by Neil Jackson
Rising suddenly, he gulped down the rest of the drink, leaving the change on the bar, and headed through a beaded curtain above which the word RESTROOMS glowed neon blue. He wasn’t sure if he was going in to read, or to return the wine and brandy to the world in a much less-appealing manner than he’d taken it out, but he knew he had to get out of the bar. The bass and drumbeats that had lured him inside vibrated through his bones, and he couldn’t concentrate. Somehow, concentrating seemed important, though he didn’t even know what he should concentrate on.
The book?
He slipped through the door marked MEN and was relieved to find that the tiled walls muffled some of the sound. There was one stall with a door hanging half off its hinges. The combined scent of vomit and urine permeated the air. The room was lit by a single bare bulb, jutting out from the wall above a cracked mirror. He stood in front of the sink, opened the book across one hand and flipped quickly to the first page.
The walls are too close. They move closer each time I write a word, and I can see his eyes in each shadow. I change things, send him away and fill his thoughts with other things - darker things - but he finds me. Always he finds me, and I’m tired now. So many words. So many shadows. I feel like the pen has worked its way into the bones of my fingers, and I’m certain if I tried to let it go, the muscles would not function, and I would fail.
He can’t find me. He can’t see me like this – can’t see me at all. If he were to walk through the doorway and into this room, then I might have to consider the possibility it is I who do not exist, and that his actions feed my words, not the other way around. I want more light. I want to put down the pen and sip cognac. I want to see his eyes, but I cannot, though I created them that I might drown in their depths.
The door to the men’s room slammed open, and a kid with long, spiked hair and several earrings burst into the room. The door cracked into Christopher’s elbow and the book tumbled from his hands, falling into the trash beside the sink amid a pile of condom wrappers and used paper towels.
“Hey,” the kid said loudly, stumbling into Christopher again as he lurched toward the stall across the room, “watch it, man.”
Christopher didn’t speak. He caught himself on the sink, scrabbling with one hand into the trash after the book. The kid ignored him, slammed the door to the stall on it’s broken hinge and somehow lodged it closed. Christopher groped among damp towels, shying away from something wet and smooth, and rummaging through the paper. Nothing. The can was only two feet tall - like the kind you kept beside your desk when you were in college – nowhere for something the size of the book to hide. Frantically, he lifted the can, peering inside, then dumped the contents on the floor and tossed the can aside, scattering the trash with his foot. Nothing. It wasn’t there.
He glanced at the stall, but there was no way the guy could have grabbed it. He was trashed, and he hadn’t been in a position to take anything. There was nothing to take. No book.
“Hey man,” the kid said, slamming back out of the stall, “What are you, crazy?”
Christopher fled. The hallway was dark and he rushed through it to the end, only to discover a doorway. There had been a curtain, but now there was a doorway. Or had he come the wrong way from the men’s room? He turned back the way he’d come, but the doorway he’d just exited was opening again, spilling dim light into the hall, and he didn’t want another meeting with the too-thin, wild-haired apparition inside. Christopher turned the knob on the door and pressed inward, slipping through and closing it behind himself.
It was dark on the other side, as well, but ahead of him he could see a light. As his eyes adjusted to the gloom, he noticed that the wall to his right was lined with doorways. They were all as dark as the hallway itself, except the last on the right. Beyond that, at the end of the hall, was another lighted doorway. The exit?
He ran to door and grabbed the knob. The door opened easily, and he stepped through. The knob slipped from his fingers, and the door creaked shut behind him as he stared. Stretching away into the distance were shelves, row upon row of shelves, tall, polished and gleaming, the spines of thousands of books lined up like silent sentinels, watching him from their shadowed perches. Halfway down the shelf to his left, a single book was canted out from the others, a colorful paste-on frontispiece gleaming from it’s cover.
