No, you're not scared of anything. But you'll be damned if you're going to go into anything with your cock hanging out. "So what's this fucking experiment you assholes are runnin'?" you demand.
Roth—the guy who looks like Roth, anyway—looks over at Small. "You're the one in charge, maybe you should explain it."
"It's a test of the equipment," Small says. He tugs at his ear. "But also a test of—"
"What equipment? These masks you're nuttering on about?"
Some embarrassed glances get passed between Roth and Small. "That's right," Roth says. "We're not going to get into the details with you—"
"How come?"
"Yeah, how come?" Small echoes. "He already knows mostly about it, we might as well—"
Roth protests. "But he's not part of the—"
"He's already figured most of it out, the part we haven't told him—"
You shove Small back on the bed. "Just tell me already, okay? Jesus."
Small makes a face, then sits back up.
"Okay," he says. "So that book is really weird and crazy, but basically it tells you how to build these mask things in stages." He cross the room to kneel at a dresser. "I got a spare one here, 'cos Maize doesn't want to play," he says as he opens the bottom-most drawer.
Tsosie returns your glance with a scowl. "Wassamatter, man?" you taunt him. "Don't you like playin' dress up?"
"This is fucked up stuff," he mutters, and he mutters some more. You think you hear the word "evil" in there somewhere.
Small nudges you in the knee as he gets back up. "Here," he says, and holds out a bluish object.
It is a mask, one of those classical, tragedian-type masks. There's a brow and a nose and cheekbones and lips and a chin, on the concave curve of the oval. There are also eyelids, but they are closed, so there are no holes to peer out through. The mask is a deep blue, and it glows like a burnished summer sky. You turn it over, and find a metal strip carved with runes affixed to the interior.
"So, it comes in pieces," Small says. "The first spell in the book tells you how—"
"You give that thing some blood like it asked you to?" you demand. That was the reason it freaked you out, you remember.
"Yeah, just a little bit. It's one of the freaky things about the books that the pages only turn one at a time. You have to perform a spell before it lets you turn the page to go on to the next one."
"What are the spells like?"
Roth interrupts. "Like cooking in a home ec class," he sneers.
"You take fucking home ec?" you jeer. He reddens.
"There's a bunch of ingredients you have to mix up and a cook, and sigils and all kind of shit," Small says. "Fuck me, and then there's the polishing. That took, like, how fucking long?" he asks Roth.
"Too fucking long," the other replies. "And those metal bands—"
You've already lost patience with these details. "Fine, whatever. But how do the masks work?"
"Well, through magic," Small says. "But what you do is, after you make these masks, and polish them, then you can use them to copy people. Then you have to seal them up."
"There's this special paint or glue or something you have to put on the inside of the mask before you can wear them," Roth says.
"Then what you do," Small says, "is what we did to you and Lynch. You take the mask, and you push it into someone's face. Like this." He mimes pushing the mask into your face. "Your own, if you want, or someone else's." He grins. "Like, you get someone out to the portables, and you jump out at them and pop 'em in the face with—"
"Yeah, fuck you. What happens then?"
"Well, it goes into you," Small says. "Like, it sinks inside, vanishes. Super freaky the first time we saw it." He pales a little when he looks at Roth. "We tried it on Perry first, and—"
"I nearly kicked your ass when I woke up," Roth says.
"No you didn't. You nearly tried to kick my ass, you couldn't—"
Roth starts to come out of the chair, but you push him back down. "So then what happens?"
"Magic happens," Small says. "It knocks you out for, like, ten minutes. I was shitting myself when we did it to Perry, wondering if he was ever gonna wake up. The book doesn't warn you about that. Fucker who wrote it— Anyway, then it comes back out, and the person is, like, asleep but they won't wake up for another ten minutes after that."
You let your memory flash back to the school. Yes, it was nearly deserted when you woke up. Lotta time passed between when you went into that portable and when you came to.
"Then you have to seal it," Small is saying. "After that, you can wear it. Or, if it's someone else's mask, you can put it on yourself, turn yourself into them."
