Chapter #6A Riddle Gets an Easy Solution by: Seuzz   "If we go see Scott," your partner says, "I will definitely be doing it outside this mask." He pulls at his face.
"You'll be doing it outside that mask whoever we go to see," you retort. "But yeah, let's go see Scott. We know he's mixed up in it."
"Fine. And you can go as-- Oh hey, I--"
"I'm gonna go as myself. I mean, outside a mask. I wanna see if that hex is still on me."
"Why wouldn't it be?"
"I've been through a lot of changes," you reply. "I took a trip through a magic book twice, was a golem for awhile, now I'm all flipped around. Maybe it shook off. It would give us some kind of clue to work with, figuring out how the hex works and maybe how to lift it."
"Aha!" he cries. You rear back, startled. "It's that being a golem business, isn't it?" He grins. "You sympathize with them!"
"That has nothing to do with--"
"Just start a special interest group, already. The National Association for the Advancement of Golem People. The N-double-A-G-P."
You grab his face and pull.
* * * * *
As you enter Bickelmeier's living room, Scott looks up at Joe with muted curiosity, and mumbles a warm greeting. Joe shakes his hand enthusiastically. "Dude, it's really great to finally meet you. I'm Joe Durras. Kevin and all the other guys have been telling me all about you, and I got tired of waiting for them to put us together, so I decided to crash in on you." He claps Scott on the shoulder and turns to you as he runs out of breath. "I'm over at Eastman, but I think you probably know Will here already."
The smile fades from Scott's face as he turns to you. His eyes cool. He doesn't hold out his hand. He just nods and grunts. "Will."
Well, at least it's not a hostile, horrified reaction.
Scott turns back to Joe. "I used to go to Eastman. I just moved to Westside this year. But, uh--"
"Yeah, you don't remember me," Joe laughs. "It'd be freaky if you did. I just started this year. Yeah, me and my brother just moved to town. It's a great place. Kevin and them--"
"McIlroy, right? You on the football team?"
"Nah, basketball. I wanted to try out for both, naturally--"
Joe continues in this way, improvising chatter and drawing Scott out. You move quietly about the living room, watching Scott carefully out of the corner of your eye. He seems wholly taken by Joe, and even when you brush past him, to sit on the sofa, he only gives you a quick glance. And yet there's no mistaking the stiffness in his demeanor when he does deign to look at you. Mostly, it seems like he's trying to forget that you're there.
But his discomfort is such that he stirs uneasily when you rise at Joe's suggestion to move "the party" to the backyard. "I'll run pick us up something to eat," you offer. Scott says that's okay--there's stuff in the pantry--but you're politely insistent. "Call me if you guys think of anything special you want," you say to Joe. "I'll be over at that Independent we passed."
Actually, you just drive a few blocks down the street and park in front of another house. It seems best to let Joe have Scott to himself for awhile, and you'd like to think about his behavior and what it implies about the hex.
It seems clear that it's still on you, but it's not operating at full force. You'd take that as a sign that it's weakening, but you're given pause by the memories of the slights that "Will Prescott" has suffered at school in the past few weeks--memories you picked up by putting the mask on after taking it off Joe. The main bullies--the Gordons and the Jasons and the Lesters--have been leaving him entirely alone; in fact the few times they've found themselves close to Prescott they have practically run away. They were the ones that handled the cursed money directly.
At the other end of the spectrum are students who are clearly just playing along with Prescott's apparent unpopularity. Geoff Mansfield has been sneery and abusive, but he hasn't a horror of Will's presence, and when he's not maligning him to his face he's just coolly dismissive. But there are a lot of people in the middle--like James Lamont--who have no reason to be rude, but are, even when with friends (like Jenny) who are otherwise quite nice. Scott's reaction today suggests he falls into this middle group. People who dislike Will but are not afraid of him.
You drum your fingers thoughtfully. You'd been inside Joe's mask for almost a full day, and you've just taken it off, so your brain still feels like it's racing hard, but it's a strain, and all the stuff he knows is well faded from your own head. So the thinking comes slowly and painfully.
