texts, so I thought I might give the sale a try.
It was a fine day in the first
week of September, blue-skied, bright, with the early leaves turning. There was
even a trace of coolness in the air, a great relief, considering the muggy
August I had suffered. It was the kind of day that makes me want to eat plain
doughnuts and drink hot cider.
Long tables were set up on the
sidewalk along West Main Street; others crowded the front lawn in front of the
noble old structure of beige stone. I wandered among the tables, quietly
scrutinizing their contents. Books were stacked in irregular gravity-defying
pillars and stuffed into cardboard boxes, the white splits in worn bindings
giving the impression that their titles were emerging through static.
There were a good many potential
buyers perusing about, and they seemed nice enough, book-lovers being a more
civilized lot. I picked up a slim volume on British war ships of the late 1700s
and was standing in the shade of a maple, flipping through its pages, when I
felt something cold touching my arm.
Looking down, I noticed a pale
hand lighting on the back of my wrist. The wrinkled fingers were slender, with
nails that looked like tiny bleached trilobites.
Instinctively I stepped back and
looked up to see the face of the person who had touched me. There were leaves
tangled in the long white hair which blew across the face -- a shifting mask
obscuring all but the toothless smile.
A rush of adrenaline spun me from
the stranger. I dropped the book onto the nearest table and found myself
walking swiftly away from the crowd and the tables and the cool shade of the
library. I crossed West Main -- blood parading through my head with heavy feet
-- and did not turn to look back until I had reached my car.
Light flashed on the window of the
heavy library door as it swung shut. Leaves trembled down onto heaps of faded
books. People milled and hunched over tables. People chatted and smiled and
made purchases. The world appeared ordinary -- no sign of the white-haired
individual with prehistoric fingers.
I drove straight home, where I
have remained since. Sleepless. Pacing. I obsess over the incident, replay it
over and over in my mind. Was the hand that touched me as cold as my memory
tells me it was? Wasn't it simply some nice little elderly person on the verge
of asking some innocuous question? How could someone really have little white
trilobites for fingernails?
There must be something wrong with
me, acting this way. I think about the Banchini House and what I saw in the
opened chest of that metallic demon. But what did I see? Those faces bobbing in
the strange light were nothing other than images cast by a hidden projector,
weren't they? The one that was reaching out, or pulling itself out, was no more
than a clever illusion. That has to be the logical explanation. It was a
prank, a little something to agitate the imagination.
September whispers around my
house, a blend of crickets and breeze. It gets dark earlier now. I prop myself
up on coffee legs and pace. I'll have another cup. I hear a noise out in the
dusk and go to the window, peel back the edge of the drawn shade and peer out.
Only back-lit leaves flitting past the street lamp, straying from their limbs.
8. BOOKS
Burnt sage leaves have left a
strange smell throughout my village Colonial, remnants of a protection ritual I
performed some hours ago -- a simple spell taken from Cricket and Moth ,
an anonymously written volume that appeared in 1935. The book has no formal
title, though the cover bears the moon-colored image of a moth above a
silhouetted cricket, both set against a pale green background. The lettering
inside is curious; it resembles black ants arranged to form words. The spells
themselves are elegant in their simplicity, poetic in essence.
Yes, I've returned to my strange
books. I spent hours distracting myself with Nana's volumes on old New England
houses, but eventually, inevitably, I went to the
It was a fine day in the first
week of September, blue-skied, bright, with the early leaves turning. There was
even a trace of coolness in the air, a great relief, considering the muggy
August I had suffered. It was the kind of day that makes me want to eat plain
doughnuts and drink hot cider.
Long tables were set up on the
sidewalk along West Main Street; others crowded the front lawn in front of the
noble old structure of beige stone. I wandered among the tables, quietly
scrutinizing their contents. Books were stacked in irregular gravity-defying
pillars and stuffed into cardboard boxes, the white splits in worn bindings
giving the impression that their titles were emerging through static.
There were a good many potential
buyers perusing about, and they seemed nice enough, book-lovers being a more
civilized lot. I picked up a slim volume on British war ships of the late 1700s
and was standing in the shade of a maple, flipping through its pages, when I
felt something cold touching my arm.
Looking down, I noticed a pale
hand lighting on the back of my wrist. The wrinkled fingers were slender, with
nails that looked like tiny bleached trilobites.
Instinctively I stepped back and
looked up to see the face of the person who had touched me. There were leaves
tangled in the long white hair which blew across the face -- a shifting mask
obscuring all but the toothless smile.
A rush of adrenaline spun me from
the stranger. I dropped the book onto the nearest table and found myself
walking swiftly away from the crowd and the tables and the cool shade of the
library. I crossed West Main -- blood parading through my head with heavy feet
-- and did not turn to look back until I had reached my car.
Light flashed on the window of the
heavy library door as it swung shut. Leaves trembled down onto heaps of faded
books. People milled and hunched over tables. People chatted and smiled and
made purchases. The world appeared ordinary -- no sign of the white-haired
individual with prehistoric fingers.
I drove straight home, where I
have remained since. Sleepless. Pacing. I obsess over the incident, replay it
over and over in my mind. Was the hand that touched me as cold as my memory
tells me it was? Wasn't it simply some nice little elderly person on the verge
of asking some innocuous question? How could someone really have little white
trilobites for fingernails?
There must be something wrong with
me, acting this way. I think about the Banchini House and what I saw in the
opened chest of that metallic demon. But what did I see? Those faces bobbing in
the strange light were nothing other than images cast by a hidden projector,
weren't they? The one that was reaching out, or pulling itself out, was no more
than a clever illusion. That has to be the logical explanation. It was a
prank, a little something to agitate the imagination.
September whispers around my
house, a blend of crickets and breeze. It gets dark earlier now. I prop myself
up on coffee legs and pace. I'll have another cup. I hear a noise out in the
dusk and go to the window, peel back the edge of the drawn shade and peer out.
Only back-lit leaves flitting past the street lamp, straying from their limbs.
8. BOOKS
Burnt sage leaves have left a
strange smell throughout my village Colonial, remnants of a protection ritual I
performed some hours ago -- a simple spell taken from Cricket and Moth ,
an anonymously written volume that appeared in 1935. The book has no formal
title, though the cover bears the moon-colored image of a moth above a
silhouetted cricket, both set against a pale green background. The lettering
inside is curious; it resembles black ants arranged to form words. The spells
themselves are elegant in their simplicity, poetic in essence.
Yes, I've returned to my strange
books. I spent hours distracting myself with Nana's volumes on old New England
houses, but eventually, inevitably, I went to the
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