This choice: Do something with Aunt Sarah • Go Back...Chapter #62The Old Ladies Club by: Seuzz   Aunt Sarah has no part in your scheme, but you suddenly see a way of making her useful. So you pull out of Will Shabbleman and back into your own body and into Rosalie's form. "Sarah!" you call as you open the door; the old woman jumps at your harsh summons. "Come in here, girl. I've need of you."
If Aunt Sarah--a woman in her fifties--finds it odd being called "girl" by a seventeen-year-old girl, she doesn't show it as she hurries into the study; and she only looks at you with terror as you pick up one of the several blank masks you have on hand.
"I need to put this to your face," you say, and shove it onto her with no other warning or explanation. It's so easy getting people to do what you want. It's probably the only thing you'll miss about being in Cuthbert, about playing the part of Grandmother.
As the mask copies your latest victim, you pull the nail from your forehead and take off your own mask. You pull Aunt Sarah out of the chair and lay her on the floor, setting another blank mask beside her. Frank and Joe had dropped the Libra and the other supplies off earlier, and you open it to the same spell you'd used on Sam Gibson, Zach Martin, and Jasper Johnson. The study is so small you have to step into the hallway when you activate the sigil, for you don't want to be accidentally struck by stray lightning bolts.
Once you've reduced her to a golem, you paint a strip on its chest with some of your essentia, then copy onto it from your own mask the imago you've been walking around with: Rosalie's body and Grandmother's mind. The new golem blinks its eyes in puzzlement when it sits up. It's a lovely form--weeks of wandering around Cuthbert have left you feeling very appreciative of Rosalie's understated normality--but the eyes have the hard, nasty light of Grandmother inside them. The golem glares at you narrowly.
"Don't get any ideas, Grandmother," you chide it. "You know who's running the show, right?"
"You are, William," she snaps. "Same as you've been running it ever since--" Her smile is sour but a little admiring. "My, but you impress a body with your cunning."
"You know what the new plan is?" you ask.
She shakes her head: "I think you're improvising."
"That's right. Don't know why I didn't see it before." She scrambles back into the chair as you kneel on the floor to flip through the Libra, but you pull her into the hallway as again you activate a light show, one that this time puts Aunt Sarah's form and mind inside your mask. "I'll be taking over for Aunt Sarah for the duration," you tell her. "You carry on being Grandmother, but listen and take orders from me. Or cousin Will. Or Joe or Frank or Rick."
"Sam, Zach and Jape, you mean."
"That's right. Now come on. We need to swap clothes."
* * * * *
Your bones ache and groan, and no matter how you shift yourself you can't get them settled comfortably. Your hands flutter nervously, and you flinch at the slightest sound. As bad as it was being Grandmother, it's far worse being one of her crutches.
It's the eyes that get you--that get Aunt Sarah, that is. The air is full of them, and she more than most is acutely aware of their existence. Most people in Cuthbert have the sense that they're being watched, but Aunt Sarah is one of the few who knows just how pervasive the spy network is. For she sits near the center of it.
With a shudder you pick up the little figurine that is Sarah's constant companion: it and her hands have worn themselves into complementary shapes. The other figurines, as you'd told Frank and Joe, are linked to airborne spirits, but the spirit associated with this one is earthbound. It sits inside the body of little Sally, the idiot girl who silently wanders around Cuthbert, staring and staring, and it guides her.
Or, rather, the person holding this figurine guides her. That is the job of Sarah--little Sally's mother. When the poor little infant was only a newborn, Grandmother had pressed the twin of this figurine into the little babe's head, through the soft spot where her skull hadn't yet knit, destroying her mind and leaving her a puppet. So Sarah spends her days sitting erect and unseeing in a back parlor, looking at the world through her poor little daughter's eyes, nudging her along from place to place, and reporting back to Grandmother all that she sees.
But you've no interest in looking at the world from a Sally's-eye view as you mount the stairs to the bare little bedroom where Aunt Sarah sleeps. Grandmother will tell everyone else in the house to leave "Sarah" alone; and undisturbed in her bedroom you will be able to flit from each of your puppets to the others while golem-Grandmother carries on the job of running the town.
