Non-Returnable

by Rick Hautala

  NON-RETURNABLE

  by RICK HAUTALA

  Published by

  Ghostwriter Publications

  Dorchester, Dorset, England

  www.rickhautala.com

  www.ghostwriterpublications.com

  © Rick Hautala 2011

  PRAISE FOR RICK HAUTALA!

  “Rick Hautala’s work shines with dedication, hard-earned craft and devotion.” - Peter Straub

  “A master of contemporary horror and suspense.” - Cemetery Dance

  “Rick Hautala proves each time out that he understands and respects the inner workings of the traditional horror novel as well or better than anyone writing.” - Joe R. Lansdale

  NON-RETURNABLE

  “Non-returnable,” originally published in Shelf Life, edited by Greg Ketter, Dream Haven Books, 2002.

  1

  Manda knew it meant trouble as soon as Jason, the manager of the Borders where she worked, asked to see her right after the Monday morning staff meeting before the bookstore opened for the day.

  No way it could be good news.

  It never was.

  After finishing her coffee and the donut she had left over from yesterday, she walked into the back room, thinking this might be it.

  This time she might actually get fired.

  Jason was standing by the returns station, leaning with clenched fists against the desk as he stared at something on the computer screen. A faint, bluish glow underlit his features, making his skin look ghastly pale.

  Manda walked around the full pallet of boxes that no one had bothered to open on last night’s late shift, and stopped a few feet from him.

  How bad can it be?

  She didn’t have long to wait. She saw the book—the special order—on the desk in front of him and instantly stiffened.

  “If you’re not going to buy this,” Jason said without looking away from the computer screen, “then you should return it. Today.”

  He seemed to be trying to maintain an “all-business” tone, but she caught the glint in his averted eyes. It might just be the reflection of the computer screen in his glasses, but it sure seemed like he was enjoying the hell out of this.

  He always did.

  Holding the book out at arm’s length, he carefully studied the front and back covers. There was no dust jacket. Just a faux black leather binding with the title and author stamped in cheap gold foil. The left corner of Jason’s mouth kept twitching. Finally, unable to hold back a sniff of laughter, he opened to the first page and read the title out loud.

  “Psychic Black Holes.”

  His voice dripped with derision, and he cleared his throat before continuing to read the subtitle.

  “An exploration of the ‘event horizon’ and mental abilities.”

  Glancing at Manda, he repeated the words, “Event horizon,” before dropping the book onto the workbench. “I don’t blame you for not buying it—especially for eighty dollars.”

  “There’d be the employee discount,” Manda said meekly, not quite daring to look her boss in the eyes.

  “Not on special orders, there isn’t,” Jason snapped automatically. Straightening up, he turned and glared at her, the overhead fluorescent lights glinting in distorted white bars on the lenses of his glasses. “You don’t really believe this crap, do you, Manda?”

  Manda tried not to wither under his steady glare, but she couldn’t help it. She didn’t like her boss, and she knew he didn’t like her. Especially since she turned him down when he had asked her out last winter.

  Still, there was no reason to be so mean to her. She tried to look past the glare off his glasses and into his eyes instead of staring at the floor and feeling like she had done something wrong.

  “Not really,” she said, her voice hushed. “It’s just...kind of interesting.” She shrugged. “I like to keep an open mind about things.”

  “I’d rather see an open wallet. So if you don’t have the eighty bucks, get this book out of the inventory. ‘Kay?”

  Manda thought—not for the first time—that what she should do is pop the book into her backpack and walk on out of the store with it, but she would never do something like that. She couldn’t. It was bad karma to steal from work, even though she knew several employees who had plenty of books and CDs on “permanent loan.” Besides, now that Jason had made such an issue of it, she knew he’d be watching her.

  Without another word, Jason dropped the book onto the returns table and strode past her. Seething with resentment, Manda watched as he walked out onto the sales floor.

  He wasn’t such a bad guy, she thought. Underneath it all, there might even be a human heart, but he acted like such a hardcore, corporate dickhead. As if eighty dollars was going to make or break the inventory.

  Music suddenly blared from the overhead speakers. The Beatles’ White Album.

  Good choice, Manda thought as she bopped along with “Back in the U.S.S.R.” and started straightening up her work area. Someone on the late night crew had left a teetering stack of books on her chair. Glancing at the computer screen, she saw that Jason had been looking at the returns information for Swann Press, the publishing house that had sent her the copy of Psychic Black Holes.

  “Thanks for the help...dickweed,” she muttered.

  The back room door slammed open as Chris and Billy came out to get a load of books for their sections. On most days, Manda would have taken a few minutes to talk with them, but she was still fuming about Jason as she turned to the shelf beside her desk where she kept an assortment of padded book bags for returns.

  “Goddamned cock swallower,” she whispered as she grabbed a bag that would fit her book. When she pulled the envelope down, her hand scraped against the rough edge of the wooden shelving. She cried out in pain as a splinter of wood sliced her wrist open as cleanly as a razor blade.

  Billy looked over and asked if she was all right.

