The Book of Masks (Vol. 3)

A Movie Steps Off the Screen

Previously: "Is You Is or Is You Ain't My BF?" 

By the middle of the afternoon you feel you've exhausted the subject of yourself, and Sydney has no more to say about herself. During all that time, moreover, she has completely failed to pick up any of Caleb's memories or personality traits.

"I think you were making it up," she teases, "the stuff about having your friend's memories. I think you were just pretending to be him." But beneath the teasing tone you can hear a peevish annoyance. You can only lamely speculate that the mask worked for you and not her because you're the one who cast it. "Then let me make the next one," she says.

There's no chance of that, though, as long as the grimoire is buried under that burning mound of earth.

Speaking of which, you've had plenty of time during the afternoon to study it more closely. Something is happening to it, so you know that despite the time it's taking that the spell is (probably) working. What started as a mound of loose dirt has pulled together and hardened into a solid shape. At first glance it looks like a fat lawn cigar, albeit one dropped by a dog the size of an elephant. It's irregular in shape, though. A fissure has opened up at one end, nearly splitting the thing in two up the middle, and farther up two smaller fissures have opened up on either side. Those cracks give you pause—Is the thing deformed?—but there's nothing to do but wait for the thing to finish.

* * * * *

By three o'clock Sydney has started to go a little stir crazy. "Maybe you don't need people to hang out with, but I do," she says. "No offense, Will, but all this one-on-one time with you is a bit much of a good thing."

"No offense taken," you tell her. In truth, you've gotten a little antsy as well.

So she changes back into her track suit, and with you to guide her she pulls off Caleb's mask. It knocks her out, and for a long minute you bend over her, staring into her face. As your trouser snake stirs, though, you decide it would be best if she didn't wake to find you looming over her with a haggard, lustful stare, and mount the steps to wait outside. You have to move into the cab of your truck, though, as it starts to rain.

"I'm going over to Sophie Van den Berg's place," Sydney tells you when she comes out to join you a quarter-hour later. She's got a dazed expression on her face, and she squints up at the cloudy sky. "Wanna go with?"

"Maybe meet you there later?"

Her lips purse into a wry smile like she had when wearing Caleb's face, but it looks much nicer on her own. "That means no, doesn't it?"

Then, to your astonishment, she leans in through your truck window to give you a solid smooch on the side of the mouth.

"That's for sharing your stuff with me," she says. "And talking with me. I'll bring over some of my dad's stuff tomorrow. If we can't look at your book, we can look at his." She jumps into her car and drives off before you can find your voice.

For almost ten minutes you sit in your truck. You press the palms of your hands against the roof of the cab, and your feet into the floorboard—it's the only way you can keep from exploding with surprise and excitement.

* * * * *

Maybe Sydney meant the kiss to persuade you to follow her out to her friend's house, but it actually has the opposite effect. You want to keep it a special thing, and so after going home, locking yourself in your room, and air-guitaring joyfully for half an hour to the most up-tempo music you can find, you text Caleb and Keith to see if they're up for something. Caleb isn't, but Keith texts back to say that he's planning a late-afternoon cinema run with some of his other friends, and to ask why you didn't reply to his earlier text informing you of the fact.

"Because you're full of shit," you tell him when you call him directly. "You don't have any other friends."

"Fuck you," he says. "Keep talking like that, and the only friends I got will be my other friends."

"And what a tragedy that would be. Who are these assholes?"

"My homies Montoya and Hollister. You know, the guys I'm making videos with."

"What videos?"

"Fuck you. Don't you ever listen to a thing I say?"

"Not if I can help it. What's this movie you're gonna see?"

"Cravenmoor. New horror thing, s'posed to be a new cinematic universe, like that Conjuring shit. Started yesterday. You'll wanna get in on the ground floor if you're gonna get in at all."

You roll your eyes, but it's something to do, so you tell Keith you'll meet him and his "homies" at the Silver Cineplex up by the mall at five.

