This choice: Go look at the boiler room • Go Back...Chapter #33The Boiler Room and What You Found There by: Seuzz   "Let's find someplace better than this," you say, pushing him back. "We'll check out that boiler room."
"You're kidding, right?" he says as he follows you back out to the gym.
"Let's just look at it. Go tell me if the changing room is clear."
He trots into the boys' locker room, and a moment later reappears to wave you in. In the back, behind the lockers and the showers, is a plain wooden door. It takes you a few moments to find the key on the key ring, and when get it open you and Patterson can only stare: it's a small closet with an open manhole in the center of the floor.
"Jesus," Patterson gasps. "It's a fucking sewer!"
"It's an access hatch," you retort. "Come on." Daintily you take the ladder down; Patterson slides down it like a twin set of fire poles, landing heavily on the floor below. The only light comes from the dim hatch above, and you have to feel around until you brush up against a heavy light switch. A bare bulb in the ceiling flickers on.
The room floor and walls are lined with grotty, green-hued tile, and one wall is dominated by great metallic cylinders with pipes leading in and out. You eyeball them curiously while Patterson just stares. On the other side of the room is another door. It hasn't a lock, and Steve watches skeptically as you open it. There's not much to see, even after you switch on the light, except a narrow corridor dominated on one side by a lot of horizontal pipes and on the other by some large lockers. You go down each one, briefly opening and closing the door, finding lots of tools and spare parts.
"Well, this is a bust," you have to admit. "Though if we ever need a hiding place in a pinch--" You pause, waiting for the inevitable "Toldja" from the golem, but he says nothing. You turn to look. He's standing at the locker nearest the door, frowning down at something on its floor. You follow his gaze. There's a box down there, and as you draw near you see it isn't empty.
It contains a mask.
You blink and look again. There is no mistaking the shape or the sheen: It's a polished mask of the type that you and your friends have made. Gingerly you pick it up to examine it. "The fuck is that doing here?" Patterson mutters softly. You don't answer. The light is dim, but even in the quasi-dark you can see that the mask holds no image. You turn it over: It is unsealed, and there is no mind band contained within it. It is a blank mask, ready to use on--
Well, on who? Who put it here, and why?
You turn to the box. It's just a ratty cardboard thing with no markings on it. Digging inside it, you find it contains only one more item: a composition book. "Come on," you tell Patterson. "Let's look at these things someplace else."
* * * * *
You had to do your homework, and then you had to go out to eat with your family and your aunt's family--she and her husband were in town--and then you had to catch up (finally!) on the social sites. But now it is ten o'clock you and you have some time for yourself and your discoveries.
There is nothing more to be found about the mask, which looks just like the ones you've made. The notebook, on the other hand ...
It looks very old, and the paper is stiff and discolored. "Looks like my grandmother's handwriting," Steve had said when you'd glanced through it on emerging into the sunlight.
"What would your grandmother be doing with stuff like this?" you'd asked.
"Just sayin'," he'd replied. But you knew what he meant. It looked like your grandmother's handwriting, too. All old ladies write like that: a neat but spidery script. It was rather shocking to see a script made for writing recipes and thank-you notes employed on ... this kind of stuff.
The first page in the notebook shows a sketch of a mask, and as though to underline the point the heading says "Mask." "Press to face. Assumes image. Must be sealed," are written below the sketch. At the bottom are the words "Mask off" and a colon, but whatever had been written after the colon has been obliterated by a nasty looking scorch mark.
The next page is headlined "Sealant for mask" and shows some roughly sketched out sigils that you recognize as being part of the spell that makes the sealing compound. The third page says "Mind" and contains a few more partial sigils. You puzzle over them for a few minutes, and then realize that they spell out a mnemonic device--like a rebus--that could be used to help recall the full sigil that makes mind strips. (But only someone who knew the sigil would recognize them or could interpret them.) The fourth page showed another few sigils, but you don't examine them closely, for you see where this is going.
It's a notebook recording, in very partial form, the contents of the Libra. You flip rapidly through pages sketching golems and golemized masks, and stop only after coming to the page that cryptically describes the use of an anima band. You'd agreed not to open any spells outside the presence of your friends ...
Fuck it, you were talking about the Libra. After licking your lips, you turn the page in the notebook.
"Chameleon," the headline says. "Many faces, one mask," it says beneath that. You let out a low whistle. That could be very useful. You've been neglecting to advance in the book. Maybe tomorrow you should visit Blackwell's again.
The next page says "Permanent Bond" and shows something like a spike. "Nails item in place," it says. "Only maker can remove." Nails what in place? Onto what?
"Erasing masks, etc." says the next page. "Needs a blank inside the sigil." There are a few sigils here--more mnemonic devices?--but without an examination of the original, they mean nothing to you.
"Copying masks, etc." and more sigils. "Erasing a mind." "A new golem spell." "Voodoo doll." "Doppelgangers." The pages are almost entirely blank except for these notations.
And then a page that shows a spiral. "Don't fall! Ha ha!" it says at the bottom.
The script on the subsequent pages is much more chaotic, as though the writer couldn't quite control his or her hand muscles. The headings are utterly baffling as well: "Change a mask." "Change a mind." "Make them all different." But though the script is hard to decipher, the sigil fragments remain firm and clear and show more detail. One of them, even, you think you recognize as a complete spell--though one that would only be a subsidiary portion of a larger spell.
"Make them dance!" The scrawl is huge and almost indecipherable, but the sigils are very clear, and copious in number. "Make them dance!" At least you think the next page repeats the message of its predecessor, but it is very hard to tell. Again, many, many sigils, all very clear. "Make them dance!" Only a close study of the inky loops, and a certain familiarity of overall shape, lets you decipher the page after that. More sigils.
By now you are trembling. The person who kept this notebook seems to have been going mad at the end. Is that the fate that awaits you? You turn the page.
It is a solid mass of sigils, laid out in block-like rows, as though type-set. There is something obsessive about their neatness. They are so regular, so perfectly formed, so meticulous and exacting ... It must have taken days or weeks of unremitting, painstaking labor to make them, and to make them all look like that.
You turn the page--
And shriek--
And fling the notebook against the wall.
Gasping, you shut your eyes and draw your knees up under your chin. To your horror you hear footsteps outside your door. Is it coming for you?
You flinch at the soft knock. "Honey, are you okay?" comes your mother's concerned voice.
"Huh? Oh. Yeah," you say, your voice weak with relief. "I just-- An email. It got me excited."
"Oh." And instantly her tone turns from concern to sourness. "Well, it sounded--" She doesn't finish, and a second later you hear her retreating footsteps.
You don't dare look at it again, but the fascination is too much. Carefully you reach for the notebook, and while holding it at arm's length you flip to the end. From the corner of your eye you peep at it ...
But it's just a hand, a crude drawing of a human hand. Why in the world did you think it was reaching out from the page to grab--
To grab what?
Fearfully, you close the notebook and hide it in the desk. You get ready for bed. But you don't put out the lights, and you don't sleep.  indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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