Christopher started to back away. His back struck the door, then his head as he shook his head in empty negation. Footsteps sounded, and a moment later he saw the clerk from the front of the store rounding the far end of the shelves. The man stared at him, as if in confusion.
“There you are,” he said with an expression that clearly questioned why his statement was true.
“I...” Christopher could only stare as the man came hurriedly forward.
Halfway down the small aisle, the clerk reached out and plucked the single volume protruding from the shelf.
“This is the last copy of New Leather and Old Cognac,” the man said, forcing a smile. “I took it up front for you, but you were gone. I left it this way so I could find it again if you returned.”
Stepping closer, the man proffered the book, and Christopher took it in shaking hands. The cover was different, again, deep green boards with the color paste-on artwork, Sylvia, curled into a garden chair beneath a trellis of roses. The garden in this painting was painted at night, and she read by bright moonlight.
Christopher’s hand shook. He glanced up from the book. The clerk was gone. No sound of footsteps. No shadows trailing away at the end of the aisle. Beyond the shelves, he could see the small oasis of desks and chairs, green-domed lamps waiting with their small pools of light. Isolated. Empty. The huge fans thrummed like a heartbeat and Christopher felt his throat constricting, as if those fans were sucking the air from the room. The life.
He turned and scrabbled wildly at the door behind him, dragging it open and diving into the darkness behind. He needed to find his way through – to where? The bar? The kid in the toilet? The bartender and his never-ending supply of Brandy?
There was only one door lighted in the hall – and it was on the left. A manager’s office, he thought. Maybe he could find someone there that would explain things – someone who could help to make sense of it. The book, half-forgotten, was clutched tightly in his left hand. He reached out to knock on the door, thought better of it, and grabbed the knob. Better to have the element of surprise, he thought - chastising himself at the same time for paranoia. What did he expect to find?
He opened the door. Inside was a desk with a bronze light on one corner, topped by a green glass globe that was the only illumination in the room. She sat, staring up at him wildly, a pen clutched tightly in her hand. On the desk, a pile of paper sat, skewed to either side, wadded sheets littering the surface.
“Sylvia?” he asked, stepping inside.
The door swung shut behind him but he ignored it. Christopher stepped forward, the book in one hand, the other reaching out to her. Sylvia pushed away from the desk, into the shadows with a gasp, sending the papers scattering away from her. Christopher tried to stop them, to catch them. He leaned down, dropping the book onto the desk in his haste and reaching for the falling pages. He gathered them quickly into his arms and stood.
In the deepest corner of the room, he saw her silhouette, but before he could speak – before he could put the pages of whatever she’d been writing back onto the desk, she faded. One second she was there, her eyes very wide, her hands reaching to him, and the next she settled to the floor like dust, sifting down through shadows. Gone.
“No!” Christopher cried, dodging around the desk, cracking his knee painfully and leaping toward the corner. There was nothing there. For a fleeting moment, he thought he saw words - letters flowing across the floor, swirling.
He turned to the desk. There was an ornate fountain pen resting on the desk, and the disheveled pile of pages he’d dropped there. Exhausted, he stumbled to the chair and sat, staring at the desk. The book was nowhere to
be seen. Christopher didn’t bother to rise and check on the floor, he knew it wouldn’t be there. Nothing would be there.
He pulled the papers closer and sorted them quickly. Each was covered in smooth, easy script, numbered in the upper right corner. Once they were in order, Christopher leaned forward over the desk, smoothed the stack with his hand, and began to read.
It took what seemed hours. Christopher never looked up, and though his back grew sore and his neck stiff from the odd positioning, he continued to the end without pause. But it was not the end, of course.
Christopher glanced over his shoulder into the shadows, then turned back to the page, and began to write.
The front door to “The Home of the Tome” opened, allowing a soft rush of air and the entrance of a slender woman. She was clothed in black, leather complemented by lace. She wore silver jewelry and black leather boots, and her dark hair was parted in the center, dangled over her features as she walked, lending an air of mystery.
