The Book of Masks (Vol. 1)

The Magician's House

Previously: "A Slippery Sale" 

You suspect the card will be a fake, or that Blackwell will just laugh in your face when you ask for the rest of your money. But on thing's for sure: You won't get your money if you don't make the effort!

* * * * *

The professor's house, when you arrive there at six on the dot, turns out to be a large villa on the outskirts of town. It is surrounded by a tall wall of whitewashed stone; you pass through an ornate iron gate to find an extensive front yard that is intricately landscaped but entirely devoid of grass. Instead, little stone walls run hither and thither at ankle height, as though lining the places where flower beds once bloomed; the ground stacks up in terraces; and little stone towers squat like pygmy monoliths.

Yet there are no flowers and no grass, and the bushes are nought but nests of dead sticks and withered leaves. The only living thing is a yew tree standing at the corner of the house by a small stone shed.

Or maybe it's not a shed. You edge closer, and see three gravestones arranged near it. Opposite it is a pile of dirt, and a shovel leans against the wall.

You swallow. It's not a shed. It's a small mausoleum.

Your nerves aren't improved when you mount the steps to the broad porch and find the doorbell set inside the iron jaws of a ravening wolf. Instead of chancing your finger inside what looks like a trap, you bang the side of your fist against a massive wooden door.

Your pessimism proves groundless. The door opens, and Blackwell beams when he sees you. With a fluttering hand he ushers you inside, into a dark and gloomy foyer. There is a stack of bills on a small table by the door, and he carefully counts each twenty into your outstretched hand.

"—two-eighty, three hundred, three-twenty— I beg your pardon," he sys, "but you are quite sure you won't take that job I offered you?"

"Thanks, no. Three-twenty?" you prompt. After his trick with the book you are going to be very careful with him, for you suspect he'll try some fast talk with the money.

"Yes. Three-forty, three-sixty— How about one night's work? Tonight? For twenty dollars an hour?"

"Um ..."

"You see, as a result of today's faculty meeting I am suddenly called out of town. I must leave early tomorrow morning and I'm in a dither over packing. I have several books I need to take but I must catalog them before I go. I cannot possibly get everything done in time. So for twenty dollars an hour—"

"For how long."

"Two hours' work at the most. You'll be home before nine."

Well, that would e another forty dollars. "Two hours at twenty," you mull aloud. "Two at twenty, two at twenty. Yeah, I'll do it." The professor beams at you. "Two-twenty," you say, pointing to the cash in your palm.

"Of course. Two-twenty, two-forty, two-sixty—" He pauses and gives you a sharp look. "You'll find all your money here," he says, and presses the rest into your hand.

* * * * *

He shows you into the library, which is a very large room under a high ceiling, and lined on three sides with shadow-shrouded shelves. He guides you into that chair at an ornate desk, atop which sits a very incongruous laptop computer.

"It's all terribly simple really," he assures you as he launches the software. He has no concept of personal space and presses in far too close. "Title, author, etcetera. Some of the books may be a little tricky on account of their being so old," he warns, and points to a stack of books that rises from the floor to your elbow before leaving you alone.

But it takes you almost no time to do the first book. Perhaps some of the others will be "tricky," but you don't see how this job will take you more than forty minutes, if even that. You dial back your efforts accordingly. If you can stretch this out to two hours, that'll be forty bucks, and you'll have given Blackwell reason to think you're a moron. Maybe then he'll stop pestering you to take a job with him.

It's not hard to slow down, either. The room keeps distracting you, and not in a good way. Sitting under that high, shadowy ceiling is like sitting at the bottom of a well, and the bookshelves seem to lean in over you. There are little alcoves in the walls, too, but you find you don't like to look at the things sitting in them. They are statues of owls and cats and wolves and ... Yow! That one in the alcove by the door looks like a hairless orangutan flashing fake vampire teeth. You flinch from taking a closer look, but are pretty sure it has only a single eye in the middle of its forehead.

