The Turning Book 1: What Curiosity Kills

by Helen Ellis

  “My dear!” a woman behind the sales counter exclaims. She beams at Octavia and clasps her hands together. She wears a cardigan over her work apron and has a handkerchief tucked up the cuff of her sleeve. Her hair is cropped short: a white, feathery swim cap. Large clip-on costume earrings dangle from her long lobes. Her glasses are tortoise shell and attached to a matching chain around her neck. Her face is a powder-dusted map of fine lines. Mrs. Wrinkles, I presume.

  She pulls a stack of books out from underneath the counter. The books are tied with string, the way a box of cookies is tied at a bakery. She presents them to Octavia. “For the Dalton debate.”

  Octavia says, “You’re the best.”

  “Say, Thank you, Mrs. Wrinkles!”

  My sister repeats what the woman wants her to say softly—the softest I’ve ever heard Octavia speak. I can tell she’s pleased with books—I’ve never heard of them and bet the Dalton debate team hasn’t heard of them either—but Octavia’s hesitant to take them. Her hand rests on the sales counter a few inches from the stack. The retired librarian nudges the stack toward Octavia’s fingers, but Octavia jerks her hand away.

  “My dear, how many times must we go through this charade? We both know you’ll take what Mrs. Wrinkles has found for you. There’s no reason to resist. There’s no reason to feel frightened. There’s nothing wrong with taking help. You asked and were answered. That’s what The Cellar is for!”

  I ask Octavia, “Does she do all your work for you?”

  My sister scowls. “Yeah, she puts on blackface and does my trigonometry.”

  The older woman says to me, “You must need help if you’re here with Octavia today. Tell me, my dear, what is it you need?”

  I look to Octavia to speak for me. I can barely hear her when she says, “Mrs. Wrinkles.”

  “My dear, you need to see her?”

  I’m confused. I thought we were talking to her.

  Octavia says, “To be honest, I’ve never believed she was real.”

  “You and so many others, my dear. Yes, Mrs. Wrinkles is indeed very real. And now you want to meet with her—after all these years. Why now?”

  “Something…weird…is happening to…someone I know.” Octavia fiddles with the string on the bound lot of books. She’s stumped over what to say next, how much more to say, or if she’s already said too much.

  The woman prompts her. “This something is happening to a friend?” She knows my sister’s talking about me but, under anonymity, hopes Octavia will go on.

  Octavia nods.

  “This something scares you?”

  Octavia nods.

  “This something is something only Mrs. Wrinkles might understand?”

  Octavia looks too frightened to even make a motion of yes.

  “Oh, my dear, this must be serious.”

  “It is, Miss Ryan.” My sister bites her lips and looks up at the ceiling in an effort not to cry.

  Miss Ryan hurries out from behind the sales counter. She wraps her arms around my sister, who rests her head on Miss Ryan’s shoulder, hides her face from me, and cries in earnest. Now I’m scared.

  Miss Ryan asks, “Do you want me to come with you to see her, my dear?”

  Octavia steels herself, draws her head back and shakes it no. She brings her coat sleeve to her nose, but Miss Ryan pulls her handkerchief from her sleeve, and Octavia blows her nose into that.

  Miss Ryan says, “Chin up, soldier on.” She gestures to a closed door at the rear of the room.

  Octavia stares at the closed door but doesn’t budge.

  I take her hand and tug to get us going. If someone has answers about what’s happening to me, scary or not, I need to find out.

  Easing between antique bookcases, Octavia doesn’t let go of my hand. Milk crates full of paperbacks line the aisle. We move slowly so as not to topple freestanding piles. I set my sights on a row of Stephen Kings against the far wall and give my sister’s fingers a squeeze. She squeezes back. We’re almost there. Whatever lies on the other side of that closed door frightens her more than me.

  Opening the door, we find a smaller, narrower room of books. A smaller, narrower retired librarian sits at a smaller, narrower desk. Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? rouge is applied in smudgy circles upon her cavernous cheeks.

  “Mrs. Wrinkles?” I ask.

  The retired librarian raises her painted eyebrows. She squints over her Trident gum–sized, rimless eyeglasses, propped on the tip of her nose. She lets her gaze linger on Octavia, who is a quivering mess.