* * * * *

Keith has three "homies" with him, not two, when you arrive, but introductions are quickly made. You recognize Michael Hollister and Carlos Montoya as guys in your English class. The third, Philip Fairfax, is someone you've had classes with in the past. Hollister and Montoya are a couple of laughing goofballs who can't help spilling popcorn all over themselves as they race down the hall to the auditorium. Fairfax is a sober, tight-lipped red-head with black frame glasses who answers your questions in an emotionless monotone. After a few minutes you finally place him: He's the kid whose kick-ass science-fair project back at Schuyler Middle School took him to Washington DC for some kind of national finals.

These days, though, he explains as you settle into the plush, stadium seating of the largest screen in the cineplex, he's helping his friends with a YouTube channel. "Movie reviews," he says. "I'm not cinematically inclined myself, so I'm helping run the technical end of it. It's all educational, of course."

He pauses as Michael, who is sitting in the row directly in front of you, squirts a stream of Pepsi into Carlos's face; Montoya retaliates by flicking a cheese-drenched Nacho at him. "Analyzing algorithms, I mean," Philip says. "The reviews themselves won't be putting any critics out of work," he mutters.

Keith, who is sitting on the other side of you, jumps in at that point to remind you that he told you all about the channel, and how he's helping them run it, and how any week now he's going to guest-host one of the videos. "Do a whole bunch of 'em as extra credit in Hawks's class," he brags. "That's the plan. Too late now for you to get in on it, though," he adds with a jeer.

"Yeah, well, I've got a girlfriend," you retort. The words surprise you.

"Pfft, sure, you say that now, but when mid-terms are— What?"

"Nothing."

"Christ. You and Lisa are bust-o for good-o. You need to stop huffing glue, man."

"Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop taking amphetamines!" Carlos hoots.

"Yes, birds too!" Mike exclaims.

"And Leon's getting larger!" They collapse against each other in gales of laughter.

Fortunately, right about then the lights go down and the ads begin.

* * * * *

An hour and forty minutes later, your quintet is swaggering toward the exits. Mike and Carlos are chortling in a nasty way and chanting (for no reason you can understand), "Quiet quiet quiet boom, quiet quiet quiet bang, quiet quiet quiet zing, quiet quiet quiet ah-OOO-gah!" Keith says a few sneering things—"Was that ectoplasm or ectojism?"—while Philip (when you ask what he thought) says, "Any insufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from mere incompetence," which sounds like the kind of thing that probably got him to Washington DC when he was thirteen years old.

And you?

You are seriously freaked out.

Oh, the movie itself wasn't all that scary. Mostly it was just things jumping out of walls.

Nor was it the iconography. Even when one of the characters pulled down a mirror—which had been prone to go cloudy and show ghastly visions of torture and murder—to reveal a grotesquely primitive portrait of a horned goat (glaring balefully) daubed onto the wall, you stifled a yawn.

But when that same character dropped the mirror (which shattered, naturally) and turned white and murmured, "Baphomet!" you sat up very sharply.

And when it turned out—helpfully shown in flashback—that the house had been the headquarters for a red-robed cult dedicated to the worship of a demon by that name, you shrank back in your seat and pulled your knees up to your chest.

"Any of you guys know anything about that demon those characters were worshipping?" you ask with studied indifference when you're in the parking lot.

"Blegh-heh-heh-heh-heh!" Carlos bleats in mocking imitation of a goat.

"You gotta have a serious craving for cock if you're gonna suck off a giant goat!" Mike chortles.

You shiver.

When Keith suggests a group party at La Cocina, you almost demur, then decide you'd rather be with friends than home alone in your bedroom. You're not much company for the other guys, though, and no one is broken up when, on getting a text from your dad, you announce you have to run a short errand and then go home.

When you are in your bedroom, you temporize for as long as you can stand, then fire up a web browser to research that demon. It turns out to be a real thing—the deity supposedly worshipped by the heretical Templars.

More to the point, the "Brotherhood of Baphomet" was the name of the secret society to which Sydney's father belonged.

* To stop things now: "While There's Time to Turn Back" 
* To keep your worries to yourself: "Stuff Gets Real" 

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