Chapter #56A Night of Quick Work by: Seuzz   Your vision reels. HARRIS STEVEN PRESCOTT, it says inside the mask. Your dad's name. There's a mask of your cousin Umeko as well. "Son of a bitch," you whisper. "Son of a bitch!" you scream.
"Settle down, Prescott," Frank says. "Look at it this way. If that mask is here, that means it'll really be your dad at your house."
Still, the very queer turn it's given you has changed your mind. You do not want to go home, not until every last mask has been accounted for. "We can oblige," Frank says. "As for Lumpy here--" He gazes appraisingly at the golem.
"Put my mask on it," you tell him. "I don't care."
But he doesn't move. "Actually, I'm thinking about not sending it back in your place. If we move fast on the Eastman kids, you're going to be Fane's only link back to the Libra. They might come looking for you."
Your bowels loosen. "You want to use me as bait?"
"No, obviously not," he snaps. "But what if they came looking for you and found me instead?" He turns gleaming eyes on you. "I could put it on, and jump them when they grabbed me."
"That mask won't let you do that," Joe says. "I was wearing it. I vanished underneath it, just like you vanished under the mask of me."
"What's the deal with that?" Frank asks you. "If people can't wear these things without--"
"It's a special layer," you explain. "You can wear a mask, but not if you put this special layer in it. That layer is what turns someone into a slave."
Frank chews his lip. "Then we could make a new mask of you, one without the layer, and I could wear that one. How long's it take to make one?"
If he made a mask of you, he'd know everything you know, and know that you were a lot deeper inside things than he thinks. "It takes a long time," you stammer. "Longer than we've got, I think."
"Still, it would be a way of--"
"Leave Fane to Hal," Joe says. "As a wise man once said."
Frank hesitates before giving up on his idea. He takes the mask of you from Joe and sets it on the golem. Your double--naked--appears, and sways backward a step as he grabs his face. He shakes his head. "The fuck am I--?" He looks around, and sighs. "I hate it when I blink in and out of existence."
Frank swallows hard, and turns to you. "So you can boss it around?"
"I don't think so," you say. "It was fighting me back at the comic book shop. That layer inside it, I think it must-- Hey," you address your twin. "Who's your boss?"
"Not you," he says uneasily. "I'm not sure I should say more." He casts a fearful look at Frank. "I'm not sure what I should say," he adds miserably.
"Come on, you're me," you tell it. "We're on the same side, basically. We want to be. Who's been bossing you around?"
"Everyone," he whines. "But Patterson's the one who makes me feel funny when-- I don't mean like that!" he exclaims, and turns very red.
"It's Patterson's slave," you tell Frank.
"Then Patterson's the first one I'll find. Joe, give those clothes to the doppelganger. We'll finish up here, then head out."
* * * * *
Travel arrangements prove troublesome. You take a cab back out to King Kong Komics. It's dark and shut up tight, but your truck--which your golem used to get out there this afternoon--is still parked in back. Frank and the fake you have to settle for using another cab while you and Joe take off in your truck, which he insists on driving. "Who do we need to see?" he asks.
"The Johnsons," you say. "Two masks there to get. Carrie Carmichael's. The Paks."
"You weren't aiming very high, were you?" Joe peevishly says.
"I was using them to get better people," you say. "That was Patterson's plan. Trick or seduce Z-grade people to get copies of A-grade people."
"So me and Frank were A-grade? I guess I'm flattered. Who did you get?"
You lick your lips. "Kyle Lakewood, Jenny Taylor, Jonathan Straussler--"
"Straussler's a fake?" Joe turns sharply.
"No, we just got a copy of him, that's all. His mask is in your garage. Same with Kyle and Jenny and Maddy Caron and Tina Branson--"
"You got a copy of Tina Branson?" Joe grips the steering wheel and arches his back. "Fuck me, but I wanna see that!"
"You understand why people like me would want to use the book?" you ask him with a little acid.
