Absconded Sanity

In her hands, there was a little black book. It had scars etched into its cover. The corners were worn. Its pages were unruly, yellow, and curled against each other as if in conflict. The woman could relate. She had been twisted out of shape by those pages. What this book had done might be quantifiable by some, but its full significance would not be known until both she and it had long since become dust.

Some Immeasurable Time Ago

The world had first shuddered, slowed, then appeared to stop altogether. People scurried between their walls like industrious mice. Some clearing and cleaning, others collecting or hoarding. An occasional delivery truck would lumber through quiet streets, stopping to drop boxes with vacant smiles on their sides on empty porches. Those smiles disappeared as their new owners surreptitiously gathered them and brought what some equated to happiness into their homes.

She was a cleaner, an organizer creating order in the small space she had. An illusory sense of control was comforting those days. Gathering some things into boxes, while other times taking long ago packed boxes apart to identify and reorganize their contents, was an unending task in which she could lose herself. Until the black book was found, it was an almost pleasant distraction.

The Book

It was buried in a box with what approximated a million other books. There was no title. It was unassuming and, at first glance, insignificant. Back then, the book’s cover was worn but not yet scarred. Its pages were an aged bone color and nested neatly together as all good books ought to. She didn’t remember ever owning a book that looked like this. It couldn’t be hers. How did it get here? That’s what started the whole train of events. And where there’s a train, there are rails, at least there’s supposed to be.

The Trouble Starts

Then, as now, she ran her hands across it. The cover felt warm, which was unusual in the cool room. The cold floor leached into her bones followed to her core and radiated back out to her fingertips. It felt good to hold this book. Its warmth made her want to clasp it close to her heart. A strange attraction and revulsion came over her. If she had listened to this subtle warning, she might have been spared. If only.

Steeping

She left the box of books where it was and slowly made her way upright. Her knees ached from sitting on the floor so long. Both feet tingled with pins and needles as they took up her weight and carried her to a nearby chair with her new find. For no discernable reason, she brought the book up to her nose and breathed in deeply. The other books in the box smelled like old books do, dusty, slightly sad in their neglect. This book smelled like spices. Something both savory and sweet came from between the ebony cover. She was sitting in the chair and staring blankly at it for minutes before she even realized her initial task had been abandoned.

Departure

Her fingers opened the book with a stammered tremor. There, on its very first page, was a sketch. Though created in charcoal and Conte crayon, the lines were at once crisp and soft in their black and sepia. There were no smudges here. It was as if it had only just been completed and was breathing itself into life. An infant’s sweet pudgy face stared back at her. So skillfully was it done that the eyes sparkled at her and seemed to follow her own across the page. She heard a squelching liquid sound. Something slippery and slimy was oozing against itself. As she watched, one of the child’s eyes rolled back in its head, and as it did, the horror of a hard exoskeleton, a phantasmal centipede, somehow oozed out of the socket of the drawing. It thrashed curling on the page before it righted itself and crawled swiftly off the edge of the book, onto her lap, and spiraled down her leg. The book flew through the air as she screamed. She stood shivering and patting herself down, twirling in place while looking for the creature that should not exist. She could still feel the trail it took down her pant leg.

Paralysis followed. The urge to look for the foul thing that had emerged clashed with the fear of actually finding it had been real. The sound of a vehicle driving over squeaking and crunching snow in the distance snapped her back into place. Her ragged breath eventually slowed as she regained a semblance of normalcy. She was still in the room with the book. It now lay near the wall as if innocent of any wrongdoing. Her eyes traced all the other familiar shapes around her and saw nothing moving, nothing out of place, nothing changed in the slowly darkening space.

Time seemed to be expanding and contracting around her. She had opened a box of books this morning, thinking to donate some to those in need of something to pass the time, something to take them away from whatever this life was right now. Now an early evening gloom was coming through the windows. She walked the few steps to the light fixture and twisted the lightbulb further into its socket until it let off a warm glow that dispelled the strangeness that had settled into her skin. Writing all of it off to the inordinate number of hours she had spent alone and an overactive imagination, she went back to the box and continued to go through the nearly unending collection of battered hardcover novels and well-loved, if ill-used, paperbacks. The little black book remained on its own, laying as if it had always been there as if nothing at all had happened.

