The Book of Masks (Vol. 3)

Backwards From Where You Came

Previously: "The Hole" 

You scramble up the slope. It's hard going, for though the stonework--if that is what it is--is firm, there are no handholds.

But eventually the floor flattens out, and you stumble over the lip and onto level ground. The light is closer now, and you can make out a figure ...

He's a hunched, balding man in the white surplice, bending over a bowl that rests on a tall tripod. He looks up as you approach, turning eyes that are a pale but intense blue upon you. His cheeks have deep folds, and there is a deep crease between his eyebrows.

A thin shadow of a smile appears on his face. "Coming along nicely, yes," he says as he straightens up.

As you open your mouth your questions die in the back of your throat. This world, whatever and wherever it is, seems to belong to this man, who even now is limping toward you with his hands clasped behind his back. You feel no compulsion or warning, just the firm certainty that only he has the right to speak here.

If he has noticed your altered attitude, he gives no sign as he looks you up and down, and then walks around you in a circle. "Yes, coming along very well." He steps back into view, and eyes you with a speculative look that discomfits you. "But you will be wanting your clothes back, won't you?"

Your clothes?

He limps back over to the tripod, and you totter after him. The tripod and its bowl are much larger than they had appeared--or they have gotten larger--for it looms gigantically into view, and you find yourself gazing down into what seems to be an enormous pool.

At the bottom, under what seems an immense depth of water, is a human body.

It's your body.

You're seized by vertigo, and feel yourself falling toward it ...

* * * * *

You wake with what seems a bracing shock, and sit up stiffly. The light is dim, but it's bright enough to show that you're inside Blackwell's library. You look down: You have a body again.

And not just any body. With fingers stiffened by surprise, you touch your thigh. It is your thigh. You grasp at your toes; they are your toes. You examine your fingers. They are your fingers.

You're sitting on a desk, and you hop down. Something slides heavily to floor beside you, and you glance down to see the Libra lying open, face down on the floor. You went into it weeks ago; now you've come out of it? Bringing your body back with you?

You suck on your lips. It is early morning, but of what day? Where's Frank? What has been happening? The house is entirely silent.

Whatever is going on, you don't want to be caught out here, like this, so you run lightly upstairs. Behind one door you find Blackwell's long-unused bedroom and dig out an enormous dressing robe. As the door to his wardrobe swings shut you catch sight of your self in the full-length mirror, and give yourself a fuller look.

Well, you don't look the worse for wear for your ordeal. Maybe a little peaked and drawn, a little thinner, but all in all--

No, there's definitely something wrong. Your features aren't hanging together right. You cock your head. Your hair is falling the wrong way, for a start, and you try brushing over in the proper direction, but it flops back limply. Your nose is crooked, too. You grimace, and your mouth curls in a parody of the smile you usually see when looking in a mirror.

Then you notice the birthmark on your cheek. It's on the wrong side of your face. You touch it, and it takes you a moment to realize you've touched it with your left hand rather than your right. You close your eyes and try to orient yourself. When you touch your birthmark you should be touching your right cheek. But now you're touching your left cheek. You run your tongue around your mouth. The missing molar, extracted when you had to get braces: it has returned. Now the gap is on the other side of your mouth. You draw a sharp breath and open your eyes again.

You understand now what is wrong: Everything about you has been flipped over. You are now a mirror image of yourself. You look down at the scar on your left thumb--but it's now on your right thumb. You reach out to close the wardrobe door, but the motion feels awkward and ungainly until you drop your right hand and use your left instead.

Slowly, distractedly, you return to the library after having put on the dressing robe. If it's not one damn thing it's another, you reflect. You pick up the Libra and glance through it, but your eye can't settle on anything long enough to take it in.

While so encumbered you hear the sound of a key in the lock of the front door. You leap back to your feet and look around wildly. That'll be Frank. It will have to be. You can't get back upstairs without him seeing you, and there won't be a hiding place if you duck outside through the French doors.

You hear the door open. For lack of a better hiding place, you twist the lever that opens the hidden door and duck back onto the top of the stairs, drawing the bookcase almost shut, and listen through it.

"--I can figure is that it's useful for creating test subjects," you hear Frank say. "No one could tell the difference?"

"It was a perfect copy." That's Joe's voice. "Even down to not being a golem."

"Like I said, useless. Not that I need any more golems running around." He falls silent. Then: "Fuck. I must've carried the Libra off to another room. I'll be right back."

Silence again. Joe must be alone in the library. Maybe if you moved quickly enough, you could surprise it and get back under the mask.

No, too risky. You stay planted by the secret door, listening. You hear only light, muffled sounds--Joe moving around. After a few minutes Frank returns. "Fuck," he exclaims. "I'm not normally this careless. I thought--" You take a careful step back, in case he decides to search the secret basement. "Shit. It's getting late. I'll just have to look for it after class."

"You could always send the other one," Joe says.

"Doesn't matter. I need you to look at the next spell, and we can do it tonight. Besides, I wanna see this thing in action for myself." More shuffling noises, and then silence.

You wait awhile before venturing out, though. Looking down into the basement proper, you can make out two still figures: one is the golemized form of Joe, while the other is of an ordinary golem. Is it your old golem body? Has Frank dug it up?

You dismiss the question as irrelevant and cautiously step back out into the library, to be assaulted by the infernal ticking of those two clocks. A quick step out into the foyer shows that the front door is locked, but to be safe you retreat back upstairs and lock yourself into one of the spare bedrooms with the Libra.

* * * * *

Page by page you flip though it, from the very front. The sigils are instantly familiar--just to look at them is to understand them, forwards and backwards--

You stop and frown. Backwards ...

You're looking at the spell used to attach a mind band to the interior of a mask. Why have you not noticed this before? The sigil, just as you remember, is actually a compound of two independent lines, nested one inside the other to form a larger, complicated circle of symbols. But if you start at the end and read the inner line backwards ... And then, once you've reached the starting point, continue to read the outer line, also backwards, all the way to the beginning ...

It's another spell, encoded like a hidden message inside the surface spell. You read it through very carefully, digesting it bit by bit before adding the next bit of information.

Why, of course. It's so simple. If you were to sketch out this double-enfolded, reversed sigil as a regular circle ... Inside it place a mask with an attached band ... Activate the sigil ... The band will release again, undoing the original attachment spell.

Your stomach seems to drop away, and you excitedly flip back to the previous spell, the one that creates mind bands. Again, patient examination discloses a hidden spell winding backwards through the original: a sigil that will destroy any mind band placed within it.

Gulping nervously, you turn to the spell that turns human beings into golems. Your hands tremble as you trace the sigil. You don't dare believe that you're interpreting it right, but it seems to be there: an extraordinarily complex sigil that will turn a golemized person back into their original form.

Joe is in the basement. You can revive him.

But maybe you should look through the book more carefully. If it contains this kind of unlooked-for surprise, maybe it contains others--others that might make you wary about employing this new discovery.

Next: "A Confrontation, Finally" 

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