Chapter 1 #2
Like hell if she was touching the book with her bare hands again. Carefully picking up the hefty book with the napkins, she went into the back room that was separate from the public and shut the door behind her, placing the book on the table that ran down the center.
Scrambling for her phone in her coat pocket, she pulled it out to text her twin sister, Sidney.
Sid, check this thing out.
She snapped a photo of the book and sent it over to her.
Some crazy dude just dropped this on my desk. Can’t figure out what it is. Usually being a librarian is boring, lol.
Usually Sid responded within seconds, unless she was in some big important meeting with some muckity-muck from some big company or a politician.
The difference between Sidney and Sasha was that Sidney could people while Sasha struggled to make friends. So, Sasha shared an apartment with three roommates in Somerville, while Sidney had a studio to herself in Manhattan.
Sidney was living proof that the phrase “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know,” held true more often than not.
Not that Sidney didn’t deserve to be successful—she was a brilliant marketing strategist and was sought after for a reason.
It was just that…sometimes, stairs were easier to climb for some people than others, and that was just the sad fact of the matter.
But that was neither here nor there at the moment.
Staring down at the book, she thought through her options.
She knew she should call Rare and have them come collect the antique book that the guy who was cracked out of his gourd had obviously stolen from them. But what if it was a prop? Just some really good-looking fake. Pushing her glasses up her nose, she sighed.
“All right, then. I suppose I should just…get on with it, then. Open you up and see what’s inside.” Reaching out, she went to open the latch.
Her phone rang.
Jolting in shock, she swore.
Looking down at her phone, she saw the image of Sidney staring back at her.
It was a goofy photo of her sister that she’d taken the last time they’d been together.
They’d gone to some janky carnival up north of Boston.
She couldn’t remember what the name of it was—every time she tried to look it up, the name of the Faire escaped her.
But Sidney was terrified of anything spooky, where Sasha just ate it up.
Same face. Different souls.
Picking up the phone, she put it on speaker and put it back down on the table next to the book. “Hey Sid, what’s up, not like you to call when you can—”
“Where are you?” Sidney sounded worried. Panicked almost.
Sasha frowned. “Work. Safe.”
“I…I swear somebody’s following me.”
“Have you called the cops?” Threading her hand into her hair, she fisted the strands, pulling them tight. “Sid, you shouldn’t be on the phone with me, I can’t help you from here.”
“I know, but when you told me about the guy, and the book—” Sid’s voice was strained. “I—I think I saw the same guy.”
“Where are you?”
“Manhattan. Work trip.”
“Hon, that’s not possible. I’m in Boston. He was in the BPL.” There was an off-chance, maybe—the two cities weren’t that far apart. Four hours? Tops? A person could drive that. Take a plane, maybe? A private jet, sure. But the odds were extremely slim, having seen the guy.
“The book. The book you have. I—this dude I saw. He walked up to me, and—hold on.”
Her phone buzzed as she got a text from Sid. Swiping over, she blinked. It was a photo of a large, antique book, hastily taken. The book was on a park bench. It looked exactly like the one she had, but the inverse.
Where the book that Sasha had was black and the V strangely dusted in purple, Sidney’s was backwards.
The leather was an ashen white. The purple was instead a strange yellowish-green tone.
And where the V on her book was odd and unsettling, the V on Sidney’s book was bold and almost… proud was the only word to describe it.
Sasha felt cold. This was too weird. Too weird for words. She wanted all her life for something interesting to happen to her—but she wasn’t so sure about it now.
Especially if it involved getting Sidney into the mix. “Describe the guy.”
“Uh—I don’t know, mid forties? Dark hair. Looked—looked hurt. Like he’d been in an accident. Dark eyes. White guy. Square jaw.”
That matched who she had seen as much as it matched half the description of New England, she supposed. “Do you have a hotel room?”
“I’m heading there now.” It was clear she was on foot, and fast. “He just—this scary guy just, just walked up to me, shoved it into my hands, told me to bury it, or burn it, said he was ‘free’ and then walked away—”
Cringing, Sasha lowered her head, her blonde hair falling in front of her glasses. “Yeah. He told me to bury mine, too.”
“What the fuck, Sash?”
“I don’t know.”
“What are these things? Fuck this. I’m throwing this thing in the trash.”
“I—”
There was a fwumf on the other end of the line.
Too late. Sidney wasn’t the kind of person to hem and haw and debate the possible courses of actions.
Nope, she just charged right ahead, for better or worse.
Executive dysfunction was not something she was familiar with.
“I want no part of whatever weird online LARP bullshit you’ve gotten me signed up for. ”
She snorted in laughter. “I didn’t sign us up for a LARP.” She’d never be forgiven for that one mail-order mystery Christmas gift.
“Uh-huh. Sure.” There was a sound of a door beep from the other side of the line, and the background noise from Sidney’s phone changed. She was indoors. “I’m going to drink everything in my minibar and Venmo you the bill.”
“You make six times my salary, Sid. That’s not fair. You can Venmo me the cost of a bag of peanuts.” She rolled her eyes.
“Fine. But I am going to wallow in those goddamn peanuts, Sash. I am going to savor every single fucking one of them.” Her sister laughed, still sounding strained.
It was clear the stress of the situation was starting to wear off a little bit, now that the weird cursed-looking book was no longer in her possession. “What the hell was that thing?”
“I don’t know. Someone playing a prank? You don’t have a weird…
I don’t know, secret admirer?” Sasha curled a strand of her shoulder-length hair around her finger.
It was an old habit of hers, something she’d done ever since she was little whenever she was trying to figure something out.
“Some sort of elaborate courting ritual?”
