The Bookshop From Hell

by David Haynes

  “Want to get a cup of coffee?” she asked, swinging her bag over her shoulder.

  “Err…sure, yeah, why not.” He paused. “Won’t Paul be expecting you? For dinner?”

  Lori walked past him to the door and switched off the lights. “Oh, he’ll be at work for another couple of hours yet.” She opened the door, holding it open. “I’d only go home, drink a bottle of red and fall asleep, anyway. You’d be doing me a favor.” She nodded toward the door. “You coming or stopping here for the night?”

  If he went home now, he might be tempted to stop at the liquor store and do something similar to Lori. She’d be doing him a favor too.

  *

  During the week, Silver Lake was a quiet town. There wasn’t much to get excited about. It was just like any other town of its size. At the weekend it simmered slightly but never reached boiling point. There was one bar, and in the last election almost the entire town voted Republican.

  The high school football team was moderately successful. On Friday night the town got behind them, marching to the football field like a platoon of well-drilled soldiers. They celebrated the wins, commiserated the losses, but either way people were happy to be there, to be talking to their neighbors and sharing a beer. It was a regular town with regular people doing regular things.

  As Dan walked side by side with Lori along Main Street toward the diner, it struck him how long it had been since he’d walked anywhere with company. Company that wasn’t a student trying to get him to change a grade, anyway.

  “You ever think about leaving?” Lori asked.

  “I did,” he replied.

  “You went to college thirty miles away, came back at weekends and your mom did your laundry. It’s not exactly moving away, Dan.” She was smirking.

  “Maybe I like it here. It’s safe, it’s familiar.” He paused. “The grass isn’t always greener.”

  “Don’t I know it. But you could go anywhere. A teacher like you, you could pick where you wanted to go. Hawaii, California, maybe even Alaska. There’s more to life than Silver Lake.”

  “There’s still time.” And there was, but was there the inclination?

  They reached the new bookstore. It was in complete darkness but he tried the door anyway, cupping his hands around his face to try and see inside. The glass was fogged. He could see hardly anything, nothing except the bulky shadows of bookcases.

  “I’ll have to come back another time.”

  “You sound so sad,” Lori said, the hint of a grin in her voice.

  He laughed. “Hey, a new bookstore in town is a major event.” He tried the door one last time. There wasn’t a sign showing opening times, or anything to indicate whether it was open for business at all. It certainly didn’t look much like it. Stores usually held parties when they opened; signs went up, flyers went into mailboxes. But this place looked as dead as it had for the last couple of years.

  “It doesn’t look open to me,” Lori said. “Come on, I need that coffee.”

  They reached the diner, taking a booth by the window looking out onto Main Street. It was lifeless. A couple of cars drove by heading out of town, but nobody walked past. They were the only people in there.

  Dan ordered. “Two coffees, please.”

  “You ever think about high school?” Lori asked.

  “All the time,” he replied. “I pretty much live there.”

  She smiled. “I meant the old days.”

  “I know you did.” He sipped his coffee. “Not so much really. It wasn’t the greatest of times for me.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, I mean, I was pretty geeky back then…”

  Lori raised her eyebrows.

  “Alright, so maybe I still am, but you can get away with it when you’re an adult. Back then, it wasn’t cool. Not cool at all. Not like Paul. He was…”

  “A dick?”

  He laughed, nearly dropping his cup. “No comment.”

  “Well, he was,” she said. “He used to pick on the other kids all the time. Anyone that wasn’t on the football team was fair game. Did he bully you?”

  “No,” he answered. “Worse.”

  “Worse than getting your head jammed down the toilet?”

  “He ignored me, probably didn’t even know I existed,” Dan lied. “I’m not sure I even spoke to him, not in all those years, I don’t…” He paused. “Maybe once, actually. I seem to recall him barging into me in the corridor. They were throwing a football around and he just hit me. I went down, he looked at me scrambling around on the floor. He didn’t apologize or anything, just said, ‘What’re you staring at, cocksucker?’”

