The Demon Book

When Nana Richards died, life was not altered all that much. As far as Colin could remember, Nana Richards had always been the psychotic lady who set his parents on edge during every family dinner. He remembered her as someone who was always twitching; scratching her skin as if she wanted to peel it off to reveal the weathered muscles beneath.

A mean lady who was no taller than 5 foot but could tower over anyone with her cold stare and overpowering smell of talcum powder. Colin could count, on one hand, the number of conversations they had had where he was completely aware of what she was saying. His mother had told him that Nana Richards had lost her mind a long time ago; one day she just snapped and they found her on top of the house screaming to all of London about demons coming from the book. The same book was coincidentally clutched between her bony fingers and, lo and behold, was nothing more than a very empty leather bound black book.

They had tried to take her away to be shut in a psychiatric ward for the elderly after this incident, but she kept biting people and wouldn’t let anyone near the black book that was practically glued to her hands. Colin had once heard the nurses shout that she was possessed as they ran from the house, she, of course, was not possessed. He had heard her laughing maniacally, in fact, as she watched them run down the street to get as far away from her as possible.

Colin was her only grandchild, and she had adored him when he was little. However, as time went on and the frown lines in her forehead deepened, her dislike for him seemed to grow. Her eyes would narrow on him when she caught him staring at her; there had been a few occasions where he had snuck into her room to see what the manifestations of a mentally unstable pensioner looked like – her face had turned a violent shade of red when she caught him and the screeches that came from a woman so small were enough to curdle milk.

When he was 10, he had overheard Nana Richards telling his father that he was a terribly normal boy and that if they weren’t careful, “he will be the one to destroy this family!” Colin and his father were in agreement about what this meant: absolute hogwash. His father would nod and hum when appropriate, silently praying that she would just settle down and let him turn off the lights so he could leave. She would mumble and mutter about how she had had such high expectations for Colin when he was young, but he turned out to be nothing more than “an empty head filled with empty thoughts, nothing of creative substance or use to the world.”

Ever since, Colin and Nana Richards would stare at each other with fire dripping from their eyes. They would each mumble insults and hurtful comments around each other, never saying them directly as it would be improper and would upset Colin’s mother. However, Colin was able to have his fun when he would ask what exactly was in the black book that she took everywhere.

Nana Richards’ eyes would narrow down on him, the bags under them turning her into a deep black hole of demonic anger. Her thin, wrinkled lips would press together so tightly that he was certain she was trying to stop the lava flow out from her soul and drown her entire family. She would give a long blink, slow and agonising as her gaze never broke from her grandson. “What an impolite little boy you have grown to be, how dare you ask a lady about her private entertainment,” she would say the same thing every time, and every time it would wipe the smirk off of Colin’s lips and they would engage in a battle of hard stares before someone would interrupt them.

This is why Colin thought it was absolutely preposterous that, at her funeral, there must have been at least 50 different people crying and telling stories of a wonderful woman, so full of life and goodness. Colin thought they must have come to the wrong house, surely they were talking about someone different because there was no way that the woman he knew, and the woman they spoke of were the same person. He knew her as the crazy lady that lived in his house and never left, the woman who was haunted by ghosts of imaginary demons living inside a little black book with not so much as one word written in it.

The book. Where was the book? Colin looked over to the open casket, there she lay, the same horrible scowl etched into her face – even in death she was miserable. She looked exactly as she had a week ago, only a little more… well, dead. Colin’s mother had paid a lot of money for someone to come in and make her look presentable for all the guests, but no one could make her look even mildly pleasant.

He couldn’t see her hands, but he was almost certain that that book would be buried with her. His father never bought into the psychotic tendencies of his own mother, but anyone would be a little wary to keep the book that she lost her mind over.

Colin began to weave through the crowd, giving fake smiles and quick nods as he passed by all of the ridiculous mourners. Desperately moving his shoulders to avoid being grabbed and dragged into a conversation with these strangers, who apparently all knew who he was. He could think of nothing worse than having to stand in the midst of the crying elderly and smile as he listened to them tell him how much his grandmother loved him (lie) and how much he meant to her (lie).