  Holding her wrist tightly with her other hand, Manda nodded as she stared at the wound. It wasn’t as bad as it had felt, but tiny drops of blood were beading up along the thin, two-inch gash. It had a little sting to it.

  “Yeah. Just caught a splinter,” she said, shaking her hand.

  “Whoa! Workman’s comp time!” Chris called over his shoulder. “You’ll be sitting in the sun, sucking down brews, and watching HBO.”

  Manda sniffed as she held her hand up and carefully inspected the wound, making sure there weren’t any splinters in it. It looked all right, and she decided not to bother cleaning it or bandaging it. After wiping the blood on her jeans leg, she turned back to the worktable.

  “Damn it,” she muttered when she noticed the tiny drop of blood on the cover of her special order. She reached out to wipe it away, but before she could, the tiny red dot disappeared, absorbed into the slick, pseudo-leather cover, gone without a trace.

  “Did you see—” she started to say as she turned around to her co-workers, but Billy and Chris had their handcarts full of books and were already heading out onto the sales floor. By this time, the Beatles were halfway through “Dear Prudence.” Manda had a mountain of returns to send out, so she put the whole thing out of her mind and got to work.

  2

  “Hey, you,” Rob, Manda’s boyfriend, called out as she stepped into the apartment and eased the door shut behind her. She latched the dead bolt, even though they had never had any trouble in the two years they had lived on Munjoy Hill.

  “Hey me,” she replied automatically as she slumped out of her jacket and hung it on the peg by the door beside Rob’s sweatshirt. “How was your day? How’d the writing—?”

  She stopped herself when her gaze shifted down to the faded, peeling linoleum floor of the entryway. The braided rug her grandmother had given her as a high sc
hool graduation present was gone. She glanced into the closet by the front door, but it wasn’t there, either.

  “Hey, Rob?... Where’s my rug?” She stayed where she was, unable or unwilling to move until she found out what had happened. The rug had been special to her. It was the last hand-braided rug her grandmother—who had died almost six years ago—had made.

  The scuffing sound of Rob’s bare feet on the floor drew her attention. He appeared in the doorway, a crooked half-smile on his face.

  “Rug...?” he said, cocking his head to one side and looking like a dog who was listening to a high frequency whistle.

  “Yeah. My handbraided rug.” Manda fought back the urge to shout. It had been a hard enough day at work. The cut on her wrist was still stinging, and she didn’t need this right now.

  “You know... The one my grandma made for me. Remember...?”

  Rob gave her a blank stare. No longer smiling, his mouth hung open, making him look absolutely stupid.

  “The blue and gray one...with the three roses in the middle...”

  Rob looked at her expectantly as though waiting for the punch line of a joke he wasn’t quite getting.

  “Come on, Robbie. Stop teasing. What’d you do with it?” Rob took a tentative step forward, then halted as though not feeling entirely safe getting too close to her.

  “I really don’t know what you’re talking about, Manda.”

  He looked past her, focusing on the wall for a moment, then shifted his gaze back at her.

  “Jesus, Rob! It’s been in front of the door since before you moved in. You can’t tell me that you don’t...”

  Her voice trailed away as she studied Rob’s confused expression. It wouldn’t surprise her if he’d been smoking pot instead of writing today. Maybe he was putting her on. His eyes seemed clear enough, but she could never tell for sure with Rob.

  “Tough day at work, huh?” he asked as he stepped forward and gave her a hug and kissed her lightly on the cheek. He placed one hand on the back of her head and pulled her close.

  “You might say that.” Manda’s voice was muffled against his chest. “A real bitch! That bastard Aceto started in on me first thing this morning, and he didn’t let up all day.”

  “I’m telling yah. You should talk to a lawyer about charging him with sexual harassment or something. That asshole’s been making your job... What’s the legal term for it? ‘An unsuitable work environment.’ Yeah, that’s it. He’s making that place an unsuitable work environment for you.”

  “To hell with him,” Manda said, dismissing it with a wave of her hand. She broke off their embrace and walked into the living room. Letting out a low groan, she eased herself onto the couch and just sat there, staring blankly out the living room windows. In the corner of the room, away from the distracting view of the city outside the window, was Rob’s writing desk, cluttered as always. The desk light and computer were on, so it sure looked like he had been working.

  Manda jumped and let out a little squeal when Muggins, her three-year-old, grossly overweight tiger cat, jumped up onto the couch and started rubbing his head against her thigh.

  “Hey, guy,” she muttered, reaching down and scratching the top of his head. Muggins flopped onto his back and began kneading her leg with his claws. Within seconds, the room filled with his motor-boat loud purring.

  Manda leaned back and closed her eyes, lost for a moment in the comfort of her cat. She didn’t even think about what Rob might be doing. Maybe he was looking for the missing rug, but she couldn’t believe him, pretending like he didn’t know what she was talking about.

  Silence settled into the room, broken only by the Muggins’ steady purring and the muffled sounds of traffic through the closed windows. Before long, Manda slipped off into a deep sleep.

  3

  The rest of the week went about as well as Manda could have expected, considering her boss was on her case about every little thing he could think of. He criticized her for the way she handled a cash return with a particularly rude customer; he threatened to write her up for taking too long a break on Wednesday; and he complained several times in one day that she hadn’t gotten all of the returns boxed and shipped fast enough.

