A Curious Tome

It was an ordinary Autumn evening, some scattered low cloud on the western horizon blotchy with the classic hues of sunset. Josie was walking down the same narrow alleyway between two non-descript factories on the south side of town towards the nearest bus stop after a long day answering calls from frustrated customers and vague silver-tongued suppliers at work. It was an alleyway usually only populated with a handful of skulking vermin and half moulding cardboard boxes, however today there was another occupant on the shortcut. A little black book, about the size of a travel diary, sat askew on top of a soot-blackened air-conditioning unit. Josie wouldn’t have noticed it had she not been half-admiring the magnificent horizon and half-dozing in the comfortable haze of monotony, drifted slightly to the left without realising, and brushed the book down to the ground. As she reached down and picked the book up and had begun to visually process the object that she had disturbed, an unsettling feeling began to come over her. Much like déjà vu, the intensely familiar yet absolutely foreign sense of strangeness gripped her for almost half a minute, leaving her motionless except the gradual drooping of her lower jaw. At that moment, a crow at the end of the passage let loose an abrupt caw and took to the skies from the gutter it had been perched. This momentary distraction was enough to free Josie from the clutches of the sensory paralysis she had fallen victim to, and it was not a feeling that returned once the focus was back on the book. Turning it around revealed no clue of its purpose or origin, and Josie realised there was no way they could return it anywhere today without missing the bus home. She’d be back in the area tomorrow for work anyway, and thought there would be no harm having an early morning to complete this newfound errand. The little black book was tucked into the front pocket of Josie’s blue laptop bag, and they were off. Whether out of a genuine dulling of curiosity, a subconscious fear of that visceral, incapacitating feeling returning, or a mixture of both; the book stayed hidden away for the entire ride home.

It was roughly 10pm that night, and the TV was playing an already-watched-ten-times-over episode of Josie’s favourite sketch comedy, when she remembered the notebook amidst the waking hibernation that most Monday-Friday employees succumbed to by Thursday evenings. Shambling to the hallway of the modestly decorated apartment she resided in, the book was retrieved from the laptop bag and taken back to the couch. Determined to find out where it came from and whom to return it to, she opened to the first page, which had on it a single world in bold capital lettering; EVENTS. “Okay, not sure why I thought it would be that easy”, Josie muttered out loud to herself in a self-chiding manner and started to turn the pages. It was organised by a single vertical line on each page about a third of the way across, with dates scrawled on the left-hand side and accompanying sentences on the right-hand side. The dates on these first few pages ranged from 2000 BC to 500 BC, which made Josie think that it was perhaps the notebook of a history student, a subject she was definitely not interested in, so she did not pay much attention to the events that had been described. As she wandered to the kitchen for something to drink, she contemplated which education facilities were closest to her workplace and came up short of anything within a 5km radius. This was then rationalised to herself that the person who had lost it probably also worked at one of the countless businesses that lined every street of the industrial suburb she had found it. She felt a pang of silly disappointment over the comprehension that the shortcut was not her secret time-saving trick that only she had known about, despite that obviously being an extremely improbable notion. When she returned to the book, she resumed flipping the chronologically ordered pages until she reached the final entry. Dated yesterday it read, “Being chased, might not make it forward.”

Suddenly shifting into a heightened state of anxiety, Josie began flipping the remaining pages frantically searching for some other entry, some other hint. When she reached the final page, scrawled inside the back cover was the word “Emergencies”, and an address in a town nearby. A glance at her phone screen made Josie quickly realise she had lost track of time and it was pushing 1am. But that couldn’t be right, there was no way she had been perusing this strange book for more than two and a half hours. Pushing that thought aside, she started to stress about the amount of sleep she was going to get before work the next day, and began her bed time rituals. A troubled and broken sleep followed, and when the familiar tinkle of the 7:00am alarm began to sound, a red-eyed and disgruntled looking Josie emerged from the bedroom and began the other, usually seeming much harder to manage morning ritual of coffee-making and showering. By 7:35, she was ready for her day and began to leave the house, not before doubling back for the strange little book she had left on the coffee table. She had planned to visit the emergency address at the back of the book after work, assuming that was the most logical choice. It was a long way to travel on public transport for lost property, but a lack of other Friday night plans and the fact that work was already slightly closer to the destination made the decision an easy one. An uneventful working day ensued, and in the afternoon after a quick web search for the transport information she needed, she set off on her errand.

