by Philip Kerr
Billy nodded. “Don’t mention it,” he said. “Why is the counter shaped like a coffin?”
Mr. Rapscallion flinched irritably. “It gives the place atmosphere, kid. It makes it feel haunted, you know? Like all the other stuff. The skeleton in the window. The laugh when you come through the door. And all the other stuff.”
“What other stuff?” asked Billy.
Mr. Rapscallion smiled a particularly wolfish smile that Billy thought was just a bit frightening, raised the arch in his already arched eyebrow and said, with a really bright gleam in his eye, “Now that would be telling, wouldn’t it? You’ll just have to find out for yourself, sonny. The hard way.”
And then Mr. Rapscallion laughed. No ordinary laugh this. But a mad sort of laugh that just took flight out of nowhere, like a big flapping bird that a dog has scared out of a bush. A crazy, loud hyena laugh that kept rolling on and on, like a tire bouncing down a hill. A cackling, crying, out-of-control, never-ending sort of laugh that echoed all through the shop like a water faucet that couldn’t be turned off.
It was a laugh like no other laugh Billy had ever heard. Nor ever imagined was humanly possible. It was a laugh that made Billy want to laugh himself and, at the same time, it was a laugh that made him want to run away.
“Which way to the Ghost Section?” Billy asked, bravely.
Mr. Rapscallion’s peculiar couldn’t-quite-help-it, loony laugh ended as abruptly as it had begun.
“The Children’s Section is just around the corner,” he said. “I think you’ll find what you’re looking for in there.”
“I’m twelve,” said Billy. “I’m a little old for a Children’s Section, thank you.”
“If you say so. But don’t say you weren’t warned, kid. The last thing I want is your mother in here later on threatening to sue me because I was cruel to her crybaby son.”
“If you knew my mother, you’d know that just couldn’t happen.”
Mr. Rapscallion shrugged.
“The Ghost Section is up the wooden stairs, turn right. Through Vampires and Voodoo, up the shaky spiral staircase—don’t worry, it’s safer than it looks or feels—along the very long hotel hallway, beyond the Red Room—don’t spend the night there unless you have to—and you’ll see it right in front of you. Maybe.”
Billy nodded and started to walk toward the main staircase.
“If you need any help,” said Mr. Rapscallion, his eyes rolling wildly around his head like two marbles, and his voice dying to a whisper, “just scream.”
And then he started to laugh once more.
The Haunted House of Books was much larger than Billy had expected. And much more fantastic than ever he had imagined. The floors creaked under his feet like the timbers on an old ship, and somewhere, from behind one of the walls, he was almost sure that he could hear the muffled sound of someone moaning or muttering or moaning and muttering—it was hard to tell one from the other.
Billy wasn’t at all surprised to have learned from Mr. Rapscallion that there really was a ghost in the bookshop. A couple of times Billy thought he saw a ghost and he was more than a little relieved when these turned out to be other customers. One of these customers was a tall man in a black coat browsing in the Vampires and Voodoo Section. Billy was certain the tall man wasn’t a ghost because while he was reading, he kept on scratching his head and, since Billy could hear the sound of the man’s head being scratched and even see the dandruff flaking off his head, he thought it unlikely that the man could be anything other than solid. Anything solid seemed less than ghostly.
The other customer he saw was a thin woman with braided black hair and a dark green leather coat who Billy found staring uncertainly up the spiral staircase.
“Do you think it’s safe?” she asked Billy. “To go up?”
Billy thought it wasn’t very likely a real ghost would have been worried about going up a spiral staircase. A genuine ghost would surely have just floated up the stairs like a cloud without a care in the world.
“Yes,” he said. “I think it’s probably all right. At least, that’s what Mr. Rapscallion told me just a few moments ago. He said it’s safer than it looks or feels.”
He started to climb the spiral staircase, watched by the woman in the green leather coat. It shifted a bit but no more than a tall ladder leaning against a building.
