The Bookshop From Hell

by David Haynes

  He looked down at it and then punched Boyce in the guts. He heard the air explode out of his lungs but he didn’t care. He was mad, getting madder by the second. What did cops do when someone wouldn’t play ball?

  “Apologize! he screamed.

  Boyce shook his head. He couldn’t speak.

  Paul hit him again. He wished he had a baton, or his baseball bat.

  Boyce fell forward. Brad allowed him to drop. He vomited onto the pine-needle covered ground.

  “Just say sorry, Grady,” Brad said. “And we can all go home.”

  Boyce rolled over and bit Brad on the side of his calf. He tried to kick him off but Boyce was like a rabid dog, he wouldn’t let go. Even when Brad stamped on his back, he held on.

  Had he not been so angry, Paul might have laughed at the scene. Brad jumping around like he’d been stung on the ass by a bee, with a stupid old man biting down on his leg. But he didn’t laugh. He didn’t feel like laughing at all.

  He pulled the Springfield from his waistband and crouched down.

  “Let go of his fucking leg,” he hissed.

  Boyce had his eyes closed, his lips pulled back. He didn’t flinch when Paul pulled the slide.

  “Last chance,” he whispered, putting the barrel against Boyce’s temple. Boyce’s eyes opened. He glanced up, confusion on his face.

  Paul pulled the trigger and Boyce’s head went off like a firework, sending shards of bone, brain and blood in every direction possible. Paul felt it on his face, in his eyes and on his lips. Brad’s jeans were plastered from the knee down.

  “Fuck,” Brad whispered. He looked down at Paul and at his jeans. “Fuck,” he whispered again.

  Paul stood up, using the back of his hand to wipe parts of Boyce’s skull from his face. His ears were ringing.

  “Resisting arrest, assaulting an officer of Silver Lake, not to mention escaping lawful custody. The guy should’ve listened. He should’ve just apologized.” He looked at Brad. “Right?”

  Brad looked like he might vomit. He licked his lips, coughed and then looked Paul in the eyes.

  “Damn right,” he said.

  The situation had escalated quickly. Paul hadn’t meant to kill Boyce, only to straighten him out, make him see how things were going to be from now on, but the guy couldn’t see sense. There was only one way to deal with people who couldn’t see things his way, the new law’s way, and that was to straighten them out. And if they still didn’t see the light, then they were liable to be punished to the full extent of the law.

  He took a deep breath. “Come on, let’s go. We can’t afford to be out of town for too long.”

  He tapped the book in his pocket. Boy, was he ever glad he’d started reading again. This was the beginning of a new life for him. A life with purpose.

  *

  Ryan Simmons sat down on the bench with the baseball bat between his legs. He opened his book again and started reading. He’d thought the story might be over after the three girls were found. He’d thought that might be the end of his story. He was wrong. It looked like it was only just beginning.

  The illustrations were beautiful, so graphic. What he’d done to those three, after he’d had some fun with them of course, was stuck in his mind forever. Just the same way as his story was.

  He’d played around with it a little. He was allowed to do that, the book said so. Gary Palmer had been pretty convenient, a nice touch especially since he was Megan’s uncle. Their oh so perfect family was now a complete screw-up. They would all be crying into their gin and tonics and hugging each other. They were probably doing that right now. He laughed. That bitch Megan had what was coming to her. She would feel how he’d felt for the last couple of weeks, rejected by people who said they were friends. Who’d want to be friends with a girl whose uncle was a pedophile murderer? Nobody, that’s who.

  He’d stopped, or been forced to stop, by all the search parties that wandered about in town. He couldn’t find a place to go, the streets had been so crowded. But it seemed everything was back to normal now. Nobody was around, everyone was tucked up in bed, sleeping soundly. The murderer had been caught and was dead, and Silver Lake was just a peaceful backwater again.

