by David Haynes
The Bookshop From Hell
by
David Haynes
Copyright © David Haynes 2018. All Rights Reserved. No part of this document may be reproduced without written consent from the author
Edited by
Storywork Editing Services
Cover artwork by
The Cover Collection
To find out more about David Haynes and his books visit his website
David Haynes Horror Writer
or follow him on twitter
@Davidhaynes71
and Facebook
For Sarah, George and Daisy.
Thank you, DW – the advice is priceless.
Table of Contents
1
2
3
4
5
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
20
21
22
23
24
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30
31
32
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50
1
He sipped his coffee and looked out of the window onto Fisher Street. It was quiet; Monroe Springs’s other stores had begun opening their doors to catch the early morning commuter traffic. The grocery, the pharmacist, the coffee shop, they were all trying to grab a piece of a pie that was barely a single serving.
He lifted his cup and mouthed Good morning! to Lisa Andrews as she crossed the road. She was the checkout girl at the grocery store, had been since leaving school, and would remain there until she’d drunk herself to death on cheap wine. As soon as her back was turned, he added slut to his greeting.
A car horn sounded twice. Lisa waved at the driver and ran her fingers through her hair. Music blared from the open window and black smoke poured from the exhaust, as the car popped and fizzed out of town.
A man wearing a cheap, shiny suit came out of the coffee shop, cell phone attached to one ear and a paper cup in his hand. His mouth was moving frantically and his eyebrows were knitted together in an angry frown. A kid rode past on his bike, narrowly avoiding the man. Neither of them seemed to notice the near-miss.
Just another day in Shitsville.
In the distance, the sound of smashing glass rang out. It was followed by a thin, piercing scream and then more breaking glass. Nobody on the street noticed it, but he did. He smiled, bolted the door and rolled his chair to the window. It was beginning.
A couple, walking hand in hand, stopped outside his shop, staring up Main Street toward the high school. The girl pulled at the boy’s arm but he stayed where he was, staring with a puzzled expression on his pock-marked face.
A car alarm sounded. It made a repetitive, high-pitched scream. A store alarm echoed; a gold old-fashioned bell that slid in nicely beside the more modern sound of a car being trashed.
The owner of the coffee shop, a small round lady named Gilly, came bustling out and stood open-mouthed on the sidewalk. She raised her hands to her face and then shot back inside, slamming the door. He could almost hear the bolts sliding into place from across the road.
The boy and the girl looked directly at him. He raised his cup and smiled. “Cheers!” he shouted. The girl looked at him as if he were an alien, then the pair of them ran back down the street, away from the high school.
The first to appear were a couple of boys, maybe sixteen years old. They both wore high school football jackets and they barreled down the street, locked together like lovers. One of them was holding a battery-powered drill, the other a kitchen knife.
The boy with the drill had two bloody slash marks on the front of his jacket, and a nasty-looking gash ran from his jaw to his temple. Blood seeped, dark and thick, from the wound but he seemed oblivious. He was too busy trying to push the drill bit into his friend’s neck as they tussled in the grocery doorway.
He could see Lisa Andrews’s frightened face pushed up against the window. It looked like she was screaming. The drill bit dug into the boy’s jawbone, sending a plume of pale gore spinning onto the glass. At the same time the boy brought the knife up under drill-boy’s chin, driving it upward until the blade disappeared. Both boys fell to the ground, unmoving. A brief silence descended.
It was only a momentary respite. A second or two later, a large group tumbled down the road. Some had baseball bats, some had power tools, and a couple of axes arced through the air. Someone fired a shotgun. Three girls attacked each other with shards of broken glass. Their hands were shredded to ribbons as they flailed and gouged and spat insults at each other. It was quite the spectacle, and all he could do was laugh and clap as the kids tore into each other.
At least half wore masks of some sort. Some were the cheap Halloween variety – clowns, vampires, aliens and monsters, all the good stuff – but some had spent a bit more time making truly original designs. He marveled at them. One or two looked like they had real flesh on them, real flesh and human hair. He clapped and shook his head. It was wonderful!
A red-haired girl bounced off his window. Her back was turned to him and she clutched her face as tendrils of gray smoke drifted from between her fingers. Her scream was piercing. It actually made him wince. That was good. She turned her head, trying to see her reflection in the glass. Half of her face had been burned away. Her eye socket and cheekbones were visible as acid ate into her skin. It would probably chew all the way through to her brain and out the other side. He grimaced again. That must have been especially painful. Before he could wave cheerfully to her she was running into the crowd, flailing at anyone and everyone with her fingers.
Pools of blood gathered in the potholed tarmac. The kids splashed in it as if it were fresh spring water. Some of them were actually laughing, smiling as they inflicted hideous, disfiguring wounds on each other. He recognized some, but not all. A few had been in the store over the last few weeks, hungry for more of his stock.