“Do be careful,” she said, biting her fingernail anxiously.
Biting her fingernail was another thing Billy thought a ghost probably wouldn’t have done.
“It’s okay, really,” he said. But a bit farther up, the staircase started to shift as if it wasn’t secured properly to the walls and the floor, which was a little alarming, and, worried that the thing would collapse underneath him, Billy felt obliged to quicken his steps to reach the top.
“I think you must be braver than me,” said the woman, and walked away.
“No,” Billy called after her. “I’m not brave at all.”
Turning around, Billy found himself at one end of a long carpeted hallway that seemed like a very ordinary hallway for a haunted house of books. A child—much younger than him—had left a tricycle in a corner and Billy thought this did nothing at all for the ghostly atmosphere that Mr. Rapscallion had talked about. Nor did the life-size waxwork of twin girls he found at the end of the hallway after he turned the next corner. Both the girls were about the same age as Billy. They were wearing pretty blue dresses and holding hands and looked very much as if butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths.
That was just weird, thought Billy. And not at all frightening.
Pushing open the red door of the Red Room, he went inside and found it to be a much larger room than he had imagined. The Red Room was at least as big as a tennis court. There were many bookshelves containing thousands of books. To Billy’s delight, all of the books were about ghosts. For several minutes he did nothing but look at the spines of the books. And almost half an hour had gone by before Billy noticed that there was nothing beyond the Red Room, as Mr. Rapscallion had said. Even more puzzling than this, however, was the discovery that the doorway by which he had entered the Red Room had disappeared. He was now enclosed on all four sides by bookshelves and nothing but bookshelves. Obviously there was a secret door in the shelves, but as to which wall of books this was in and how it was to be opened Billy hadn’t the first clue. And for several minutes afterward, he just stood there in the center of the Red Room, looking in one direction and then another, and then another.
Billy supposed the Red Room was called the Red Room because the carpet and the ceiling and all of the bookshelves were the color red. About the only things that weren’t red were the books and Billy himself. The room was lit by seven candles, which struck Billy as a little dangerous in a bookshop. But the candles created some strange shadows in the room and made it seem a bit more creepy.
Especially when one of the candles in a sconce on the wall blew out.
And then another.
Billy picked up one of the candles that were still lit and went to light the two candles that had gone out. But as he did so, two more candles went out, as if an invisible finger and thumb had nipped their wicks.
“That’s a bit odd,” Billy said to himself, turning to light these as well. Almost immediately the flames on another two candles were extinguished and the darkness seemed to take several large steps toward Billy himself.
The boy gulped loudly.
“What’s going on?” he said, with a strange high note of panic entering into his already high voice. “I want these candles to stay lit.” With a shaking hand, he leaped from one snuffed-out candle to another and, for a moment, he successfully managed to keep all seven lit.
But then four candles went out at once and Billy heard himself cry out with terror as the darkness seemed to gain on him. “Yikes. This is getting kind of creepy.”
Worse was to follow. In his haste to reach one of the unlit candles, the flame upon the candle in his trembling fingers seemed to drag agains
t the air, and then went out. Billy gulped again, dropped the dead candle onto the carpet and reached for one of the two that were still lit—even as this new candle flickered and died in a little wisp of wraith-like smoke.
Horrified, Billy bent down to pick up the candle from the floor and turned to face the last remaining lit candle. Just as he raised it to the only candle that stood between him and complete and total darkness, this last candle went out as well.
Darkness surrounded the boy like a thick envelope. It was as if someone had picked him up and dropped him into a deep bag made of black velvet and then tied it tight before throwing the bag into a hole.
Then he heard the floorboards creak. He tried to tell himself that these were probably creaking under his own very nervous weight. But it was only too easy to imagine that he wasn’t alone in the Red Room. That someone or something was in there with him. And trying to scare him, too.
“Is someone there?” he asked, hoping very much that someone or something didn’t answer. “Because if there is, I think it’s in very poor taste to frighten another person like this. Even if this is the Haunted House of Books.”
