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A high school student finds a grimoire that shows how to make magical disguises. |
Previously: "The Spell on the Other Side"  "You want to set yourself on fire?" you scream at Caleb. "Shhhhh!" he hushes you, for the street has echoed with your shout. "You don't have to yell!" "I think I do! Fuck me, Caleb— No, fuck you! I'm not gonna let you—!" "I'm not gonna set myself on fire, Will!" He grabs hold of your arm. "The spell doesn't ask you to do that!" "Same thing, practically! Didn't you say it turns people into— Those things!" You jab a finger in the direction of the school. "I'm ninety-nine percent certain it doesn't, Will." "You said it does!" "Then I'm ninety-nine percent certain you could undo it by taking the mask off me." You can no longer believe your ears. "Taking it off you!" you cry. "I'm not even gonna let you put one on! Jesus, Caleb!" You grab him by the shoulders. "You think I'm gonna let my best friend—? You're talking like Russian roulette!" "Nothing's gonna go wrong!" He sets his jaw. "Where's the book? It is my book, you know. So give it back!" He fumes silently. Then he says, "Okay. I'll bring it in to school tomorrow." "No, tonight!" You shove a forefinger in his face. "I don't fucking trust you!" "Alright," he says in a haggard, angry voice. "I'll go home and bring it back." "I'm doing this for your sake," you tell him as you wheel around to march back toward your house. "It's like you're becoming obsessed." "I'm just interested, Will!" he protests. "This stuff—" "Is too dangerous!" you finish for him. "We've got plenty of, well, toys out of it. Fuck me, you and Keith are having all kinds of fun, fucking babes down in the basement. You should be happy with that!" "I'm not in it for the 'toys'," Caleb retorts. "Well, not only the toys," he corrects himself. "This stuff is— It's fascinating." "You're obsessed." "Aren't you interested in it? Fuck, this stuff is actual magic." He hurries along silently beside you before adding, in a musing way, "I want to figure out how those sigils work. There's got to be like, code in them. Like computer code. Freaking instructions for how to turn the shit we pour into them into the masks and stuff." You just snort. Of course Caleb, who has entered more than one science fair in his time, would be interested in it that way. Just like the dudes who made the atom bomb were interested in that. * * * * * It's nearly an hour after he's left before he gets back, and you give him a beady-eyed look as you yank the proffered book from his hands. "You didn't do anything stupid before you came back here, did you?" you ask. "No, I didn't do anything stupid," he growls. "And don't you do anything stupid." He points at the book. "You might want to get back into it at some point." You snort and wish him a good night. But upstairs, in your bedroom, you open the book to look through it. Your mood is fairly grim as you flip through the spells one by one, and recall what they make, and you shudder as you look at the spell that Caleb and Teresa used to turn that Eastman High kid into a golem. As for the spell that comes after— Despite your skepticism, you study it closely, and make your own translation of it, both the instructions and the explanation on the reverse of the page. Reluctantly you are forced to conclude that Caleb might have had a point. It promises that the treated mask it makes will turn someone into a "devoted servant" in the "guise of him whose persona has been crafted," which certainly sounds like it will turn someone into a golem. But does not actually say that it will transform them into a golem; and neither does it do more than imply that the change is reversible. But it isn't enough to change your mind on the dangers of trying it out. Still, you are piqued enough to look at the spell that comes after, about which Caleb has said nothing. And when you do— * * * * * The next morning you don't even wait for Caleb to show up in first period. You go looking for him at his locker. "You!" you holler at him as you shove him in the shoulder. He wheels with a look of shock and alarm. "I told you not to fuck around with that book last night!" He gasps. Then a strange light comes into his eye. "I didn't," he says. "I told you I didn't." "Bull-fucking-shit!" you yell. "Mother fucker! You—" You are grabbed from behind and shoved back against your locker. A hard blow to your stomach punches all the air from your lungs, and you bend double in an agony. Then your cap is knocked off and your hair grabbed by the handful. Your scalp screams as your head is wrenched