  Lori bit her lip, trying to suppress a smile. “Sounds like him.”

  “I see him around town now and again, but can’t say I’ve ever had much to do with him.” He took another sip. “How did you two hook up, anyway?”

  She shrugged. “We dated a bit back in school.” She paused. “And when I came back to town he was just kinda…kinda there. Seemed easy enough to just pick up where we left off. Most of the people I knew back then have left town. There’s not many of us left now.”

  “They’ve all gone to Alaska, or Hawaii. That’s what I heard anyway.”

  “Very funny.”

  “You want some more coffee?” He beckoned to the waitress sitting behind the counter.

  Lori checked her watch. “I should probably get going. Paul will…”

  A truck screeched to a stop outside the diner. Even from inside, Dan could hear the music blaring. Old school rock. Paul Weaver stepped out of the car and peered into the diner. His close-cropped hair, almost down to the scalp, was now out of necessity rather than style. His head glowed orange under the street light. His t-shirt probably fit him around the belly twenty years ago, but not now. It pulled tight.

  “It’s him,” Lori said. She stood up, pulling her bag over her shoulder. She turned to Dan, gave a smile that vanished almost immediately. “Nice to see you, again.” She hurried to the door.

  Paul stepped into the diner before Lori opened the door. He said something Dan couldn’t hear and marched to the table.

  “Mind if I join the party?” Paul said. He slid into the booth without waiting for a reply.

  “Hey, how’s it going?” Dan asked.

  A sheen of sweat covered Paul’s forehead. His cheeks were flushed. “Sit down, honey,” he said to Lori.

  “I…I think we should just go home,” she replied. “I think…”

  “Sit down,” he said without taking his eyes off Dan.

  Dan was feeling uncomfortable. Paul Weaver had scared him at school. It seemed he was always on the lookout for a new victim, someone he could tease, bully or beat up. It was only by being invisible that he managed to avoid him. Mostly.

  “What we jawing about here then? You two seemed to be talking up a storm when I pulled up. Might have missed out if I hadn’t passed by when I did.”

  Paul was smiling but there was no humor in it. His expression was vaguely menacing.

  “Just about the old days,” Dan started. “About high school and…”

  “Wait…you two were at high school together?”

  “You know we were,” said Lori. “We were in the same year.”

  Paul pulled a face. He looked like he was taking a long and difficult crap. “I don’t remember you,” he said, looking directly at Dan. “Were you…Oh, wait, you were one of those kids I used to beat up, right?”

  “No,” Dan replied. He now knew he’d missed nothing by not talking to Paul Weaver for all this time. The guy was obnoxious, verging on the threatening. “You never laid a finger on me,” he lied.

  Lori pulled at Paul’s sleeve. “Come on, I’ll make us some…”

  He pulled his arm away and poked Dan on the forearm. “Well now I have,” he said. His breath smelled of coffee and stale cigarettes.

  Dan exhaled. “What’s the matter with you? I’m just trying to drink a cup of coffee here.” He wasn’t about to be intimidated. Twen
ty years ago he would have been, but he wasn’t that same kid now and Weaver certainly didn’t look like the football hero he once was.

  “You’re drinking a cup of coffee with my girlfriend. That’s what the matter is.”

  “What? Are you crazy? We were just talking about…”

  Paul leaned forward across the table. His reek was even stronger. There was stale sweat in there too. “I know what men like you are like,” he hissed. “Worming their way through life, slipping beneath the covers when a man’s back is turned.”

  “Paul, please.” Lori grabbed his arm again. This time he shrugged it off more aggressively. She slid out of the booth, catching herself on the table to stop the fall.

  Dan looked up at her and then looked back at Paul. “Listen, I don’t know what crazy ideas you’ve got but we were just having a cup of coffee, catching up on old times. That’s all. There’s no need for any of this.”

