The Book of Dreams
Every page was blank. Not a single mark, not a single line of text disfigured the pages. Their whiteness was sterile in its purity.
He flicked to the last page, then back again. Nothing. Not a word.
‘Nooooo…..’
It was a magic book, maybe, but somehow he knew there was no magic here. He’d been tricked.
The events of the last couple of days rushed over him in a flood. Meeting the girl again, trying to throw the book away, digging up her grandfather’s grave. He rocked back and forth as the enormity of what he’d done pulsated through him, his mind toiled and his eyes wavered in their sockets as unconsciousness sought him out and then found him.
&&&
The police found the stolen car about a mile away from where it was taken. It hadn’t been stolen after all, but taken by the family’s son. In the back of the car was a spade, coated in freshly dug soil.
The boy was found lying across the front seat. At first he was assumed dead, but closer inspection found life in those horribly blank eyes, and a weak heartbeat beneath shallow breathing.
In his left hand, gripped tightly enough to break skin and draw blood, was a rusty, muddy key.
&&&
Nothing would bring the boy out of his petrified state, and he was duly committed to a nearby psychiatric hospital, where his condition continues to be observed.
The key, it was discovered, opened the front door of a derelict cabin in the woods out of town. The cabin had been the property of an old man who had died just over a year earlier. A granddaughter, who’d lived with him, had disappeared, believed to have left town after his death.
Investigation discovered that the key had been taken from the disturbed grave of the man, and the evidence on the boy’s person and found in the car with him made it clear that he was behind the grave robbing. Charges by the church were raised, and then dropped when the boy was deemed unfit for trial. The parson of the church where the incident took place told local reporters that he would pray for the boy.
A week after the boy was found, nurses checking on him during the night, claim to have heard him muttering something about a book while in the deep throes of sleep.
No book was found in the car, nor at the disturbed grave. Nor indeed, in the derelict cabin in the woods.
&&&
She came to him one time after, while he was sitting up in the bed he didn’t recognise, in the room that wasn’t his. He may have been dreaming; he couldn’t be sure.
She ghosted in through the door, which closed without a sound and smiled down at him from his bedside.
‘Did it answer your questions for you?’ she asked.
He stared up at her. Her face appeared to shimmer. ‘
Empty,’ he said. ‘You lied.’
‘That’s what you think,’ she said. ‘The book did what I said.’
‘Every page was empty. You said it granted wishes.’
She continued to stare at him with darkly hollow eyes. ‘You didn’t know what to wish for, so I gave you a wish. And your wish was to see inside that book, at any cost.’ She cocked her head. ‘Which you did.’
He leaned back. His body felt heavy and sluggish, as though he’d never get out of bed again.
‘And what did it do for you?’ he said at last. ‘You never told me how you knew it worked.’
The girl sat down on the edge of the bed. Her smiled faded, her face set as cold as an Arctic winter sky.
‘You hurt me,’ she said. ‘I was lonely, and needed a friend, and you took me up into the hills and abused me for the amusement of your friends.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘I wanted you destroyed. And look around you.’ She waved her hands at the room. A single Picasso print and a curtained window broke up the whiteness of the walls. The book did what I asked.’
‘I’m so sorry! I can make it better, I promise.’
‘Its too late for that. It was too late by the time you dropped me off that night.’ She stood up.
‘Wait!’ He tried to get up, and realised for the first time that strong restraint belts held him down.
‘See you,’ she said.
She turned away towards the door, and he noticed that her hair seemed to be matted at the back, as though something were stuck in it, or something inside her head had decided to burst out of her skull, bringing, sticky, gluey stuff with it. He’d never seen what it looked like to have the back of your head shot out with a shotgun, but he had no doubt that was what he was seeing now.
She turned back as she pulled open the door, and for the first time he realised how deathly pale she was. ‘I hope you enjoy it, down there,’ she said, as he began to buck and twist in his restraints and scream as though he had swallowed up a strong, northerly wind.
The girl went out and closed the door behind her. From out in the corridor came the sound of footsteps, running.