Running it until it's time for Nate Shabbleman to push her from her perch, that is. Now "Grandmother" can die in a way that doesn't touch you.
You lock the doors to the bedroom, sit on the bed to slip off the hard, sensible shoes that Aunt Sarah wears, and flick your mask back to the remote sigil. Then, while grasping Sally's control rod, you return to Will Shabbleman's body.
* * * * *
"Why would you want to take it off?" you find yourself replying to Nate's worried query. "You don't want anyone catching you outside it."
"That's a point," Nate says, and leans back in the old wooden chair at his rickety desk in the jail. "But yew know how to get it off, case there's a need?"
"Sure." You grin unpleasantly as he licks his lips and stares down into the mask. "Havin' second thoughts, Nate?"
"No. Jes' a big step is all. I'm just gonna be lookin' like her, right?"
"That's right. Ain't no way I know of to copy what's on the inside," you lie.
"Then how'm I s'pposedta pull off this impersonation?"
"Grandmother's got ever'body in town trained to jump when she orders. An' ever'one knows who she's lookin' like these days."
"But--"
"You've lived in town long enough, been around the old witch long enough. You can fake it." You smirk lightly. "Same as I can fake it when I'm wearing your face."
"Yew still plan on doin' that bit?" He peers up at you.
"Thought that was part o' the plan, Nate. Less'n you want me givin' you sexual favors after you take over."
He mutters something inaudible, and his expression grows pinched. "When's that gonna happen? I mean, when're yew plannin' on--" He swallows rather than describe the sequel.
"After we take care of Grandmother. I was takin' my life in my hands just by sneakin' in and gettin' this one mask away from her. Be safest to make the final swap after gettin' Grandmother out of the way."
"An' how're we gonna do that?"
"Do I gotta do all the plannin' for us? Well, lucky then that I've put some thought into it." You describe the scheme that Rick Bredon had laid out for the conspirators to use. "I figure we do it tomorrow. Early. Wait until you see them leaving the Big House, then you follow and get them to come with you. I'll be waiting."
"It's no sure thing--"
"Ain't no sure things when you're fightin' Grandmother, but this's the way t'do it. She'll never see it coming."
He stares long at you, and you know what he's wondering: Can he trust you?
"I want this, Nate," you say, trying to quiet his unstated worries. "I want Grandmother gone. And I want Rosalie in my bed. I'm worried more about what you want."
* * * * *
After leaving Nate, you walk over to Zach's Fish Fry Shack, where the owner will be entertaining his cronies after closing up. There's a poker game in progress, and voices--husky from cigarette smoke and loosened by lots of liquor--are very loud. Zach looks up from the table with a glittering eye and waves you over, but rises and comes to you when you beckon him back. "Siddown a spell, Will," he says. "Lose some o' that pocket money Grandmother likes to give you."
"She don't gimme enough to make it worthwhile," you snort back. "Slight change in plans," you say, dropping your voice. You tell him what you've done with Aunt Sally. "Look for me inside Will here. If I dip inside Joe or Rick, I'll tell you guys that's where I am." He nods. "Also, you and Joe call up your golems, tell them to go with Nate tomorrow when he pulls them over."
"We doing it that soon?"
"The sooner the better. We all want out of here, right?"
"Naturally. Means Rick better call the Stellae."
"That's where I'm off to now." You peer over his shoulder at the raucous company. "I think maybe I will join you for a few hands." Zach claps your shoulder and tugs you over to the table.
* * * * *
But you shift your focus even before Will Shabbleman has sat down, materializing inside a dim and dirty shack on the outskirts of town. You're naked, in bed with a couple of hot water bottles. Jasper Johnson's bones scream as you shift around and pull the mask off. As Rick Bredon, you dsn't like the look of the place any better when you wake up again. You pick up his cell phone and call Charles Brennan, to whom you outline a plan for infiltrating Cuthbert with Frank and Joe. "I want back up," you tell him. "Miko or Maria."
"Miko's busy," he says. "But if you need Catilindria, I can send you Aparijita."   indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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