De Novo

She had puttered around for hours now. It was getting late. The donation pile had grown, and she was digging into what she loved, the reorganizing part of the task. It almost took her mind entirely away from the little black book. She could barely see it behind her new piles of donations. She convinced herself nothing was wrong. The thought of throwing the weird little thing in with the donation pile both gave her a vague sense of relief and guilt. When she stood up again, she did so with purpose. She walked over with a strange sense of bravado. Trying to fool herself and not quite succeeding, she bent over and scooped the book up. It was not warm. No spices were wafting. The book seemed completely normal. She wanted to prove to herself that earlier had been some waking dream, so she steeled herself and opened the book once more.

Relief flooded her entire body. Like some breath that she’d forgotten, she was holding had been released. There was indeed a drawing, a woman’s portrait. Her off-page stare, meticulously rendered, was directly before the viewer. It was not overly flattering, just an honest, open likeness of someone known intimately by the artist. Standing there holding the book again, the woman felt foolish now. At least until the mouth, so expertly drawn, began to part.

It sounded like wind screaming through trees from miles away. The sound couldn’t be coming from anywhere else. Her hands went numb, and she let the book fall from them as she tripped backward. The book landed face down and opened on the floor. This time there was no mistaking things for an intensely vivid daydream. There was no pretending there wasn’t something going on here as the hoarse wind/scream grew louder and now included the crazy sound of rustling leaves.

What she saw next was miraculous, terrifying, and exciting at the same time. It hadn’t been leaves at all. It was the sound of paper, small pieces of paper that now started to push the book up from the floor as they flooded out from between the pages. The push-pull of this event had the woman wavering back and forth as she found what the book was pouring out now was, in fact, a growing pile of dollar bills. She watched as the book lifted higher and higher from the floor.

The screaming wind subsided, and the bills slowed with the irregular pattern that reminded her oddly of the last few kernels of popcorn popping. The mountain of money took up a third of the room now, and she watched as the book slid from the top of the pile and landed with a thud that sounded more appropriate for a weighty dictionary than the slim volume it was. There was no arguing about the money. That, upon further inspection, was very real.

She kicked the book aside. Cautiously she crept to the pile. Her hesitant hand reached out in disbelief. Dollar bills, some crisp and new, others crinkled and soiled, created a predicament. There were tens of thousands here. How could anyone explain this sudden windfall? Could she even deposit it in her bank account? She chose to let these questions simmer and get down to the business of putting the pile into many meticulous stacks.

Third Time’s a Charm.

In total, $20,000 sat in front of her in orderly little piles. Her head swam with what she could or would do with that sum. She glanced over at the book. On the floor where she had kicked it, the little black book sat patiently waiting for her to make the next move.

As she approached the book, it appeared to skitter slightly. A shudder ran through its pages. It almost sighed as she picked it up and ran her fingers once more over its smooth black cover. It was warm again. It grew uncomfortably hot as she turned it over and over as if in a trance. Putting the book down was not an option anymore. What else could the book give her? Did it have more treasures? She could only think of opening those pages again even as her hands fought the urge in some reflexive form of self-preservation.

The third time she opened the book, it immediately became too heavy to hold. Like a ton of gold brick, it weighed her down, fingers painfully pinned under the open cover. Its pages opened and fluttered like kelp in a sea tide. She was trapped. Held in place by the book, she was helpless. Her face, literally at arm’s length from the swirling pages, could only turn away as something heaved its way from the very spine of the book. It moved with a strange mixture of precision and ungainly lack of self-awareness. The soft blubbery form hadn’t felt its full self in so long. Stalks that approximated eyes stretched and protruded in some obscene way that stopped the scream from even escaping her gaping mouth. She watched in abject terror as the book’s prisoner continued to pour out and explore its new surroundings. It had barely a care for her. It had gotten what it needed. A slim tentacle emerged from its mass, wrapped around her door handle, and it let itself out of her house. With unimaginable speed, the creature was gone in mere seconds. The weight at once lifted, she snapped the book shut and stared blankly through her open door and the too-quiet world beyond it.