Ivy
Something really strange is happening on this island. Amy walks back into the store through the back door, and I swear her eyes are brown now. Plus, her hair looks shorter. That can’t be right, but I didn’t spend six months in therapy after the divorce just to question my instincts.
It’s not just her eyes, either. It’s the strange products on the shelves. The customers at the café. The dreams last night. Everyone stares as they pass the shop window, like I’m some kind of exhibit.
Amy continues to go over the various aspects of the business.
The man from the café this morning stands across the street on the grassy roundabout in the statue's shadow. He’s staring into the shop, which is creepy for sure.
But I find it pretty hard to concentrate on my would-be stalker when I’m so distracted by the statue itself.
The strange, modern gargoyle with sweats and horns and wings was in the thinker’s pose yesterday. But now he’s standing. His arms are crossed over his broad chest, his brow furrowed, glowering down Main Street.
“What in the hell?” I breathe. I hadn’t even looked at the statue this morning. I’d been afraid to meet those eyes again.
“Something wrong?”
I nearly jump out of my skin and turn and find Amy standing not a foot behind me. I open my mouth to answer, then stop. Her eyes are blue now. I snap my mouth shut.
“Nope. Just can’t believe how fast the time flew. Closing time already?”
She looks at her watch. “Yeah. If you want, I can lock up. I know that was a lot to take in for one day.”
Internally, every alarm I have is telling me to get away from this woman as fast as possible. On the outside, I keep things professional. Whatever is going on here, I don’t have many options. Still, I feel the pull to get back to the cottage quickly.
“That would be amazing. Thank you, Amy. I think I’m still just exhausted from the trip over,” I lie, and I’m proud to find my voice steady. God only knows what my face is doing.
Gathering my things, I walk out. When I glance back, Amy is still watching me from the window. Snapping my gaze to the road, I don't dare look at the statue. I don't need to. I know what I saw.
My stride slows once I've left the shop.
I'm going back to a cottage with empty cupboards, no Wi-Fi, no TV as far as I could see, and no sort of hobby distraction.
I'm looking down the barrel of a long night staring at the walls…or climbing them. Glancing around, the Alexandria Book Nook catches my eye. If I can’t doomscroll or even watch TV, getting something good to read is the next best thing.
My hand finds the gold handle of the black front door. The hinges squeak as I step inside.
Just inside the entryway, I stop.
I take a few steps back outside. The exterior of the building is a perfectly normal shop size.
About twenty-five feet wide and one standard story high.
Some of the silver paint is peeling off the sign.
There's nothing extraordinary about the store from the street except that it could use a little TLC.
I step back inside, absolutely positive that this time, the interior will make sense.
It. Does. Not.
The inside of the Book Nook is massive. It's not something simple like ten-foot ceilings explained away by creative pipework or a store that runs deeper than you’d expect.
The floors are marble. Pillars reach at least three full stories to a ceiling painted like something out of the Vatican.
Old parchment, burning candles, and sand linger in the air.
The shelves span floor to ceiling along the walls and down the center of the hall, because that’s what it is—a hall.
Gilded staircases twist up to the higher stacks.
I step forward cautiously, half-expecting the whole illusion to fall away and leave me concussed somewhere.
A melodic but fierce voice drifts out from the stacks. Someone is talking, though I can’t hear what’s being said.
“Hello,” I call.
The words stop, and the whole place goes so silent it feels like it’s closing in on me.
The woman I saw sweeping out front this morning peers around a bookshelf. Brown, almond-shaped eyes lock onto me and glare. Her thick black hair is pulled into a ponytail, accentuating her high cheekbones and long, straight nose.
“How did you get in here?” she demands, striding forward and stopping directly in front of me.
I take a small step back. “Through the front door.”
Her eyes fly to the front just behind me.
“It’s locked,” she says.
I open my mouth to argue, but when I glance over, I find the deadbolt pulled across from the inside. Something that should have kept me out, but didn’t. I hadn’t fastened it, and I hadn’t heard anyone behind me.
“I don’t—” I stumble.
This is ridiculous.
Instead of dwelling on it, I move past it. A technique I learned whenever my ex-husband would say something I knew was false but couldn’t prove in the moment.
“I’m Ivy Smith. I’m new to the island,” I say, holding out my hand. She eyes it before taking it.
“Layla. This is my archive.” She gestures around at the books.
“You mean your store?”
She lets go of my hand and swipes some lint from her shoulder. “That’s what I said.”
