Burning Books

by Sharon Gerlach

  I’d be dead from suicide or something.

  No, not that. Never that. Never.

  ∞

  The storm passed in the night, leaving behind cold and unsympathetic blue skies. Molly tamped down a desire to work in the yard after taking out the garbage; the air bit with icy teeth and ached all the way to her bones. With nothing pressing to do, she wrapped herself in her blanket by the fire and contemplated the green-leather books.

  Magnus didn’t want her to read them. Molly didn’t think she could bear not knowing the rest of the story, as idiotic and codependent as Idiot Woman seemed. Still . . . what if he was right, and the books contained spells that were triggered when she read the printed words? What if her specific touch was enough to trigger the magic? Already, she’d spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about the story, and her daydreams had pulled in what little she’d read and turned it both beautiful and menacing. And seeing things . . . Lord, there was that, too. Magnus’s reflection making her think there was a man lurking outside the garden doors, overcoat thrashing in the wind.

  But that didn’t make any more sense than her confusing her daydream. Magnus hadn’t been wearing a coat. Maybe reading the book triggered magic that caused madness, and she was losing her mind. She must be, to be entertaining any of this nonsense.

  She set her teacup on the table and picked up the topmost book, opening it to where she’d left a laminated bookmark between the pages, falling into Idiot Woman’s story with disquieting ease.

  I didn’t think it through, sleeping in the car while trying to catch my admirer. I did it three nights in a row, and I woke the third morning with a throbbing headache and sinus congestion. The next day I developed a terrible cough, and the day after, the congestion moved into my lungs. I burned with fever. The trip to the doctor was excruciating, full of bright light and blaring horns on the road and bright lights and hacking, snuffling patients in the waiting room. The pharmacy was packed, and I had to wait two hours for my antibiotics to be filled, all the while sitting next to a woman who had about ninety kids in tow and who hollered at them in a nasally, piercing voice that went through my head like a drill.

  Finally, back in the quiet sanctuary of my bedroom, a cup of hot tea warming my hands and a hot, wet cloth over my puffy, aching face, I found peace. And sleep, of a sort. It’s strange the way your thought processes fragment as you drift toward sleep. One moment, you’re composing a detailed to-do list and flagging it with mental reminders of things that must be done before you can accomplish certain tasks. The next, you’re thinking about that boy you kissed on the playground in third grade because he held up your skirt while you hung upside-down on the monkey bars so the other boys couldn’t see your underwear. And then you’re thinking about that boy, all grown up, with a tattoo and sculpted muscles and a good job and those eyes . . . those beautiful eyes laughing at you, watching you, always watching you. Even when you can’t see him, you can feel those eyes, and you dream that you’re spilling your tea, but you can’t make your arm move to put it down, and the hot liquid soaks into the comforter and turns cold. Then the cup is lifted from your hand and borne away and the tea is mopped up and then you’re under a warm, dry blanket and you sleep and dream of stars and swirls of wind and of playing in the garden with a litter of puppies when you were young, and then you remember that you live alone—

  I don’t want to remember that boy. I don’t want to remember the man. Please, oh God, please, don’t make me talk about the man.

  Molly turned the page and found it blank. The next one was blank as well, and then she came to the back cover of the book. Her name lay on the plan endpaper like an accusation. She brushed her finger over it, breathing a sigh of relief when nothing happened. She laughed at herself.

  “Idiot. Magnus and his they’re magic books, and they’re bringing something dark. Glyphs and all that nonsense. See—look at that, I’m touching my name, and nothing’s happening.”

  “Who are you talking to, Mol?” Magnus asked.

  She jumped. She hadn’t known he was in the room. He carried a plate of last night’s treats in one hand and a paperback crime thriller in the other, and he stretched out on the sofa, propping himself up with a throw pillow.

  “Just talking to myself. You had me all wound up last night about these books and spells and magic triggers, but nothing’s happened. Watch.”

  Her blanket fell away as she shrugged her shoulders. Magnus saw the green book and threw himself upright. His paperback flew in one direction, the plate of snacks in another.

  “Molly, no!”