The hex attaches to you, but it also attaches to the mask. It doesn't affect you when you are under a mask. What is it that you and Prescott's mask have in common, that you lack when you're under a mask? Your appearance. Except that you and the mask are now mirror images of each other. But that's only a cosmetic difference, as far as the mask is concerned, Joe said. You and it still share the thing that prevents you from wearing it.
Which is imago. The hex must attach to imago. It's the only thing that explains the pattern.
But what explains the differing effects? You know why Gordon and Jason and those guys have such a strong reaction to you: They handled the money.
No, wait, they took the money from you. But is it possible that the money itself has a residual effect, and that anyone who handles it will pick up a weaker version of the hex?
You draw a sharp breath. If that money circulated through the school, it would spread the hex like a virus. Worse, if it circulated through the city, it would touch all kinds of people who would then conceive an irrational dislike of you when you showed up. You have to stifle a groan.
Well, you don't know for sure that that's the way it works. The thing is to figure out how to detach the hex from your imago. You'll get back into Joe's mask, talk to him--
Speak of the devil. Your phone rings. "You need to get back here," he says without waiting for you to speak. "Fuck, but this is incredible." His tone is gleeful.
* * * * *
They're sitting with their backs against the fence, knees drawn up. Scott is very white in the face and staring at Joe. Joe has his hand on Scott's knee and is smiling warmly. They look up as you approach. Scott pales even more. Joe hoots. "Where's the yummables? You went to get yummables!"
"Some asshole called, told me to get back over here."
"Oh yeah!" Joe nudges Scott. "I got another introduction for you."
"Fuck you," Scott snarls, and his face suddenly reddens.
Joe grabs him before he can rise. "I'm not giving you any shit, man," he says quietly. "I believe you. I saw. I took it off you. I had to put it back on because--"
"What's going on," you interrupt. Outside Joe's mask, his playfulness is a lot more tiresome.
Joe looks up at you, even as he grips Scott's wrist and puts an arm around his shoulder. "That box was the jackpot," he says. He looks at Scott. "Yeah, we found it, man. That's how come we came looking for you. That's how come I believe you. That, and I did get it off you."
"It?" A little explosion seems to go off in your head. "It's not a mask you're talking about, is it?"
Scott's eyes dart up at you. Joe nods. "It looks like Scott Bickelmeier, it walks like Scott and it talks like Scott. But underneath? This is Taylor Mitchell."
You drop to your haunches and stare at him.
He stares back, eyes glittering with fear and anger. "So you're mixed up in this too?" His mouth twists. "I coulda guessed. A fucking weirdo like you."
That hurts. "I'm not a weirdo. Not like that," you say in a quiet, pained voice. "I'm just under a curse. Like you."
* * * * *
"I dunno, man," Joe says. "It's not really our business. Our job is to recover shit like the Libra and take out the trash like Blackwell."
"And fix things like Lucy and Cindy?" you riposte.
"Point taken, but there we could fix things. I don't know how to fix this. It's almost like it's fixed already."
"Tell that to Taylor Mitchell."
Joe winces, and covers his embarrassment by shuffling the papers on the dining room table. You're back at the house, discussing the afternoon's revelations. Poor Taylor--or Scott, as he has been having to be for the past few months--is at his own house, waiting to see what you and Joe will say after "thinking about it."
You're also dying to know what you'll decide, because you're dying lots of little deaths trying to figure it out.
"The problem is that Taylor Mitchell is dead," Joe says. "Or so the world thinks. That's different from Lucy and Cindy, who were just missing for a few days and then showed up again with amnesia. And besides, if we let Taylor take that mask off--"
"You didn't tell him how to do that, did you?"
"Of course not. It's not coming off until we take it off. But if we let him take it off, then Scott Bickelmeier disappears. We can't make both families happy."
"But what will make Taylor happy? You heard him. He hates being Scott, because his brother hates Scott."
The corner of Joe's mouth goes up. "I don't suppose we could tell Sean what's going on." He looks up with a mischievous expression. "We could even make a mask for Sean, and they could take turns switching back and forth with each other."  indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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