As she passed the clerk, she nodded absently, scanning the store with interest. She skipped the reading area, skirting along one side and heading immediately for the stacks. The old books lured her, crying out to her with the siren-song of untold stories.
The first shelf was imposing, and she nearly returned to the small rack of modern novels near the front of the store, but something caught her eye. A single volume out of place, the spine protruding from among it’s peers. She stepped forward, sliding it out and turning it face up in her hand. It was a dark book, black leather binding with the front decoration etched in browns and gold. The image was that of a man, hunched over a desk, the fingers of one hand gripping his hair, those of the other gripping a pen so tightly it looked as if he were stabbing it through the desktop.
The title read, “New Leather & Old Lace.” She flipped it open.
The dedication read. “For Sylvia.”
The woman stared at the words for a long moment, frowning as if something were itching at the back of her mind, then placed the book back on the shelf and slid it tightly in, letting it disappear in a jungle of tangled words and endless tales. In the darkened hall of an ending far away, she almost heard him screaming.
MAN’S BEST FRIEND - Stephen James Price
The speedometer was registering just over sixty miles an hour, but Jerry Conway continued to accelerate as they drove down the back road.
“Please slow down, Jerry. It’s getting dark and this road is really curvy.”
“I know how to drive, Denise. Why do you always do that?”
“Anything can happen. I don’t want to chance getting into an accident just to get home four or five minutes earlier.” She grabbed the edge of the dashboard as the passenger-side tires floated ominously towards the shoulder of the road.
Jerry jerked the steering wheel back just in time.
“See? The front tire almost went off the road. Now please slow down!” She still clung to the dashboard with both hands.
“Damn it. I know how to drive. I really wish you’d stop your back seat driving. I–”
The headlights illuminated the two glowing eyes in the middle of the road. The eyes quickly became a very large brown dog wearing a bright pink collar. Jerry pushed down on the gas petal and that same time Denise squealed and pushed down on the imaginary brake petal on her side of the floorboard.
There was a loud thud, and the car jumped a little–twice--as the front and rear tires rolled over the dog.
“Oh, God. Jerry, stop the car!”
Jerry didn’t stop. He just kept driving and staring straight ahead. He was trying his best not to smile.
“Jerry, please stop the car and go back,” Denise said as she started to cry.
“Stopping won’t do any good. The dog’s dead. Nothing we can do.”
“We can try to find its owner.”
“It was probably a stray.”
“Didn’t you see that collar? It was someone’s pet, Jerry. Probably some little girl’s judging from the collar.”
“I didn’t see a collar,” he lied.
“There were a couple of houses near there that we can check. At the very least we can get it off the road.”
“I don’t need to get in a fight with an angry dog lover, and I certainly don’t need to get blood all over my clothes. We went over him with both wheels.”
Denise closed her eyes and put her head back at his mention of blood. The car was quiet for the next few minutes.
“You didn’t even slow down,” she eventually said in a voice just louder than a whisper.
“I didn’t have time. Didn’t even see him until I hit him,” he said, pausing for a few seconds to ensure she believed him. “I just hope he didn’t dent the car.”
They drove the rest of the way home in silence.
Jerry woke up to the sound of a dog barking.
“It’s three o’clock in the damn morning”, he muttered as he looked at the clock.
Irritation turned to rationalization as the dog continued to bark.
“Denise, wake up.”
“Wha–” she said, still half asleep. “What’s wrong?”
“One of the neighbor’s dogs is barking out near the garage. It’s been going at it for almost ten minutes now. Dogs just don’t bark like that for no reason. I’m going to check out the garage. Maybe someone is trying to steal one of the cars or something.”
“Should I call the police?” Denise asked, now sounding both fully awake and fully afraid.
“Not yet. It may be nothing, but I want to check it out. I’ll be back in a few minutes,” he said as he put on his slippers and pulled on his bathrobe.