  Ryan put the book away and took a couple of swings at an imaginary ball. Baseball wasn’t his game, never had been, but he could swing a bat okay. He felt its heft. It was a useful tool, something that could be used to cause a lot of damage. He smiled. There were a lot of people who he wanted to cause a lot of damage to. The same people who owned properties, all nice five-bed new builds, who kept their expensive German cars parked on the driveway. He would love to smash the whole lot to pieces. He took another swing with the bat.

  Before he got started on his real story again, he was going to write himself a nice little side-story. Once he’d done that, he was going to sort out Megan. She’d bad-mouthed him all round school for something as trivial as a bit of fun. She was going to see exactly how far he’d come since then.

  He licked his lips and set off across the park toward the big houses. Let the fun begin.

  31

  “If I catch the bastard, I’ll rip his goddamn face off.”

  Sam Portland was sitting on his desk, his feet on a chair. His cheeks were flushed.

  “Sit down please, Sam,” Dan said, walking into the classroom.

  The kids had been all over the place for a couple of weeks now. He’d forgotten what it was like to have a normal start to the day, one where some heinous crime hadn’t been committed overnight.

  “Want to tell me whose face you’re going to rip off?” he asked.

  Sam stood up. “The guy who trashed my dad’s BMW last night. Now it’s in the shop and I won’t be able to use it at the weekend.”

  “Aww!” Tom Holiday called out from the back of the room. “Poor Sammy!”

  “Hey, screw you, Holiday!” Sam shouted back.

  “Sam!” Dan yelled. “Just sit down.”

  He scowled back, and for a moment Dan thought he was going to have a standoff. Finally, he sat down.

  “He’s not the only one,” Emily Carr said. “I heard half the football team got done last night.”

  “Well if anyone would know, you would,” Tom said.

  Half the class sniggered. Sam stood up again. “You want to shut your mouth, Holiday, before I come over there and shut it for you?”

  “Anytime, big boy!” Tom replied, also standing up. He looked uncomfortable, opening and closing his legs constantly, one hand in his pocket, scratching himself.

  “You two, sit down!” Dan shouted and walked down through the gap in the desks. “I hear another word from either of you and you’re going to the principal’s office. Got that?”

  The two boys stared at each other for a moment and then both sat down. Dan walked back to the front of the class again. Emily Carr was sitting on the front row but Dan couldn’t look at her. He’d been involved in the clean-up at the PD yesterday, helping the paramedics take injured and dead cops out of the building until reinforcements arrived from Rainworth. After that, he’d completely forgotten about everything. The rumors about Detective Ronayne only started later, and by then Dan didn’t want to see or hear any more about it.

  “I heard Matt Priest’s Audi got it good,” Ryan Simmons chipped in. He smiled at Dan. “Nobody touched my dad’s car though.”

  “That’s because your dad’s car’s older than he is. It’s a piece of shit not worth damaging,” said Sam.

  Ryan shrugged. “Maybe.”

  “And you’re not even on the football team now, anyway,” Jacob Straw shouted. He’d taken Ryan’s place as quarterback.

  Ryan laughed. “And you’ll always be second choice, Jacob.” He turned in his seat. “In every single way.”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Jacob replied. He also looked agitated. As if he’d got ants in his pants. Ryan just shrugged again and faced forward.

  Dan looked around the room. He had five of the football team in his c
lass, and all of them were either squirming in their seats or sitting with their hands in their pockets. Only Sam Portland seemed to be acting normally. If you could call trying to start a fight with everyone ‘normal’.

  “Maybe we should just start,” Emily said. She had a faint sheen of sweat on her forehead and was rocking on her seat. She didn’t have any pockets but she looked like she wanted some. Beside her, her open bag showed a copy of the leather-bound book she’d had with her yesterday. What was it with those books?

  He opened his mouth to speak but stopped as Megan Palmer walked in. She didn’t look like she normally did. Her hair was tangled and the makeup was gone.

  “Megan,” he said. He was surprised to see her back so soon. “Take a seat, we’re just about to get started. Good to see you back.”

  The class was deathly quiet, for a change. Everyone watched her as she walked to her desk and sat down. Her eyes were puffy and red. It didn’t look she’d had much sleep.