Then there are the clocks. Two large grandfather clocks loom next to each other, touching corners at right angles to each other. They tick discordantly, and by listening very closely you come to realize that they are out of phase with each other, one being slightly slower than the other. Meanwhile, behind your left shoulder there's another clock ... No, now that you take a closer look, you see it's just a pendulum, almost flush with the wall, in a space bare of shelves. It swings in a long, slow arc. Your eye follows the shaft, which disappears through a slot in the ceiling. You look back down, and notice that the pendulum is shaped like a scythe. Peering closer still, you see that although it does not brush the ground, it slips back and forth over a shiny groove in the floor.

* * * * *

After about an hour of this you are eager to get out sooner with less money; you also don't like that your back is turned to the a set of French doors that give out onto a rapidly darkening landscape. You are down to only three books when—

"Oh, for fuck's sake." The software freezes and the entire computer has to be rebooted. It takes precisely ninety-four ticks of one grandfather clock (and eighty-three ticks of the other) to get back to where you'd been when it crashed. (You know how many ticks because your mind has become morbidly fascinated by the noise they make.) You start to type in the book title again—

"Son of a bitch," you mutter, for the software has crashed again. You press your hands to your ears, trying to shut out the clocks. You pull open a desk drawer, looking for something that will occupy your attention as the computer reboots, and find a hunk of modeling clay the size of your fist.

You grab it up and start working at it absent-mindedly. It is very dry and hard and flaky, impossible to work with, so you spit a huge loogie onto it and work the moisture in. Almost instantly it becomes soft and pliable, and seems to slither beneath and between your fingers. You're holding it in your left hand when the spreadsheet relaunches, and with your right hand you hunt-and-peck the book title into the box—

"Piece of motherfucking shit!" you scream as the screen fades to blue. You fall back into the chair and work angrily at the clay. A perturbed Blackwell looks in through the doorway. You blush and hang your head.

"Is something wrong?" he asks in a polite tone.

"Sorry," you mumble. "The laptop keeps freezing." He comes over to look at the computer and the book. He smiles tightly when he opens the latter up to its title page.

"Mmmm, yes, it's a pity no one knows how to write stable code anymore. I've gotten quite superstitious about it myself. Where does it keep crashing?"

"In the title box." The title is a jumble of words that sound vaguely Russian. "Three times it's done it. I mean, Christ!"

"I doubt he has anything to do with it," Blackwell says. "If it gives you trouble again just put in a placeholder title. That's one of my workarounds, and God knows why it works." You pull and press at the clay and study his head resentfully as he leans in to point at the screen. "Here, just put in an acronym of the title and then the author's name in parentheses. I'll change it to whatever suits me later."

The software has relaunched by this point, and you follow his suggestion. Luckily, the fourth time is a charm and it takes the entry he has suggested. You set the clay down on the desk and turn to the rest of the information.

"What's that?" Blackwell cries in a strangled voice. You glance up, and find him staring down at that lump of clay. His expression is one of bug-eyed terror.

"Oh, sorry," you mumble. "I was just playing with that stuff while waiting for the computer to come back on." You reach out to take it, but he grabs your wrist in a vise-like grip. He makes a choking sound, and gingerly picks the clay up.

But it's not a featureless lump anymore. It has acquired an eerie resemblance to Blackwell himself. And not a flattering resemblance either: it looks like a the work of a caricaturist with a deep loathing for his subject. But it captures him perfectly: the skinny legs, the apple-like belly, the sloping shoulders, the bulbous head with the drooping nose and protuberant lips, and the combover, like a limp snake trailing over his scalp.

At least, that's what it looks like from your angle, in an admittedly dark room. It must be a trick of the light and your nerves.

"How did you soften the clay?" the professor asks.

"I spit in it. Look, I'm really sorry—"

"No no no. No." He seems to have recovered, but he has grown quiet. "It's quite alright. I'm just startled is all." He turns toward you with an intense expression on his face. "You have a prodigious talent."

"I was just goofing around."

"I will give you fifty dollars an hour to be my assistant," he says. "You can set your own hours, your own schedule, to work around the job your father has given you. What do you say?"

* Next: "The Bully Boy" 

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