Tell Me A Story


 He was very tall, and looked thin as a switch upon which an overlong, ill-fitting grey Ulster had been carelessly draped. A great ball of white hair bloomed around his head and down his chin like a dandelion puff.

He seemed in a great hurry, looking as though pursued. I called to him, as he had dropped what looked like his wallet.

“Mister!” I yelled.

He stopped and turned, squinting as if to take my measure. His teeth and eyes were yellow, and he growled at me, a deep rattle rolling up from the wheezy tubes of his chest. He spat a wet scab of blood in my direction.

 “Sir? You—“

“Tell me a story!” he screamed, and began to run, knocking through clusters of shoppers who barely seemed to notice him.

 I thought to leave, but felt I should try again to help the hateful man. I do not know why. I jogged to catch up to him, and swooped up the object he had dropped.

When I straightened, he was gone. 

 I looked all around me. He had melted away somehow. Given his height and oddness, this was a surprise. I held up the man’s lost item.

It was not a wallet, but a notebook, the kind one keeps to jot down grocery lists or scratch in deep heartaches. Its cover was leather, a perfect black, polished with wear, and of an odd shape for a notebook. After a few moments, I opened it, thinking the man’s address might be within.

The inside of the book seemed darker than the cover. I turned a page, which felt made of nothing. It grew darker still. There were no notes, no poems, no lists. No creamy white cotton paper. Each page black and blank, the insubstantial stuff of damned souls. There was no nap for any nib to dig in and record a thought. I seemed to be burrowing into a tunnel where light was forbidden. The world around me vanished. My legs failed. I settled blindly to the curb. Panicking, I cried out and grabbed the leg of a passerby. She yelled, shook me loose, and with that, the last page was revealed. My eyes hurt as I broached the dark behind me.

 Upon that last page, in perfect copperplate was written:

‘Tell me a story.’

The world returned, the business of people’s bumps and bustles pressed into view at the edges of my sight. I slammed the book shut. I sat for several minutes, unable to stand.

I was not one to be taken into voodoo beliefs or dark magic, but I was also not so dim as to ignore my own senses. The book pressed against my palm as if trying to open itself. I sat down on it. I looked at my shoes for a moment and unlaced one. I took the book, trussed it tight and cinched it with a good knot. I got up, slowly at first, then rushed as best I could manage to the trash.

I shoved it in and turned away fast. In an instant, the lid of the canister popped and hit the ground. Despite myself, I looked around. There was money inside.

So much money! I pulled a bill, a $500 bill. I had never seen one. I knew it must be old, though this was barely worn. My first thought was that it was counterfeit, but it looked and felt too real.

There were more bills deeper down. I dug and did not see the book.

The thoroughfare was less crowded. The woman I had accosted was surely gone; no one saw me. I was just another bum, sifting trash for treasure. When I’d finished, I had forty $500 bills. I stashed them in every pocket, and rushed up the street, back to my one-room in Belknap. I dropped to the floor, smoothed the cash, and set it into rows and columns. 

 Twenty-thousand dollars.

I curled about my find and stared, the book forgotten, my daydreams a formless happiness. Unbelievable! So much money! I closed my eyes and far-fetched of the easier future awaiting. It was a scratching at my door that stirred me. There was a shadow in the thin gap of light between the door and the floor’s weather stripping. I caught my breath. I watched the black book wriggle through the gap like a flattened cockroach.

“Tell me a story,” it said. Its voice seemed to echo along hallways and chambers within it. The notebook folded, then paused.

“Tell me a story, David.”

“What? How?”

“Yeh…”

“My name. How…?”

“Not sure, really. You wrote it, I think.”

“No one could write in that. It had no pages. Like fog. Glass.”

“As a glass darkly! Yes!”

“Where is the man? The guy like a dandelion?”

“What?”

“Your… Owner?”

“My owner?”

The book laughed, so hard it pulled the light from the room. Its leaves flapped, pulled their binding and danced as though rectangles of darkness were set upon a dust devil. Then, it was over.


“What are…? How did you find me?

“One needs private space, and sometimes one needs all of it. I guess I am everywhere. You need a place. I have prepared one.”

“Oh, no. Hey. Take the money. Man, I am good here. I just wanted to help that old man.”

“Oh, don’t worry. I’ll let you out when it suits. You’ll need to forage. Why do you think I paid you in advance? You’ll need food and stuff. And liquor. I like when you people are “likkered up.” Good stories. You’ll need good stories, indeed. Hours in bars, clubs, between sheets…

“Twenty-thousand is not enough beer for all of a life, book.”

“Ha! Who says you will live that long? Besides, I work the loaves and fishes angle.”

“What are you?”

“Now, how would I know that? What am I? I have been chisel and granite, a scrawl on a wall, a whisper, a scroll in an Irish monk’s rookery. All things that tell stories, I am. What are you?”

The book was crawling onto my money like an inch worm.

“Well, now. Time for a story, Davey. I’ve paid.”

‘We didn’t make any deal.”