  “Right. Everyone turn to page three-fifty. We’re going to go over this chapter again and try and find out what the motivations are for all the characters, how they’ve changed from the first chapter.”

  The sound of books being opened, pages being turned, was refreshing. The class went as well as could be expected, under the circumstances. As he dismissed them, he stood by the door, watching Sam, Ryan, Jacob and Tom go on their way. It hadn’t been that long since all four of them would go off together, messing about in the hallway like most teenage boys. Now they could barely stand to be in the same school as each other. The undercurrent of aggression, of contained violence, was almost tangible.

  “Sir?”

  He watched the last of them disappear around the corner. JJ was standing next to him. He’d been waiting since class finished.

  “What is it, JJ?”

  “Close the door,” he whispered.

  “What? No, I won’t close the door. What’s going on?” He would never close the classroom door again to speak to a student.

  JJ looked into the hallway. “I went to see Alex yesterday.”

  “You what?” he almost shouted. “How did you get in there?” He walked back to his desk, away from the door.

  JJ shrugged. “I figured all the cops would be busy down at the station. They wouldn’t have anyone spare to sit outside his room.”

  Dan sighed and shook his head. “You shouldn’t have done that.”

  “Why?” he replied. “He’s my friend. I wanted to see him, make sure he was okay.”

  “And was he?”

  JJ thought for a moment. “They’ve got him sedated, drugged up to his eyeballs. He didn’t know who I was for a while.”

  “Well I wouldn’t try it again, he’s probably better off out of it for a while, and you could get in real trouble with the cops if…”

  “I don’t think there are any cops left in Silver Lake,” he said. “They’ve brought a couple in from Rainworth but they’re only here when they’re needed.”

  Dan exhaled loudly, thinking about the scene inside the station. The air had been thick with the reek of gunpowder and blood. The walls in the reception were covered with stains that didn’t bear close scrutiny. It was literally a bloodbath.

  “Still, you shouldn’t go back, JJ.”

  “He wasn’t like the old Alex,” he continued. “He…he...”

  “He was sedated. That’s…”

  “No, it wasn’t that. He kept going on about a book, his book, his story.”

  Dan felt a strange coldness creep up his neck.

  “I thought maybe it was a diary, that perhaps he had a diary somewhere and that he wanted to keep it up. I mean, I don’t think they’ll let him have a pen, not after…I mean after what he did to himself.”

  “He say anything else?”

  “No, just kept going on about the book. I knew I wouldn’t be able to get into his house to look for it.” He winced. “I didn’t want to go back in there. The only thing I had was the freebie the old guy at the bookstore gave us. I hadn’t opened mine so I gave it to him. It was the only time he looked like the old Alex, he smiled, actually smiled.”

  “Well that’s good, maybe they’ll let him have a pencil, or a crayon, something like that and he can…”

  “That’s when it all went weird. Or weirder.”

  “In what way?”

  “It’s like…I don’t know, it’s like when he looked at the pages, he saw something bad, something horrible. He kept saying it wasn’t his book, his story. I don’t know, I just guessed they were the same.” He looked down at his shoes. “It was the best I could do to try and help him.” He sounded close to tears.

  Dan put his hand on the kid’s shoulder. “You’ve done everything you could, JJ.”

  Dan thought about the book Ronayne had shown him. He’d thought it might be a diary but the detective told him it was blank. There was nothing in it.

  “Leather cover, right? Not quite paperback size, not quite hardcover, somewhere in between?”

  JJ looked up. “You have one?”

  “No.” He paused. “The cops came and asked me about it just after…after Alex hurt himself. They said it was blank inside, nothing written in it at all. That’s why I never mentioned it to you when I came over to check how you were doing.”

  JJ frowned. “I don’t really remember. I was pretty out of it for a while.”

  Dan nodded. Then there was Linda. When they found her, she’d been going on and on about her book. Her story. She couldn’t remember anything else. Certainly not the mutilations she’d visited upon her brother. If only he could talk to her again, talk to Alex even, find out what these books were.

  “Do you know where it is?” JJ asked.

  “The cops would still have it, I guess.”