  And she bent the spine open until it cracked and smugly read the words printed inside the back cover.

  “Molly McKinley.”

  Flames boiled out of the printed letters. Molly shouted in alarm, jumping up to drop the book into the copper bowl on the table. The paper charred. Fire licked over the pages hungrily, greedily consuming the pulp, burning in brilliant color as ink met flame. Leather blistered and blackened and burned. And when the book was reduced to ashes, even those burned until, with a tiny pop, the last spark sputtered out, leaving behind no evidence that there ever was a book.

  Something broke in her mind, like a fragile snap of a delicate bone or the crack of thin ice under a careless foot. A tiny displacement that somehow felt right.

  Magnus hovered on his knees between the sofa and the coffee table, mashing a tapenade toast point into the carpet with his knee. He trembled violently, his face pale and waxy. Tears filled his eyes.

  “Why don’t you listen, Molly? Why don’t you ever listen? I told you what Cecily said. They’re glyphs; they’re releasing magic. You don’t even know what you’ve done!”

  She slid off her chair and onto her knees beside him, cradling his face in her hands. For once, he didn’t shrink away from her touch, and she treasured the moments of comfort he allowed her to give, pretending for one sliver of time that they were normal twins.

  “I don’t believe in magic, Magnus.”

  He flung out a hand dramatically, pointing at the copper dish. “Then what do you call that?”

  “It was a parlor trick, nothing more. A cheap magic trick with no magic, just chemistry. I bet if we had the other books examined, we’d find some catalyst. Maybe it’s slow-acting, triggered by the oils from my fingers.”

  “Why won’t you believe?” His voice dropped to a whisper, cracking as he clutched her by the shoulders, squeezing harder than was comfortable, fingertips digging deep into her flesh. “There is black magic in those books, and there is no taking it back once you’ve released it. Don’t read any more of them, please, Molly. Promise me you won’t.”

  Molly stared into his pleading eyes, framed with long, dark lashes, wet with his tears. “All right,” she agreed quietly. “All right. We’ll take them to someone and have them examined before I read any more.”

  “Someone who specializes in magic,” he insisted.

  “And someone who specializes in chemistry.” Though God knew who that would be. Maybe Joyce knew someone—if Joyce were still talking to her. “We’ll figure it out, Magnus, okay? We’ll figure it out together.”

  He collapsed against her, sobbing into her shoulder. Stunned, Molly moved slowly, letting her arms inch around him by degrees. She couldn’t remember having held her brother since they were small. His personal boundary issues had presented when he was very young; their mother had been his preferred source of comfort, and even then, he allowed Eloise’s touch with deep reluctance. Only in times of tremendous stress had he ever turned to his twin.

  But he clung to her now, trembling violently in her arms, sobbing into her shoulder what sounded like a chant. She couldn’t make out the words until he turned his head slightly away from her, and then she wished she hadn’t heard them. They echoed in her mind, a psychic ricochet she couldn’t stop.

  “The darkness is coming. The darkness is coming. The darkness is coming.”

  ∞1∞

  He’d left bruises on
her shoulders. Molly eyed them with a looming sense of unease. A memory hovered just out of reach, teasing her with a sense of familiarity while refusing to come close enough to catch. Had she borne bruises like this once, and from whom? Not Magnus; his dislike of physical contact eliminated him from suspicion. Perhaps, hidden in that lost year, was a man who had treated her poorly, although she couldn’t imagine ever dating someone like that.

  Embarrassed by his breakdown and mortified that he’d succumbed to Molly’s embrace, Magnus had left without attempting to explain his distress. One moment he huddled on the floor with her, and the next he ripped himself away and ran for the door. Annis found her hours later, crouched on the floor in hopeless disappointment, and helped her clean the up the mess Magnus had left behind. Molly retreated to her room to change her tapenade-smeared clothes, finding the bruises when she shrugged out of her shirt.

  Ordinarily, she avoided looking at the scars that marred her body from her collarbones to her knees. Her lower legs and face had escaped injury, although she couldn’t fathom how. The pictures in the newspaper showed a contorted snarl of metal and jagged glass that should have meant instant death.