  She didn’t care.

  Even if he fired her, she was sure she could find another job—a much better paying job, too—without too much effort. If Jason gave her any more grief, she was ready to quit on the spot. What she wasn’t ready for was when Psychic Black Holes, which she’d returned to Swann Press on Monday, showed up at the store in Thursday’s mail.

  “Christ on a crutch,” she muttered as she regarded the padded book bag stamped “Return to Sender” in bright red letters, front and back. She had been shift leader for three hours yesterday because Tim, one of the assistant managers, had called in sick. There were mountains of returns she hadn’t had time to scan out of the system, so her first response was to toss the package onto a shelf until she could get to it. Maybe it’d still be there when she got the nerve to quit. The next person in charge of returns could deal with it.

  But she hesitated, hefting the package in one hand, knowing it contained a book she really wanted to own. Hesitantly, she placed it down on her desk beside her now-cold cup of coffee. The back room was deserted, so she sat down at her desk. Sighing, she leaned forward and cupped her chin with both hands, staring long and hard at the package.

  “Who would know?” she muttered, glancing around the vast, book-cluttered room.

  It would be so easy to slide the book into her backpack and walk out with it. Even if, sometime in the future, Jason noticed that the return credit never showed up, she would claim that the book must have gotten lost in the mail, or maybe imply that the publisher was trying to screw the store out of the money.

  Either way, she’d have the book, free and clear...clear, that is, except for her conscience.

  “Yeah, damn it.”

  She huffed as she reached past her cold coffee and picked up the package. A terrible sourness filled her stomach. Her hands were clammy as she wedged her fingertips under the stapled flap and started to rip it open.

  She let out a cry when an upraised prong of a staple sliced the underside of her forefinger. Dropping the package to the desk, she shook her hand to relieve the sudden sting of pain, then held her finger up to inspect the wound.

  It wasn’t so bad.

  Not even an inch long.

  But the staple had cut deeply. The wound spread open like a tiny eye slit with a bright red bead of blood for an eyeball. Placing the wounded finger in her mouth, she gently sucked on it. The faint, metallic taste of blood teased her tongue.

  When she pulled her finger from her mouth and looked closely at the cut again, she decided that she didn’t even need a Band-Aid. Her breath caught in her throat when her gaze shifted down to her desk. A corner of the returned book was sticking out of the padded envelope, and two drops of her blood glistened like miniature rubies on the edge of the black, faux-leather cover.

  As she reached to wipe the blood away, something peculiar happened. Later that day, Manda all but convinced herself that it had been simply a trick of the light, or maybe there was something wrong with her eyesight; but as she stared at the book, the rich, black tone of the leather cover darkened and swelled. A momentary wave of dizziness swept over her, and before she could react, she watched as the fake leather absorbed the two tiny drops of blood. After they were gone, a hint of deep, dark scarlet swirled inside the textured black cover.

  “That is so weird,” she muttered, taking a quick step back.

  “What’s weird?”

  The male voice, speaking so suddenly behind her, startled Manda. She let out a sharp squeal and spun around to see Billy, crouching beside his book bin next to a cart stacked with books.

  “How long have you been here?” Manda asked, gasping.

  Billy grinned and shrugged as he shot her a lopsided grin.

  “Whaddayah mean? I’m just loading up my cart.” He hesitated, t
hen added, “All right. You caught me. I was reading on the job.” He held up a book, but Manda couldn’t read the title. “Promise you won’t turn me in to the big bad boss.”

  “Yeah—sorry,” she said, feeling more than a little humiliated. “I was just...” Her voice drifted off, and she chanced another glance at the book on the table. “You startled me, is all.”

  “Yeah. I do that to a lot of people.” His charming grin spread across his face and in a goofy cartoon voice, he said, “It’s what Tiggers do best.”

  Manda couldn’t help but laugh at his impersonation. It was actually quite good. She always found Billy amusing, even when he was cracking crude jokes that many of the female employees found offensive. It was only because of him, she realized, and a few other employees that she stuck with her job here. They were about the only thing that made it tolerable.

  Just then, the backroom door swung open so hard it banged against the wall. Jason strode over to the returns station. His gaze immediately fixed on the returned book, and he glared at Manda.

  “I thought I told you to return that.”

  Looking past him, Manda caught Billy’s eye. Jason’s back was to him, and Billy was twisting his face into a sassy, sour expression. He looked like he’d just bitten into a lemon.

  “Yeah, I—I’ll do it first thing today,” she muttered, avoiding eye contact with Jason because she knew if she looked him in the eye, she would either start laughing hysterically or else run, screaming, out of the store.

  4

  Later that evening, when she got home from work, Manda did scream. She had put in an extra hour at work trying to catch up and, as a result, had missed the bus she usually took home. Almost two hours later than usual, just as the sun was setting, she got back to the apartment and discovered that Rob wasn’t there. She found a yellow Post-it note stuck to the refrigerator, informing her that he had gone out to Gritty’s for a few beers with Marty and Sheena. She should join them, if she wanted to.