  Paul banged his fist down on the table. “Just stay away from her, Law.” He stood up, his belly nudging the table. He grabbed Lori’s wrist and pulled her toward the door. “Come on.”

  Dan watched the truck speed away. He hadn’t moved since Paul had dragged Lori out of the diner. He was still in shock. What the hell was wrong with the guy? He’d acted like some kind of jealous schoolkid. He shook his head and finished his coffee.

  7

  Linda Phelps had been assistant librarian at Silver Lake Public Library for more than thirty years. She loved the library and she loved all of the books, each and every one of them. When she opened the doors every morning, she loved how the old building smelled. The books had been cooped up all night, holding their breath until she returned. And then all at once they exhaled and filled the building with their sweet, spicy scent. Beautiful. It always made her smile.

  She loved the way the sun filtered through the high windows on the east side of the library. It slanted in on the historical romance section, washing all those titles in a sumptuous and evocative light. Not that she was a big fan of romance books, historical or otherwise. The time for romance in Linda’s own life had come and gone. No, she preferred a good mystery; a crime thriller or even, on occasion, an exploration into a serial killer’s life. The men – and they usually were men – fascinated her in ways she didn’t understand.

  The drive to commit such atrocities was such an alien thing to her that it didn’t seem real. Until she saw the photographs in the books of course, and then it was all too real. Women bound and gagged with their throats slit wide open, the butchered remains of prostitutes found partially dissolved in acid, and – worst of all – how one man had fed his victims to the hogs on his farm. The photographs were always black and white, and somehow this made it worse. There was room for her imagination in those shadowy images, room for her mind to conjure up scenarios that hadn’t happened.

  These people made her skin crawl. They made her stomach knot, sending her running to the bathroom. Sometimes the pictures made her want to scream. But they all had one thing in common. They made her feel something, and that was better than the alternative.

  The only thing Linda disliked about her job was the computers. They were new and she didn’t understand them at all. The old system worked perfectly well. There was nothing wrong with a rolodex. Some of the cards needed replacing, sure, and she’d offered to do that in her off-hours at no expense to the town but they wouldn’t listen, insisting they move with the times. That was okay if you were able to move with the times. She wasn’t.

  She wouldn’t let them know that, though. Those bureaucratic fools in the town hall didn’t have a clue about libraries, but they might not like it if they thought she couldn’t cope. They might even force her to take retirement, and that was a fate worse than being eaten by Jeffrey Dahmer.

  It would mean spending more time at home with her brother, Robert. She might have killed him before now had it not been for the job at the library. He was as fat as he was cranky. He hadn’t been out of the house for nearly two years and even if he was inclined to, it was doubtful he could walk down the steps and onto the sidewalk now.

  Sometimes he was just cranky and sometimes he was just plain mean. Linda begged him to shower, to wash himself. She didn’t do this for his sake, she did it for herself. His reek was so strong she got through five plug-in air fresheners a week trying to conceal his stink. The expense was worth it. But would he listen? Of course not. He didn’t want to take a shower so he wouldn’t. He was stubborn just like their father, but the similarity ended there. The meanness was all Robert.

  He once asked her to bring him a magazine from the store. Not a football magazine, or one on fishing. A magazine with naked women inside. Pornography. There was not a chance on earth she was going to do that. No way, but when she refused he called a woman from three towns away and asked her to come over.

  A prostitute. A prostitute in the house left to her by Mom and Dad. What would they say about that? Linda didn’t want to think about it. She’d turned the television up loud, so loud that the neighbors banged on the dividing wall. Even then she could hear Robert and the woman groaning and moaning. She could hear wet slapping sounds that made her stomach turn.

  But that wasn’t the worst of it. When they were done, the woman came out of his room demanding money. Robert hadn’t any of his own; he relied on handouts from her. The prostitute said she would make a real fuss if she wasn’t paid. She might even call the police and tell them Robert raped her. Imagine what their parents would say if police came to the door? Imagine what they’d say if Robert got taken away? They would never forgive her for not taking care of him.

