by Dave Shelton
*
It wasn’t far, and when he got there, it didn’t take long to unpack. James had brought everything he owned in the world with him, and found that it had fitted all too easily into the trunk and backseat of his car. And it wasn’t a big car.
His life had gone a bit wrong lately, but this was to be his fresh start. He arranged his few possessions in their appropriate rooms while listening to music he didn’t like on his radio. The house felt empty and unfamiliar, but then, he reasoned, it was empty and unfamiliar.
When he was done, he made a mug of tea and sat on his bed to read for a while. He wasn’t usually much of a reader (it was odd that he’d bought the book at all), but for the time being he had no television, so he plowed through the first few chapters. It was diverting enough, just a cheap thriller: dumb and action-packed, like the movies he usually watched. In any case, he liked it enough to keep reading. In fact, it was odd but, while he knew it wasn’t very good, really, he found—for the first time in his life—that he just wanted to carry on and on reading it.
He had never understood before when someone called a book “unputdownable,” but here he was frantically turning the pages, drinking in every badly written word, devouring the pages like a starved man, reading much faster than he’d even known he was able to. He read on, longer than he’d intended, only rather briefly (and reluctantly) stopping to make and eat some supper. Then, with nothing pressing to occupy him after his meal, he decided he might as well continue. He raced through a few chapters in the armchair in the living room and then, when he started to feel chilly, he took the book to bed, intending to read just one more chapter before going to sleep.
He finished it at three thirty-five in the morning. He was puzzled that he’d needed so badly to get to the end, but by then he was too exhausted to really think too much about it. He slept deeply and solidly, but only until a little after dawn. Almost immediately on waking he started to think about the book again. He hadn’t liked the ending. His guess at who had committed the murder had been wrong, and he’d been disappointed by that. Only now he thought that it wasn’t he that was wrong: his was the right ending; the author of the book had got it wrong.
He got out of bed just long enough to find a pen, then he got back in and turned to the back of the book. There were half a dozen blank pages right at the back, and with his cheap ballpoint pen, he started to write on these, in tiny, densely packed letters. Just for fun he wrote down his own ending to the story.
James was surprised to find that it came to him easily; it felt as if he wasn’t even thinking about it. As if he wasn’t thinking of the words and then writing them down, but instead he was writing them down and then reading them. He was amazed and delighted by himself. He hadn’t ever thought of himself as having a good imagination, or that he could write particularly well, and yet here he was pouring words onto a page (onto several pages) with the same determination with which he had read the book the previous night. He finished at the very end of the last page—a perfect fit—and sat back in the bed, slightly breathless, elated and startled.
He flicked through the pages. There were no mistakes, no crossings out, no corrections. He read the occasional sentence here and there as he glanced through. It seemed to be good. Better, he thought, than the writing in the book itself.
“Well, where did that come from?” he said to himself aloud. He stared at his hand accusingly. The pen had leaked some ink onto his fingertips and now the hand almost didn’t feel or look like it belonged to him. It was all very odd, but he guessed that he was just a bit disoriented by the move and a general feeling of not yet belonging. A huge yawn took hold of him and pushed such thoughts away.
“Breakfast,” he said, and got up and had some.
*
After breakfast, James drove to town. He went to a supermarket full of harsh light and chirpy music and bought a number of things he needed for the house. He had written a list earlier and then left it on the kitchen table when he went out, but he was pretty sure he had remembered everything. He also got a few things that hadn’t been on the list but that suddenly seemed necessary once he saw them on the shelves. Then he made an excellent job of finding his way home again, only passing the library twice this time.
Back home, he swore at himself briefly once he found his shopping list and realized all the things he’d forgotten, then he set about finding places for all that he had bought: this cupboard for plates and dishes, this one for cups and glasses, this one for jars and tins, and so on. There was little enough that it didn’t take him long.
A couple of the items that he had bought on impulse he left out on the kitchen table: a packet of six notebooks and a pack of a dozen cheap ballpoint pens. James sat at the table and stared at these. He couldn’t remember why he’d bought them, but thinking back he remembered he’d felt a small thrill as he placed them in his cart. Stupid, really. Oh well, now that he had them, the notebooks might as well be of some use, he thought.
He tore open the plastic wrapping and took one out. He needed to be more organized from now on, he told himself, so he decided to write a proper shopping list for tomorrow, and a list of things he needed to do. He took a pen from the box and removed the cap.
But he didn’t write a list because, as he folded back the cover of the book and looked at the empty page of lined paper beneath, a thought occurred to him. He found he was thinking about a child he had seen sitting on a low wall outside the supermarket: a girl, maybe twelve years old. She looked as if she needed to cry but wasn’t going to let herself. She was holding her lips tight together, looking first off to one side and then the other, as if trying to shake off the attention of anyone who might look at her. James had wondered what her story was.
And then, because he couldn’t know, he made one up.