A knock at the door pulls Layla away. She flips the lock that didn’t keep me out and pulls the door open. A mess of light pink hair and a bold pink dress sweeps through.
“Did you see the—” Dolly starts in her sing-song voice, then snaps her mouth shut when she spots me.
“Dolly, you’ve met Ivy, yeah? She’s new in town.” Layla says “new” in a way that, on paper, would be underlined and highlighted.
Dolly nods, her big eyes fixed on my face, not blinking. Of everything I’ve seen on this island, she is the one who unnerves me most.
“You made it through your first day! Hooray!” Dolly pulls me into an unexpected hug.
“Oh, well, okay,” I say, patting her on the back.
Layla rolls her eyes. “Dolly, we’ve talked about personal space, remember?” Layla pulls her back.
“Oh, right.” Dolly says it like someone does when they have absolutely no intention of letting the information sink in.
“Were you looking for something in particular?” Layla asks me.
My gaze drifts upward to the towering shelves and the impossible ceiling.
“How?” I ask. This isn't something I can file away and parse through later. It’s right in front of me. But Layla just looks at me impassively, as if the question doesn’t make sense. “No, come on. This building. The inside. It can’t possibly be this size. The outside is completely wrong.”
Layla looks up into the stacks as if noticing the incongruity for the first time.
“Oh, the optical illusion thing. Is that what you mean? The outside is painted to make it look smaller than it is. Like the forced perspective at Disney World, except opposite.”
I am going to scream.
How did I escape one gaslighting ex-husband only to fall into an entire gaslighting town?
“Are you serious right now?” I ask.
Dolly covers her mouth to hide a laugh. “I don’t think this is working,” she sing-songs.
“Dolly!” Layla hisses.
“What isn’t working? What is all this?”
“Nothing. Can’t you recognize when a girl’s a little off her rocker?” Layla says, gesturing toward Dolly, who’s already lost interest in the conversation and is wandering into the stacks.
“What can I help you find?” Her voice has a definite clipped quality now.
I take a deep breath and recenter myself. The building is impossible, and it isn’t forced perspective, but Layla will clearly not admit that, so I move on.
“I’m looking for something to read. I can’t get any of my devices to work on this island.”
Layla nods. “That’s what most people find. What are you after? The Roman Empire? Politics? Why We Sleep?”
I pull a face. “Fiction. Any fiction. Romances, mysteries, science fiction, I don’t care. Anything, so long as I don’t have to live in the real world for a while.”
Layla cracks a smile. “Oh, thank God. Everyone here are such nonfiction snobs. And don’t get me wrong, I like good nonfiction. But give me a smutty romance any day.”
“Or an alien invasion,” I add.
“Or a smutty alien invasion romance,” Dolly’s voice adds, drifting in from the stacks.
I look to Layla and mouth, Is she okay?
Layla shrugs and heads into the shelves. We twist around one stack, then another, back and back. The lights overhead begin to dim, and in the darkening store, I swear I can see stars above me instead of a ceiling.
Layla catches me looking. “LED light strips.”
By the time we stop, I am completely lost.
“Okay, this one.” She pulls a book with a red cover off the shelf. “And this one. And this.”
When she’s done, I have five books weighing down my arms. The way back is two turns instead of the long hike it took to get here. Which, again, makes no sense.
Dolly emerges from an aisle with a stack of her own. Most of the titles seem to involve blood, death, and disembowelment.
“Listen,” Layla starts. “I imagine it can be rough being new here. Literally nowhere to go or see. Some of the other residents and I do a game night on Fridays, whoever’s free. If you want, you could join us. It's fun." She lets the invite hang, and I’m momentarily stunned.
Then I remember the statue.
The bigger-on-the-inside bookshop.
Amy’s ever-changing eye color.
“I’ll think about it, thanks,” I say.
“You should come. It’s so much fun,” Dolly sighs.
I look at her stack of blood books, her pink eyes, then back to Layla, who shrugs.
“How much—” I start, but Layla waves me off.
“That’s not how it works here. Just bring them back when you’re done.”
“So, it’s a library?”
Layla tilts her hand back and forth. “It was a long time ago. Now it’s more of a compendium.”
My gaze wanders over the books, the pillars, the painted ceiling. I don’t buy the forced perspective explanation she tried to feed me, but I’m not as sure as I was when I walked in here that whatever’s going on is malicious. Maybe it's just odd?