The Book of Masks (Vol. 2)

The Fate of Dwayne Macaulay

Previously: "The Return of the Reluctant Prodigal" 

"What? The? Fuck?" you yell. Your fists bunch up.

Caleb winces. "You shouldn't have left the book with us," he says. "And all that money."

You wheel on him, and only the sliver of you that recognizes him as your best friend prevents Dwayne Macaulay's instincts from punching out most of his teeth. As it is, you can hardly make him out through the blurred vision of your trembling rage.

Caleb takes two long steps back, and raises his hands. "Hey man, what's done is done."

You're standing in the elementary school basement. A breeze is blowing in through a broken window, stirring up dust. In the dingy, late afternoon light the place looks even more like a junk heap that usual.

And it's not improved by the addition of a life-size statue of Dwayne Macaulay.

Don't freak out, Caleb warned you as he unlocked the basement door. Especially looking like that. We think he's not dead. Just, uh, resting.

You wheel from Caleb and advance on the ... thing. It's lying on one of the tables, and except for the lifeless pallor it looks exactly like Macaulay.

Except that he's made of stone.

He's naked, which would alarm you if you hadn't spent seven days pretending to be him, so you're not shocked by his bare torso and crotch. As you lean over him you see that the physical replica is exact right down to the pores in the skin. Even the tufts of his beard are detailed to the individual hair, as though he had been flash-fossilized.

You run a fingertip over him. It feels like pumice, and there's a little "give" when you push at him. And when you focus on his chest, you see that Caleb spoke truthfully when he said it looks like he's breathing in a very slow and shallow way.

You glare back at Caleb. "The book did this?"

"Yeah." He shrugs and dodges your eye.

"What happened?"

Caleb is a little hazy on the details because (he explains) he wasn't there when it happened. But Macaulay, still in the Marianne mask, showed up at the trailer while some of the sophomore guys were there to pick up some stuff for Marianne. There was a fight, but there were several of them and only one of Dwayne, and he only had the muscles of a soft, thirty-something woman, so they overpowered him. And the next spell in the book called for a human sacrifice—

"A what?" you bellow.

Caleb flinches again. "Well, not literally. But the list of ingredients called for a human being. Look, no one was going to actually do it," he exclaims. "We weren't going to try executing that spell. But then Macaulay showed up and one thing led to another, and—"

You pinch the bridge of your nose. "So you did it. You know, I did make arrangements before I left for Dwayne's boss to take care of him."

"Yeah, and look at the bang-up job they did. He was out there for a week and never caught him."

"So when did this happen?" You point to the petrified Macaulay.

"Yesterday."

You look back at the figure. Something about the story strikes you as fishy. "Didn't you say he was in the Marianne mask when you turned him into this rock monster?"

"Sure. And he still looked like Marianne after we dropped the stuff—"

"You said you weren't there."

Caleb's ears redden. "The guys called me out. Anyway, he still looked like Mrs. Matthias after we, uh, did the thing to him. But she was ... unresponsive? But we knew there was a mask on him, so we took it off, and we found that." He points to Macaulay.

"You have any idea what he is, what he's supposed to be?"

"We think he's a golem. Yeah," he continues when you shake your head. "They're like a living statue, you craft them and—"

"He's gonna come alive?" you yelp. "Like that?"

"Keep your shirt on, man. You have to use a mask to activate them. The ones the book makes, I mean. See, the old-fashioned golems, you just make a statue, and they walk around obeying your orders, like a robot. But these, you have to put a mask on them for them to come alive. Then they turn into a copy of the person in the mask, and they do what you say. I've got one at school pretending to be me."

It feels like your hair has caught on fire. "You made two of these things?"

Caleb blinks, then grins weakly. "Well, the other one's not like this one, the other one's just a lumpy thing. It doesn't use a human body, either, so we didn't kill anyone when we made it. Not that we think we killed this guy here," he hastily adds. "You saw that he's still breathing, right?"

"And Lindsay is letting you do this?" The world is making less and less sense.