Jerry went into the kitchen, grabbed a flashlight off the top of the refrigerator, and checked the batteries by turning it on and off a few times. The light was strong and bright. He took a deep breath and went out the back door. He followed the sound of the dog’s barking. Halfway around the side of the garage, the flashlight went dead. He shook it a few times, but it wouldn’t turn back on. The moon was completely hidden behind a wall of clouds and it was pitch black out.
Still following the constant barking, he walked slowly forward with his hand gliding along the side of the house. After about ten steps, Jerry tripped over something and fell face-first onto the ground. Cursing, he felt around on the ground and found the garden hose, still wrapped around his feet. An intense pain flared through his left ankle when he stood up. Still cursing under his breath, he slowly limped around to the side door of garage. The barking seemed to be coming from all directions now. He listened, but it was impossible to get a bearing on it. He found the doorknob and tried to open it, but it was locked.
Of course it was locked. All of the doors and windows were locked, he thought. Why didn’t I go out through the door in the den? Why was I trying to sneak up on a potential burglar?
He limped around to the front of the house, tripping over the porch steps before ringing the doorbell. He rang it several times before Denise came to the door. Somewhere between the third and fourth ring, he noticed that the dog had stopped barking.
“Who is it?” she asked cautiously as she turned on the porch light.
“Who the hell do you think it is?” he answered. “Just open the damned door.”
Denise unlocked the door and Jerry almost pushed her over as he flung it open and stormed into the house.
“What was it?” she asked as he hobbled toward the bedroom.
“Not a damned thing,” he snapped. “Just a stupid loud- mouthed mutt.”
“I don’t hear anything, honey.”
“It’s stopped now. I probably scared it away. It’s just damned lucky I don’t own a gun.”
Denise winced when he mentioned a gun, but he glared at her until she looked away.
The dog started barking again less than ten minutes after they got back in bed. This time it sounded farther away, but Jerry was certain it was the same dog. He could hear Denise’s soft snores from the other side of the bed, but the constant b
arking wouldn’t allow him the luxury of sleep. He was still awake–and the dog was still barking–when the alarm clock went off at 7 a.m.
Jerry’s ankle was swollen and bruised from his argument with the garden hose the night before. He winced in pain as he gently pulled his sock on. Cursing the “stupid mutt” one more time, he decided to wait until he was just about to leave for work before putting on his shoes.
While Denise was fixing toast and coffee for their traditional breakfast, he went out front to get the morning paper. He walked to the edge of the steps and looked around the yard. The newspaper was in the center of the sidewalk leading to their front steps.
“The idiot paperboy is getting better,” Jerry said to himself as he stepped off from the steps onto the sidewalk.
“What the–” Jerry felt the wetness as it soaked through both socks. He lifted his right foot, rubbed his fingers over the bottom of the sock, and put them to his nose.
“That damned mutt,” he yelled.
He bent over and snatched up the newspaper only to find it was also dripping with the same yellow liquid. He threw it into the yard, peeled off his socks and threw them at the newspaper, and stomped into the house.
“Where’s the paper, honey? I want to clip the coupons,” Denise asked as he walked barefoot into the kitchen.
“Damned mutt pissed on it,” he grunted.
“What dog?”
“The dog that kept me up all night long.”
Denise had a puzzled look on her face, but she kept silent.
That night, exhausted from the activities of the evening before, Jerry went to bed just after eight o’clock. He had just dozed off when the dog started barking again. He tried to cover his ears with the sides of his pillow, but it didn’t do much to drown out the barks. After about ten minutes, Jerry got and up shuffled to the window. He opened it and leaned out, cocking his head from side to side in an attempt to discern which direction the barking was coming from. Once again, it seemed to be coming from all directions. Suddenly, the barking sounded like it was coming from behind him, inside of the bedroom. He pulled himself back in, banging his head on the windowpane. He spun around as the sound seemed to whoosh past him out the open window.