“Sash, nobody talks like that. No wonder you’re still single.” There was a beep of an elevator.
“I’m single because I choose to be. I don’t like dating.”
“Uh-huh.”
Staring down at the book, the weirdness of what was happening just kept rolling around in her head. It had to be an elaborate prank. It had to be. There was no other possible explanation. “You in your hotel room, yet?” she asked her twin.
“Just swiping in now,” Sid responded. “Thanks for staying on the line.”
“Yeah, of course.” She smiled. “Can’t leave your cowardly ass out to dry.”
“I’m not a coward, I just don’t get off on making myself afraid like you do, you sick little wei—” Sidney broke off abruptly.
“Sid? Sid, you still there?” Sasha checked her phone. The call was still connected.
“No, no, no, no, no.” Sidney moaned in fear.
“What is it?” Her own fear rose in response. She was hours away. There was nothing she could do to help. And that uselessness, that agony of not being able to see, to know what was going on, was something she’d never experienced before. “Sidney, talk to me.”
“It’s—it’s here!”
“What’re you talking about?”
Sasha’s phone vibrated. Another photo. Swiping, she checked what it was.
There. On the crisply made hotel bed. Placed there like the staff had put it there during the turndown service, like a featured gift.
The white leather book with the intricate “V” emblazoned on the cover.
Her blood felt like it had run cold. “It’s okay, Sid.
There has to be more than one book. It’s—these are fakes.
” Sasha forced herself to laugh. “It’s a game.
Right? Just somebody playing a prank on us.
Mom and Dad probably set us up for some…
it’s probably one of those online murder mystery things again, right?
They know how much I love true crime shit, and they signed you up for it, too. ”
“Fuck you!” Sidney was frantic, her voice cracking. “I don’t want anything to do with this!”
“I know, I know. But think about it.” Everything was clicking into place.
“The guys who gave us the books had to be actors. Probably twins, like us—get it? Very funny. These are just props. Really good props. They know too much about us. Mom and Dad know what I do for a living, and they know you’re in Manhattan—”
Sidney cut her off. “No, they don’t. This was a last minute trip. I booked the flight this morning.”
The little back room suddenly felt both too cold and too hot at the same time. She stared at the book in front of her. “I’m going to open the book I have and see if there’s any answers inside of it. There should be something there that’ll tell us what’s going on.”
“Sasha, it could be dangerous. What if it’s covered in—in drugs? Or poison?” Sidney’s voice was trembling.
“I’ve got napkins so I don’t touch it. I’m not gonna lick it.” She sighed. “I’m not an idiot.” She opted not to tell her sister she already touched it without gloves once, and that might’ve been the source of the random vision she had.
“All—all right, but stay on the phone. Okay?” Sidney was sniffling.
Oh god, she hated when her twin started to cry.
It was the easiest way to get Sasha’s waterworks going.
“This is my job, right? Preserving old books like this. I’ll be able to tell it’s a fake with one look at the text on the inside.
The outside’s a decent copy. But the text itself and the paper will be much harder to duplicate. ”
Sid sniffled. “Y—yeah.”
Reaching out, she hovered her fingers over the metal clasp that kept the latch of the book shut. “All right, here we go.”
Touching the clasp, she cringed and braced herself. Nothing happened.
A flick, and the piece of metal fell open. Nothing happened.
“Sash?” Sidney sounded terrified. “Sasha, are you there?”
“Still here. It’s just a book. It can’t eat me.” She chuckled.
Grasping the cover, she tested it, and was pleased to see that the hinge—while clearly old, was in very good condition. It opened without issue. This doesn’t look like a fake…this looks very real. Very, very real. It was cracked, dusty, falling apart here and there. It wasn’t pristine by any means.
“What’s—what’s it say?” The digital voice of her sister betrayed every ounce of her fear.
“The first few pages are blank. That’s normal.” She carefully turned them. They were either blank pages or vellum, meant to keep ink from block prints from bleeding over. She reached the title page, expecting to find something in German. Or perhaps Latin.
But one large word in black text greeted her. No author, none of the usual markings. Just one word. One…adjective, actually.
She blinked in confusion. “Huh.”
“What? What’s it say?” Sidney was getting frantic.
“It just says…Vile.”
Sasha should have known.
She should have known not to want her life to be more interesting. She should have known not to play with strange books. She’d seen enough movies. She’d read enough fiction.
She should have known not to read the single word on the page in front of her.
She’d opened the door.
And walked.
Right.
Into it.
The single word Vile on the page suddenly turned into a puddle of black ink before her eyes.
For a moment, she blinked, not able to process what she was seeing.
It was impossible. But as it began to leak over the page, seeping out along the sepia surface and onto the table as if it were a living thing, she screamed.
It wasn’t just possible.
It was happening.
Throwing herself backwards away from the book, she tripped over a chair and crashed into the floor. But the darkness that was emerging from the book was spreading like wildfire. Faster than she could process. Unstoppable.
Tendrils, like the limbs of some deep sea monster, were crawling along the walls—like shadows cast from monsters she couldn’t see, from light sources that didn’t exist, spreading over the floors and the ceiling.
She couldn’t breathe. Sidney was screaming her name from her phone, but Sasha couldn’t respond. This wasn’t fake terror. This wasn’t play fear. This wasn’t making herself afraid of pretend ghosts on the screen and squeaking at teenagers wearing rubber masks.
This was real.
One of the tendrils snapped around her throat and cinched tight.
She couldn’t even scream as it cut off her air.
It lifted her in the air.
She had told her twin Sidney that the book wasn’t going to eat her.
But as it pulled her toward the center of the darkness, the empty nothingness where the book had been only moments before?
She knew she had been very, very wrong.