  Today, her fingers traced the zigzagged pink lines that ran from each shoulder joint, over the side swell of her breasts, and ended in an almost delicate fine line just above each hip. Her eyes followed her fingertips. These came from her extraction from the vehicle, or so her doctors had said; the Jaws of Life could not open the crushed car enough to remove her without injury, and shards of sharp metal scored her flesh in nearly symmetrical patterns. In between lay a landscape of punctures and pink lines, some razor-thin, some as thick as her finger, all of them ranging in hue from livid crimson to the silver of old or shallow wounds. The infinity-knot pendant hung in the hollow between her collarbones, a mystery that constantly plagued her but which, this fine day, took a backseat to another more pressing one.

  The darkness is coming.

  The phone rang. Molly jolted and then huffed out an exasperated breath. Perhaps Magnus was right, and she should stop reading the books. Idiot Woman’s story appeared to be affecting her more than she cared to admit.

  As she picked up the extension beside her bed, she wondered if it was Magnus, contrite about fleeing so unceremoniously from her comfort and needing a ride from wherever he’d run to. While it was no longer raining, the wind still blustered and blew its chill right through clothes to the flesh.

  “Magnus?”

  “No, Molly, it’s Joyce.”

  Great. Here came the resignation she was expecting, likely accompanied with unsolicited advice about how to handle her troubled brother, including institutionalization. It happened disturbingly often.

  “Hi, Joyce. How are you this morning?”

  “Fine, Molly. Look, I wanted to talk to you about something.”

  Molly closed her eyes. “If it’s about last night, please, don’t resign. We’ll do something about Genevieve, I promise.” An awkward silence filled the line. “Joyce?”

  “We’ll definitely have to do something about Genevieve and her vile friend, but that’s not why I called. I wanted to talk to you about Magnus.”

  “I won’t be hosting the club for several months. By then, we’ll have figured out why those books bother him so much. Or else I’ll make sure he’s somewhere else while the club meets.” Where, she had no clue. She supposed he could go watch more horror flicks with his friend Cecily. “I’m sorry he caused such a scene. He just . . . he gets these ideas sometimes, and he won’t let go of them.”

  “Molly.” With just one word, Joyce managed to convey across the telephone line the authoritative bearing of a lifelong teacher. She’d been a glorious find for the book club; not only had she known her and Magnus’s parents, but she’d taught English lit and brought smart, thought-provoking ideas to the discussions.

  “I’m sorry. I’m babbling. Please go ahead.”

  “I wrote my dissertation on the occult as a literary element in classic and modern literature.”

  “Oh. Well, at least my brother’s oddball theory probably didn’t shock you. I’m sorry for his disruption, however.”

  “No, I’m glad he interrupted, because Molly—he may be right.” Molly’s brain scrambled for a reply. Joyce went on before she could find it. “There’s a legend of a book that once a person starts reading it, he becomes trapped in the words, lost and confused, trying to turn his mind to other things but unable to. He must read it backward to free himself.”

  “I didn’t become trapped in the words, Joyce, and I read the whole thing. Then it burst into flames.” She winced as soon as the words left her mouth. She hadn’t meant to reveal that.

  “Burst into . . .” Joyce trailed off. “My research wasn’t what one could call exhaustive. I’d have to live a dozen or more lifetimes to look into every supernatural nook and cranny. But I do recall reading about books that are magical traps. With some, the pages fill with ink so the words can’t be read backward to free the reader from the spell. Some shred themselves. Some catch fire.”

  “You think I have magic books, just like Magnus said. Not some parlor trick or chemical reaction. Real magic—does it even exist?”

  “The books should be examined by an occult expert.”

  “They should be examined by a chemist.”

  “I know someone who is both.”

  “I was hoping you would.”

  Joyce sighed in relief. “That went much easier than I expected. You looked so angry with Magnus last night, I didn’t know if you would be willing to listen.”