*
It was almost dark, and he was hungry and his hand hurt. He felt as if he had just woken up, but he wasn’t in bed: he was sitting at the kitchen table. He got up and switched the light on, feeling woozy and unsettled, stretched his arms out and his head back, trying to work the tension out of his muscles. He wished he could do the same for the tension inside his head.
Then he looked down at the kitchen table and saw the notebook. It was open at a page about two-thirds of the way through, a page covered in writing. When he picked up the book and looked through it, he found that all the pages before that were the same. It was his handwriting, but he had no memory of writing it. James dropped the book onto the table in shock, backing away from it as if afraid. Was he going mad? When he had calmed down a little, he made a cup of tea, glancing at the book suspiciously out of the corner of his eye as he did so. Then he sat, picked up the book gingerly, swallowed hard, and began to read.
It was really good.
At least, he was fairly certain it was good. It was much better than James could ever believe he was capable of writing, that was for sure. But there it was, in his handwriting, and as he read it there was a dim ring of familiarity to it, as if he’d at least read the story before. But how could he have written it? He didn’t write. He couldn’t even tell stories very well, much less write them. But here was the story of the crying girl, richly imagined and set out in precise detail, beautifully and touchingly written.
It was amazing. Frightening, too.
He remembered a story he had heard on the news once. There had been a man who had been hit on the head and had suddenly found that he could play the piano rather brilliantly, despite never having done so at all previously. James wondered if the same thing could happen with writing. And without being hit on the head. The whole thing seemed crazy. Luckily, his hunger helped distract him, and he set aside the book to make himself some cheese on toast.
He wolfed it down, in that way that you can when you’re on your own and nobody’s watching. Then he made more and did it again. At the end of it he felt full, sated, fulfilled. Elated, in fact. And not at all tired. He couldn’t decide what to do next, but anything seemed possible
.
Ten minutes later he was fast asleep, fully clothed, on his bed.
*
When he awoke, late the next morning, he felt amazing. There was an energy in him like he had never known before, and a feeling of deep satisfaction. He sang to himself as he made a huge bowl of porridge for his breakfast, far too much for only one person. Then, when he had eaten it all, he had two pieces of thickly cut toast, generously buttered and laden with jam, all of it washed down with mugs of tea. And it all tasted incredible, like the best porridge, the best toast, the best jam, and the best tea ever made. He felt incredibly alive, his skin singing, his mind happily racing.
He looked at the notebook, half expecting it to be empty, to discover he had dreamed the whole thing. Or else it would be full of gibberish. But no; it was as he remembered it, still (so far as he could judge) very good, maybe even brilliant. This morning he found it easier to just accept it, somehow. And he had other things on his mind, too. He had decided to look for a job, just temporarily. He had enough money put aside that he could get by for a while, but he wanted something to do, to keep his mind and body occupied.
Another trip to town, to the Job Center, was called for, so he showered and dressed and drove off in his complaining heap of a car.
He hadn’t planned to go to the library, but the parking lot beside it was convenient, and while he was there he thought he might as well. The same girl, Mary, was behind the desk, filing buff-colored record cards. She looked up at the sound of the door opening.
“Oh, hello again, Lost Boy. Did you find your way home, then?”
“Um, yes, thanks.”
“And now that you’re living in the neighborhood, I suppose you figured you’d join the library, like all solid upstanding citizens should?”
“Um, yes,” said James. Actually, the thought hadn’t occurred to him even for a moment. He hadn’t ever joined a library in his life—why would he? But now, somehow, the idea appealed. “What do I need to—”
“Here you go.” Mary plucked a photocopied sheet of paper from a plastic holder on the front of the counter and offered it to him with a theatrical flourish. “Just fill in this form, bring us some ID and proof of address, and that’s pretty much it. I’d take you through it in detail, but it’s all pretty self-explanatory, unless you’re some kind of idiot. And you want to join the library, so you’re clearly not.”
James glanced down at the form. “Well, I don’t know about that,” he said. “But I think I’ll manage. Thanks. I’ll, uh, see you in a day or two.” He made for the door and Mary waved him a distracted good-bye as she returned her attention to her record cards.
“See you later, navigator,” she said.
*
James didn’t get home until early evening in the end. After a fruitless visit to the employment agency, and then a large, unhealthy, hugely enjoyable lunch in a café, he made a spontaneous trip to the movie theater and accidentally saw the beginning and end (he slept soundly through the middle) of a black-and-white German film.
While he had been out, the story he had written hadn’t even crossed his mind, but now that he was home, he found himself thinking about it again. The notebook was on the kitchen table, open at the final page of writing. He thought he would read through it one more time.
But when he sat down, instead of turning back to the start of the book, he unthinkingly turned over to a blank page. Why had he done that? he wondered. And then he noticed that he had picked up the pen, too, which was odd as he had no intention of writing anything. He had barely a thought in his head, after all.
Or he hadn’t. Now, actually, there was something, or the beginning of something, at least …
*
His hand hurt again, but it took some time to notice because his head hurt so much more. Something else was wrong, too, if only he could work out what it was. Perhaps if it wasn’t so dark it would be easier. He wondered why his cheek felt so odd.
