The Book of Masks (Vol. 3)

The Boy Who Victimized Himself

Previously: "Things That Look Like People" 

"What's going on?" you ask, and point to the figure in the chair. "Is Sean, uh, part of the club now?"

"No," Maria replies.

"Toldja he didn't know about this," Eva says. She catches your eye and mouths a Sorry at you.

A chill runs down your spine. "So how did Sean get a mask?"

"I guess we need to ask Sean. We thought we'd ask you first, just in case this was something you knew about."

"Well, I don't. Did you ask Keith if he knows about it?" You feel your scalp starting to crawl, and your face starting to flush at the mistrust in Maria's—Fairfax's—attitude.

"Yes. Just before we called you." Her answer makes you feel a little better. "So I guess that makes Sean the only person we can ask. We've been keeping him, uh, sedated, but I guess now we can—" She pushes his head up, and rubs his face—softly at first, then more vigorously as Sean's eyes remain stubbornly shut.

"How did you find out he was wearing a mask?" you ask the others.

"We tried putting one on him," Jessica says. "The same way we got them onto everyone else." By her smirk, you're guessing that Carlos has abandoned Marcos and put himself back under her mask. "But it started acting funny—hissing and stuff. After trying it a couple of times we got the idea of seeing if there was already a mask or something on him. So we tried taking one off him instead and, well, there you go."

There's a groan from the chair, and Sean's eyes flutter open. He blinks, then rears back. He struggles briefly against his bonds, and pales. "What?" he gasps. "What the—?"

"That's what we'd like to ask you, Sean," Maria says, emphasizing the name.

"Sean?" He blinks at his name.

"That's you, isn't it? Sean Mitchell?" She arches her eyebrows and purses her lips.

His brow furrows, but fear shows in his eyes. "I don't know what you—" He slides his tongue over his lower lip. "Sean is— I mean, Mitchell is—" His eyes go distant. He swallows.

Looks are exchanged around. "Maybe Scott was a beta?" Jessica says. "So maybe Sean doesn't know he was, uh—"

Maria picks up the mask and strokes its inner surface. "But there's no beta layer. He should know exactly who he was. Who he was pretending to be." She shows the mask to Sean, who rears back from it. "How long have you been pretending to be Scott Bickelmeir?"

You've never seen anyone shit his pants, and you're not sure that Sean is shitting his pants now. But if you had to imagine someone shitting his pants he would have to do like Sean does now: every muscle in his face, shoulders, torso, and legs seems to twinge and sag all at the same time. His eyes bulge and his mouth works.

"A mirror," he croaks. "You got a mirror?"

Again, looks are exchanged. Maria takes out her cell phone, swipes her finger across the screen, and holds it up to show Sean.

He yelps.

Then—and this you definitely weren't expecting—a grin of relief spreads over his face, and his eyes start to stream.

"You got it off me!" he says. "Oh God, thank you Jesus, you got the fucking thing off me!"

* * * * *

It's an afternoon of surprises and revelations. To start with, the person tied up in the chair—Philip leaves him tied up, and for some reason he doesn't even ask to be released—isn't Sean Mitchell. It's Sean's twin brother, Taylor.

His dead twin brother.

"It was back in August," he tells your company. "Start of August. I was working at this company, manual labor and stuff, and this box comes in to our shipping center. It was busted open in transit, and we were repackaging it to return to the sender 'cos the guy it was addressed to said he didn't want it. Anyway, we—" He licks his lips. "That's me and Scott and Sawyer Harrison. Well, we start looking over the stuff as we're repacking it. It's some old papers and things, an old school notebook, and also these masks."

He glances over at the desk, at the mask he was wearing. He flinches from it.

"Well, like I said, it was like no one wanted it, so we— Well, we took some of the things out. The masks, some of the papers. And we got together one day up at Eastman—that's where we went to school—and started looking at it all. Scott put one of the masks to his face and— Well, you're not going to believe it."

"The mask went into face, and he passed out for ten or fifteen minutes," Maria says, "and then the mask came out but when it did it had Scott's name printed on it. Right?"

