The Mask of Alabaster Part Three
Chapter Three: The End
As I opened the book my head began to pulse harder; thumping like a rabbit pouncing into a deep hole. Turning through the pages of the strangely titled book, I passed by chapters on strange creatures such as bogarts and basilisks, and others on witchcraft, necromancy and other forms of occult sorcery. One chapter's title read "How to Smell an Elf Without a Nose."
I began to doubt that my uncle bought this book at Barnes and Noble, and he bought me this book before Amazon or eBay existed, so it must not have been purchased from an internet person...perhaps from a troll, though.
Each page was decorated with an embroidered black border that was braided with oddly shaped knots, which seemed to endlessly intertwine into one another. The detail of the artwork made the Book of Kells look like a work of Ted Geisel.
As I was desperately skimming through the pages looking to see if I could find any bit of information about the mask or face floating outside of my window, I began to forget what the thing I was looking for even looked like. Apprehensively, I returned to the window and stared at the creeping face that remained still between the leafless branches. It was neither a skull nor a face that appeared to have skin. It was pale white with two eyes that looked like pupil-less cat's eye marbles, propped beside a nostril-less, yet uninteresting nose. And its mouth was closed with pursed lips whose edges slightly dipped into a frown. Around the face was a pallid incandescent aura which resembled the bokeh of distant headlights.
In a fruitless endeavor, I checked the book to see if there was a glossary or index. I returned to the tedium of turning each page individually and found a section on the "Ignis Fatuus" or what many have come to know as "Willow-o'-the-Wisp." The ignis fatuus, according to the tomb, is a type of ghost that resembles a lantern and is often sighted by travelers in wooded areas, especially bogs and swamps. The paranormal entity is known to divert travelers from their paths and get them lost at night. Apparently, this is a global phenomenon, as it has been recorded by various journeyman on most continents.
The image on the page depicting the ignis fatuus reminded me of something I had learned once about in a physics class. There is a type of lightning that forms due to reasons I do not recall, which forms a luminous spherical floating bubble of lightening that has been known to meander through walls and explode. This can occur during thunderstorms under very rare and strange circumstances and I was beginning to fear that this floating face was this ball lightning readying itself to obliterate me into electromagnetic oblivion.
Although the face glowed like the phantom ball of the ignis fatuus, the latter does not have a face. I began to feel relieved that I may not explode, while also hopeless after each turn of this seemingly never-ending book, when suddenly, a zephyr blew and turned the pages of the book. I turned around to find the window open and the face was no longer nested in the tree, but pressed against a windowpane of the slightly ajar window.
My focus was quickly erased by fear of the face and I momentarily froze, before my senses activated and allowed my to pounce across the room to shut the window. When I returned to the book, the pages had been turned by the wind to page 999, which was the beginning of a chapter called "The Mask of Alabaster".
On the page, there was an oblong oil painted portrait that was blushed in reddish pink, which portrayed the same face that had pressed itself against my window. My heart skipped a few beats and I began to read the passage. There was a cryptic poem, which read:
"Animated by a wizard whose avarice bears blithe the thaumaturgy,
To forge a warlock’s soul inside a gypsum stone,
This augury and the legerdemain required of such magical metallurgy,
Siphons a sapphire from the fire inside his pelvic bone.
His soul is trapped in a putrid shell: his very own decapitate skull,
On which will gleam a glowing garnet, glimmering gold and scarlet,
His eyes shall cry with weeping, sunken, hollow two eyeholes
Luring any victim to view the red of this lustrous target."
I looked back at the face in the window and on its forehead, a red glow began to glimmer. "Oh god, I'm the victim," I thought to myself. Victim to what, I did not know, but I averted my gaze from the Mask of Alabaster to read more about it.
"The Mask of Alabaster," it read, "is a fragmented figment of a fool's imagination. The fool, being both cunning and curious, can peer through time and space as if each were but a mirror."
After being called an imbecile by the book, I felt momentarily insulted, but ignored the stab at my ego and read on.
"Each living being is but a crafted concoction of elements enlivened by electricity. It is not intended for those blessed with breath to become aware of their origin. However, behind each mind there is locked away behind bone an imprint left behind by its creator. If, perchance, one discovers that he or she is capable of feeling this imprint, as if it were a limb, then he or she would catch a terrifying glimpse of their own self from the creator's point of view. The image portrayed in the portrait above as an interpretation of what one might see when they activate this hidden sight within their mind: a mask made of alabaster."
To my horror, the floating mask that haunted me from my window was my own reflection, telling me not to look.
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