  Molly drew in a breath, let it out slowly. “He’s very upset about them. He had a meltdown a little while ago. I promised him I wouldn’t read any of the remaining volumes until they’d been examined by an expert. It could just be a chemical reaction triggered by something. The oils in my fingers, the heat of my hand, whatever.”

  “It could be. Then again, it could be much worse. In fact, I think it probably is. You can’t stop thinking about the story, can you, Molly? You think about it constantly, want to know what happens next, daydream about it. Don’t you?”

  “How . . . how did you know that?”

  “I could see it when you mentioned them last night. Please, no more reading until my friend can examine them. Find something else to occupy yourself. Go through your parents’ things in the attic, finally—you’ve been talking about that for months. Work in your greenhouse. Take Magnus on a vacation. Just don’t open those books again.”

  Easier said than done. Molly finally locked the books in the trunk of her car because the temptation was too strong to immerse herself in Idiot Woman’s disturbing world. Hopefully, Joyce’s friend would make time to see her soon. It would certainly soothe Magnus’s nerves and hopefully set him back on a mostly even keel.

  She took Joyce’s advice and retreated to the attic after changing into worn jeans and an old T-shirt. Annis had packed all of their parents’ personal effects into neatly labelled cardboard cartons and stacked them in equally neat rows in a corner of the attic, along with an antique trunk full of photographs and old letters. Clothes and jewelry and ornaments . . . Everything had been stripped from their bedroom but the furniture, bedding, and draperies—a cleverly performed exorcism that ensured no sign of their personalities remained. Magnus had been devastated. Annis had assured him that everything stayed in the house, but seeing it every day was unhealthy for all of them.

  The knowledge of the boxes had pressed heavily upon Molly’s conscious for several months now. She should go through their things, donate clothes, sort photographs and letters, divide the bric-a-brac between her brother and herself, but she’d been unable to face the task. A year since the solar superstorm had stolen her memory of their deaths and the months following, a year during which she’d felt cheated, a year of helpless fury and frustration and the specious certainty spawned by denial that if she could just remember, she could change the outcome.

  Floorboards creaked in protest unde
r her feet as she approached the neat rows. Nine boxes wide, five boxes high, two boxes deep. Ninety cartons of emotional treasure with the power to destroy a heart. Eloise McKinley’s jewelry boxes, stuffed with glittering trinkets her husband had gifted her over the years, were in one of those cardboard crates, but not her signature string of pearls. Those were a wedding gift from her groom and circled her neck even now in her satin-lined casket. Kenneth McKinley’s leather valet box, filled with cuff links and watches; his high-school ring; the Greek lavalier with his fraternity letters; ticket stubs from the theater, the opera, the symphony, motion pictures. The story of their short lives, told in trinkets and souvenirs.

  She couldn’t read that story today; she didn’t possess the strength. With her worry over Magnus and his reaction to the books, she couldn’t bear heaping on the exquisite melancholy of touching the things they had worn and cherished every day. So she turned her attention to the barrel-top Saratoga trunk beside the boxes. She came armed with a ring of keys; presumably, one fit the lock on the trunk. She fingered through the bits of metal—these ones were too small. They most likely belonged to the Briggs & Riley luggage, a clutch of dusty relics exiled to a forgotten corner elsewhere in the attic. Everyone had used that luggage; thus, it had no sentimental value. Now no one used it, for Magnus didn’t travel well, and there was nowhere Molly wanted to go.

  This key—no, that looked like the spare key to the cellar door. Not much of a cellar—just a small, dank space with mortared stone walls, large enough to hold the furnace and water heater but, if the repairmen were to be believed, too small for anything else, including repairs. Aha—the round barrel key. She sank to the floor and slotted the key into the lock, twisting it. The lock refused to spring. Maybe that wasn’t it, after all.

  But no, it had to be. That was the only barrel key on the ring, and the keyhole definitely was designed for a round, hollow key. She bent closer to see better, working the key in the hole to no avail. The trunk slid backward several inches and hit the wall when she tried to tip it to get at the lock more easily. As she was pulling it back into place, she spied the corner of a yellowed newspaper clipping poking out beneath it. She hooked it with her fingernail and scraped it off the floor.