The Mystery of the Rearranged Masks

By Gregg Willard 

       I turned to the mystery of the rearranged masks. I had been certain that the only possible explanation was that my mother or father had come down to the basement while I was away at school and had moved the masks around, though why was completely unknown to me. They showed no interest in the 

masks, or in manipulating them for any purpose at all. The only time they had ever come downstairs was the day I finished setting them up. 

       On that day they had come down the steps and said, "Wow," (my father) and "What a lot of work" (my mother). After that they had left me entirely to myself. Soon after the changes began. The first was a vacuum-mold Bozo The Clown mask to the right of a latex pullover full head mask of a bald Cyclops. Late one sleepless night I came down to find Bozo to the left of Cyclops. 

        After a week of other alteration mysteries, I had decided to install a door-activated video surveillance system. After inspecting the footage the week before, the mystery only deepened. Besides myself, no one else came down the stairs, yet tiny changes in the mask arrangements persisted. There was one exception. 

       A couple of days later my mother opened the door. The timer said 11:30 am. She came down the stairs and walked out of the frame. I heard the closet door open, the slide of the spring-loaded cord on the floor vacuum cleaner being pulled out, and then the whine of the floor vacuum cleaner. She methodically vacuumed the rug and the paneled floor, carefully working around the chair and table legs, the bottom of the ping pong table and the base of the refreshments and snack bar and the stools. Then she shut off the vacuum, retracted the cord and dragged the vacuum back out of the frame and into the closet. She left, and the room went dark.       

      After that I took down the camera and cried.