Things You Need Read online

  He was too old to know her anymore. Too old and from a foreign era, the rules of which no longer applied. His worst fear was not Melissa turning up pregnant and unwed, but that he’d push her there, leaving her adrift by fleeing to his office and seeking shelter in the pages of the stories which had become more important to him than real life.

  He massaged his chest harder, trying his best to ignore Peanut and Pebbles . . .

  Fluffy and Princess?

  . . . whisking something down the hall. Yes, stress. Both Melissa and Marty had become strangers to him. Melissa, a startling feminine creature who scared him because she was developing curves out of nowhere and didn’t at all resemble the little girl he used to take fishing and hiking. Marty had morphed into a sullen malcontent. Hanging around those dropouts from the Commons Trailer Park every weekend, drinking, probably also smoking dope and laying with loose girls.

  Wait.

  What was he worrying about?

  Melissa was only 16. She’d only recently started dressing in short dresses and shirts with low-plunging necklines which sent him scurrying to his office. Marty was only twelve. Getting a little surly, but still doing okay in school and toeing the line, if only barely. They hadn’t gotten into any trouble . . .

  Had they?

  Again, unbidden, John’s mind toyed with thoughts of a stroke, a heart attack, or some other ailment affecting the mind. Hadn’t the former owner of Arcane Delights, Brian Ellison, recently passed away after Alzheimer’s and dementia had stolen his mind?

  No.

  Brian Ellison still owned and operated Arcane Delights. Didn’t he? John had bought several old Stephen King novels there, only last week.

  Hadn’t he?

  Drawn by the memory of the Stephen King novels he’d purchased (he swore only last week), his gaze slid to the huge, handmade wooden shelf next to his office door, which of course was his Stephen King shelf. He owned nearly every one of King’s books and multiple paperback copies of his favorites: It, Salem’s Lot, Pet Semetary, Christine and The Dead Zone.

  He paused, frowning at the black leather-bound book stuffed between It and Salem’s Lot. It looked familiar, but he couldn’t place from where. He shrugged and passed it over, searching for the model of Christine he’d built about six or seven years ago . . .

  8 or 9

  10 or 11?

  . . . when he’d taken up modeling again over the cold winter months. Since then he’d been spending more and more time alone in the comforting solitude of his office. Delicately assembling cars with airplane glue and tweezers, trimming parts with an Xacto knife, escaping into memories of his youth instead of facing the strange realities of today’s world. Obamacare (thinly veiled communism, anyone could see). Marriage equality (he didn’t hate gays but marriage had always been between men and women and such cataclysmic changes made him uneasy in ways he couldn’t explain). The increasing violence he saw on television, like the awful story of two men who’d broken into a family’s home, killed the father and son, tied the mother and preteen daughter to the bed and raped them for hours before setting them on fire. Down in his quiet office he felt protected from this changing world as he channeled his youth through car models, plastic glue and Testors paint.

  There it was. The model he’d constructed of King’s famous Plymouth Fury. Sitting on a book club edition of Christine, right where it should be. The relief he felt at the familiar sight nearly buckled his knees. The longer he gazed at it, however, the more something appeared off. The model car sat crookedly, the left front tire leaning inward. Tentatively, John picked up the lovingly assembled 57 Plymouth Fury.

  The left front tire fell off.

  It hit the original-printing book club edition of Christine, bounced, and fell to the floor with a plastic rattle.

  John’s hand began to shake so badly he feared he might drop the model and damage it worse. With forced care, he gently replaced the crippled car, cringing at the way the model’s front end dipped at its missing wheel. Somehow, he forced himself not to drop to his knees to search desperately for it, especially with the way his arthritis was bothering him these days . . .

  but he didn’t have arthritis yet

  his knees felt fine

  . . . and instead took several slow steps backward until he once again stood in the center of his office, as the swishing sound in the hall grew closer.

  Those damn cats.

  Feeling strangely infantile in the way old people sometimes do and hating himself for it . . .

  but I’m only 45

  50?

