingly easy to set up. Gordon tells you where his locker is; you find him at it; and with a soft, almost gleeful sneer he agrees to meet up with you at six o'clock in back of the school by the portables. And you astonish yourself a little when you one-up him by giving him your phone number in case he has to call because he's changed his mind about fighting you.

Then he has to one-up you by sending you a flurry of texts throughout the day, promising what he'll do to you. You manage to shut him up when you reveal that you've got his wallet with his IDs in it, and that he'll have to beat it out of you to get it back. That elicits only a single reply, which is his last of the day: I'm sending u to the morgue.

You take the first day of your five-day detention after school, and when it's done you trudge back to the portables, where (as according to plan) Gordon and Caleb are waiting for you. They've already stashed the stuff for the spell inside one of the portables, and talk some more about how it's going to all work. Gordon must have guessed you'd be jumpy, because he's brought along a small flask filled with something hot but calming. "Not a good idea to fight someone while you're wasted," he says with a crooked grin. "But you're not really trying to win this one, are you?"

Still, it's an anxious thirty-minute wait until Kirkham shows up. It's just you and Gordon outside the portables when he does, for Caleb has hidden himself inside with the supplies. Kirkham studies you and your friend with a darkened brow as he trudges up. "The fuck is this?" he demands, and jerks his chin at Gordon.

"He's here to ref," you explain.

"No refs."

"Then no fight," Gordon says.

"So that's how you're gonna weasel out," Kirkham sneers at you. He turns to leave.

"Chickenshit," Gordon calls after him. Kirkham turns, and regards you both.

"Okay," he says, settling back on a heel. "You first, then him. You can ref the second fight," he adds, jerking his thumb at you. "If you're still alive."

"Talk or come at me," you taunt, and brace yourself.

Instantly, Kirkham leaps across the gap between you, swinging a fist at your face. You jerk your head back, so it barely grazes you, then duck and throw yourself at him, grabbing him about the torso and kicking at his ankles in a bid to trip him. But he makes the same play, and you're the one who winds up on the ground with him sneering down at you. "Fuckin' pussy," he says as he raises a fist. But then Gordon grabs and hauls him up in a quasi-headlock. "Mask," Gordon grunts as Kirkham flails in his arms like a wildcat, cussing hard. You scramble over to Gordon's unzipped workout bag, pull out the blank mask, and wheel toward Kirkham. An instant later he is sagging in Gordon's arms, the mask you thrust at him having vanished into his face.

The rest goes just as quickly. Gordon carries him into the portable where Caleb is waiting and drops him onto the book, which is open on the battered teacher's desk, and the three of you quickly strip him of his clothes, revealing a lean, lithe figure. With trembling hands you spread the rest of the ingredients over his hairless chest, and after the mask has come out, Caleb lights a match. He hesitates, though. "What if this doesn't kill him?" he asks hollowly.

"Just finish it," Gordon growls.

You jump back as a cold, purple bloom of flame envelops you.

* * * * *

"So, I guess it's a good thing we made a spare," Caleb says. "Even though that's not what we were trying to do."

The "spare" in question would be the mask you put onto Kirkham. You had the foresight to glue one of those memory-copying strips into it, so as to make a complete copy of him, and now all you have to do is take it back to the elementary school to seal it up. Then someone can put it on so it won't look like David Kirkham has vanished.

Because it doesn't look like the real one is going to be coming back anytime soon.

But who is going to wear it? You and Caleb and Gordon all exchange worried glances. It's got to be one of you who becomes Kirkham.

Unless you take a chance on putting the mask onto the ... thing ... that the spell made.

Next: "Caleb the Kirkham" 

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"Table of Contents (Vol. 2)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 2)"