So I've recently started writing again due to some encouragement from a few people in my life. I know that no one actually reads this blog, but I'm going to post a short story that I wrote anyway. I didn't edit it at all, I didn't even read through it before posting. I wrote it raw and quickly at work this morning. So if anyone finds this, I hope you enjoy. It's a bit creepy, so here goes.
The Red Book:
A gown and two sweaters. That's all that was left of her. She must have packed before she left. I had been gone too long, and she took the opportunity to act.
I had told her.
I had told her not to touch the red book, but something about it had been pulling at her, she told me. Like a fool, I thought that if I locked it up and hid it away, that wretched pull would go away. Or at least she would have been searching for the book until I returned. But to my dismay, I returned to our little home with my arms full of vegetables from the market to find that there was nothing more left of her than three pieces of clothing.
I let the food fall out of my arms when I saw the house in such disarray. Books, dishes, and my clothing had been thrown about the cottage, evidence of her search for that which called to her. The book with red pages was gone, and she with it. My beloved Aster, lost to me. What the hell was I going to do?
-----
It started on a Sunday when we were taking a stroll to town down the dusty, rocky path. I remember how the sun dappled through the leaves, casting shade on Aster’s white hat. I always hated hats, but she made them beautiful.
We had nearly reached the end of the road where it met the town of Bawning when my beloved Aster gasped. I turned to ask after her wellbeing, but she rushed ahead several steps to the side of the road where she fell to her knees. I rushed to her side, concern beating with my heart. I found her clutching in pale fingers a book that had been lying in the grass. The cover was a solid brown except for a gold symbol that had been inlaid on the front. Curious, I crouched down beside her. She flipped open the book. The page was a deep blood red, but there were no words or symbols. She flipped to another. And another, but not a single page had a jot of ink on it. Not a sentence, not an image, not a word. But she insisted that it was lovely. I asked her if I could hold it, and she gave it to me. I could feel even through my leather gloves that it was like fire, and should I hold it for very long, it would burn through to my flesh. My dear Astor begged me to keep it for her. She said that a book must never be discarded, and requested me to put it in the pocket of my trousers. I kept it there for her. It was hot against my leg as it had been in my gloved hands, but to a bearable degree. We continued our stroll and wandered through the market. I thought nothing of it then, but for all that walk, her eyes kept darting anxiously to where the book sat in my pocket.
We arrived home, and at her asking, I gave the book back, albeit warily. She immediately began to flip through the blank pages curiously. I made dinner that night, and when at last she came to the table having put the book on the shelf, she was silent for most of the meal.
In the days that followed, she grew stranger still. The book migrated from its shelf to the bedside table every night. I lay with my darling wife, and sometimes I would wake to find her curled up with the book against her chest. A week passed and her eyes grew red-rimmed and tired. She spoke less and less. But after eight days of her immersion in this book, I finally asked what she was looking for.
“I'm reading,” she replied with a scoff, “what else would I be doing with a book?”
I peered over her shoulder. There were no words in that book - I'm certain of it. I circled around her to look at her face, and surely it did seem from the movement of her eyes that she was reading, but as I said, there was nothing to read. Try as I did to convince her of this, she waved me away, and at the last snapped that she would not be deceived by one such as I.
I retreated then, and watched her wither. Day by day, the book seemed to consume her. It took her body as well as her mind, leaving her a shell of a woman, her soul stolen by some hidden evil on those red pages.
Two months passed since that day on the road when she fell victim to that tome, and again, I urged her to speak to me of the words she saw, for I could see nothing. She said not a word, only held the book to her closely but weakly as though all her strength had been sapped. It was that night that I heard a horrible piercing shriek of agony and horror. I leapt from my bed to find my wife on her knees in the main room. She wept and held herself around the abdomen as though in a terrible pain. I fell to my knees beside her, and took her shoulders in my hands.
“What is it, My love?” I looked nowhere but her eyes for my fear for her. “What has happened?”
She brought trembling hands between us, and I could see now that they were burned. Blisters of fire had built on her hands, and the skin was red and falling apart. I held my hands to either side of them, longing to hold them, but dreading to cause her more pain.
