The Book of Masks (Vol. 2)

Vee Is for Visit

Previously: "What Chance Have You Got Against a Tie and Crest?" 

You've read stories about people who are tied up and left to freeze on a cold, hard floor for hours at a time. None of those stories even began to convey the agony and the boredom you are soon to suffer.

You twist inside the cords that bind your wrists and ankles. But they're knotted too tightly—who was the fucking Boy Scout who tied them?—and you quickly exhaust yourself.

The floor is very hard under your bony, unpadded ass, and it's wet and cold, and a damp, chilly stain slowly forms and spreads across the seat of your pants. Speaking of which, whose clothes are you wearing, exactly? You're dressed in dark slacks and a stiff, itchy coat. Something extra from one of the boys' wardrobes? The assholes didn't give you any socks and shoes, and your feet are soon numb from the cold, and your fingers swell and lose all feeling.

If only the numbness would spread to your lower back, where a low, persistent ache soon forms.

* * * * *

You fall asleep at some point, chin on your chest, for you jerk awake with a start to find a patch of yellow sunlight blazing against a wall. Your hands and feet are truly dead, and your limbs are petrified. Your prison looks no better in the dim daylight. It's a concrete box. Metal rungs set in a wall lead up to a metal grate; another wall is pierced by a small chute. Low entryways at opposite ends lead off into dark tunnels.

Hours pass with nothing to do but watch that patch of sunlight drop from the wall and crawl slowly across the floor. It reaches your feet, but is too feeble to warm them.

Are you getting a fever? Your thoughts begin to drift in circles, touching on but never settling firmly on the same cluster of worries. What is happening with your golems? They tried warning you. Are they looking for you? Can you hope for rescue before it's too late? But how can they find you when you yourself have no idea where you are?

At some point you doze off again.

* * * * *

You're wakened by the scrape of metal against concrete, and open your eyes to darkness. Even the moon is down. But gone too is the gnawing hunger that tortured you throughout the day. But you've got a burning thirst.

Shoes clink on the metal rungs of the ladder, and a pale shadow drops to the floor before you. A circle of light blazes into your eyes, then is dimmed. "How are you doing there, Will?" Vee asks when she lowers the light.

"Not good." You can barely make out your own slurred reply.

"What's that?"

"Nngh!"

She sets a bulky object on the oil drums, touches it, and a light winks on—an electric lantern. "I thought I'd keep you company," she says, "while I do some work." You close your eyes and sigh.

She ducks into one of the tunnels and returns with a folding chair, which she sets up by the drums. "We're turning that book of yours into a real research project," she says as she starts to unpack the contents of a plastic bag. "We almost got in a lot of trouble in the lab when we tried out the first spell. Whew! What a stink! But we made a mask. Now we just need to polish it. How long will that take?"

When you don't answer, she says, "We'll get the answer out of you, Will, whether you want to tell us or not."

"Water," you mutter. "Water!" you shout when she asks what you said.

"Hasn't anyone been down here to see you?" she asks.

"Nn-nhn."

"Fuckers. Todd said— I'll be right back." She scrambles up the ladder.

But it feels like a very long time before she returns, to kneel beside you with a bottle. She's brought a coarse blanket, too, which she throws over you. "You look cold," she says as she tips the water into your mouth. "It probably doesn't matter. We just have to put the new mask together, and you'll be out of here."

"Kristen," you mutter after she withdraws the bottle.

"Hmm? Oh, yeah. She told me she told you what's going on. Who she really is and what we're going to— Shit." She breaks off. "That's probably why Todd didn't come down to feed and water you."

"How come?"

"Because I bet Kristen—excuse me, Abi,—told him not to. In case you tried telling him who she really is."

"He's going to find out anyway."

"Yeah, maybe."

"And him 'n Chris'll be pissed at you, too. Because you went along with it."

Vee stares down at you. Her lips twitch.

"Yeah, maybe," she says.

Why isn't she scared? you wonder as she tucks the blankets around your legs and shoulders. "Why did you go along with it?" you ask. "Kristen says you hate Abi just as much as she does. But—"

"Oh!" Vee laughs. "Kristen's sweet, isn't she? You know she wanted to push Abi, the real one, in front of a train?"

