by Jeff Schanz
One of the island’s mysteries was about to be solved. Does Lia actually eat? Of course, it was a stupid question. Unless she was a zombie, vampire, or robot, it was a given that she would need consumable nourishment. Brandt had accepted that Lia and her father were peculiar, and maybe had some odd diet, but he wasn’t willing to question whether they ate food in some fashion. Maybe all they ever did was drink goat’s milk straight from the bucket, or chewed on fruit or vegetables right off the vine, or mashed it all up in some vat somewhere and made blended smoothies that they secretly slurped on when no one was looking. He had no idea. But any living person ate something. And even though he didn’t doubt it, it would be nice to check off “Lia eats food” in the notebook of weird shit he needed to start writing.
Another smaller thing to jot down in the aforementioned notebook was Lia’s momentary mental block on how to use her utensils. She got it right in the end, but there was some strange examining and comparing of the fork, knife, and spoon before she tucked in. She only ate a little of the chicken, but seemed to enjoy it just fine and smiled at Brandt in between chews. Brandt could even understand her rusty memory of utensil functions, considering if he was the one alone on an island he might forego forks and knives too, and just eat from his hand. She seemed to realize that her momentary bewilderment with her silverware might look odd, and once the meal was done, she blushed a little.
She was still a healthy pink and blushing made her look almost pastel. Her whole skin tone change was yet another oddity that should be added to the “weird-shit” notebook. It wasn’t a sun-baked pink, just a good, old-fashioned baby face pink. Brandt wanted to ask, but thought mentioning that she had been really pale before might be rude. She obviously had a serious concern about her skin if she wore outfits that blocked the sun. So maybe he should build up to that question.
After lunch was over, Lia asked Brandt if he liked to read books. And what was his favorite kind of book?
He thought for a second, then answered, “You know, I haven't sat down to a good novel in a while. I pecked at some thriller a few months ago, but haven't finished it. I honestly don't know where the book is.” He was about to say that he thought his brother had it, but he refrained from mentioning his brother yet. There didn't seem to be a reason to hide the fact that he had a brother, something inside him just wanted to keep it to himself for now. “I used to like mysteries, but I haven't had the time in a while. I always wanted to read more classics, just never seemed to get around to it. And you?”
“I love them all. I read absolutely everything.”
“Well, I’m sure there’s some things you don’t like.”
She shook her head vigorously. “No. Anything and everything.”
“Come on.” He made a doubtful face. “Anything? Like an encyclopedia of worms?”
She nodded. No indication that she thought Brandt was kidding.
He made his doubtful face sterner. “Existential Viking Poetry?”
She nodded again.
That’s a real thing? “Please tell me you don’t read teenage vampire romances.”
She started to nod and then paused. Her eyes lowered a little.
“Oh, dear lord,” he said, patting her shoulder. “I’m kidding. I don’t care what you read. As long as it’s not porn.” Brandt pretended to be disgusted. “That stuff is offensive and degrading to women.”
She seemed to pick up the cynicism this time, and like the egg incident, decided to play along.
She shrugged and said, “I do not read that. I only look at the pictures.”
Nice. She’s catching on. Or I’m just a bad influence. Probably both.
Lia giggled as her face flushed. She turned away trying to hide another laugh and took the dishes to the sink. Since it had no running water, he was curious as to how they would get cleaned.
She left the dishes alone and came over to Brandt and said, “You said you’d like to see my collection of books. My library is upstairs at the end of the hall. Would you like to see it?”
“Of course,” he said.
Brandt was interested in anything she wanted to show him. And certainly, something labeled a “library” inside a house. But something more than that intrigued him. This library seemed to be sacred to Lia. The place she kept her heart’s desires. Sort of a child’s box of secret stuff she kept under a bed, which only the most awesomest of friends were allowed to see. Lia was going to open her soul a little to Brandt. Though he felt unworthy, it also felt really good that someone cared to do it for him. Most of his friends were Army buddies who were solid in a pinch, but not always the easiest to get along with. And his last girlfriend wasn't interested in sharing souls or even talking. They drank, they screwed, they spent money, they partied with other friends who did the same –– and then she left. Nice talking with ya, babe.
Brandt had honestly forgotten how bruised and battered he was until he climbed the stairs. He had wrapped himself well in his mummy threads, and they had remained snug and supportive during the day so far, but the effort of ascending the stairs was different, requiring muscles and bending. He was happy when they reached the end of the hall and he could stop moving.
They were in the smaller hallway that Brandt couldn’t see from his room. It only had one door at the end of it. Lia hesitated for the briefest moment, then opened the door. She stood aside and gestured for Brandt to go in first.
The room was vast, the size and style of a chapel. The ceiling was vaulted and the windows to the left scaled the entire height of the wall, including the vaulted shape. Reddish wood trimmed the windows, with maroon colored wallpaper in between them. Thick stained glass shapes, pieced together like a simplistic puzzle, combined to make whole windows. Similar to the brown glass that lined the wall tops in the living room, they were unfit for seeing through. Except, these were multi-colored like a cathedral. The designs were not saints or biblical scenes, but geometric patterns that might be considered floral. Ambient light coming in from them had a kind of halo effect like the glass had been polarized or specially treated. Folded velvet curtains were drawn to both sides of each window.
