Horror D’oeuvre #15
Books
by Blu Gilliand
© 2007 by Blu Gilliand
All Right Reserved.
The sign over the door said simply: BOOKS.
The store appeared to have been there forever. The walls were white, the door green, and the paint on both was fractured in a thousand tiny lines. Thick cobwebs gathered in the corners of the front window, wrapping the small bodies of insects in a funeral shroud of dust. Books, their pages yellowing under the glare of the sun, were heaped high in the window, stacked in haphazard, leaning piles that had gone untouched for ages.
It was his kind of place.
He cracked open the door. A little bell dinged softly. The smell washed over him, a smell of old pages, cheap newsprint and card stock. In that smell, the promise of thousands of creased spines, hundreds of thousands of dog-eared pages. Of memories and dreams and far-off places. Of adventures and romance and mystery and terror.
There was no proprietor to greet him. He was free to roam the aisles at his whim. He wound his way through the store, marveling at the sheer tonnage of books that crammed every shelf, every nook and cranny. Biographies. Science fiction. Romance novels in bulk. Textbooks, even. Near the back, a long row of shelves bulging with horror paperbacks. Row after row of lurid, day-glow covers, the titles written in smears of blood.
He picked one up. The Pet by Charles Grant. He’d read it years back, liked the quiet, subtle style. He flipped through the book.
The pages were all blank.
Frowning, he picked up another. The Orchard also by Grant. He thumbed through the pages. They, too, were blank.
He went to a different shelf, pulled down something by Clive Barker, and opened it to the middle. Clean, white pages stared back at him. Same for Braunbeck, Monteleone, Hautula and Schow. The covers were intact—title and author’s name written clearly on the front, blurbs and synopsis on the back. But on the inside…nothing.
He shoved the handful of books back onto a shelf and moved over a couple of aisles to the mysteries. Rows of books reached to the ceiling. He pulled from them at random, riffling frantically through each book and, unease turning to panic, dropping them on the floor.
The words had all disappeared.
He headed for the back of the store, where the hardcover books were. Maybe those would be different.
There was a man in the corner. He was perched on a small stool, facing an unsorted jumble of magazines, textbooks and newspapers. He was hunched over, with a few stringy gray hairs clinging to his skull. His skin was as yellow as old paper. His cupped right hand was shaking, like someone at a craps table about to throw the dice.
“Excuse me.”
The man turned. Above his hooked nose, where his eyes should have been, were two gaping, red-rimmed sockets. They wept tears of blood.
“Don’t need these,” the old man said. He held his right hand out. Two small, white orbs with glistening tails of nerves rested in his palm. “They don’t work anymore.”
The man bit down on a scream, stumbled, and raked a section of Louis L’Amour westerns to the floor. The old fellow was rising, proffering the bloody prizes in his outstretched hand. He pointed a crooked, knotty finger.
“Maybe I could try yours,” he said.
The customer turned, ran. He rounded the corner and made for the door, but the door wasn’t there. He was at the back of the store again. Frantic, he turned and raced the other way. He was met, again, with the store’s back wall, which was studded with groaning, overloaded shelves. He ran along the wall, passed the horror section, and turned right.
He was just registering that he was, impossibly, again, running toward the same corner in the back, when his foot caught a cardboard box, crammed with dime novels, that had been shoved partially under a shelf. He fell forward, arms pinwheeling, his head thudding against the hard floor.
He rolled to his back. The sightless old man was there, hovering over him, the twin black holes in his face looming large.
It was like drowning.
* * *
The old man stood at the counter, squinting at what little sun the hazy front window allowed in. He blinked several times as his new eyes focused on the pile of books in front of him. He took one off the top and flipped to the front page. And began to read.
Comment by Stevefaust on 31 August 2007:
That was cool…I mean weird….no, it’s cool…….. I likeded it!
Comment by kresby on 1 September 2007:
I like this. Creepy.
kresby
Comment by Blu Gilliand on 10 September 2007:
Thanks guys - I’m glad you enjoyed it.
Blu