Ah yes, he was lying on the kitchen floor. That was it. One of his legs was tangled up in his chair, though he didn’t realize this until he tried (and failed) to stand up. Now his knee hurt, too. He freed his leg from the toppled chair and carefully raised himself to his feet to take stock of the situation. He supposed he must have fallen asleep at the table and fallen off his chair. He touched a hand to his head and discovered that this was a very effective way of being in yet more pain. He stumbled about until he found the light switch, then made his way up to the bathroom to stand in front of the mirror and survey the damage.
He wasn’t bleeding. That was good. But his cheek was very red and he suspected that he’d gain a pretty respectable bump on his head by the morning. He parted his hair at the site of the pain and tried to take a look in the mirror, but he couldn’t really see. He was reminded again, though, of the stiffness and pain in his fingers. He took a look at his right hand, turning it and flexing the fingers. The discomfort was freshly familiar, jolting his memory. He’d been writing again, he could vaguely recall. But what, he had no idea.
*
He had finished the first notebook and continued into the second, almost filling that, too. It was, he thought, an extraordinary amount of words to have written in one night, even if he had been just copying them from a book. To have also composed them from scratch (and again, written them out in a neat, compact hand without a single correction) in that time defied belief.
The pages rustled and flapped in his shaking hands as he flicked through them. He felt panicked and short of breath. What was happening to him? Where were they coming from, all these words? He put the books down, paced around the room for a while, his mind full of fast-moving nothingness. After some minutes he got his thoughts to settle, then he braced himself and sat down to read.
The thing that scared him most was not that this story was more brilliant than the last (though even he could see that it was), nor that it seemed only faintly familiar to him, even though he had apparently been the one to write it, nor even that the content of the story was so dark and twisted. What worried him was a single word on the penultimate page: quotidian.
He had no idea what it meant. He had never heard it before, much less ever used it. Was it even a real word? He had no idea. But he had written it, apparently. Or at least his hand had held the pen that had written it. His steady hand. Not this one that was quivering before him now.
*
Mary wasn’t used to having customers waiting outside the library door for her to open up in the morning.
“You’re keen,” she said, but James rushed by her without a word, heading straight for the reference section. “Suit yourself,” she muttered.
Quotidian really was a word. What’s more, it was a word he had used perfectly correctly in a short work of fiction that, by any reasonable judgment, it was fair to say he was in no way capable of having written.
“Have you filled in your form, then?” said the girl when he went unsteadily over to the desk.
“No. Um …” He fumbled in his pocket and found the form, looked at it with dazed puzzlement. “Um, yes. Yes, I have.” He had indeed filled in the application form; it was just that he had no memory of doing so. He handed it over, then his driving license and a letter from the electric company.
The girl nodded, filled in a form of her own, and told him, a little brusquely, that he’d have his card in a few days.
James did not respond. He looked confused, a little lost. The girl was still trying to weigh whether to ask him what was wrong, or tell him to leave, when a short, stout man wearing a ratty jacket and a flat cap, and in his sixties came in. He looked at James with wide eyes, over-acting surprise.
“Blimey, Mary. Two people in here at once? Haven’t seen that since the fifties. I hope they’ll be giving you some extra staff to cope.”
“Morning, George,” said the girl, smiling and handing him a copy of the Financial Times. “Enjoy your crossword.” He shuffled off toward one of the tables. James hadn’t moved. “Was there anything else
?” she asked him.
“Eh? Sorry. I, uh … I didn’t sleep too well last night. Look, um … this is going to sound crazy, but …” He was looking to one side of her, avoiding meeting her eyes. One of his fingers was tapping erratically on top of a pair of notebooks he had put down on her desk. The last time she’d seen anyone so nervous in her company the man in question had proposed marriage (without success). “Um, look … do you …” He shook his head, as if trying to rattle his thoughts into some sort of order. “Do you know how I could find out about who used to live in my house? In The Writer’s House? How could I find out who the writer was?”
“Well, I suppose—” Mary began.
“French fella,” said George, without looking up from his crossword. “I think French. Foreign anyway. Before my time here, but I heard all about him. Young chap. Locked himself away in that place, scribbling away. Wrote two books, then went mad.”
James’s face crumpled. “Mad?”
“Well, he killed himself anyway. Got to be a bit mad to do that, haven’t you? Funny lot those arty-crafty types, aren’t they? Highly strung. Why d’you ask, though?”
But James was already halfway out the door.
*
Mary thought more than twice about whether to go to the house. She had the address from James’s application form, but she figured that he’d probably be back once he realized that he’d left his notebooks behind. She also realized she could quite easily mail the books back to him if that was her real concern.
But after two weeks she still hadn’t. She’d read them in the meantime, though, several times over. She’d meant just to take a glance, kidding herself that she was checking in case James had written a phone number inside somewhere, but of course once she’d read the beginning she couldn’t stop herself.