  . . . John Pinkerton clasped the Magic Eight Ball in two hands and raised it as if in supplication. Feeling equal parts foolish and desperate, he shook it and whispered, “Am I going crazy?”

  Faded letters emerged from the murk inside the ball: Answer is Hazy.

  He shook it again, rasping, “Am I going insane? Having a stroke? Am I dreaming?”

  The polyhedron turned slowly until it revealed: Ask Again Later.

  John licked dry lips. Ran a hand through his hair and rubbed the back of his neck. Scattered thoughts bounced around his mind. Why did Beth stare at me like she didn’t see me and turn the lights off? Who’s been sneaking into my office? Who’s moved things around? What’s happening to me? Feeling lost, he glanced helplessly at the desk next to his Ramsey Campbell shelf.

  There, sitting upon it, was a black leather-bound book.

  The whisking sound out in the hall . . .

  the hem of a robe dragging across the floor

  . . . drew closer.

  Ignoring the sound, John approached he black book sitting on the writing desk he never used. He finally admitted to himself—though it made about as much sense as the toy spider being misplaced or Beth staring through him and turning the lights off—he’d seen the book all over his office. Jammed in with the horror anthologies, with the Star Wars novels, the Ramsey Campbell novels, and on the Stephen King shelf. Somehow, John knew if he turned away, he’d find it elsewhere.

  On his Charles Grant shelf.

  Next to Boy’s Life, with his Robert McCammon novels. Nestled between Dune by Frank Herbert and Foundation and Empire by Isaac Asimov. With his modest collection of Nero Wolfe mysteries. No matter where he turned in his beloved office, his quiet sanctuary against a mad world grown increasingly alien, somehow he knew he’d continue to find it, hiding in plain sight, waiting for him.

  A strange sort of resolve hardened inside John, a kind he hadn’t felt since high school . . .

  middle age?

  . . . and with an amazingly steady hand, he flipped open the black leather-bound book sitting on the writing desk he never used.

  Names.

  An entire page of names. A list. He read them off silently. They were men and women’s names (or in some cases, perhaps boys’ and girls’ names) and for the most part unfamiliar. Written in a clear, moderately ornate script. He flipped several pages and saw more. Names and more names, all written by the same hand.

  After the fifth page, a name jumped out.

  Elizabeth Kinner.

  He knew right away who she was. His Kindergarten teacher from 39 . . .

  50? 60?

  . . . years ago. A wonderful woman whose tireless love for children had touched everything she’d done in the classroom. She’d been near retirement age when he’d been in her class. If memory served him correctly, she’d passed away quietly in her sleep his freshman year at Webb Community College.

  A spark flared deep in his consciousness. He didn’t dare consider it directly as he studiously ignored the whisking sound moving closer to his office.

  He flipped another page. More unrecognizable names until he reached the bottom of the sixth page and, predictably, another familiar name appeared: Bob Cranston. Bob would’ve graduated high school with him, had he not been hit by a drunk driver walking home from football practice. The name below, Al Moreland. The boy who’d been hit by a train while riding his four wheeler on the tracks, John’s te
nth grade year. They never found Al’s body. Only his demolished four wheeler.

  He flipped another page.

  And another.

  More and more names he recognized. Mr. Drake, the farmer who’d unfortunately flipped his tractor onto himself trying to free it from mud in one of his fields. Sam Perkins, a hunter who’d disappeared in the woods one winter. Eddie Bannister, a two-bit high school dropout who’d been killed, most believed, by his partner in crime Derek Barton (who’d since fled to parts unknown) in a botched robbery at Handy’s Pawn and Thrift. Bud Hartley, local simpleton but gentle giant, who’d died of complications in Clifton Memorial Hospital after a pile of burning garbage at the landfill fell on him. Lizzy Tillman, who’d died when the NYSEG payment center flooded in that awful storm a few years ago . . .

  Decades?

  And on.

  More and more names he recognized as he turned the pages. Names of people he knew, all of them dead and gone. Their names, written on the pages he kept turning, as a robe dragged down the hall toward his office.

