The Book of Masks (Abridged)

The Bully Boy

"WHO'S SET TO MAKE A THOUSAND BUCKS A WEEK?" You do a high step.

"You are," your friend Caleb says tonelessly.

"Who's set to make a thousand bucks a week?" You kick your leg like a chorus girl.

"You are," your friend Keith says, just as tonelessly as Caleb.

"Who's set to make—" You lick your index finger and thrust it in the air, and punch your fist next to it in the air three times. "One. Thousand. Motherfucking. Bucks. A week?"

"I give up, Prescott, who?"

You whirl and freeze. Lester "The Molester" Pozniak, soccer goalie and bully, stands behind you with an amused look on his face. Other students passing by the school wing give your little knot a wide berth.

You could run, but that would be worse. You compose your face and prepare for what is to come.

"Hmmm, who could be lined up to make a thousand bucks a week?" the Molester muses. "Can't be any of your friends. They're worth more as organ donors." His eye falls on Keith. "By the way, Tilley, I'll be calling for your spleen after lunch. Have it out and ready for me. But back to Prescott's question. Who's set up to make one thousand motherfucking bucks a week?"

You swallow. The suspense is always the worst part with the Molester, and the Molester knows it. Sometimes he doesn't even follow through, just taunts and leaves.

"Couldn't be your sister. That is your sister I see down at the middle school when I drive by there, isn't it? Roberta?"

No, it's Robert, and he's your brother, but you don't correct the Molester.

"I always see her hanging around that Stephano fag," he continues. "I suppose she's safe with him. He's not going to pop her cherry. Be a different story, if she were your brother. None of the pretty boys are safe from Stephano's grabby hands." He shrugs. "But maybe she'll turn him straight. She's obviously hot for him, and real pretty besides. I bet you'd like to fuck her, even if she is your sister."

"Maybe you'd like to fuck my brother, you're so obsessed with him," you blurt out. By now you just want to get it over with.

His punch to your eye drops you onto your ass. "This isn't over, Prescott," he says with quiet malice. "Your job sounds real interesting."

* * * * *

"Oh, good heavens!" Blackwell exclaims as he ushers you into his foyer. It's Monday, the first day of your new job. "Don't pretend for a minute you walked into a door. I know the mark left by a fist."

"It's not as bad as it looks," you mutter.

"Poor consolation, because it looks terrible. Let me see that, William."

You wince and try to avoid his fingers, but he is insistent. "I think there is real damage there. What do your parents say?"

"I haven't been home yet."

"Good. We can do something before they see it."

"It's not—" But he is gone. You go into the library. It's just as creepy as before, and you particularly avoid the niche with the vampire cyclops-monkey. There is a greasy feel to the air.

You're looking out at the dead garden when your employer bustles back in with a jar. "This should clear that up," he says. "A remedy of my own making."

"I don't want to put on makeup—"

"Bosh. This is medicine, and very potent it is, too." He brushes some on your tender eye. You feel a tingling, and he beams. "Take a look." He holds up a small mirror, and you see the discoloration has faded; is still fading; it is suddenly gone, and all the pain is gone too. You press your fingers to your face; all the swelling has gone as well.

"Whoa. You oughta bottle and sell that stuff. You'd make a fortune."

His laugh is a bark. "I mixed it myself, but the recipe comes from ancient Canaan, and though the Canaanites were more advanced than is recognized, they were not so advanced as to have encompassed a Food and Drug Administration. I'm afraid the bureaucrats would blanch at my recipe."

You hope he's joking.

"Anyway," he continues, "you did splendid work on the books last Friday. I have a different job for you today." He gestures to a stack. "I've marked several illustrations in these tomes. Please copy them out by hand. I want them in one file instead of scattered throughout these books." He opens to the first illustration: a circle containing an intricate, almost eye-splitting design.

"Wouldn't it be easier to scan them into a PDF and print them out?"

