Her New Face

The room was dark with the velvet curtains closed to keep out the day light as old Tucker laid on his death bed having suffered from a stroke but he was still in his right mind and wanted to make sure that his will was amended. His lawyer sat in a chair near the bed with a pen in hand, after shooing Tucker's relatives out of the bedroom so they could have some privacy despite their protests. They were mostly concerned about how they would be listed in the will and did not care about much else which was apparently quite obvious. The lawyer began to read out the will as he had been instructed to write it, naming everyone in the family that Tucker had considered till he came across the name of Emily, his great granddaughter whom he had never really had the opportunity to get to know. When her name was mentioned the air in the room began to change as if a cloud had slipped inside and was now hovering over the bed. Tucker closed his eyes for a moment, breathing heavily before going silent and for a moment his lawyer thought he may have already passed away until he heard him speak in a very low but clear voice.” I want all of my personal items which I placed inside of a truck to be given to Emily” The lawyer looked at him a bit confused at first “ But you..” but before he could finish Tucker continued” Everything in the trunk gets left to her. The heavy fog seemed to dissipate and Tucker suddenly felt more at peace and once the will was finished, he signed it and the lawyer signed it, ensuring that no one could contest it.

A few days later he passed away in his sleep and his family being as greedy as he already knew they were, they were already giddy with excitement despite the fact they were at a funeral. They were anticipating getting a windfall at the reading of the will but they were disappointed and angry. In the will he had left what little he had in money to a local school and his personal items which were inside the trunk, it was read out loud that it was all going to Emily. The family sputtered that they would contest it and stormed out of the office leaving Emily alone and in shock. Why would he leave his most personal items to someone he did not know very well?

 The funeral was a mix of grief and anxiety as most of the family kept glaring at her and every chance they got they tried to corner her and tell her that she had no right to accept his personal items and they would fight her on it till she gave the trunk to them. She left the cemetery before they got a chance to say anything more and headed back to the house and went up to her room. Closing the door behind her, she picked up the trunk and set it on the bed, curious about what was so important that he felt the need to keep it from the rest of them. Slowly she pried open the lid and peered in. On the very top was an old pocket watch, a pile of letters which looked like they had seen better days, and a folded woolen blanket. Carefully she removed each item out of the trunk and studied it before setting it down on top of the bed and beneath all of it sat a pile of pictures and she could tell that they were old and they were mostly of children wearing halloween masks but one mask in particular stood out and not because it was scary but because it was eerie enough to give her chills. As she flipped through the photos her deep brown eyes caught a glimpse of something at the bottom of the trunk, wrapped carefully in paper so she set down the pictures and lifted it out slowly peeling back the layers of paper to reveal the very mask that gave her the chills.

There was the very same mask that she had seen in all of those pictures and despite how it made her feel there was something that made her feel drawn to it. She picked it up, tracing her fingers along the edge of it, feeling a warmth she tried to explain away as heat from being stored inside the trunk. Walking towards the mirror that hung over her dresser she stood looking at her own reflection then down at the mask, wondering …but she was already holding it up to her face before she could second guess it and when it touched her skin, a strange feeling overcame her and she could feel it compress against her skin as if it had been made just for her. Her eyes flickered for just a split second before she grasped the edge of it and forcefully peeled it off and tossed it on top of the dresser and walked away from it, not giving it a second thought.She had no idea of what that little interaction had started…the entity that had lived within the mask waiting for the right person to come its way finally found its person. It had simply stayed dormant for generations hoping that the right human would help to set it free and now she was standing in the room in front of her and its mark had been made. The mask had been worn for many generations but it always was passed down from male to male and it was not interested in a male host but now, now it had what it wanted and needed right within its grasp.

The next morning, the changes to Emily's personality were subtle at first. Her personality became much colder, and more distant. The deep brown eyes began to change with little specks of amber and the tone of her skin started to pale and look more waxy. When she looked at her family members, it was if she was looking through them and no longer saw them. The uncle tried to bully her about the trunk again and when she turned to look at him,  her face flickered. He was not sure what it was but it startled him enough to back off. The entity had gotten its first hold on its host and it had no intention of letting her go because Halloween was merely a week away and it was important that the girl survived till then.During the day when Emily was around her family and other people she knew, the entity allowed her to be herself as much as possible but at night when she was alone in her room, Emily would have blackouts and not remember where she was or what she had done. Her family is convinced that there is a massive treasure hidden inside the trunk and they are determined that they are going to get it one way or the other. They felt that she had been corrupted by greed which oddly enough was their only motive at this point and they huddled in the kitchen working on hatching a plan to break into the bedroom while she slept.

The night before Halloween is when the family decides they are going to put their plan in motion and they gather around the bedroom door after Emily has called it a night. They could not be heard speaking by Emily herself but the entity was listening and knew that if they were to retrieve the trunk they would take the mask and break the spell before everything could be completed and run its one chance to truly be free. If it was to kill the family that would bring in the police and other people and that would also ruin everything so it decided to act in a different way to stop them. It created an invisible barrier in front of the bedroom door preventing the family from breaking in so no matter how hard they tried, they would fail. After a few hours of failed attempts, they decide to call it quits for the night and formulate another plan the next day.

The next morning Emily was up bright and early, the mask gripped tightly in her right hand as she walked out of the house and down the street, disappearing into the distance and she was gone for the entire day. While she was gone her family gathered together once more, determined once more to break into the room but with it being Halloween there would be too many people milling about and any noise would create attention. By the time evening had come, it was too late. The neighborhood children were excitedly running up and down the street, going door to door oblivious to what was happening around them as Emily appeared but she was no longer the same, she physically looked the same from a distance, still breathing but the mask she had left the house with was now seamlessly on her face as if it had always been there. Her eyes were now the color of amber and a grin spread across her face as she looked up at the house that used to be home. In horror, her family realized that the girl they had once tried to steal from was gone. They had no idea what had returned in her place.

She slowly walked through the crowds of children and up the path to the house. Her family stood at the living room window, hands pressed to their mouths. Pure terror was the only mask their faces held as they heard the familiar, sharp click of the front door opening. The words that followed froze them to their very core:

"I’m home."