"Well, derp! Just because it's wrong and I'm pissed at you doesn't mean I don't understand!" He slaps the side of his head. "Fuck me, Prescott, but if I wasn't one of the good guys, I'd be inside those masks so hard even Frank couldn't pry me out." He breathes heavily through his nose. "Yeah," he says in a much quieter tone. "That's how come the Libra is so dangerous. Because it's such a fucking temptation."
You're both silent for a bit. You're thinking about what you've done, and guiltily mulling over how much you enjoyed it. Based on what he said, you suspect Joe is mulling guiltily over what he'd like to do.
"Okay, who else?" Joe finally says. "Whose houses do we have to go to?"
"The Johnsons, the Carmichaels, the Paks," you repeat. "Also Ian Carpenter's."
"You replaced Ian but not Jonathan? Dumbass."
"So, we'll also have to go by Keith Tilley's," you say, ignoring his comment. "That's where the real Ian is. Also, by Jason Lynch's, because that's where the real David Johnson is."
"Your plan isn't making any sense to me," he complains. "David Johnson was someone's idea of an A-lister?"
"It's complicated, and it made sense at the time," you say. Joe looks over at you skeptically. "I was wearing Frank's mask while we were--"
"Oh, say no more," he shrugs. "If you were using Frank's brain--"
* * * * *
You go to Ian's first, and Joe insists on being the one to fetch him out. Ian gives you a queer but passing glance as he slides in next to you. "How come you're hanging out with yourself," he asks Joe.
"I think I'm cool," Joe says, sounding wounded. "Don't you think I'm cool, Tilley?"
"You're a dork," Ian snorts. "And if Joe Durras thinks you're cool, he's an even bigger moron than everyone thinks."
You redden; Joe laughs. "I suppose you think you're hot 'cos you're hanging out in Ian's skin?" he asks.
"Yeah, well." Ian shrugs. "Where are we going?"
"See an old acquaintance," Joe says. He changes the subject, and spends the rest of the drive drawing gossip from your friend. You slouch uncomfortably between them.
Ian falls silent as he begins to recognize the neighborhood. "How come we're here," he asks when, following your muted directions, Joe parks in front of Tilley's own house.
"Will, go get Keith while I explain a few things to Ian," Joe says. You clamber over Carpenter and out of the truck.
Golem-Keith has a dopey expression--of course--when he comes to the door, but he willingly follows you out. He draws back sharply, though, when he sees another Keith--unconscious--in the truck. "Get in the back with him," Joe orders. "Get him undressed."
The golem resists, and you have argue and cajole and pull at him before he follows you into the truck bed and disrobes. You hand the clothes to Joe, but he just throws them onto the lawn. A minute later he drags out a still unconscious but now naked Keith and dumps him on the lawn as well. Tires squeal as he pulls away from the house; you hang on for dear life as Joe rockets back to Carpenter's house. Once there, he hops into the back with you, pulls Keith's mask from the real Ian, and similarly dumps him and his clothes onto the front walk.
"Aren't we going to explain things to them," you gasp as you climb back into the cab.
"No time," Joe says. "And it'd be a mess, and the less they know the safer they'll be."
"But at school--"
"Like that's important," Joe says. "Might be rough for 'em for a day or two, but that's all."
* * * * *
Joe works with similar dispatch at the other houses, and you wince at the way the freshman girls will be waking in a state of total nudity on their own porches. "They're gonna remember it was you, Joe," you point out to him.
"I'm not going back to Eastman," he retorts. "If Frank finishes up tonight, we'll pull up stakes in the morning and no one will ever see us again." He claps your knee. "You'll have to play dumb, pretend the same weird thing happened to you. I don't think your old friends will like thinking that you were behind it all."
"They will when they hear that 'Joe Durras' was the one who pulled their masks off." You slouch in your seat. "I'm supposed to be you."
"We're supposed to be ourselves," Joe retorts. "That's the point of fixing things." What he says, you decide, is inarguable.
But you get a chance to reopen it when Frank calls a little after eleven. "Problem," Joe says when he hangs up. "We can't find Patterson."
"What you mean?"
"It was a fake at his house when Frank finally caught up to him." He scratches his chin. "We'll have to continue the search tomorrow. You wanna go home now, or hang out with us until it's all sorted?"   indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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