This Is My Page!

Some families pass down silver. This family passed down a book.

I. The Last Box

The attic still smelled like her mother: lavender, old paper, and the faint ghost of oil paint that had never quite left the floorboards.

Ambroysia set down a cardboard box marked ASUNA – WINTER COATS and wiped the dust from her hands. It had been three days since the funeral. Three days of folding her mother's life into boxes, taping them shut, and pretending that was the same thing as saying goodbye.

"Is that the last of it?" Alexandria called from the top of the attic stairs.

Ambroysia did not answer right away. In the far corner, beneath the round window where the afternoon light fell in a single dusty beam, sat a box she had never seen before.

"No," she said slowly. "There's still one strange box. I've never seen it before."

It was small, no bigger than a family Bible, and it was black. Not painted black. Not the black of old wood or polished leather. It was as black as the darkest night Ambroysia had ever known, the kind of darkness that does not reflect light so much as swallow it. The dust that coated everything else in the attic had not settled on it at all.

Ambroysia stared at it with curiosity and bewilderment, and the longer she stared, the more she felt it: a slow, steady pulse, as if the box were breathing. Then she realized the pulse was keeping time with her own heartbeat. Thump. Thump. Thump.

For a split second, she stopped breathing.

"Ambroysia." Her aunt's voice sounded far away, as if it were coming from the bottom of a well. "Ambroysia!"

Ambroysia had been so drawn into the box that she had not heard her aunt call her name. She snapped back into focus and turned. Her eyes were glazed and distant, as if her soul had stepped out of her body and had not yet found its way back.

"Ambroysia, what happened? Are you okay?"

Ambroysia opened her mouth, but she could not form the words. Instead, she walked to the corner, knelt, and picked up the box. It was warm. Her hands began to shake.

Alexandria looked from her niece to the box, and the color drained from her face as a wave of recognition crashed over her. She had seen that box before. Twenty years ago. In a casket.

"Ambroysia," she said, trembling, "put that down. Now!"

But Ambroysia was so fixed on the box that her aunt's words never reached her. Gently, almost lovingly, she lifted the lid.

Every light in the house went out.

II. The Book Wakes

The darkness was total. It was not the soft darkness of evening, but a thick, smothering black that pressed against their eyes. The silence was so heavy that both women could hear each other breathing, quick and shallow, like two animals hiding from something in the woods.

Then, from somewhere very close, came a sound like the turning of a page.

Thump.

Both women jumped as the lights flickered back on. The box had crashed to the floor and spilled its contents at Ambroysia's feet. A book, as black as the box that had held it, lay face up in the dust.

Ambroysia's eyes locked on it. As if under a spell, she stepped forward and reached down.

Alexandria lunged across the attic and seized her wrist with a grip so fierce it hurt. Ambroysia looked up, confused. Her aunt's eyes were wide and wet.

"That book is death, Ambroysia!"

Ambroysia searched her aunt's face. Then, without a word, she yanked her arm free and picked up the book.

It came to life in her hands.

The cover flew open on its own. The pages began to glow, first a faint ember-orange and then brighter, as if they were burning from the inside without being consumed. Letters bled up through the paper, curling, hooked shapes from an alphabet Ambroysia had never seen in her life.

And yet she understood every word.

She turned the pages, and with each one the letters burned brighter, hungrier, until she reached a page with no writing on it at all. The light in the book pulsed, waiting.

Alexandria stood frozen in horror. She could see what Ambroysia could not: a faint silver light draining from her niece's skin, flowing down her arms and into the pages like water poured into dry sand. The book was feeding on the light inside her. Alexandria knew exactly what was happening, and all she could do was watch, because she had watched this same thing once before, in her youth, with her older sister. Ambroysia's mother. Asuna.

III. What Asuna Won, What Asuna Lost

Tears welled in Alexandria's eyes. That book was the reason Asuna had gained everything and, at the same time, lost everything.

They had found it twenty years ago at their own mother's wake. Alexandria remembered the moment exactly: the quiet room, the lilies, the casket, and there, tucked beside their mother's folded hands where no one remembered placing it, a black box. Asuna had been drawn to it the same way Ambroysia was drawn to it now. Alexandria could not read a single word in the book back then, and she still could not. Asuna could read all of them.

A few days later, the money started.

First, Asuna won the lottery for $20,000, out of the blue, on a ticket she did not remember buying. The next week she won again, $40,000. After that, every win doubled the last. $80,000. $160,000. At first it was thrilling, like a fairy tale, until Alexandria began to notice the pattern.

Every time Asuna won money, she lost something she loved.

First, it was Pinky, the little dog she had loved since she was a child, found curled up and cold in her basket one morning. Next, Asuna lost her love of painting; her brushes dried out in their jars, and she never picked them up again. Then she lost her passion for singing, and the house went quiet. Finally, after the largest sum she had ever won, she lost her best friend, who died suddenly under strange circumstances that no one could explain.

It was as if sadness and death had attached themselves to Asuna like a shadow. Every win had to be paid for. After her best friend's funeral, Asuna locked the book away and swore she would never open it again.

For years, she kept that promise.

Until...

IV. The Book of Emptiness

Alexandria shook herself free of the memory. She crossed the attic, took her niece by the shoulders, and looked her straight in the eyes. Slowly, Ambroysia looked up.

"Ambroysia, listen to me. The book in your hands is a curse. It is called The Book of Emptiness. It drains your soul to fill its pages. It took your mother's soul, and it took your grandmother's soul. This book has been passed down in our family from generation to generation, but only the firstborn daughter can read it and use it. I don't know how our family came to own it. I only know that it appears to the firstborn daughter when the one before her is gone."

Her voice cracked.

