The Book of Masks (Vol. 2)

Joining the Club

Previously: "Masks Beneath Masks" 

by Masktrix

Will Prescott gapes and gasps and chokes on his own words. You manage to croak out a five-word question –"Who the flip is that?"– before Vee and Chris shove you aside as they crowd into the room with you.

Todd spins the interloper about and slams him onto a bed, pinning him there."Macklin!" he barks even as he bunches up a fist over Prescott's face. "The fuck we do now?"

"Close the door!" Vee shouts at Chris. He whirls and crashes into you, and together you tumble in a heap against the door, slamming it shut. You pretend to fumble at the knob, and succeed in locking yourself and others inside.

All at once, everyone starts talking. "Is it –?" "Get Abi!" "Where'd he –?" "Guys, get off, you're –!" "Who is that?" The last question is yours, and Vee answers by trying to shove you through the solid surface of the bedroom door.

"He was fucking Drewlin the whole time?" Todd yells.

"No!" Chris shouts. "It's a mask! One of the masks that – Vee! Vee!" he repeats as with a hot glare she tries choking you with your own tie.

Chris pulls her off you. "Get the mask off Jacob," he pants. "Vee!" He shakes her.

She glowers at you, then shakes herself and turns toward the bed. Prescott shrieks as she advances, until Todd cuts him off by closing a meaty hand around his throat. His eyes bulge.

Vee looks over her shoulder at you. Her eyes smolder.

"Keep your fucking mouth shut, you dumb prick," she hisses. "Your little mind is about to be blown. Behave, and good things will come your way. Misbehave, and I will end you."

She turns back to Prescott, and lays a hand across his brow. She murmurs a short incantation, and pulls. A bluish mask come away in her hand.

You feign shock as an unconscious Jacob Drewlin-Frye collapses under Todd’s grip. "The? Actual? Fuck?" you gasp.

Todd releases the limp body, sniffs, and sits up. "What do we do with him?" he asks, chucking his chin at you.

"I think we need to have a little chat," Vee replies. She gives you a very even look.

"What about practice?"

"You’re a prefect, for fuck’s sake. Write me a note." Her eyes remain locked on you.

"What did you do to Jacob?" you ask in a whisper. It's a good thing you are legit terrified of Vee; very real terror is probably what Mark Pederson should be showing right about now.

"We didn't do anything," Vee says coldly. Clinically. "Nothing happened here. Jacob had a weird nightmare is all. None of us were in this room with him. Were we, Mark?"

You flinch under her hard stare. "No," you reply. "I didn’t see anything weird here at all."

Vee drops a bony hand onto your shoulder. You shudder at her touch.

"Good," she says. "That’s very good. Congratulations, Mark. You’ve just become part of something that’s literally going to change your life."

***

You rest against the barrel in the storm drain – the Catacombs, as the others call it. You’ve followed them down here like a cult procession, the memories of your time in this dungeon still haunting you. It’s painful just to look at the place you were held prisoner, and it’s only through Mark’s strength of will that you’re able to resist having flashbacks. Now you’ve got a good look of the place, you can see that it’s far more vast than you thought when you were trapped; away to the side, beyond where you were bound, the tunnel plunges even further underground. What the fuck was this place?

Todd Baldwin, Chris Fiore, Vee Macklin and Abigail Steiner stand before you. You’re one of the gang now. It used to be Kristen… now it’s Mark Pederson. Four of you are still in school uniform, but Chris must have found Abi just before she hit the court, for she's brought a tennis bag with her, and she is rocking a polo shirt and a pleated tennis skirt that shows off her perfect legs. You are getting hard just looking at her.

For twenty minutes you've been on the receiving end of some heavy exposition. To everyone’s surprise – including yours – Abi confessed that she put the masks and book in your locker. They had returned to her possession just this morning – part of some innocent mix-up related to the weekend's room sweeps – and after Chris had told her Mark wasn’t a suspect, she had converted your footlocker into a temporary, improvised hiding place for them.

Is she telling the truth? You remind yourself to ask her later.

Then they went over the masks in detail with you, too – at least, with their limited understanding of them. They even offered to let you put on the mask they took off Jacob as a convincer. You declined, and accepted their word.