A disembodied hand slapped against the window, fingers still curled in a fist. It left a ball-shaped smudge of clotted blood on the glass and dropped onto the sidewalk. It was impossible to see who it had come from; there were so many kids fighting. How many were there? Fifty, sixty maybe. A few stragglers at the back were going at it half-heartedly, punching, kicking and biting each other.
One of the kids had an ear in his mouth, blood dripping from between his teeth. He spat it out and looked across the street at the store. His eyes narrowed as if he were trying to solve a particularly tricky math question. He looked confused, dazed almost. That was until one of his pals cracked a pool cue around the back of his neck, shattering the wood and knocking the kid to the floor. He was still staring at the store when a Yamaha off-road motorcycle rode over his head. The rider was helmetless, whooping and laughing as he cut through the crowd. He was headless a second or two later when someone flashed a chainsaw across his path. The bike carried on for another ten feet, careering into the grocery window, smashing it in the process. The kids surged inside.
He finished his coffee and poured another one. Kids today got a bad deal. Everyone was always criticizing them, saying they relied too much on technology for fun, that they lived vicariously through social media and didn
’t know how to entertain themselves. The worst sin of all, as far as he was concerned, was that they didn’t read books anymore. Some of them couldn’t even read! Well, that wasn’t true for this town. He’d changed things, brought literature to life for them, educated them in the joys of a damned good book.
There were thousands of towns just like this all over the country, towns that needed him and his books. His personal collection was growing by the second.
2
“And for your homework over the weekend, I want you to read chapters eleven through twenty,” said Dan Law, Head of English.
There was a collective groan.
“There will be a quiz on Monday.” He looked around the classroom. One hand was raised. “Yes, Mr. Simmons?”
“I was thinking…you know with the weather being so good and the game tonight… well…me and the boys were planning on driving up to the lake this weekend, and well…we were kinda thinking…”
“That you wouldn’t have to read the book and you could goof off and drink beer all weekend at the lake?”
Ryan Simmons grinned back. Sam Portland, the boy’s best buddy, reached over and slapped him on the back. “You offering to buy us beer, Mr. Law?” Sam shouted. It was followed by a whoop.
Dan shook his head, smiling. “Tell you what. I’m a reasonable man. You win the game tonight and I’ll make it chapters eleven through fifteen. You lose and it’s eleven through twenty-two.”
It was the same routine week after week. He set them up, they took the bait and then they read what he’d always intended anyway. They all knew what was happening here, it was just a Friday afternoon, good-natured game of cat and mouse.
Ryan and his buddies put their heads together. “Deal!” they shouted.
“Hey, that was a little too easy,” he said. “Maybe I should’ve gone for…”
The class closed their books in unison. Ryan shook his head. “Too late, sir. A deal’s a deal.”
“You got me,” he replied. “Now get out of here.”
He started tidying up his desk as the students filed out. It wasn’t a hurried rampage to the door but it wasn’t a leisurely stroll either. His was the last class of the day, and there were better places to be than a classroom on a late summer weekend.
“Sir?”
He looked up but he knew who it was already; one of the kids in the class who actually didn’t have any better place to be.
“What can I do for you, JJ?” The boy was holding a large black book under his arm. “That a little Lovecraft you’ve got there?”
JJ nodded, smiling. The last student filed out, bumping him. JJ straightened his rucksack without acknowledging the impact. He was used to people bumping into him. It was almost as if they didn’t see him.
“You were right about Lovecraft, sir. He is pretty special,” he said.
“Glad you’re enjoying it. Have you reached Shadow Over Innsmouth yet?”
“Not yet.” JJ held up the volume. A ratty bookmark was positioned about halfway through.
“You’re going to love that one.” Dan packed the last of his books into his case and closed it. He wanted to get out of here too. He was ready for the pizza, beer and crappy TV he’d been promising himself all week.
“Sir, I was wondering when you’re going to start the Reading Room up again? The summer’s nearly over and I thought, well…it might be fun to start it running again?”
Dan frowned. The Reading Room had been a club he’d set up last year to try and encourage the kids to read. It focused on the books they didn’t like him talking about in the classroom – horror literature. He’d hoped that by concentrating on that specific genre it might make it more appealing, a little taboo and mysterious perhaps. Besides, it was those books that had made him want to read in the first place. It hadn’t been a massive success but it gained a few hardcore followers. Kids like JJ, who read books as often as they played Xbox or PlayStation. Anomalies, maybe.
“I hadn’t really thought about it. I don’t know…”
“I asked Miss Hill at the library, she said she’d let us use the room again.”
“You’ve already spoken to her?” he asked, laughing.