Excluding the window area, all the walls and support structures were bookshelves. They were made of the same wood as the window trim. And like the windows, most shelves extended to the ceiling. There was a rolling wooden ladder that looked sturdy despite its height. Every shelf had a series of books on them, some shelves more tightly packed than others, but none were empty.
In one long section, there were shelves that had some seriously ancient-looking tomes, complete with appropriate flaking leather and baked on dust. Some shelves had encyclopedias and manuals, and assorted non-fiction Among them were history books, school books, picture books, dictionaries of multiple languages, how-to books, cookbooks (surprising), technical manuals, auto repair manuals, boat building manuals, house building manuals, and gardening books.
In the next section was a variety of fiction which began with some antique books by authors so ancient they might have needed to make their own paper. As the section went downward, the books became a bit more modernized with cloth bindings, albeit worn and brittle, with most of the names and titles worn off. Further down were books that claimed to be complete collections by famous authors that were usually required reading in high schools and colleges. Shakespeare, Poe, Hemingway, Steinbeck, Maupassant, et al. Rows and rows of books that would make up the list for what we would send an alien race if they requested a cargo container of our best literary examples. Most were in English, but there were titles in multiple languages. Skipping ahead a bit, in two alcoves were some more modern novels. A variety of pretty much everything: mysteries, thrillers, sci-fi, horror, drama, all alphabetical, and numerous enough that a small town library would be jealous. A lower section held a less neatly stacked grouping of well-read paperbacks, which were a mixture of all of the above plus cheap thrillers and romances. Maybe a few more romances than the others. Brandt bent back the cu
rled cover of one of the paperbacks: “Viking Heat.” Brandt smiled at the irony that “Beowulf” was on one of the other shelves. To his right, he noticed more paperbacks that were collections involving young adult and teen titles like “Harry Potter,” “Twilight,” “The Hunger Games,” etc. Next to those was a smaller collection of children's books like Dr. Seuss, Roald Dahl, and Sendak. She really does like everything.
Brandt heard the sound of leather creak behind him. He turned to see that Lia had just sat down in her usual prim manner in one of the comfortable-looking leather chairs. In the middle of the room were several of those same chairs, plus two leather couches. She beamed a bright smile and looked positively proud.
Brandt’s suspicions were confirmed. This was Lia’s Sanctum Sanctorum. She both wanted to hide in it and show it off at the same time. Everything she loved was neatly categorized and lovingly arranged here on the wooden shelves. Every possible adventure, every tragedy, every thought, every conversation, every fear, every hope, every instruction, advice, hypothesis, every day of history, works of art, every worry, every dream, everything that could be thought of was sitting in here waiting to simply be opened and experienced.
Brandt walked over to Lia. “It’s only one room in your house, but it’s your home, isn’t it?”
Lia seemed to like the question. Her already bright smile nearly reached her ears.
“I don’t have other people to talk to. But – the books talk to me,” she said.
Brandt nodded absently, swiveling on his heels to gather in the cathedral-like feel of the place. He wasn't a book nut, and preferred a good movie to a good book, but he couldn't help but be impressed by the library. It looked like something that would be imagined for a movie about an old-world adventurer who had every conceivable bit of written information at his disposal. The interesting thing was that the modern-day tablets and smartphones had all this information at the touch of a finger swipe and a monthly membership. But still, to look at the physical embodiment of all that information was like standing on the moon rather than looking at it through a telescope.
Brandt sat down in front of Lia. He had intended to give her some other compliment about her library, but something else tugged at his mind. She kept saying that she didn't have anyone to talk to, yet she also claimed that her father lived here. When she was talking to her father, Brandt didn't actually hear the father's voice. And other than Lia's assurance that her father resided here, there was no evidence that he actually did. To the contrary, every indication was that Lia lived here completely by herself. Brandt had no doubt that her father, or someone else, had originally been around to build this place, and certainly many other people would've helped get everything to this island at some point. But Brandt couldn't help but feel that Lia was utterly alone here. The father she spoke of may be real to her mind, but in actuality might be dead or gone, and possibly lying in the coffin in the basement, and kept alive in her own mind to shield her against the loneliness and fear of being the sole person on this island with no way to leave.
Are you done with the amateur psychiatry? He would have chided himself for the leap in deductive judgment, but he was used to the method of his rambling mind. On more than one occasion, it kept him, and the men of his unit, alive. At least for a while.
“What is it?” Lia asked, looking a little worried. Brandt must’ve had a peculiar look on his face during his mental wanderings. She was probably thinking that Brandt was bored with her precious books.
“Oh, sorry. Nothing,” said Brandt. “I get distracted easily. I've got ADD or something.” He gave her his best winning smile. “Your library is incredible, Lia. If I was ever rich and wanted to have a library in my mansion, I'd build it just like this.”
