The Book of Dreams
He found himself crying, wanting to jump in and search for it, use it to discover the mysteries of his life, make his wildest dreams come true.
It was some time before he made his way back around the side of the deserted arcade and back along the pier. His shoulders were slumped, his head ached, his empty bag felt full of rocks.
As he reached the end of the pier he looked down at the rocky excuse for a beach below the pier which no one ever used except dog walkers and crack addicts. Something small and square lay amongst the rubbish and the driftwood of the high tide line, about twenty metres from him. It was the book.
So, it was meant for him then.
&&&
The water had made no difference to the book’s impenetrability. It was still locked as tight as ever, and didn’t even look damaged by its little swim in the ocean. He didn’t believe in magic, but if he had, he might think this book carried some with it.
The girl’s grandfather was dead, and he’d had the key.
That night, he logged on to the internet.
&&&
He sat in the driver’s seat of his dad’s car and watched her run away up the path towards her house. Regret and revulsion filled him up like a lock gummed up with glue. He hated himself, hated the way he’d treated her and felt sick for what he’d done.
His friends had egged him on. The new girl had said yes, agreed to go out with him, and he had wanted a nice date at the cinema or bowling or something. Instead, they had made him take the whiskey with him, take her up into the hills, get her drunk. They said everyone did it, that was the way it was supposed to be. They said she’d be gagging for it.
He’d not got far. Got enough drink in her to loosen her up, to let him touch her a bit. Only when he’d tried to take her clothes off had she started to object, started to get mad. He hadn’t meant to punch her, but she’d slapped him, and the whiskey had put extra fire in his gut.
He had regretted it instantly, and apologised, but the blood dribbling from her nose made it already too late. He had driven them back to town, his unsteady eyes using all their focus for the road, while she sat in silence beside him.
&&&
He waited until midnight before setting out again. His parents were asleep by that time, and he stole the car keys from off the hook in the kitchen, sneaked round the front and pulled open the garage door.
He was lucky their driveway was on a slight slope, because he was able to roll the car silently out into the road and about fifty metres away from the house before the road started to angle upwards and he had to start up the engine. He didn’t know how he’d get it back into the garage again, but that wasn’t his concern right now.
In the boot of the car were his father’s shovel and a pick axe.
It had been easy enough, from a local obituaries website, to find out where the old guy was buried. In a cemetery about a mile out of town, in a small village where he’d apparently grown up. Easy enough to find, he just hoped the old man’s grave was away from the road.
As he drove, thoughts flickered through his head like a misfiring TV, but only one seemed to make any sense. Getting the key in his hand. The girl said her grandfather had kept it with him always. And now the old man was dead there was only one place he was going to find it now.
He hated what he had to do, but life was becoming unbearable now that he had the book to deal with.
He found the cemetery easily enough, though it took him some time to find the grave because it was lit only by the moon, and covered about an acre. Using a torch he had brought with the tools he eventually located it, among a row of relatively fresh graves around the back of the decrepit Norman church. It was out of sight of the road, so he was able to set up the torch to light the area he had to dig without fear of being seen by any passing motorists. Be grateful for small mercies, his mind screamed at him, as he prepared to undertake an operation found only in the trashy horror novels his father read.
The headstone told him the old man had been dead for just over a year. Oh sweet God, that would be long enough, he knew, as he took one last deep breath of free air, and then he began to dig.
Within minutes his body had broken out in a cold sweat from the exertion, and it got worse the deeper he went. After half an hour his muscles screamed at him, after nearly an hour his back felt like he’d been beaten with a stick. He wanted to quit, but knowing that the key must be down here somewhere pushed him on.
He was waiting to hit wood, but when his spade suddenly speared into something crunchy and hard he realised it must have rotted away. He put down the spade, reached over and grabbed the torch. The battery was getting low, but there was still enough light to see by, and he angled it into the grave to see what he’d found.
The remains of a human skull lay in the soil at his feet.