  Octavia curtsies. So, I curtsy too.

  The woman removes her hand from the huge book she is reading. All the books in here are thicker than thick and look to be written in Old English. This is where such books come to die. The old woman keeps her grip on an index card she’s been using to read line by line. When she lifts her arm, a name tag emerges from behind her wide work apron strap. Miss Gibbs points us toward a doorway without a door that is blocked almost entirely by a bookcase.

  This new chamber is equal to the size of my parents’ bathroom but incredibly tall. Looking up at the skylight, I am at the bottom of a well. Perhaps this was once a terrarium. The room is tall enough to have housed a redwood. The shaft is bathed in daylight, but there is no artificial lighting. The shelves rise all the way to the top, but there is no ladder. All the books are coverless. A crumb of mortar falls along the wall. I peer into a sliver to find that the bookshelves give the illusion that the room is square, but it’s circular.

  “Young lady, may I help you?”

  Octavia and I whip around to discover yet another retired librarian sitting on a swivel stool: an old man. We’d scooted right past him. He is inside this tower with us. He is no wider than the stool, and his three-piece, pinstriped suit makes him appear more elongated. His Windsor knot is as wide as his neck. No glasses. His eyes are thoughtful and rheumy. He clasps his hands over his crossed legs and bounces his top foot in want of an answer. He closes his eyes to better hear us, his dears. He smiles expectantly. Every line on his face grins.

  I dare to ask, “Are you Mrs. Wrinkles?”

  Octavia elbows me.

  He chuckles. “Young lady, you do need help! I am Mr. Charles. This is Mrs. Wrinkles.”

  Placing his hand on his lapel, he opens his jacket a few inches from his chest. Out peeks the hairless head and shoulders of a sphynx.

  Mrs. Wrinkles is not completely hairless. She is fuzzy like a peach. You can’t see the fuzz, but you could feel it if you touched her—and she wants you to. As soon as she spots us, she slinks out of Mr. Charles’s suit jacket, prances up his crossed leg, and preens on his knee like a Swiss goat on an Alp. She lifts her head. Her face is all angles. Her ears are tall and pointy, like the tips of a tiara. She can’t weigh more than six pounds. Her skin is the palest of pinks, with faded black spots. She looks like a washed out, sun-bleached box of Good & Plenty. She extends a bony paw.

  “Pleased to meet you,” says Mr. Charles.

  Octavia cowers behind me. I can see why Mrs. Wrinkles would scare her. The cat is straight out of King Tut’s tomb. But she’s so friendly! She paws the air and tilts her head inquisitively.

  Mr. Charles says, “What, no fine-how-do-you-do’s?”

  Not shaking the cat’s hand may be construed as rude on my part, but I am not doing it. I remember what happened to my shin when Yoon first visited me as the deli cat and then what happened to my legs when Peanut Butter and Jelly had a go. This morning, a stray whisker sprouted out of the side of my head. The turning has started. How many more hours do I have as myself? My body is ripening. If I touch Mrs. Wrinkles, my fingertips will look like I just ate a bag of Flamin’ Hot Crunchy Cheetos.

  I say, “I’m allergic. My sister’s cat-phobic.”

  Mr. Charles says, “But Mrs. Wrinkles is no cat. She’s a lady.”

 
I hear Yoon’s voice: She’s no normal girl, Father.

  I ask, “Is she human?”

  Octavia punches me in the back.

  “Is she what?” Mr. Charles chuckles. He rubs a faded black spot between Mrs. Wrinkles’s eyes. The sphynx purrs. With no fur, her ribs vibrate like a xylophone. He says, “Well, she’s as smart as any human I’ve met. She knows exactly what I’m saying, don’t you, Mrs. Wrinkles? And beautiful to boot!”

  Mrs. Wrinkles lifts her narrow haunches to show off. She looks me up and down and sniffs. She must sense my inner cat like Peanut Butter and Jelly did, but she is indeed being a lady about it. No crying, no swarming, no pouncing, no hissing fits. The tip of her skinny tail runs up the center of her handler’s face, but his eyes don’t cross. He gingerly places his hands on her hips and rubs her like he’s shining a shoe.