She blushed only a little, but it was from joy. She blushes so easily. It seemed to mean a lot to her that her library impressed Brandt. She stood up and looked around excitedly. Without looking at Brandt, she asked, “Which book would you like to read?”
“Oh?” Brandt wasn’t chomping at the bit to grab a book and spend his day reading, not on a starkly beautiful island with eye-pleasing company, but he humored her. “Ok, give me a second to think.”
Lia twirled and shifted, playing with her dress like a 5-year-old girl. She was giddy with anticipation of his book choice. Brandt wanted to smile at her just because it was refreshing to see a grown woman who loved the simplest things in life, but he held back the smile and simply thought. He had wanted to read some classics, and it seemed appropriate in a place like this to make that kind of choice, he just had no idea where to start.
“There’s too many choices,” he said. “You pick for me.”
He was hoping that would delight Lia but it had the opposite effect. She looked sadly overwhelmed. “I can’t,” she said, as if that explained everything.
“Ok, well…” Brandt was stuck and wasn't doing a good job hiding it. “I really don't know.”
As she had done so well before, she read his emotion and adjusted her perspective. “I’ll try as you ask. At least give me a genre.”
Brandt thought for a second, then said. “I used to like mysteries. And I did say I’d like to try some classics.”
Lia rubbed her chin. She resembled some great literary detective considering clues to a case. “Doyle, Christie, Hammett, LaCarre, Hillerman, Poe?” She looked vexed, as her eyes darted across her vast collection.
“I’ve seen a few Agatha Christie movies before. But I never actually read her books. How about you pick out your favorite of hers?”
The reaction that he was robbed of earlier, he suddenly got now. Lia’s face glowed like she had just deciphered a treasure map. She gave Brandt a conspiratorial glance and then nimbly climbed up the rolling ladder. She gently slid out an old clothbound edition of something and brought it down, cradling it to her breast.
She handed it to him with two hands. Across the top was the title, “And Then There Were None.”
Brandt nodded. “I think I’ve heard of this one.”
Lia was beside herself with pride. “It’s the first edition with that title. It was originally titled, Ten Little Niggers in England in 1939, and then later changed to And Then There Were None in the United States in 1940. The original title was deemed culturally offensive.”
Brandt carefully opened the cover and saw the small print on the bottom of the first page. “1st Edition, Dodd, Mead, New York 1940.”
She doesn’t need Google. She is Google.
He accepted the book with as much reverence as he could muster. “Thank you,” he said. He briefly considered cracking a joke asking how to download this to a Kindle, then thought better of it.
They both wandered around the library for a few more minutes. Lia looked like it was a normal routine of hers to examine the neatness of the shelves and the alphabetical accuracy, although she would be the only one who would be messing it up. Brandt stopped in front of a small display on a very low corner shelf. He scrunched his eyes to make sure he saw what he thought he saw. “Kama Sutra? The Joy of Sex? A Guide to Better Sex?” The titles weren’t meant to be said aloud, but they just slipped right out. An impish smirk creased his cheeks as he pivoted toward Lia.
At first, she darted her eyes downward, and Brandt thought she would do another one of her famous blushes. Eventually, she met his eyes with an imperious expression. “As you can see, I have all kinds of instructional manuals.” She delivered it flatly, letting slip a nearly imperceptible grin.
Brandt would’ve preferred doing anything other than going back to his bedroom. Being out and doing anything was immensely better than convalescing in a bed. But he had slowed down after a half-day outdoors, and especially after the stair climb, he was feeling run down. He excused himself to take a nap and Lia agreed it was a good idea. She stayed in the library as he stiffly shuffled back to his room.
His mummy bandages had barely loosened during the day, so he left them on as he got back into bed. It felt so
wrong to get back into a bed in the middle of the day. The last time he had napped in the middle of the day, it was during his time in the Army, and he had men that stayed on guard as he and a few other men took some reviving rest. It was as alien as anything he could think of to be in a comfy bed as the sun blazed outside, but he chagrined and got himself settled under the sheet. He left the comforter off as his compromise.
Without anything better to occupy himself, he cracked open the old book. Literally. The binding popped and creaked as he spread the pages apart. Luckily, nothing looked damaged. He got through the first few chapters before he closed his eyes.
His mind played with the ironic connection that both he and the book characters were stuck in a mansion on a lonely island. Assuming some murders were likely to take place in this murder mystery, was that a significant factor in Lia’s choice of book for him? His argumentative conscious shook its head at him.
If you were doomed, you’d already be dead, dude.
Good point.
The idea of Lia being a murderer or assassin was about as comical a thought as the man-eating rabbit from “Monty Python’s Holy Grail.” Brandt’s inner consciousness chuckled at the reference. And then he briefly recalled the image of Lia cheerfully walking toward him with a dead chicken, its blood running down her chest.
He dismissed that and nodded off to sleep.
CHAPTER 6
Sundown came and Brandt was glad he had awakened in time to see it. Surprisingly, he was feeling much better. He rewrapped his mummy suit and went downstairs.