Taylor's eyes bulge. "How did you—?" He looks around. "Well, if you know that much, I guess you can guess some of the rest. I did it with another mask, and then we played around with some of the other stuff we found in the box. Eventually I tried putting on Scott's mask, and it turned me into him, and he put on mine and it turned him into me." His brow darkens. "Sawyer put one on, but it just knocked him out and he never woke up."

He trails off, and pain fills his eyes. No one says anything, not even to prod him into resuming. When he does, his voice is very clipped. "Long story short, Sawyer wound up in the hospital. Scott and I couldn't find any way to turn ourselves back. So he went home as me and I went home as him. Only he had a car wreck." The tendons in his neck work, and bruises appear around his eyes. His voice turns gruff and fuzzy. "I was stuck as Scott, and I didn't know how to tell anyone who I was or what happened. They'd think I was crazy."

"So you've been pretending to be Scott ever since?" Maria asks after a long silence.

"Yeah. I moved over to Westside 'cos my brother did. I wanted to stay close to him." His expression twists up. "Sean didn't want anything to do with me, though. He thought I was Scott, thought I had something to do with Taylor's— With my death. Like he blames me for it."

For a moment he stares at the floor, all the muscles in his face working. Then he looks up.

"But you got the mask off me. You know how those things work." He looks from Maria's face to yours and to the Garners'. "You're gonna let me go, right? Let me go find Sean, let me tell I'm—"

He freezes as no one answers, and his face falls. "Oh, Jesus," he whispers as he turns very pale.

Maria holds his eye, then stirs. "Be right back," she says. "Stay comfortable." She doesn't need to gesture to get you and the others to follow her out and down the corridor. "Well," she says when you've reached the foyer building entrance. "What do you think?"

"His story checks out," Jessica says. She holds up her cell phone. "I was Googling while he was telling it. About the accident and everything. That guy Sawyer Harrison. All of it."

"That's good, but I wasn't so much doubting his story as wondering what we should do about it."

"Jesus!" Eva exclaims. "We let him go find his brother! Or we bring Sean out here! You're not seriously suggesting we don't!"

You can tell by Jessica's expression that Carlos agrees with Mike, and when Maria looks at you, you nod too.

She sighs. "It certainly complicates things, but I agree. And I would like to know more about this box they found, and where it came from."

You'd like to know how Philip and his friends have learned to do all this stuff with masks. You have your suspicions, but there doesn't seem any point in confirming them.

At least, not yet.

* * * * *

You have to return home for dinner, so you leave it to the others to handle Taylor and his situation. After eating, you retire to your studio bedroom to study and to catch up on the texts that have been coming in. The first is from Cindy Vredenburg, asking if you can talk. don't want to leave incriminating texts on your phone, she explains, and adds a winking emoji.

"Pretty fucking weird what turned up at the complex, right?" she gasps when she picks up in answer to your call. You ask her what happened after you left. She tells you that Fairfax and the others called Sean out to the complex and oversaw the fraternal reunion. They also explained to the brothers about themselves, and about you and Keith. "So there's eight of us in the club now," she says.

"Want to bring Caleb in?"

"Don't even joke about that." Then she adds, "Not that I'm really opposed to telling Johansson about it all. But we've got to draw the line somewhere, right? And I get the impression Philip's pretty annoyed at the way more and more people are piling in."

There's not much more to the conversation though, except for Cindy's remark that Taylor (who is presumed dead) is going to have to continue playing the part of Scott Bickelmeir. She also has to share that, since turning him into a beta, Seth has been doing a bang-up job of "painting my front porch, if you get my drift, and I'm sure you do." You silently gag.

When you hang up you find two new text messages. You groan at the first: a snippy note from Stephanie, demanding to know where you are as you're late for the "study session" that she set up for you and Will. In the afternoon's excitement, you had totally forgotten.

The second also leaves you leery. It's from Scott Bickelemeir. But instead of a shirtless photo, it's a plaintive request: can we meet and talk, you and me and my brother?

* To continue: "A Meeting with the Mitchells" 

*
"Table of Contents (Vol. 3)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 3)"