"So," Vee concludes. "I think I know who Shelly is hiding as – it's not that hard to guess – and we've already made plans for her. We don’t know where Prescott, the real one, is. Today, in chemistry, I thought he was you, because you were acting all weird."

"I told you," you reply, "it was because I had Chris's bondage gear in my bag. What I thought was his bondage gear."

"Yeah, so you said. That's funny." But Vee still looks as though she's only half-convinced by your story.

"But it doesn't really matter where Prescott is," she continues. "If he’s run off home, great. If not, let him keep the masks he stole from us. Maybe he can steal himself a better life. Maybe he'll come clean, and try making a deal with us." She peers at you speculatively, in a way you don't like. "Not our concern, as long as we've got and keep the book. Tonight we start making more masks. Er, right, Abi?" she says, catching herself with a startled glance at her friend.

"Right," Abi agrees. "We’ll meet back here in an hour, after practice. Todd, Chris, you bring back the stuff we need. Vee and I will show Mark here a little more of the book."

She saunters over and pats you on the shoulder. "Mark’s Latin is about as good as yours, isn’t it, Vee?" she asks. She drops you a slow wink. "You two should make quick work of the next spell."

"The Latin’s atrocious," Vee replies. She gestures you to join her at the table where she was working the other night. "Half of it is garbled pseudo-mystic bullshit."

She's concentrating on you, so she doesn't notice as Abi, behind her, stoops to dig inside her tennis bag. Nor does she see it when Abi pulls out an object, the size of a salad plate, that glows with an eerie blue light. As Vee continues to grouse about the bad Latin, Abi steps up behind her.

"Hey, Vee," Abi says. The raven-haired girl turns, and Abi slams the mask straight into her face. Abi giggles as her former friend collapses to the floor like a rag doll. "Go to hell, you treasonous bitch."

You stagger back in shock, not because of Abi's attack on her friend—who didn't see that plot twist coming?—but because: "Where the fuck did you get a mask from?"

Abi rolls her eyes. "It's the mask I took with me when I came back to here to get Kristen. Turns out I didn't need it, not when I could just pretend to Kristen, pretending to be me." She smirks. "I’ve been holding onto it since then, waiting until we got the book back."

She kicks at Vee. "So one of us gets to be Vee Macklin. Do you want the honors, such as they are?"

You blink. "I have to pretend to be Mark," you point out.

"I can pretend to be Mark."

"Then who pretends to be you?"

"We've got an extra mask of me. The one you found Chris playing with. He gave it back to me. Can't we put it on Vee here?"

You try to picture what Vee is proposing, and find that it's like trying to keep track of a half-dozen bouncing ping-pong balls, all at once.

The mask she got from Chris has that golem paste in it, so yes, that could go onto Vee. You could give Mark's mask to Abi. Except, if it works on her the way the masks worked on Shelly, it would take her hours or even a whole night to start getting the memories. As for the mask she's making of Vee ...

"Fuck. No, Jesus, Abi!" You shake your head. "Think! The mask you just put on her, it doesn't have a mind strip inside it, it won't copy her memories. We might look like Vee, but we won't be able to act like her!"

Abi freezes.

"Never speak to me like that again," she says in a cold, quiet voice. A steely cast comes into her eyes, and she shows you her canines. "Am I clear? You never speak to me like that."

For a moment you think she’s going to hit you.

But then, with a quick blink of the eyes, that air of menace vanishes, and with a glinting smile she reaches up to stroke your cheek.

"Just relax, okay, Will?" she says. "I'm on top of things. You’ll only have to fake being her for a few hours, until you’ve made a new mind band. Then no one will be able to tell the difference."

"You'd be better at faking her," you point out. "She's your friend."

"I can't read Latin, Will."

"We could just go off, you and me, to work on the book."

"In that case, why can't you be Vee?"

She's right, you realize. If it's just the two of you together, until dorm check and lights out, it won't matter which of you wears which mask. And in the morning, after Abi has slept inside Mark's mask, and you've made a mind band and can copy Vee, you will both be able to perfectly imitate your impersonations.

Next: "The Fifth Column" 

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