“Sure,” JJ replied. “I’m down there all the time.” He held up the book again. “I could speak to some of the others too? See if they want to start it up again. I’m sure they would, they…”
Dan held his hand up. The boy was getting excited, talking quickly and moving his hands about. The Reading Room stopped running at the start of summer but only because the library shut down for a refit. He hadn’t been there since it reopened a month ago. He should probably take a look.
“Just hold on a minute. I need to talk to Miss Hill. I need to think this through and the school will have to okay it.” He paused. “I don’t know if I’ve got the time.”
He did have the time, he had plenty of time. Especially now. But what he didn’t have was the inclination. He’d lost that around the same time Amy left.
“But you’ll think about?”
He sighed and nodded. “Sure, I’ll think about it. No promises though. Now get out of here and enjoy the weekend.”
The boy almost ran out of the classroom, his excitement obvious.
*
Dan stopped at the liquor store on the way home and bought beer for the weekend. The guy at the register smiled as he took his money.
“Been one of those weeks, huh?”
Dan nodded and took his change. He was tired of the sound of his own voice. He just wanted to get home, put on some music, drink some beer and then watch crap on TV with a family-sized pepperoni on his lap.
There had been a time, not so long ago, when the weekend meant something different. Dinner out at a restaurant maybe, catch a movie or go to the theatre. Maybe even watch the ball game back at school. All that was gone now and he missed it.
He hadn’t at first, not when the novelty of sitting around in shorts all weekend with the drapes drawn had been new. Eating pizza and drinking beer while watching horror flicks and playing rock music way too loud had been deliciously indolent. An extravagant waste of time.
He pulled onto the driveway of his two-bed cookie-cutter and killed the engine of his twelve year old Focus. It coughed a weak objection and then died. He looked across at the perfectly manicured lawns of his neighbors – the neatly tended flower beds and the blinding white of the picket fences – and then glanced at his own property.
He could mow the lawn this weekend, he could even paint the fence and tidy the yard, but how much fun would that be? Not much, not as much as eating cold pizza and feeling the ice-cold buzz of a beer slide down his throat anyway.
He climbed out of the car and gathered his beer. He’d thought the house was Amy’s dream, what she’d always wanted. Sure, it was no palace, but it was a start. Something to build on. Turned out that what she really wanted was to leave, to get out of their relationship as soon as they moved in.
He unlocked the door and stepped inside. The house wasn’t dirty, but it had a ‘single man’ smell to it. It was an odor that moved in as soon as the bowls of potpourri moved out.
The bottles of beer chinked together, jerking him back to the here and now. He unloaded all but one of the bottles into the refrigerator, filling two shelves completely, feeling pretty satisfied with the appearance. He opened the other bottle and took a drink. It was warm, it was fizzy and it tasted like heaven. He emptied the bottle in three rapid elbow raises, grabbed another and collapsed on the sofa. The beer buzzed through his body like an express train, easing his brain down through the gears. He took a long deep breath and closed his eyes for a minute. His stomach rumbled, signaling that it was time to pick up the phone and order his dinner.
It made him cringe when the youth answering the phone recognized his voice.
“Family-sized pepperoni, Mr. Law?”
It was even more depressing that the kid knew what the order was before he’d asked. For a moment he thought about changing things u
p, just to make himself feel less predictable. But pepperoni was his favorite and the victory would be brief.
He put down the phone and wandered to the bedroom, pausing by the spare room. It was an office, with the potential to become a nursery when the time came. He’d been pretty sure it wouldn’t be long. But that day had never come.
The only wall space that didn’t contain books or a bookcase was below the window. Even then, books were stacked beneath the glass in an untidy pile. The spines reached out to him. The colors, the fonts, the words themselves all promised something different. Amy hadn’t liked the way the books were stacked. They weren’t alphabetized, they weren’t in some neatly categorized order that was easy to understand. They were just placed on the shelves. King next to Poe, Stoker next to McCammon. Wherever they fell.
He had tried to organize them once, driven to it out of a sense of guilt manufactured by Amy. He didn’t get very far before V.C. Andrews and the cover of Flowers in the Attic transfixed him. He rose from the book several hours later, having re-read it. There were several more aborted efforts, but each time a different book grabbed him and hauled him back inside its wonderful dog-eared pages. There had to be close to five hundred paperback books in the room, each read at least once.
That wasn’t to say they were all classics. Far from it. Some were little better than beer mats masquerading as books. But when he bought one, whether from a store, online or at a yard sale, he felt he owed it to the writer to read the words. Even if some of them did make him cringe.
Dan walked to the pile below the window and squatted down. He read the spines, recalling when and where he’d read each book. There had not been many times in his life without at least two titles on the go. One of those times was now.