  He says, “Mrs. Wrinkles has lived in this library all her life. She’s sixteen years old. Her great-great—you can’t imagine how many greats!—grandmother was kept by Miss Miriam Webster. Mimi purebred exotics. When she died, she donated her entire estate to the city on the condition that her darlings—and their darlings—be allowed to continue to live here. Mrs. Wrinkles is the last of her line.”

  Octavia peers out from behind me. “We need to ask her a question.”

  Mr. Charles says, “Be my guest.”

  “In private,” she pleads.

  “You have all the privacy you need.”

  “But you’re here.”

  “I am her chaperone.”

  “You’ll see what she gives us.”

  “Young lady, I have not seen anything since Jackie Kennedy was in the White House.”

  Mrs. Wrinkles flicks her tail back and forth, back and forth, like a hypnotist’s pocket watch before Mr. Charles’s eyes. His eyes don’t move. This man is blind.

  He says, “Even if I could see, I wouldn’t say a word. Librarians never judge. We’ve sworn the same oaths as priests and doctors, but we keep our promises. Whatever is discovered here will remain confidential.”

  I lean forward and whisper to the sphynx, “Tell me about the turning.”

  Mrs. Wrinkles leaps onto a shelf packed with coverless books, their spines aligned according to height. There’s an inch of space on the ledge, and she nails it. She doesn’t wobble. Her balance is effortless. She leaps to a higher shelf on the case to the right, where larger books are crammed willy-nilly. She doesn’t rustle pages hanging loose from poorly glued spines of what I’m guessing are atlases and maps of our bodies, ourselves. She springs to a higher shelf on the case to the right, this time landing on a book jutting out. The shelves get messier the higher she goes. More bird than cat, Mrs. Wrinkles flies from shelf to shelf, spiraling up and up and up.

  Mr. Charles says, “My lady knows every inch of her house, knows where to find anything inquiring minds want to know.”

  The sphynx looks down and meows. The sound echoes down the shaft. She’s so high that her head is a postage stamp. Octavia gazes up and shades her eyes as if this will help her focus.

  Mrs. Wrinkles ducks out of sight. I hear her claws sink into books as she climbs up the crawl space between the case and curved wall. Silence. She’s stopped. Specks of dust glisten in the sunlight as they drift down three stories. A book nudges toward a shelf lip as Mrs. Wrinkles head-butts and paws at it from behind.

  Octavia marvels, “I’ve always wondered, if she really was real, how she does it. You leave a question for her—”

  “—and when the library closes,” Mr. Charles finishes her thought, “Mrs. Wrinkles goes to work. This morning, we found your debate books laid out on the floor in the main Cellar room. My lady can ferret out anything, anywhere, no matter how small or how hidden.”

  Octavia says, “She’s a hunter.”

  “For knowledge,” says Mr. Charles.

  Octavia nods, and although Mr. Charles can’t see her, I think he senses a puncture in the air. I feel it. Since we got here, Octavia’s fear has clogged this well like a fog. We all breathe easier because Octavia is slightly less afraid. She sees a bit of herself in Mrs. Wrinkles: a smart girl who finds comfort in the truth.

  Books next to the one the sphynx has chosen for us jostle and threaten to fall. I duck and cover. Octavia presses her back against the shelves. Mr. Charles doesn’t uncross his legs. His front foot keeps on bob-bob-bobbing along. Mrs. Wrinkles’s book flaps as it falls three stories all by its lonesome. Mr. Charles sticks out his hand, as long and narrow as his shoe, and catches it.

  It’s a miniature—the size of one of those moving-image cartoon books you flip through to watch a stick figure slip on a banana peel. Mr. Charles holds it out to us between his index and writing fingers.

  Octavia accepts it, opens it, and we peer inside.

  In addition to the book’s cover being torn off, the title page and table of contents have been ripped out. My sister turns the book over. The index is intact, but the words are made up of horseshoes, triangles, and pitchforks.

  “It’s in Greek,” says Octavia.

  She snaps the book shut.

  The shadow of another cat’s head drifts over the skylight like a storm cloud. The shadow is gigantic, imposing. One ear is missing a chunk. When the head turns to profile, a gaping mouth shows off shadowy canines as long as my arms. The room grows cold. We are eclipsed. Fear drapes my sister’s face like a funeral veil.