upright, and you nearly shit yourself to find yourself staring into the tinted glasses of David Kirkham, senior-class psychopath. "How come every time I pass your locker, Prescott," he hisses in the quiet but terrifying cadences of a pissed-off cobra, "I hear you losing your shit at the top of your lungs? You need to learn how to chill. Teach yourself how to chill," he says, and he knees you in the ballsack so hard you almost scream. "Because what I charge for lessons in learning how to chill, I don't think you can afford." He palms your forehead like a basketball and bounces the back of your head off the locker behind, then wheels to melt back into the crowded hallway. Caleb, of course, has vanished by the time you recover. Why didn't he and Teresa set Kirkham on fire? * * * * * What you're mad about, of course, is the torn page you found in the book last night. The bottom half of the next spell has been torn out of the book, making it impossible to complete the spell and hence impossible to turn the page and get any further in. Caleb, mad that you have stopped him from his experiments, has taken his revenge by blocking any further investigation of the book. Well, that's what you accuse him of doing when—eyes still tearing up with pain from your run-in with Kirkham—you catch up to him in Walberg's class. "I didn't do it, Will," he insists through gritted teeth. "It was already like that when I got to it. After I did that last spell." "Really. So why didn't you say anything about?" you sneer, for you don't believe him. "You didn't give me a chance. You made me shut up yesterday at lunch, and then you just flipped out on me last night!" "So how did it get torn, if you didn't tear it?" "Beats the fuck outta me. But it suits you, doesn't it?" he sneers in turn. "We're stuck now." "I didn't say I wanted to be stuck or even to stop! I just want us to be careful." "Well, now you also know why I wanted to try that spell out. Because it looks like it's the last one we'll be able to try." You sit back in your desk with a snort, and are only brusquely polite to him the rest of the period and the rest of the day. * * * * * Friday comes. It's one week until Halloween, and people in your classes are talking more and more about what they're going to wear to school that day. At lunch, Keith is the one to propose the obvious idea for what you and your friends should come as. "The girls," he says with a smug but leering smile. "We should come to school dressed up as them hoes we made." To Teresa, at whom he does a slight double-take, he says, "You could come as that guy." "The girls aren't enrolled in school, Tilley," Caleb snorts. "So?" "So where do we hang out while classes are going?" "We could go to the library," Keith suggests. "Oh, you want to hang out all day in the library. That sounds like fun. And we'd get noticed," Caleb adds, "and Mrs. DeWare would ask us why we aren't going to any of our classes." "Then we could hang out at the portables," Keith suggests. "Not with the kind of creeps that hang out there," you say. Including Micah, who would definitely notice Mickey, you add to yourself. "But what a waste!" Keith groans. "It's the perfect day for those perfect masks we made!" "Keith is right," you tell Caleb later. "We should try to set it up so we can come to classes next Friday in some masks." Caleb gives you a speculative look. Then he says, "So come with me after school, I think I got something to show you, something that'd help us do that." "What?" You can't help but feel your hackles rise, for it sounds like Caleb has been hiding something from you. "I'll have to show you," he says. * * * * * So after final bell you let him follow you to your house to drop off your truck, then climb into his car. "Gotta meet someone," he says when you ask where you're going, and he only adds, "You'll see, it's pretty interesting" when you ask who're meeting. To your surprise and dismay, it's to the Larson's barn that he takes you. "The fuck?" you ask as he parks on the shoulder behind a car you recognize as belonging to the Larson twins. "It's okay, Will," Caleb says as he starts to get out. "I texted the boss, he's expecting you." "The boss?" you echo as you get out. Then you freeze as Jared and Cody Larson come sauntering out of the barn. "Hey Will!" Jared calls. "Glad you came out. What do you think?" A smug expression spreads across his face. "Perfect kind of killer prank for Halloween, huh?" Then he points at Caleb. "You didn't even spot he was wearing a mask, did you?" he says. Next: "Your Two-Faced Friend" |
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