  Those had been Mom’s last words. “Take care of Robert. He’s not as strong as you. He needs someone to look after him.” So, what was Linda to do? She was left without a choice. He knew she wouldn’t throw him out, even if she could. He knew what Mom said, and he knew he could do what he wanted and still be looked after. She hated him more than she despised the new computers. Both had been imposed upon her and she could do nothing about either.

  In all the time they lived together, she had only ever invited one gentleman for tea. She had never done it since and would never do it again. The man, Wilbur, was a sweet, shy man who worked for the mayor for a short time until he married and moved away. Robert had been so rude, so uncouth and disgusting, that she was too embarrassed to speak to Wilbur again. Robert had made animal noises, and smells, at the table. He’d drunk so much beer that he’d fallen off his chair and vomited on the carpet. Wilbur tried not to look too appalled by his behavior but Robert eventually tried to start a fight with him. That was when he left. It was one of the worst nights of her life.

  Linda blew her nose on the white handkerchief her father had given her. She swore under her breath and pulled the plug out of the back of the computer. It was the only way she knew how to make it stop. Lori would show her again tomorrow but it wasn’t information she would retain, she didn’t want or need to. Not when there was a perfectly good electric cord to yank.

  It was her turn to close the library for the night, something she should have done half an hour ago. She had no real interest in going home but she felt weary. She switched off the lights, locked the doors and stepped out onto the street.

  Once upon a time, Silver Lake had been busy all year through. The timber business boomed and with it all the towns in the area grew well beyond their means. Then came the inevitable crashes. Father lost his job, then a second job and eventually a third. He’d been broken by then, taken to the drink and cried most days. She heard Mom talking softly to him, telling him everything would work out for the best, they’d all be fine. But she’d been working two jobs by then and she was tired too.

  Linda crossed the street. The clock on the town hall tower clicked onto the half-hour and chimed. Eight-thirty. By now Robert would be well into his tenth beer and maybe his third bag of Cheetos. He went at them like a wild animal, spilling cheesy orange dust everywhere. He didn’t care; good old Lindy would clean up aft
er him.

  Lori had been quiet at work today. It was unusual for her to be like that. Usually, she was full of smiles and chatter. But today she’d hardly said a word and her smiles had been few and far between. It was a shame, she was a nice girl; a little ditsy sometimes, but she was kind and she never lost her temper even when she was showing Linda how to operate the computers for the tenth time. Still, if Lori was in the same funk tomorrow, she’d ask her what was wrong. Maybe she’d bake a dozen lemon drizzle cupcakes when Robert had fallen unconscious, and take them to work as a treat for them both.

  “Well, good evening, madam.”

  Linda stopped, shocked out of her own thoughts by the voice. She turned toward the old drugstore. A man stood in the doorway, smiling. He was dressed like a real gentleman; a suit, waistcoat and shoes that were properly shined, glossed just like Daddy’s had always been.

  “Good evening,” she replied. “Mr…?” She knew almost everyone in town but this man was new. There had been a few rumors about the old drugstore and what it would become, but nobody had seen it open yet.

  He bowed. “Castavet, at your service.” He beckoned for her to step inside.

  She peered past him. She couldn’t see much; it was gloomy. He had lamps burning but they flickered in the evening breeze. There were shelves though, shelves and shelves and shelves. She could see that much.

  “I believe we share a common love,” he said.

  “We do?”

  “Of course,” he replied. “Books!” He paused, motioned for her to step across the threshold. “Won’t you step inside?” he beamed. “All of my new customers qualify for a free book. Why don’t you come and see what I’ve chosen for you? Especially for you?”

  He disappeared. What could the harm be in seeing what was inside? It was only a bookstore. Besides, a few extra minutes away from home, away from Robert, was always welcome.

  She stepped into the shop. Castavet was already behind the counter. He beckoned her over by curling his forefinger.