  He kept turning until he saw nothing but blank emptiness. He flipped back a few pages until he found the last page of names, ran his finger down them—seeing Art Finely’s name, part owner of Henry’s Drive-In, who’d died of a heart attack two years ago, Brian Ellison of Arcane Delights . . .

  but I saw him last week

  . . . and several others which appeared familiar, but he couldn’t place.

  He stopped at the last name.

  “No,” he rasped, throat feeling tight and dry, skin cold and clammy. “No. It can’t be. It can’t . . . ”

  He stepped away from the black book full of handwritten names of people who’d died, sitting on the writing desk he never used, gripping the Magic Eight Ball so tight his knuckles ached. He backed away and kicked something on the floor again. He spun, glanced down, and saw the animatronic tarantula on the floor. A gasp, not from him but from a blonde little boy he didn’t quite recognize . . .

  Dillon

  her brat son Dillon

  . . . who’d been on his hands and knees pushing the toy spider across the floor but had jumped up and was now staring at the toy with a wide-eyed expression crossed between fear and awe.

  The boy . . .

  Dillon

  . . . opened his mouth but before he could say anything a middle-aged woman with a tight narrow face, straight hair and gray-dishwater eyes ducked around the corner and into John’s office . . .

  Melissa

  . . . and grabbed the boy by his shoulder, fingers digging into the meat so badly John winced in sympathy. She spun the boy around to face her, scowling, eyes flashing darkly. “What are you doing in here?”

  The boy’s mouth trembled; he stuttered, but couldn’t get anything out.

  John stepped forward, sad desperation surging through him. Why did she treat her son this way? He was a pain in the ass sometimes and he did sneak into his office and mess with his things but it was okay. She didn’t have to hurt him. Is this what he’d passed on? Was this his legacy? No one should ever touch his things? “Melissa, it’s all right. He was playing, he was . . . ”

  His middle-aged divorced and bitter daughter didn’t listen, only squeezed Dillon’s shoulder harder. “Answer me! You know Grandma doesn’t want anyone in here messing with Grandpa’s things! You already broke one of his cars as it is!”

  The boy swallowed and finally managed to blurt out, “The light was on! It was on, but I didn’t turn it on, I swear! Grandpa said someday I could have the toy spider, after . . . ”

  Something twisted in John’s head.

  Had he said that?

  When?

  And who was this child? And this strange older version of Melissa?

  someday I could have the toy spider, after

  after

  The strange-familiar middle-aged woman shook the boy. “I don’t care. You’re not supposed to be in here, do you understand? Grandma will decide when and if you can have the damn spider. Let’s go.”

  She grabbed the boy’s hand and jerked him from the office. The boy protested with, “But Mama, the spider moved! I was playing with it and it moved all by itself!”

  The strange-familiar middle-aged woman slapped the light switch on the wall as she left, plunging the office back into darkness. Panic thrummed through John as he scrambled for the light switch, slapping desperately until he flipped it back on.

  Relief flooded through him, but it was short-lived, because as he stepped back from the light switch, he glanced up at the bookshelves against the far wall—two blue shelves normally filled with miscellaneous horror, science fiction and mystery titles, with everything from William Hope Hodgson to Bentley Little to Agatha Christie—and gasped: They were mostly empty. A few paperbacks lay forlornly on their sides, but the two blue shelves which had formerly been stuffed full of books was now empty.

  Except another black leather-bound book, lying on its side, on the middle shelf.

  “No,” he muttered, the word gushing out of him in a frenzied litany. “No, no, no, no.”

  He spun around again and saw the Star Wars shelf in disarray, many of the action figures lying sprawled on their sides, the commemorative glasses gone. His knick-knack shelf was likewise in disorder, empty where things had been taken. On the floor sat several cardboard boxes. On the sides, written in neat, precise handwriting in black marker—Beth’s handwriting—he read John’s Things.

  The whisking sound hovered beyond his door.

  “John.”

  He spun, clutching the Magic Eight Ball in front of him. There, standing in the doorway to his office . . .

  Beth.