"She what?"

"No kidding." She plops herself into the chair and resumes unpacking the sack. "She wanted to haul that pretend copy of you out to the railroad tracks and push him in front of a train. Squash Abi and you at the same time. I told her not to be stupid." She takes out some metal instruments and frowns at them.

A hard shiver—a delayed spasm of horror—rattles your teeth. If Kristen had done that, you wouldn't have a life to return to even if you did get loose!

"Then we figured out we didn't have to do that," she continues, bending her head over her work. "Those pretend things you and Ginny Weasely made? We could just order them around. Right? They thought you were Abi, so all we had to do was put on a mask of Abi and then they'd obey us. It's much more convenient that way. So convenient," she adds in a low voice that makes you shudder.

You say nothing for a long time, even though she didn't exactly answer your question, and you watch as she scrapes and chisels away at something on the oil drum. A mind band, you think. She's making a mind band so she can copy my memories. Then she'll know everything I know.

At the very least, you can try to make it a trade, so after a lengthy silence you resume the conversation. "So you and Kristen are going to swap Abi's identity back and forth, huh?"

"No." She blows away some metal shavings. "But I told Kristen we would, so she'd think that's why I went along with her."

"So why are you going along with her?"

"Are you really that stupid, Will?" Her voice floats on a wave of contempt. "I guess you were just getting settled into Abi's memories when we caught you, or else you'd— Though I gotta say," she interrupts herself, "you were doing a first-rate impersonation of her, considering you didn't know her. I mean, Kristen knows Abi really well, but she was totally over the top last night. I'm gobsmacked that Chris didn't twig to her not being Abi, the way she was all over him. At least she finally got into character this morning."

"So what is your plan, if you're not going to share Abi with Kristen?"

Vee raises her head. The lantern illuminates only part of her face, so her expression is unreadable.

"The same thing Abi would have done if she'd got this stuff." She turns back to her work. "Do you know who some of the kids are who go to school here? No, of course you probably don't. Mathilde Ambard," she says. "Name ring a bell?"

"No."

"She's a snooty, stuck-up bitch. Though she's got a right to be." Vee pauses. "One of her ancestors was cut down by the English longbowmen at Agincourt. Ask her, and she can tell you the name of every single, fucking, faggoty Frenchmen between her and him." She wipes her fingers across the unfinished mind band, and falls into a grim silence.

"And that's who you want to be?"

"No, that's who Abi would have wanted to be. Me, I'm not sure yet. There's a girl down in the first form, Sherri Watson, who's got a trust fund that could buy Massachusetts. But I'm not sure I want to go through puberty again. And there's a fourth-former whose dad is a Hollywood producer. A couple of hops, skips and jumps, and I could be the star of a cinematic universe or something. But that fourth-former has a dirty little dick, and I don't know how long I'd be stuck with it before, well—" She trails off.

"Is that what Chris and Todd want, too?" you ask in a croaking voice. "Money? Celebrity?" It sounds like a stupid question with an obvious answer.

"We haven't talked about it. And I'm still in the daydreaming stage myself. I mean, fuck!" She looks up to stare at the wall opposite. "There's a whole book to get through! What's the use of making a plan before you know everything you can do? You know? But maybe we'll turn ourselves into some of the X-men in the meantime, or into some other people who aren't stuck in school, then figure out the book before we do anything else."

She gives you a quick, direct glance. "But that's what you were planning to do, wasn't it? That's why you and your girlfriend tried worming your way into Xavier's?"

"You think that's what we were trying to do?"

"Of course. So which one is she, Will?"

"Which one is who?"

"Which one of the students here is Shelly pretending to be?"

Her questions seems to suck the air from your lungs. "What makes you think—?"

"Because she tried warning you last night," Vee says. She turns sideways in her chair."They know, they know you're not her. We found the texts on Abi's phone last night, but I guess you didn't see them in time."

She leans forward. "Or is there a third person who knows about all this stuff? Someone named Ian Cowdray?"

* Keep your mouth shut: "Pulling a Switch on the Old Switcheroo" 
* Tell Vee about Shelly: "The Sorceress's Apprentice" 
* Bluff Vee with Ian: "Golems and Gorgons" 

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