The floorboards creaked again, in a sinister sort of way.
Somehow Billy managed not to lose control, hoping that as his eyes became accustomed to the darkness he might eventually see something. But the darkness remained as black as pitch. Indeed, the darkness seemed to intensify. It was almost as if the darkness surrounding him was becoming thick enough to feel. All he could hear was the sound of his own breathing and he could feel the hair lifting off his scalp and standing on end as if it had been trying to reach up and touch the ceiling.
Fear took hold of Billy like a clammy, cold hand.
And for no good reason he could think of, except that Mr. Rapscallion had suggested it in case he needed help, Billy began to scream.
Almost as soon as Billy started to scream, one of the red bookshelves swung open like a secret door to reveal the brightly lit hallway he’d walked along forty minutes earlier. The waxwork of the twin girls wearing the blue dresses was still there. The twins were holding hands sweetly, like before, but—and perhaps he imagined this—it seemed to Billy as he ran, still screaming, out of the Red Room that they were smiling now.
At the end of the hallway Billy kicked the tricycle out of his way and stepped, nervously, onto the spiral staircase. Trying his best to ignore the very definite swaying motion of the steps under his feet, he managed to descend safely to the floor below.
The tall man in the black coat was still browsing the Vampires and Voodoo Section, and now that Billy saw him again, he realized the man was wearing a priest’s collar and had a cross on a chain around his neck.
Seeing Billy again, the priest smiled. “You’ve been up to the Red Room, I hear.”
“Yes,” said Billy.
“Your first time in there?”
“Yes.” Billy tried to control the feeling of panic in his chest. And wiping the sweat from his forehead with his sleeve, gradually he recovered his breath and his nerve.
The man’s smile widened. “I could tell. Maybe I should have said something before you went up there but I didn’t want to spoil the fun for you.”
Billy frowned. “You mean you knew what was going to happen?”
“Of course. This whole shop is rigged like a haunted train ride in an old carnival. A ghost train. Of the kind you might find in a theme park.”
“You mean the Red Room—it’s not haunted?”
“No, no, no,” said the man. “Well, at least I don’t think so. No, it’s all a trick, my boy. A trick. For example, the door disappears when you step on a spring-loaded floorboard. And it only opens again when an electronic sensor detects the sound of someone, such as yourself, screaming. That is, provided you scream loud enough. The sound sensor is getting rather old and needs replacing, probably. You have to block the door with a heavy book if you don’t want any of that to happen.”
“I see.”
The priest returned the book he was reading to the shelf and removed the pair of little gold-framed glasses he had been wearing on the end of his long nose. “I’m Father Merrin.” He smiled and extended a long, thin hand to Billy.
Shaking the priest’s hand, Billy said, “My name is Billy Shivers.”
“Pleased to meet you, Billy,” said Father Merrin. “I’m sure.”
“What about the candles in the Red Room?” asked Billy. “How do they work?”
“Simple. After you’ve been in there awhile, the room switches on little currents of air that blow through tiny holes in the walls behind them.”
“Oh.”
Billy thought that Father Merrin was older than Mr. Rapscallion. He looked ill, too. And Billy wondered if Father Merrin might himself be a corpse, or something worse.
“Look here, you’re not a real ghost, are you?” Billy asked the priest.
“No.” Father Merrin smiled. “I’m flesh and blood.”
Billy looked relieved. “A haunted train ride, eh?” Billy nodded. “That explains a lot.”
“It explains everything,” said Father Merrin. “Doesn’t it?” He chuckled. “I mean, what else could the explanation be?”
“But it must have cost a great deal of money to build this place,” said Billy. “Don’t you think?”
“Oh, yes. A small fortune. I believe the man who helped Mr. Rapscallion to build this shop was a first-class professional magician. A stage conjurer all the way from Las Vegas, Nevada, who used to design and build tricks for some of the best cabaret acts in the world. For example, look here.”