Finally, after narrowly escaping the worn hands of Mrs Winterly, who lived down the lane and hadn’t seen Nana Richards for the good part of a decade, he finally arrived at the casket. How was it possible for someone to have no heart beat and still look about as peaceful as a building site? Colin’s nose wrinkled at the overwhelming smell of talcum powder that was still exuding from her, he thought they would have at least washed her before they stuck her in the box.

He glanced around, trying to look through the box without anyone thinking he was acting strange; when he saw it. A little corner of the book poking out from underneath her arms. Colin took a deep breath and looked around to see if anyone was watching him, after all, the last thing he needed was to be seen robbing his very own grandmothers grave. He pinched his nose and carefully placed his hand down to hold the corner of the book.

Colin gave it a sharp tug but the book stayed in place, his eyebrows furrowed together as he gave another sharp tug; it didn’t move. Maybe after all these years of wrapping her hand so tightly around the book it turned her knuckles white, the skin on her palm had fused to the leather cover. He pulled a few more times, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible.

“Don’t be so greedy!” he whispered and gave one last tug, as if by magic her grip became unstuck and the book slid out from her arms. Colin stumbled back as the book came flying into his chest, he bumped into someone and heard the crash of a plate drop to the floor and smash. Like a parliament of owls, every head in the room turned to look at the source of the noise.

In an attempt to rescue himself from being known as the ‘grave robbing grandson’, Colin huddled the book to his chest and contracted his face to look like he was heartbroken as he let out a loud sob and sprinted from the room. Hopefully this looked like nothing more than a distraught grandson breaking down upon the close inspection of his dearly beloved Nana Richards’ corpse. Of course, the entire reaction was fake and as soon as he was able to shut himself in his bedroom, the sobs ceased.

He pressed his back against the door for good measure, in case anyone thought they would try to comfort the grieving boy. Colin held the book in front of him and examined the outside of it, it was rather disgusting. The hand print of his Nana Richards was almost embossed into the leather, with a deep dip in the spine of the book from where she had tightened her grip on it.

The edges were worn and the pages were littered in spills and stains from nearly two decades of living pressed to Nana Richards’ side. The book radiated the same overpowering smell of talcum powder. In fact, from the feeling of the book, Colin was sure that she had doused the whole thing in talcum powder on more than one occasion.

Colin had never been this close to the book, and the outrageousness of his grandmothers’ delusions were only amplified when he held the, very non-threatening, book in his own hands. How was it possible for someone to lose their mind over something as simple as this? Just as Colin began to think fondly about how truly insane Nana Richards had been, the book began to change.

He could feel the leather heating up beneath his finger tips and as he brought it closer, he noticed tiny gold letters appear on the cover of the book. Colin flipped it over and the same gold letters were appearing on the back, but they were moving. The small gold letters were beginning to grow and float across the empty black space. They shook and spun, stringing themselves into words that moved liked water on the cover of the book: “open me Colin” they read.

The shock of seeing his own name materialise out of thin air on the very book that had taken his grandmothers’ mind was enough to scare the colour from his cheeks. With a sharp intake of breath, he threw the book to the floor. As the book tumbled through the air and bounced against the hard wood floors, it landed wide open, the blank pages falling to either side of the spine.

For a moment nothing happened, but before Colin could process the last few seconds, the air became thick with paper that was shooting from the pages of the book open against the floor. Colin dropped to his knees and covered his head as he watched the book shake and seize as it spat paper. He looked around him to see that the paper being shot from the book wasn’t just paper, it was money.

Thousands and thousands of one dollar bills floated through the air and coated the entirety of Colin’s bedroom. There had to have been at least $20,000 littering his room at the moment! Just as quickly as the waves of money came spilling out of the blank pages, they stopped. Colin rose, wading through ankle deep piles of American money to pick up the book. He gave it a shake and a few more dollar bills trickled out from the spine.

Colin was in shock as the book rested limply in his shaking hands, the colour had drained from his face, even his freckles had abandoned him as he glanced at the mountains of money that now filled his room. He felt the book give one last gentle shake and he looked down to see the scrawl of inky black letters appear on the middle of the blank page; he would have recognised the untidy scribbles anywhere – this was Nana Richards’ writing:

“They’re coming Colin… the demons, they’re coming.”