Ch. 15 / Pt. 1 : When They Wear the Mask
Eating breakfast mid-morning, almost brunch, Deirdre watched Paul with concern. She’d spent most of the night supervising his post-projection aftershocks, his shivers and starts and fits of semi-conscious whispering. After his initial collapse, she and Victor had carried him back to his bedroom to rest. She’d sat in, sleeping in an armchair by the bed, and his restlessness had left her restless. Hours of sleepwalking and sleep-talking and tossing-turning nightmares passed before Paul fell into peaceful slumber. That peace had allowed her, too, to sleep.
At dawn, Paul had jerked awake violently, awakening her in kind. He’d thrown himself from the bed and scrambled on all fours out of the room and down the hallway. When she’d caught up to him seconds later, she’d found him sobbing and vomiting, body arched around ceramic. She’d tried to soothe him as he shook and puked but he hadn’t seemed aware of her presence. His eyes had searched but found nothing. Eventually, he eased himself against the wall and passed out again. Not strong enough to move him on her own, and unable to otherwise rouse him, Deirdre had climbed into the bathtub and slept uncomfortably there.
Victor had found them just after nine o’clock.
Nobody had spoken much, since. After the initial chatter of every-morning catch-up, the table had fallen to silverware scrape and chewing. Curled in his seat, Paul’s pink-white skin sallowed sickly, paler than pale. His eyes hid in cavernous sockets. He looked apocalyptically hungover, older than his years, frail in a way Deirdre never thought of him as being. And so, barely tasting her food and only half-remembering to thank Gaea for her gracious bounty, Deirdre watched him, across the table, with concern.
Paul, perhaps feeling the tension in the air, cleared his throat. At once, everyone else at the table joined Deirdre in her watching.
“So, uh…” Paul trailed off, coughed. “Uh…” he faltered again. Peering at the faces turned toward him, he shifted in his chair and managed a third attempt. “So, uh, this—this artifact thing, this mask, it’s not the only conduit or whatever our bad guy has moving around in the world. There are others in other cities…maybe other countries…”
“That makes sense,” Nora chimed in, freshly showered, frizzy hair balled in a knot atop her scalp. “Like we said, this thing is probably just a fractal of a fractal, an offshoot or byproduct of some other entity or thoughtform with more power or magnitude, which may, itself, be an offshoot or byproduct of some other other entity, and so on…”
“Monsters all the way down,” Olly added.
“Right,” Paul said, unamused. “Anyway. It’s also figured out how to…I don’t know how to describe it…It can kind of ‘skin’ ghosts, and It’s using their skins to armor Itself. At least in the spirit realm.”
“Did you find out what the thing wants?” Rehani interjected.
“Uh…no,” Paul admitted. “Not really. I know It’s gathering power through the killings and the way It ‘skins’ ghosts, and I know It uses a lot of that power to help Its, uh—Its servant perform the murders, but as far as a motive…”
Rehani scrunched her face, incredulous.
“These things don’t profile easily,” Olly leaned forward, their elbows and half their torso on the table as they stretched between Rehani and Paul. “They don’t think like people do. They aren’t people.”
“You said ‘servant,’” Nora piped up, leaving barely a breath at the end of Olly’s sentence before speaking. “What do you mean by that?”
“The people It possesses or—I guess I don’t know if it possesses them, but—the people It uses, they usually buy into the deal because they want to do evil things, or they want to reap the rewards of evil deeds, and It uses those desires to manipulate them until It controls them. Maybe entirely.”
Nora and Olly exchanged another secret-language look. Victor seemed to understand it. A faintly-proud smile perked up beneath his scruff.
“What?” Deirdre asked.
“Well…that’s a lot of human sacrifices just to power up a mortal body and possess it,” Nora said. “So whatever ‘It’ gets out of this cycle, I don’t think it’s as simple as just, like, driving sadistic psychos into committing increasingly sadistic crimes. Dumb inertia can do that by itself.”
“And what’s the end-point, anyway?” Olly wondered. “I mean, the thing collects human sacrifices and—and spirit essences or whatever…It can’t be aiming for something as basic-bitch as possession.”
“I don’t know,” Paul said. “I don’t know what It wants.”
“But It wants to kill me?” Deirdre asked.
“It—It does,” Paul admitted. “And there was some other place I caught a glimpse of, It had someone It specifically thought of as an enemy…so there must be some inherent need for a conflict or a specific sacrificial target in Its plan.”
“Whatever Its plan is,” Rehani said.
Deirdre clutched her silverware in taught hands. “Do you have any leads on how to stop it?”
“A couple. In the projections, in the visions I had when I touched It with my sixth sense, I watched one of Its servants die. It tried to protect the vessel at first but then decided, essentially, to cut Its losses. So if we can find this Robert Robertson guy before the Mask fully possesses him, we might be able to convince the thing to bail altogether.”
“Is there a better plan than ‘hunt down a wanted fugitive and shoot him?’” Deirdre pressed.
“Most supernatural things still die if you put enough bullets in them.” Victor leaned back in his seat, the table’s attention swiveled his way. He pointed at the ceiling and twirled a finger. “This place is virtually impenetrable. If you all—uh, if we all want to bunker down here, we know It has to show up. That gives us tactical advantage.”
Rehani’s mouth gaped. “And how many folk die in the meantime?”
“Vic—er, Victor—has a point,” Paul said. “We don’t know where the guy is, we don’t know how powerful the Mask is…and the last time we launched a response team, it didn’t exactly end well.”
Rehani huffed, waving him off.
Paul continued, “For better or worse, sooner or later, this thing needs Deirdre. It has to come here.”
“I’m not bait.”
“No,” Nora jumped in, “but this place is a trap. Vic, when you and Ambrose first took me in, when we were walking around and you were explaining all the wards to me, I mean—this place is the mystical equivalent of, like, every casino and museum in every heist movie.”
Victor nodded. “We have wards against non-biological entities, uninvited intruders, and general malevolence. From what it sounds like, this thing’s strong enough to get inside, anyway, but acting against those defenses will take a toll. It’ll slow the thing down, tire it out.”
“And once indoors, we’ve got the anti-bullying system,” Olly added.
“The what?” Deirdre asked.
Victor chuckled. “It was originally a spell intended to stop a few children from hurting each other. The Blackwoods were deep enough into magic to use it as a shortcut for everything, babysitting included. When Ambrose’s daddy inherited the house, he expanded that defense into a general anti-violence response. Anyone who commits any act of violence in the house, well…usually, it’ll knock someone out. In this case, it’ll at least hit this ‘Mask’ with a few hard jabs.”
“And then what?”
“I don’t know. We find a way to pull the Mask off of Robert Robertson’s head. Tie him up tight enough that he can’t break free. If all else fails…” Victor trailed off, shrugging.
“Yeah,” Deirdre said. “If all else fails.”
The table returned to breakfast-chew and silverware scrape.
After a few minutes, Victor stood up. “Well, Deirdre, I promised I’d go fetch your cat. Want to help me corral the thing?”
“Right,” she said, snapping out of a trance of thought. “Right, yeah. Sure.”
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