Father Merrin steered the boy gently toward a shelf at the back of the Vampires and Voodoo Section. In front of the shelf was a table. And on the table was a plastic voodoo doll with several pins stuck in its body.
“Now then,” said the father. “The voodoo doll. Pick it up and see what happens.”
Billy picked up the doll and stared at it expectantly. Nothing happened.
Father Merrin frowned. “Wait now. It’s been a while since I played with this one. Ah yes, now I remember. You have to pull out one of the pins. That breaks an electronic circuit in the room, somewhere, but don’t ask me to explain it exactly, I’m not very good with technical things.” He nodded at Billy. “Well, go on, Billy. Do it.”
Billy looked around nervously, as if wondering what would happen next, and then did as the priest had suggested. He pulled one of the long needles out of the plastic voodoo doll.
Immediately, a length of rug proceeded to remove itself from the floor, after which two of the floorboards slowly lifted up on hinges. Outside the window there was a flash of lightning and a clap of thunder and the electric lights on the ceiling flickered and then dimmed. A heavy kind of smoke started to billow from the open floorboards and creep across the room like something almost alive.
“Dry ice,” murmured the father. “Atmospheric, don’t you think?”
“That’s the word Mr. Rapscallion used,” said Billy. “ ‘Atmosphere.’ ”
“Shh,” said Father Merrin. “This is the best bit now.”
Slowly, a man who seemed to have been buried under the floorboards sat up stiffly, as if coming to life after a very long time. His head was bald and his ears and nose were as pointed as the goblin’s in a fairy tale. His eyebrows were joined in the middle like a horrible hairy handshake. His teeth were sharp, like a fierce animal’s. And his fingernails were longer than the keys on an old piano and every bit as yellow. He wore a coat buttoned high up on the neck so that the strange-looking creature hardly seemed to have a neck at all.
Billy gasped and took several steps back onto the priest’s big feet.
“Yikes,” he said. “What is that?”
“It’s all right, Billy. It’s only a vampire. Well, a dummy that’s supposed to be a vampire.” Father Merrin bent forward and patted the dummy on its bald head. “See? But wait. We’re not quite finished.”
For a moment the lights went completely out, and when
they came on again, the creature had disappeared and the floorboards and the rug had returned to their original positions.
“Wow,” said Billy.
Father Merrin pointed at the doorway. “Watch over there.”
Even as he spoke, Billy saw what looked to all the world like the creature’s disembodied black shadow creeping out of the room. Billy ran to the door and watched the shadow slide as stealthy as a cat along the wall to the top of the curved staircase, where, finally, it disappeared.
“Wow,” he said again, thoroughly impressed. “That was amazing. It really looked like that creature’s shadow creeping out of the room all on its own.”
“Didn’t it?” said Father Merrin, happily. “Didn’t it just?”
“Was that really supposed to be a vampire?” asked Billy.
“Yes. The shadow part is some kind of projection from a hidden camera. And the dummy is just a dummy. He looks hideous but that little bald fellow’s always been one of my favorites in this bookshop.”
“You mean you come here a lot?” asked Billy.
“Oh yes. Often enough to know that Mr. Rapscallion will be cross with me if I give any more of his shop’s secrets away. I’ve said enough. But I didn’t want you to be too scared, Billy. You see, there aren’t many children who come into this bookshop. At least not anymore. Sometimes I forget that Mr. Rapscallion actually designed this shop for children.”
“He did?”
“Yes. Years ago, this shop used to be full of children. Full of them. This was one of the most successful shops in Hitchcock. But as you can see, it’s only grown-up children like me who come here now.”
“This place is fantastic,” said Billy. “Why don’t the other kids come here?”
“I don’t know.”
“Maybe they got scared off,” said Billy.
“I’m afraid it might have more to do with the fact that children these days don’t seem to be in the least bit interested in books,” said Father Merrin. “That includes Mr. Rapscallion’s estranged daughter.”