"But you can take it off again?"
"Sure. There's magic words to do that." Small grins. "Why, you tired of—?"
"No." The refusal comes out easily, and in your gut is the conviction that you want to let this play out a little longer, at least. "Just makin' sure it's reversible."
"Oh, it's totally reversible," Small says. "We've been in and out of these things a couple of times. 'Cept for Maize over there, of course."
"That how come you wanted me and Lynch to play?" you ask. "'Cos you couldn't get him to play along?"
"No, for the experiment we wanted to run, like we told you. But see—" He flips the mask over and points to the metal band inside it. "This fucker is the thing that copies, like, memories and stuff. Personality stuff." He cocks his head and studies you with a shrewd expression. "The, uh, stuff that makes you act like you."
"Uh huh." You return his stare with a steady one of your own.
"Right," he says. "But the mask itself only copies the body. So, if you don't got one of these metal bits inside the mask, then if you put the mask on you'll only look like the person. You won't know how to act like them." Still he stares at you with narrowed eyes.
"What Justin wanted to know," Roth says from the desk, "is what would happen if you put these masks on someone without them knowing what was going on. We tried on the masks, but we basically knew what to expect, so—"
"We've been trying it out real careful," Small interrupts. "So, we made the masks, and me and Perry put each other's on and went home as each other, him disguised as me and me as him. Like we are now. We didn't have those metal bands inside our masks, though, but we managed to fool our folks because we know how each other act."
You suppress a snigger. There's some kind of joke to be made here, but you can't come up with one before Small continues.
"Then we made the metal bands and put them in, so we could get each other's personalities and stuff, and that made it easier. But still kind of pointless since no one noticed before how we were different.
"But then I wondered a couple of things," he continues. "I wondered what would happen if you popped a couple of masks onto other people, when they didn't know what was going on. What would happen if, like—?"
He shrugs and grins. "What would happen if Will Prescott suddenly woke up in Jason Lynch's body, and Jason Lynch woke up in Will Prescott's?"
He props himself up against the dresser. "So tell me. What happened?"
You shrug. "I woke up, got really confused 'cos I had two people inside my head fightin' to tell me who I was, but I got settled down real quick—"
"Wait," Small says. "You had two people inside your head when you woke up?"
"Sure. Me 'n Lynch. I had a hell of a time for a minute or two remembering which motherfucker I was supposed to be."
Roth's expression has gotten very stiff as you talk, and his eyes dart over to Small, who also looks a little taken aback. "You're saying," Small says, "that you got Lynch's memories right away?"
"Sure." You look between the two conspirators. "Why? Ain't that the way it's supposed to work? Di'nt' you say—?"
"Yeah but— Well ... Never mind," Small says. "It's probably not important. But, you're saying you could act just like Lynch? Right now?"
"Sure. I whupped your asses when I came in, didn't I?"
Roth speaks up in the silence that follows. "He's got a point."
"Huh." Small says. "Well, that is interesting, but like I say, it's probably not important." He drums his fingers on the dresser. "So what're you going to do now?"
"I dunno." You look around. "Say, shouldn't ol' Lynch be showin' up pretty soon with my body? I mean, if I remembered about you assholes and that book, and he's got my memories, shouldn't he be comin' here too?"
"He's not going to have your memories," Roth says. "Just your body."
"What? How come?"
"Because," says Small, "we didn't put one of those metal bands inside his mask. The one we put on him. The one we used to copy your body."
"Huh?"
He points at your face. "The mask you're wearing has Jason's body and memories. But the mask he's wearing only has your— Uh, Will Prescott's body in it. The only stuff he knows about you is whatever he already knows about you. That was the other part of the experiment, to see what someone would do if he didn't have the memories, if he just woke up inside of those old-fashioned body sw—"
You finally find your voice. "You mean he could be fucking up my life right now?"
Roth grins. "That's part of what we wanted to find out would happen," he says with a laugh.
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