“You know better. Has the arc of your life set you to collide with fine fortune?”

I agreed it had not.

“You took it knowingly. Admit it. Now. Tell me a story.”

“Fine.”

Twenty-thou for a story. I could only think of ‘The Five Chinese Brothers,’ so I told it.

“No! I do not like it! No!”

It was somehow upon my chest.


“I want stories! Sin. Rape and murder performed without finesse. Violations! Crenellations and curlies. Beatings! Bruises to the heel, blows and blood! Shame, ugly, painful and loveless. The impalers from the East knocking at the farmhouse door. Yo, ho! Rattle The Lord’s sensibilities, nurture your guilt until there is only suicide left to you. ¡Torque! ¡Quemada! Twist and burn, malformed child. Unscrew that skull cap! Confess!

Whatever lived in that book was mad. But there was money I wanted, well worthy of a dirty tale. I told him about Lydia, pulchritudinous, wicked, deceitful, voracious Lydia, until I ran out of all the very nastiest bits. I am not sure what happened then. No memory. The last thing I heard was “Not good enough. Tell me another.” When I woke, night had set in.

The propane fire pit had cut on, and I saw the book was gone. So was all but one bill. I felt a rib-sucking greed, a wrath unfamiliar. I wanted my money. A print on one wall mocked me. “We’ll try again” in the voice of Vera Lynn. I turned on all the lights. I took a flashlight from a shelf, searched the closet, under the trundle, every dark nook of my place. It was gone. I tucked the lone bill in my pocket and went back to bed with a bottle of booze and my rage.

The next day, it was back. The McKinley’s were aligned, dour portraits loosely arrayed five by eight but for the one crumpled in my pocket.

“Tell me a story.”

“What’s your name.’

 “Iyam what Iyam. Not, I Am. I don’t know. Call me Bill.”

“Bill?”

“A joke. Two, really, if you think. I was a thing adorned, of emerald, ruby, morningstar, diamonds, gold… diadems… Other fancy stuff. Oh!


“What?

 “Puff. We lost Mr. Dandelion. Dead.”

“How?”

“As most things manage. Are you sleepy?”

“Yes.” Not really. Hungover.

“Open me up, then. Page six. Lie down. Plenty of rooms. I am acres of mangled funhouse now, a parody of Versailles, a hall of no reflection. I cannot even regard my own beauty!”

A woman’s voice now. Lydia’s. I picked up the flashlight.

“You won’t need that.”

I took it anyway. One step.

Gone. I tripped and fell over what seemed like parallel sticks. I regained my footing, feeling for any support. Nothing but soft, slimy hummocks, sticks and shards beneath my feet.

The smell. I had read of charnel houses in tales of monster-making, but never imagined this. The flashlight was near useless, its range barely beyond its bulb.

I don’t know how far I went when the air ceased to be quite so noxious. I set myself down. There was something on the ground. I pressed it, and it cracked and went to powder. I held the light close as possible. It was a mummy’s finger, though hardly recognizable as such.

“Bill? Where are you?”

 “I am here.”

“Where?”

“Are you familiar with origami?”

“No.”

“But one fold over. Notice the coastline of Scotland, as it always measures larger, the closer you get?”

“No!”

I ran down the line of what I now knew to be corpses, running until there were no more, until… Mr. Dandelion. He was the last. I put the flashlight in his face. Just shadows in the eye sockets.

There was light past him, so I ran to it. I do not know how I made the leap, but I was back in my room. I found Lydia’s narcotics I had hidden before she left. Bill fed on stories. I would starve it. I took the whole bottle and washed it down with swigs of Ol’ Hick’ry.

Bill had cozied itself on the nightstand. In a fury, I grabbed it and tossed it into the fireplace. It did not scream or change in any major way. It crawled under the andiron, and feathered, black cinders with ragged orange edges ran up the vent. I passed out.

Lydia.

I woke. Bill was on my face, clutching me, burning me. I believed I could feel my cheeks and lips blister and pop; its furnace breath, 40,000 years old, cooking my insides.

“Kill me, Dave? Today is the last that belongs to you. Then… you tell stories. Forever.”

The narcotics and alcohol put me out again, despite the attack. They should have killed me, but the pills were old, I guess. Still, no dream for Bill to rob. I woke a little before dawn, the money rustled by the air from the the floor registers. I picked up a bill, held it up to the fire. Its eyes were burned out. Pinholes, brimstone bookworms, every socket. Ghost eyes. Watching me.

It made sense then. I got up, collected the money and scattered it on the fire. It was the money. They were the true pages of the book. Bill shriveled. The money burned and freed sins scriven in symbols forgotten. They floated up the vent, caught thermals, micrographia in smoke, nearly illegible; a brief of Man, Latin and Linear A. Centuries of entrapment. Forced confessions. 



I had thrown all the money in, but the one bill. The one in my pocket. I wanted to keep it. Desperately. I crumpled it.

I was on my knees.

I miss you, Lydia. I should take you to dinner. I’ve got the money.