  “At the PD?”

  “I don’t know. They won’t let you take it to him.”

  “I might ask anyway.” He turned to leave. “Thanks, sir.”

  “Anytime, just don’t go do anything stupid. Okay?”

  JJ smiled and walked out into the corridor.

  Dan followed him to the door. As he reached it, Bob Fletcher barreled into JJ, nearly sending both of them to the floor.

  “Sorry,” JJ started. “I didn’t…”

  Fletcher grabbed JJ’s wrists. “Why don’t you be more careful!” he shouted. “You could’ve injured us both!”

  “Hey, it was an accident.”

  Fletcher had always grated on him. He made no efforts to hide his dislike of the kids, and never went the extra mile to help them with anything. He’d been next to useless at the station yesterday, standing on the sidewalk gawking inside as the extent of the carnage became apparent. He righted himself and let go of JJ.

  “See you later,” Dan said to JJ, gesturing for him to get moving.

  Fletcher looked at him. “He one of yours?”

  Dan nodded, turned away and was about to close the door behind him.

  “You know, one of these days, you’re going to fall foul of one of these kids. One of them is going to pull the wool so far over your eyes you won’t even be able to see that self-righteous attitude you wear like a suit.”

  Dan turned back. “What?”

  “I think you heard me.”

  “At least I give them a chance, Bob. We’re here to teach them but we’re also here to help them and make them believe in themselves.”

  Fletcher laughed. “You read that in the Teacher’s Handbook? Sounds like bullshit to me.”

  “You look like you need a break, Bob. A vacation.” He looked tired, dark rings under his eyes, as if he’d spent the night awake. “Burning the candle at both ends? You’re not as young as you used to be.”

  He meant it as a joke – barbed, but a joke all the same. It was an attempt to get rid of the man. He didn’t want to get into a row with him about the ethics of teaching.

  “What do you mean by that?” he asked. There was a note of aggression in his voice.

  “Nothing. Only that you loo
k a little tired. I think we all…”

  “Keep your observations to yourself,” he snapped. “I can still run rings round these kids. I know what they’re up to. All of them!” He hopped from foot to foot. He looked agitated. His hand went to his pocket, sliding inside.

  Dan’s eyes widened.

  “I’m still young enough to know exactly how to deal with them. And don’t you forget it!” He jabbed a finger toward Dan, stopping short of his chest. It was quite comical, coming from a man half a foot shorter with nearly twenty years on him. Fletcher’s behavior was bizarre.

  He let his finger hang in the air for a moment and then turned away. After just a few steps he started walking strangely, as if he too had ants in his pants or needed the bathroom. His hand remained in his pocket, his arm moving frantically up and down like he’d lost his keys in there.

  Maybe the source of his ire was whatever he had going on inside his shorts; the same thing that seemed to be upsetting half the class. He winced. He didn’t think it was ants in the pants that was causing the distress. There was something down there all right but it wasn’t ants.

  He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Emily Carr, the football team, and now this. What the hell had Bob Fletcher been doing and who with? He dreaded to think.

  It all came back to the books. Each and every time. He needed to make another visit to the bookstore and this time he wasn’t going to let Castavet sweet-talk him again.

  32

  Ryan watched Megan from across the dining hall. She was sitting on her own, her head down, toying with her food. He enjoyed seeing it. It made him feel pretty good about things. On the other side of the room, an argument broke out between a couple of the football team. Trays were thrown, drinks were spilled and punches exchanged before Coach Grayson intervened. He hauled the brawlers out of the room in his massive arms.

  At the back of the hall, Sam Portland and Emily Carr – usually either sitting with Megan Palmer or the football team – were having a noisy disagreement. Sam was a dick, always had been, but Emily was making him look stupid. Or even more stupid than he usually did. It hadn’t gone unnoticed that half the team were scratching their balls almost constantly, or that Emily herself seemed to have some issues down below. It didn’t take a genius to work out what was going on there. The staff in the STD clinic up at the hospital were going to be pulling double shifts if they wanted to keep this little outbreak under control.