The Book of Masks (Vol. 4)

Of Pranks and Punks

Previously: "A Prank Present" 

Something about the story seems familiar, but in a way that is odious, like a nightmare dimly remembered on a sunny morning. "Put it in the garbage," you mutter, and flip to the corresponding page.

You have to read and re-read the first few paragraphs several times before it dawns on you that it's the same story, but that it has started over again with a different set of characters. These and their situation carry an even more vivid sense of familiarity, and you feel sure that you have met them before in some other story. But you cannot place them.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

"That'll be seventeen-fifty in store credit," Tom Arnholm tells you as he sets the small stack of books on a cart. "Unless you want to take something out in trade for them."

"No, I think I'm fine," you reply. You're not interested in collecting on the credit that the used bookstore is giving you for the books, or in collecting anything on them.

For they're not even your books—they belong in the Westside High school library—and you and your best friend, Carson Ioeger, lifted them from Erik Carstairs's locker just before summer vacation started. Stealing and selling his library books is your petty revenge for the muddy game of Keep Away that the football player and his friends played with your own school books just before spring break.

"Petty revenge is like petit fours," Carson retorted when you pointed how small-minded his idea was for getting back at Carstairs. "Both are pretty damn sweet." Now you're wishing that the books had come out of the Keyserling College library instead of the Westside library. Those would be even more expensive for Erik to replace!

You saunter over to one of the bookstore's work stations, where Carson is arguing with Ted Arnholm, Tom's brother. "Ready?" you ask him.

"Just a minute," he snaps. "Seventy-five cents," he tells Arnholm.

The grizzle-bearded owner reddens. "You're haggling over a dollar fifty?" he says in a strangled voice.

"You're haggling over a dollar fifty," Carson retorts. "I don't have two twenty-five to my name, and who else is gonna buy it?"

Arnholm's face twists into a bitter scowl. You hide a smile. Ted Arnholm could make a living as a metal press, your dad has said, if he didn't make more money pinching pennies at that book store.

"Fine," the storeowner says, and thrusts a book at Carson. "Seventy-five cents."

"Outta store credit."

"Cash!"

"On the barrel-head," says your friend. He looks at you and jerks his head at Arnholm. "Pay the man, James. I don't even got lint on me."

You take out your wallet. "Got change for a twenty?" you ask Arnholm. He turns an even deeper shade of purple.

* * * * *

"So what's the deal with this?" you ask Carson after you're in his car and driving back to his place. This of course is a book—the book he bought at Arnholm's Used Bookstore—but what sort of book you can't immediately tell. It's large and hefty, with red leather covers with gold thread running through them. But the lettering is too ornate to be easily deciphered, though the golden pentagram on the spine is very suggestive.

"It's a book," Carson says. "So keep it away from the football players, unless you want them to try eating it."

You grin at his jibe, but he fumes. He lost a very expensive Physics textbook in that same scrum, and his mom made him pay for it out of his own pocket money.

"So what'd you pick it up for?" you ask. "And how'd you get talk old Leatherbutt down to seventy-five cents?"

"Examine the evidence yourself, Holmes. You're supposed to be smart."

You roll your eyes. Behind the cover are heavy end papers covered with ornate lines and stylized faces. But the rest of the book, you find to your surprise and dismay, is sealed tightly shut. You frown as you try to peel back the next page, and clench the tip of your tongue between your teeth as you try to slide a thumbnail between any of the other pages. "The hell's going on?" you ask. "Someone glue all the pages together?"

"Seems like it. Basically, that's a leather brick you're holding."

"So what'd you get it for?"

"I got it for seventy-five cents, you were standing there when I made the deal. Gonna make a hidey-hole out o' it," he continues. He glances over his shoulder, and jumps over into the right-hand lane. "Gonna carve out the insides and make a hollow place. Put in a magnetic lock you have to open by sliding a nail file or a knife under a flap or into a slit. Oh, speaking of slits," he adds with a grin, "we gonna crash Cindy's party tonight?"

That would be Cindy Vredenburg, cheerleader. "Ha!" you exclaim. "But no. Seth 'n the rest of them'll be there." That would be Seth Javits, who plays basketball when he isn't hassling and bullying guys like you and James.

"So they'll be there. That'll make it fun."

"Fun for who?"

"Fun for us. Cindy's parents'll be there too. Seth won't be able to do anything. We, on the other hand—" He leans over to waggle his eyebrows at you.

The car in front suddenly brakes. "Jesus!" you yell, and jam your feet into the floorboard. Carson swerves into the left-hand lane at the last possible nano-second, missing the other's rear bumper by centimeters. "Every day's a fucking adventure with you, man," you gasp.

* * * * *

And that near-collision is enough adventuring for you. You stay in that night, and Carson lets you keep his book for examination and brainstorming. It's too handsome a book, you feel, for it to be repurposed so brutally as he has suggested.

But after thirty or so minutes of struggling with it, you decide that pages really must be glued together. That, or the book is a complete fake, being carved out of wood and decorated to resemble a real book. There are a few real pages with legible script at the front, however, and you settle onto your bed to peruse them for a clue as to the book's origin and purpose.

The language is in Latin, but you had AP Latin I last year, so it's not hard for you to translate. The message is all very curious and more than a little mad. The title might be translated as "Book of Faces" or "Book of Persons", and the pages that follow promise that it can teach the reader how to construct magical disguises. There is also a design that looks like a stylized thumbprint, and the invitation to complete your purchase by possessing the book with blood.

To unseal the book, turn to page 6
To give the book back to Carson: "Punks and Persecutions" 

*
"Table of Contents (Vol. 4)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 4)"