  But not the Beth he knew. This one’s hair was white, cut cruelly short in an economical bob. Her face looked much the same, with the exception of lines around her mouth and at the corners of her eyes tired eyes. Weary eyes, and inexpressibly sad.

  “John,” she whispered. “John. I don’t know how the lights keep turning on. But if you are here, please stop. I can’t take much more of this. I’ll sell the house soon, John. Swear to God. Please stop it with the lights. Please.”

  Frantic, mind crumbling, John stumbled forward. “Beth. Beth, I don’t understand. Please don’t go. Don’t turn off the lights. Don’t turn them off!”

  Beth turned and, as she left his office, flicked the lights off, plunging the room back into darkness. Outside, the whisking of the robe against the cement came closer.

  And into the office.

  John stumbled back to the far corner where his old recliner was, or should be. His recliner, found at the Salvation Army in Utica, where he’d spent countless hours (more and more as the kids found him old, useless, and irrelevant, and Beth considered him less interesting than her flower gardens or her cross-stitching or her Methodist Ladies Society meetings) reading Rod Serling, Ray Bradbury, Flannery O’Connor, Stephen King and Poul Anderson, sometimes poetry, in his recliner, his seat of dreams.

  John lurched backward in the darkness and collapsed, crying out when his backside struck nothing but hard cold cement, not his recliner. It was gone. Everything was gone, gone.

  He gazed through eyes blurred by tears. The lights were still off, but a soft glow had seeped into his office, through the door, and he could see the empty shelves, bereft of every single book he’d collected and read and had hoped to read. Gone, gone, all of it gone . . .

  Light filled the doorway of his office, a soft glow and a strange sensation of overwhelming peace, of contentment and rest, of kindness and . . .

  “NO!” The scream ripped from his guts. “GET AWAY FROM ME!”

  Despite the fact he felt nothing but acceptance, John Pinkerton screamed with all his might and threw the Magic Eight Ball at the soft glow filling the doorway of his office. The air of benevolence faded, leaving him with nothing but cold emptiness, crushing loneliness, and worst of all, despair.

  He slid to the cold concrete, lying in the fetal position, knees pulled to his chest, sobbing at t
he loss of something he couldn’t define, couldn’t grasp but also couldn’t bear. He blinked his eyes . . .

  ***

  . . . as if waking from a deep sleep. He found himself kneeling before the bookshelf in the rear of his office, trying to decide what book he should read next. He shook the Eight Ball with one hand, smiling. “What’s it going to be?” he whispered, “Classic literature, today?”

  The white polyhedron, suspended in liquid turned murky with age, jiggled as it revealed: Future is Hazy.

  John chuckled as he returned his attention to the books before him. “Story of my life,” he whispered. “Story of my . . . ”

  Something whisked along the floor outside his office.

  5.

  The white polyhedron, suspended in old, milky fluid, jiggled as it revealed: Future is Hazy.

  “Story of my life,” I whispered. “Story of . . . ”

  A chill hand gripped my heart.

  My throat tightened. I had to swallow hard to open it again. A rush of something filled me. Dread, and fear. I felt lightheaded. I dropped the Magic Eight Ball and it bounced off the counter to the floor. It rolled away into the dark. I sagged forward and barely caught the edge of the counter with both hands, leaning on it for support as my stomach clenched and my knees buckled.

  I closed my eyes and took several deep breaths. “What the hell was that?”

  An answer wasn’t forthcoming, but honestly, I didn’t want one. What I wanted was to get out and back to my cabin at The Motor Lodge. I didn’t care what I might do with my .38. I wanted out.

  Bracing myself against the counter, I twisted at the waist and glanced over my shoulder at the door. I blinked several times, trying to clear my vision, but the aisle leading past the shelves stretched out forever. The floor shivered under my feet and the door seemed miles away, and tilted sideways.

  The skewed perspective played hell with my senses. My head pounded harder as I tried to focus on the front door; my guts clenching, threatening to send my dinner everywhere.

  I closed my eyes and whispered, “It’s not real. Not real not real not real not real . . . ”