  Mr. Charles says, “Damn that tomcat always coming around! He thinks our lady is getting old. He wants us to adopt him as soon as she passes on to that great litter box in the sky. But we hate that tomcat, and our lady isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, are you, Mrs. Wrinkles?”

  Mrs. Wrinkles rolls onto her back and braces her paws on the shelf above. She shimmies out so her hips balance on the flatness of a book. Her stomach muscles support her top half in midair. Her ribs rumble like a purr, but a purr it is not. She thrashes the air beneath the Great-and-Powerful-Oz–sized shadowy head. Her anti-purr sours into a challenge.

  Mrowl! Break the skylight. Mrowl! Spatter me with broken glass. Mrowl! Jump! Come and get me. I dare you! Mrowl! I wish you would!

  The tomcat bellows. I don’t get meaning from him. I get sheer meanness. He sounds like a dragon. I expect to get cooked. At any second, the skylight glass will melt, pour down the well, and solder me to the floor.

  Not Octavia. She’s squeezed out of the well. Books topple from the Old English graveyard bookcase that blocks the doorframe. I hear her apologize to Miss Gibbs and then she is gone.

  I have to go after her. She has the Greek book.

  chapter sixteen

  Outside, braced against the handicap ramp railing, Ben’s got Octavia.

  Wait, what? Yes, here he is with crazy, coincidental timing straight out of the movies.

  Octavia had been running and, I guess, ran right into him. He’d caught her. They both look surprised. There is distance between their bodies, but his hands are secured to her shoulders. Octavia doesn’t pull away. She clutches the lapels of his camel-hair coat, which he now wears instead of his poker parka. They aren’t looking at each other. They aren’t looking at me either. In light of what’s looming above, I guess Octavia’s forgiven or momentarily forgotten Ben’s eating a mouse.

  From the library roof, a mammoth tomcat hangs, gargoyle-style, over the edge.

  The tomcat is bigger than Yoon when he turns. He sets to stalking the ledge to show off his length and muscles. He cracks his tail like a whip. His yellow eyes narrow. His face is flattened as if he’s taken more than his share of punches. His right ear is half-eaten by mites, but he’s healthy now. His fur is glossy and undefiled. He is entirely one color.

  “Meet Country Club,” says Nick.

  “Wait, what?” I actually say it aloud this time. Again, a boy has seemingly stepped out of nowhere. The boy. MY boy. I ask him, “What are you doing here? Are you
with Ben?”

  Nick says, “I owe him.”

  “Poker?”

  Nick cocks his head at me. He hasn’t washed his hair since last night. His curls are stiffer and stand on end. He gently takes hold of my wrist as if he does it all the time. He twirls me into his chest so that my back aligns with his front. Silly Mary. How can I talk about something as trivial as poker at a time like this?

  We look up at the tomcat, who glowers down at us. Nick rests his chin on my shoulder. His warmth radiates up my neck and pinches my earlobe. The sensation is familiar and heady. Momentarily, I don’t care about the tomcat like I didn’t care about Ling Ling when Nick held me this exact same way on the terrace last night. I could turn my head and kiss him—but I want to know what’s going on.

  I ask, “Why Country Club?”

  “Earth to Rosa Parks,” says Octavia. “That cat is white-only!”

  Country Club bellows. There is no mmm in his mrowl. His mouth opens, and a dark noise issues forth—a menacing, guttural, unending roar. His canines are swords. If he bit you, those teeth would hit bone. He’d take out your ankle with one lock of his jaw. He is prehistoric.

  Strangers stop in the cold to look up at the beast. Country Club is the closest thing to Godzilla these real-life Upper Eastsiders have seen. Babies are clutched and wheels of $1,600 strollers put to the test. Coffee sip-tops pop off and scald trembling hands. People trip and curse the sidewalk. Earpieces are pressed, calls made to 911 for the fire department and 311 for animal control. Some dumbass throws a rock.

  The tomcat takes no notice.

  Nick clasps his hands around my stomach and hugs me. He burrows his face into the side of my neck. His curls tickle. This may read as a protective gesture—impassioned, even—but that is not how it feels. I am not being snuggled. I am being restrained.

  Oh.

  I get why.