Josie jumped off the train at Brog Street Station, which appeared to be the absolute opposite of what would be called a hive of activity – no-one got on or off the train here, and apart from one Transport Department employee manning the ticketing and information booth, the place was completely abandoned by people. This particular district of town seemed mostly consistent with that, judging by the rundown nature of the buildings and various vacant lots with nothing but slate rock and gravel and the occasional tuft of sad looking grass that had managed to find some scrap of nutrient in the ground. When she arrived at where the map indicated the place should be however, she pulled the book out under a street light to re-check the address she had written down, as it seemed to be another of these empty lots. 65 Bramston Road. She examined the neighbouring properties, on the right-hand side was an old caryard from the faded remnants of a logo on the brick outside wall which indicated this was number 63, the other side was a small warehouse complex and the mailboxes had number 67. She went back to the front of the lot she had just spent all this time getting to and placed her hands on her hips in frustration. Suddenly, another awful feeling overcame her, paralysing her in place and almost immediately summoning beads of sweat to her forehead. There was something different this time though, a certain malevolent presence seemed to be lurking behind her, it seemed to suck her soul right out of her. From the back of the empty space before her though, a light seemed to appear and get rapidly brighter with every passing millisecond until she could no longer see due to glare. The light had appeared and disappeared within a single second and she was once again able to move and breathe and think. Slowly, Josie began to stumble over to where the light had been, determined to understand the phenomenon she had witnessed. The sun had all but gone now, so she retrieved her phone and put the torch on, then noticed the reflective sheen of something long and metallic sticking just out of the ground. She brushed some gravel aside with her boot and uncovered a metal bar attached to something underground, took hold with both hands and heaved upwards, dislodging the moderately sized trunk from the earth. During this process Josie lost balance and fell backwards, which also popped open the lid of the trunk which was now laying askew a short distance away. After dusting off the seat of her jeans, she leant down and peered inside. There were two bundles of bank-notes with $10,000 printed on the small paper wrappers holding them together, and a small, ornate ring with an eagle motif in the metal moulded around a small, cut gem of what she believed to be emerald. It seemed to be glowing very faintly.

Not knowing what came over her, she tucked the two bundles of cash into her bag and picked up the ring. The design of it reminded her of Native American culture, and she thought of a time centuries ago, when people lived from the land and the landscape remained relatively unsullied by human structures. As she contemplated this, she placed the ring on her finger and suddenly became fuzzy headed and was overcome by vertigo, collapsing to the ground. A few moments later when she came to, it was bright, and her eyes needed to adjust to the light. She realised it was also very hot and the sun was directly overhead. This couldn’t be, there were no buildings anywhere and she was overwhelmed by the starkly different environment that surrounded her. As anxiety began to creep in, she decided to check herself for all her belongings, as one tends to do when trying to orient themselves. Everything was still intact, however she noticed that the ring she had found did not seem to be on her finger still. On the eastern horizon, she saw a dark figure grow increasingly larger, imperceptible at first, but with every passing second it grew, and so did another wave of that crippling dread. Inside her mind, she heard a deep and ominous voice chanting “I HAVE YOU NOW”. Instinctively attempting to turn and flee, she only made it about ten paces before stumbling on a large rock protruding from the ground and landed chin first into the dirt. It was then she spotted the ring again, within arms reach in front of her. Without hesitation she snatched it up and began jamming it on and off her fingers frantically, all while the voice boomed away it’s intimidating phrase louder and louder. “I WISH NONE OF THIS EVER HAPPENED” she screamed at the world, which suddenly began to warp and bend in front of her eyes. That woozy feeling returned, and she soon slipped out of consciousness once more.

When she awoke once more, blinking her eyes and taking stock of the situation around her, she realised she was back in her bed. The gentle tinkle of her phone alarm became apparent to her and she picked it up in a state of confusion. Turning it off, she read the date displayed on her home screen. Thursday the 14th, yesterday morning. That can’t be right, Josie thought to herself as she sat dumbfounded on the edge of her mattress, it can’t have been all a dream. Trying to shake that awful miasma of memory and dream, and trying to reconcile what she had experienced, she got ready for work and left in a hurry. All day she was plagued with an internal battle of what she knew and what she thought she knew. It became clear when she left for the bus stop later that day, when she saw that little black book in the alleyway. She did not hesitate to briskly walk past it, and she did not turn back. Whatever that book was, it was not good news for her.