He gives you a penetrating look. "Yes, it would be easier, on you and me both. You also would have just talked yourself out of about two hundred and fifty dollars." You grimace. "They are for a book I am compiling, but the designs here are too regular. I want them to resemble as closely as possible those than adept would have made. I will, of course, credit your work in the acknowledgements."

He pauses in the doorway as you sit down. "I'd like to see your illustrations before you leave," he says, "and please don't leave for the night without finishing whatever design you are working on."

* * * * *

The library continues to creep you out, but you thought to bring a music player, and it nicely filters out the infernal ticking of the clocks. You are soon deeply absorbed in the line work, much to your surprise. It gives you great pleasure to trace out the designs, which twist and curve in interesting ways, and despite their complexity they seem to yield easily to your pen strokes.

You get a bad scare at one point, though. Blackwell has left the mirror leaning against the stack of books, and when you glance over you see your own face reflected in it—and also the face of the cyclops-monkey as it leans directly over your shoulder. You whirl, but of course there's nothing there. You look back at the mirror, and realize it must have been a trick of the light, for the monster is still safely tucked inside its alcove.

About an hour after you start, the doorbell rings; Blackwell answers it, and over your shoulder you see him and a visitor go walking past the doorway connecting the library to the wide hall beyond. You only have time to see the long blonde hair that falls inviting around her shoulders, and a short skirt that hangs off a nice ass to frame some shapely legs, before they disappear.

A short time later Blackwell enters. "I have to leave soon, Will, so may I see your work?" He examines it closely and praises it very highly. He points to only one correction, and then asks you to finish the design you are presently working on.

Ten minutes later the girl leaves; a few minutes later you also finish up. You shout a farewell and Blackwell answers that your money is on the front table. Indeed it is: two hundred and twenty-five dollars. You pocket it with a smile.

As you walk out to your truck you see a light come on in one of the front rooms, and through the open curtain you see Blackwell, in his stocking feet, enter. He puts a DVD into his TV and sits down on the couch with what looks like a dinner plate and a dish rag. He begins to dry it.

You watch for a few minutes, but it looks like he's not going anywhere. Apparently he told you he was leaving only as an excuse to cut short your hours.

* * * * *

Blackwell's face is a mask of anguish when you see him the next day. "My ointment always works," he says, and points to your eye. "That's a new bruise."

"I walked into a door."

"You don't strike me as the type to get into fights. Are you being bullied at school?"

"Yeah, there's this kid who likes to beat me up for my lunch money," you sarcastically reply. Then you choke, because it is very near the truth.

"Will ..." Blackwell says gravely.

"Okay, yeah, but it's my own damn fault. I was bragging about this job and the money, and this one guy, we call him 'The Molester' because he's this real fucker, he's decided he wants a cut of it."

"We must do something about this," Blackwell says.

"I'm not going to tell the principal!"

"Oh, I agree. School administrators are useless, and so are the police." He scratches his cheek thoughtfully. "Here now," he says, and he leads you into another room.

This one looks like a study. From a file cabinet he takes a folder and examines its contents briefly before returning it to the drawer. With a meaningful glance at you he takes a crisp new ten-dollar bill from his wallet and sits at the desk. He takes a fountain pen—its case is livid green—from a drawer and begins to write on the bill.

"If the gentleman—may I speak ironically?—wants your money, you should give him some."

"I can't do that !"

"Please, Will." He quietly and carefully continues to trace something onto the bill. When finished, he smiles and hands it to you. "Take that with you to school tomorrow. When he demands cash, say 'I will give you ten dollars to leave me alone.' Then give him that bill. That precise bill."

"What good will that do?"

"Probably no good at all," Blackwell barks, and he bubbles over with laughter. "But it will buy you one day's peace at least."

* * * * *

You gasp and grit your teeth. "Uncle. Please, uncle." But the Molester just presses your wrist back farther.

"Uncle Sam," he insists. "Or some of his boys. Honest Abe or Andy Jackson. Ben Franklin, if you have him."

The tears are squirting out of your eyes. You have that ten on you, but isn't it better to take the pain than humiliate yourself by paying Pozniak off?