"No, Bhodi is. She gave the book to him, thinks he's okay with it, won't do anything with it." He shakes his head. "He's got the rest of us working out of it. Oh, by the way, before you get too shirty with me about all this, you'd have been in here doing the same thing." He fixes you with a keen eye.

You raise your chin. "What makes you think that?"

"Because Bhodi's into it, and he's got that brain band of yours inside his head. Joe too."

You stagger.

"Oh yeah, they told me about that. I don't really know them super-well, and I didn't know them before, so I can't tell how much difference it's making. But they're pretty into it. Oh yeah, we've been going through the book."

He says it with a cheerful abandon that makes your blood run cold.

* * * * *

They have unlocked three spells since you left town, Caleb explains to you. The first made a kind of glue that attaches a brain band to a mask to make an all-in-one disguise. By attaching a blank band to a blank mask, you can copy someone all at once instead one piece at a time. The downside, Caleb says, is that for some reason it takes longer to get into someone's brain if it's attached to a mask than if you put on just the band or if you put them on separately.

After that came a spell that created a golem. It took a week for them to do that one, and they had to dig four hundred pounds of earth out of a graveyard, but it crafted the slave that is currently at the school pretending to be your best friend. "You put hair into it, and the thing has to obey the person whose hair you use," Caleb say. "Though like I say, it just lays there until you put a mask on it. We used my hair when we made it, and today I put my mask on it and sent it to school."

"Is it going to fool anyone?"

"It looks just like me, and talks and acts just like me." He grins. "I discovered I'm kind of annoying."

You grunt.

Then you shiver. What if the person you're talking to is actually a fake?

Before you can challenge him on the point, he jumps ahead to the next spell, which is the one that baffled them until, providentially, Macaulay showed up. "So now we're on to the one after that."

"Hold it," you say. "You're doing all this without Lindsay knowing about it?"

"Yeah. I'm not sure if Paulina knows. She and Bhodi have gotten pretty close since—" He sidles up and nudges you in the ribs. You flush. "I get the feeling he's told her a little bit about what's going on, about the guys making masks of each other."

You clutch your head. Things sure have gotten busy in your absence, and you have a feeling that, far from simplifying with everyone turning back into themselves, things are going to get even more complicated.

But at least you got Evie back, you reflect witha sigh. And you can send Marianne home. And you don't have to worry about Macaulay anymore.

"Well," you say, "if this is the worst that's happened, and we can keep Lindsay from finding out—" You catch yourself as a furtive look skitters across Caleb's face. "What?"

"Well, I said that Lindsay doesn't know what's going on, but she has been kind of getting into it herself. Second-hand. Indirectly."

"How do you mean?"

"Well, Mrs. Matthias was going stir-crazy. And it was getting hard for the girls to keep juggling that mask of Evie around. So they showed Dane's mom the mask and she's been playing Evie the last few days."

You cover your face and whimper. "Anything else?"

"No, I think you're up to speed now. I guess we should have a meeting, figure out what comes next."

"Next?" you murmur.

Caleb doesn't hear you. "Two meetings, I guess," he says. "One with the girls and one just with the guys, to talk about the next spell."

"And what does that one do?" You suddenly feel very weary.

"It makes this paste and you put it inside a mask. Then, uh—" He grimaces. "Look, Joe and I tried it out last night. It would be faster if we saved the explanation for later, when we can tell everyone. Except the girls, obviously."

"Yeah, obviously," you grunt. "Okay, let's meet tonight, at Dane's old trailer, I guess." You glance at the busted window. Yes, best to abandon this place.

"What do you want to do about him?" Caleb asks, and points to your face. That's when you remember you're disguised as Macaulay—the way a fish remembers that it swims in water. "We can glue that brain band and mask together, put them on the real one. It should turn into another golem thing, like I've got at school. Except it'll obey me, 'cos we used my hair to make it."

Yes, you could bring Macaulay back. You could use him as a bank.

But would the world miss him if Dwayne Macaulay just ... disappeared? Marianne and Dane Matthias are his only family, and his business acquaintances care nothing for him.

* To continue: "People and Possibilities, Part 1" 

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