Puppet Skin [OHSHC]

Chapter 3

By the time lunch ended, Iiyo was at odds with herself. Nekozawa was a nice guy, in a weird way, and she felt kind of sorry that he didn't have any members, but she also thought he was creepy and seemed to only care about his Black Magic Club. In addition, it still freaked her out that she couldn't sense his presence at all, no matter how much she concentrated. There wasn't even a light hum. She didn't mind that she couldn't see his aura because he seemed to only have two kinds of feelings: a happy-calm, and an excitedly-creepy kind of happy. She wanted him as a friend, whom was more to say than the other students at the school, but she didn't want his club.

She thought that maybe if she kept her mind off of him and his club, an answer from the divine might just appear in front of her. Luckily he wasn't in her Creative Writing or Home Economics class, so it would be much easier to keep her mind off of the guy clad in black. All she wanted was a couple of hours to herself.

The writing course wasn't too bad, and the schedule for the semester seemed fair. Overall, it looked like it was going to be a lot of fun. The contests were also a great opportunity to show off her prized talent since the media seemed to be all over it. Iiyo definitely had something to look forward to in the class, and could tell she could learn a lot.

The cooking class, however, was an entirely different story. She was assigned a partner. That wasn't a half-bad idea for the class, but it meant that she had to be constantly on guard, and all the buzzing made her a bit light-headed. They didn't cook anything since it was just the first day. They went over class rules, etiquette, safety regulations and clean-up regulations so nothing super-exciting happened. The fact that they hadn't started cooking and she was still tense made the situation worse for Iiyo. What would happen once they did start cooking?

Once the last bell rang, Iiyo realized that she had to go to the club room and face whatever horrors that hid in the candlelight dimness, imagining that there would be sacrificial virgin blood in a golden goblet in the center of a pentagram. She still hadn't received any answers as to what to do about Nekozawa and his club, and it was appointed to every Mondays, Thursdays, and every bi-Saturdays, so that meant two or three days a week of who knew what.

She waited for everyone to exit the room before she carried her hand-me-down bag and headed out the door, only to be greeted up close and personal by Nekozawa himself, scaring Iiyo by the sudden appearance. "I thought you might still be here," Nekozawa said, with an obvious smile of excitement. "Let's hurry to the club meeting."

Meeting? It's only us! Iiyo thought, but followed suit. She was afraid that if she didn't start walking, he would have dragged her. If she was planning on leaving the club, she may as well go to a couple of meetings to come up with a fool-proof excuse. What did she know? It might have been better than Home Economics class at least.

He led the way by candle-light and started off by giving me an official tour along with weaving in ancient mysticisms and history. The altar had a few candles, incense, but Iiyo was more concerned about the human and animal skulls. They were bleached so he could have bought them, right? They could have just been replicas. He showed off some of the macabre art and Victorian furniture which held her interest for quite a bit. She tried wasting time by asking what the paintings were about, but hearing about the plague, witch-hunts, and dark deity worshipping overloaded her brain with too much information. It was strikingly good stuff for a possible future story.

And then Nekozawa showed Iiyo his mass collection of books ranging from history, to sorcery, to holy books of different religions. To Iiyo, it was the mother-load of inspiration just sitting on the shelves. It was her one golden gateway to the kind of research she had been begging for, but her mother was protective, claiming that her mind was too susceptible and too easily influenced. Boy, if her mother knew where she was at that moment, there was going to be another threat to move.

Nekozawa saw Iiyo's dazed happy face as she gently traced the spine of an old leather-bound book. He had found a way to convince her to stay in his club. He figured that she may not have liked the ritual part, it was evident by her wanting to avoid that subject, but he knew there was more to the Black Magic Club than just casting curses. It was fine if she stayed only for the books. At least she was staying in the club with him. However, he could hardly wait until the comforting darkness got a stronger hold of her, then she would grow to like the club and all the aspects of it even more. He wondered what her first curse would be. Normally, simplicity was better, but he had a feeling she liked flare. All he had to do was get her to reveal her side that allowed her to feel hatred, and that would open the door of her inner sanctum for the darkness to influence her. After all, he believed that being in darkness is when the truest part of a person is revealed.

Nekozawa looked around the shelves and pulled out a thick book and held it out to Iiyo. "I think you should start with this one."

She narrowed her eyes to read the title aloud in the candlelight. "The History of the Occult."

"This will provide a light background of where the idea of black magic comes from through religion, superstitions, myths and the likes. It's a good starter point if you want to be able to understand all the other books."

He was basically giving Iiyo a free pass to the realm of the unknown with books to guide her. What more could she ask for? She smiled, showing him that she was really happy, and gently took the book from him.