"My mother used that book to gain wealth, and it cost her everything she loved. In the end, she had to make a choice. She chose a life of luxury and money, and it cost her the warmth and kindness she once had. It cost the lives of my brother and my father. And by the end, she didn't even care."

Ambroysia looked down at the book. By instinct, as if the book itself were guiding her fingers, she turned to the pages that held her mother's story. She skimmed to the end, where the strange writing stopped abruptly in the middle of a line, as if the hand that wrote it had been torn away.

The last words were not written in the strange alphabet. They were in plain English, in her mother's handwriting, pressed so hard into the page that the paper had nearly torn:

NOT MY DAUGHTER!

Ambroysia's breath caught. She flipped back to the beginning of her mother's story and read how Asuna had willingly sacrificed her dog, Pinky, to win $20,000. As she read on, she could tell that her mother had never wanted to sacrifice the other things. Once Asuna had used the book, it took its payment whether she offered it or not. The sacrifices had become involuntary. When Asuna realized that her best friend had died because of her, she stopped using the book for years.

Ambroysia stopped reading and looked up at her aunt. "How do you know what the book is if you can't read its pages?"

V. Not My Daughter

"Asuna told me," Alexandria said quietly, "after your father died. She told me she had read the whole book, every page, and that our father died because our mother couldn't stop using it."

She swallowed hard.

"Do you know the last words our mother ever said to us? She was lying in that enormous bed, in that enormous house, and she looked at us and said, 'What is your soul worth? Because I know what mine is worth.' Your grandmother died alone in a big house, surrounded by her earthly treasures. No one came to her funeral except Asuna and me. She was such a good person, Ambroysia, until that book found its way to her and drained her soul."

Alexandria's grip tightened on her niece's shoulders.

"Think about your mother. Think about how she changed in the last years of her life. She had stopped using that book. She was living a good life. Then your father's gambling problem swallowed every dollar she had, and she opened that accursed thing again. It took all of her, Ambroysia. It even took your father's life."

"No." Ambroysia's voice was steady, and it surprised them both. "It didn't take everything. The book wanted her to sacrifice me, and she refused. That is what killed her."

Alexandria opened her mouth, then closed it. For a long moment, she was lost for words.

"And yet," she finally whispered, "here we are. That book has still found its way to you."

Ambroysia looked at her aunt, then down at the book, and thought about the last words her mother had ever said to her. That was the last time she had seen her alive.

VI. Her Mother's Last Words

It had been an ordinary morning. Her mother had stood in the kitchen doorway with her car keys in her hand, and instead of saying goodbye, she had said this:

"Honey, our life is a book, and each page is filled with our trials and tribulations. We don't create life itself, yet some of us have the power to create the life we want to live. Sacrifices made in life have their rewards as well as their troubles. My pages are full of mistakes that can't be erased. Some sacrifices are not worth the rewards. Choose carefully what you are willing to sacrifice."

Then she had kissed Ambroysia on the forehead and walked out the door.

For the last few days, Ambroysia had wondered what her mother meant. She remembered how her mother had changed after her father's death: cold and detached, with a bitterness that left her eyes only when she looked at her daughter.

Ambroysia turned to the last pages of her mother's story and gave a small, bitter laugh at the irony. The Book of Emptiness. What a fitting title for her mother's last years. Empty. That was precisely what her mother had become.

No. Ambroysia shook her head. No. Her mother still had life in her when she looked at her daughter. Ambroysia had seen it in her eyes that last morning. Whatever this book had taken, it had not taken all of her. Ambroysia knew that the way she knew her own name.

They had found her mother's body at her father's grave, holding a photograph of him and Ambroysia. The coroner told her they could not find a cause of death. It looked as if her mother had died of natural causes. But her mother had been healthy, fit, and only forty-two. How does a healthy, fit woman of forty-two die of natural causes? Ambroysia had asked herself that question a hundred times.

She looked down at the book in her hands. Now she had the answer.

VII. This Is My Page

Lost in thought, she turned through the pages of her mother's story one last time and read the final words again. NOT MY DAUGHTER!

Then she turned to the next page.

It was completely blank, except for a single line at the very top, written in that strange, burning alphabet. She did not need anyone to translate it. It was her name.

Ambroysia Rayne Ferguson.

The page glowed softly, patiently, like a mouth waiting to be fed.

A warm hand closed over hers on the cover of the book. Ambroysia was so lost in thought that she jumped when her aunt touched her.

"Ambroysia," Alexandria whispered.

Ambroysia looked up into her aunt's eyes. They were filled with so much love and so much fear that it almost broke her heart.

"This is my page," Ambroysia said.

Alexandria looked down. She saw an empty page and, at the top, strange, hooked symbols that seemed to spell out three words.

Ambroysia followed her aunt's eyes. "It's my name at the top."

Tears spilled down Alexandria's cheeks.

Ambroysia gently closed the book. Then she took her aunt's hand and simply held it, feeling the comfort and warmth of it flow through her whole body, a warmth no lottery ticket in the world could ever buy.

"What is your soul worth?" she said softly, repeating her grandmother's words. "Because I know what mine is worth."

She thought of the last words in her mother's handwriting. NOT MY DAUGHTER! Her mother had paid for that sentence with her life. Ambroysia was not going to waste it.

"I know what my soul is worth," she told her aunt.

She let go of Alexandria's hand, walked to the box, laid the book inside, and closed the lid. The box did not pulse. It did not breathe. It simply sat there in the dust, black and silent.

Then Ambroysia took her aunt's hand again and led her to the stairs. At the top, she looked back at the box one final time. Then she looked at her aunt, and together they walked down the steps, hand in hand, with smiles on their faces.

Behind them, in the dark of the attic, a page with a name at the top stayed perfectly blank.

For the first time in generations, the Book of Emptiness went hungry.

Written By Dr. George Shannon Ferguson