“Come, my love.” I placed a careful hand under her elbow and helped her to stand beside me. With a hand on her back, I guided her outside to the well where the water was fresh and cool from the night wind. Drawing a pail, I instructed her to put her hands inside and take comfort at the temperature of the water. I helped her to sit in the grass, and placed myself in front of her. While she bathed her hands, I wiped the tears from her cheeks, and brushed her long flaxen hair behind her ears. I asked her many times what had happened that she should have burned her hands so, but she continuously shook her head, not speaking a word except to beg me to take the book and hide it from her.
She need not have asked me so desperately, for long had I wished to take it from her and cast it into the fire. So unyielding were her demands to be rid of it that I at once rose and did as she asked. Leaving her there under the pale moonlight with her hands burned, I found the wretched book. I dared not touch it with my bare hands, and quickly donned my gloves before handling it. It burned again, almost seeming to turn to fire in my hands yet it remained in the form of a book. I took it to the garden behind the house and there I buried it deep in the dark soil near the flowerbed. I dared not plant it in the garden itself, for fear of what devilry should accost our growing things.
I returned to my beloved Astor to find her asleep beside the well - in perhaps a deeper sleep than she had seemed to have for months. I woke her gently only to wrap her hands, then I carried her to bed and placed myself beside her. I did not sleep that night, but she did, and I was the happier for it.
A few days passed and she seemed to be better. On occasion, she would inquire as to the location of the book, but I insisted on it being kept a secret. As time went on, she began to grow increasingly frustrated with my persistence in keeping the secret of the red book's location. I knew that every time I left the house, she would search for it, but I was so confident that she would never find it that I paid it no mind. She became angrier. Her hair began to fall out and her skin seemed to shrink so that her eyes popped from her face like marbles on a paper. She was weak and wouldn't eat. She stopped sleeping or washing, but still I would not give her the book. That was what had made her this way. If it hadn't been for that ill-fortuned volume, I would still have my dear Astor, not this bent creature that shared my house.
It was on a day when I walked alone to the market that it happened. She had long since given up coming with me on walks. The animal that now lived in place of my wife had no use for sunlight or joy or fresh air.
I had come to enjoy my solitary strolls if only to get away from the darkness that the woman who had been Astor seemed to efuse.
I took my time on this particular venture. Perhaps I knew that it was near the end, and I didn't want to watch her devolve even further into that beast into which she had turned. Perhaps I was selfish and simply longed for the joy of sunlight. Perhaps I, too, could feel something from the book and it was keeping me away as my sweet Astor disappeared.
But when I emerged into that house to see the wreckage that she had wreaked upon our home, I knew that I had been gone far too long. And more than this, I knew that I should never have allowed her to convince me that bringing the empty book home with us was a good idea.
We found her three days later in a dress marred with her blood. She lay with slit wrists and burned hands on the edge of the river, her skin having already been sunburned from being out for so long. She didn't look like my wife anymore. My wife had died months ago, but still I mourned. We buried her underneath the apple blossom tree in the back garden. I painted a white cross to mark her grave, and placed it as a headstone of sorts in the ground above her.
I wept there for many hours after the guests had left. I sat there on my knees with my face in my hands, angry hot tears running down my skin to water the ground beneath which lay my beloved Astor. When I rose, the sun had set. I went to the place where I had buried the book, and I dug it up. My tears continued to fall, and I paid no heed to how they sizzled and steamed when they struck the ground. My shovel hit the book, and I dug it out. Holding it in my hands, I noticed that it was not hot. Dirt was caked under my fingernails, but the book was so light and cool in my hands that I dared not put it down. With a sneer, I opened up the tome, and flipped through the pages. I screamed in rage. There were no words. I threw it to the ground and stomped on it, yelling and cursing the day it was made. I picked it up and carried it into the house. I left it on the table, but when I tried to go to sleep, I found that it was all I thought about. I got up and went to it again, gently taking it in my fingers and flipping to the first page. To my shock, there was text there, written in an even darker red than the pages themselves. How could this be? I read it through and flipped page after page, unable to put it down. When at last dawn came, my eyes were pained and weary from reading. It had nothing to do with the strange heat that the book had pumped up into my face while I read. I finally closed the book, and sat contemplating its contents. It spoke of an old war and an older beast. Destruction and ruin. On the very last page, there was a command. Curiously, I obeyed it, and thought not to my own welfare before I plunged my hands into flames. Next, it commanded me to kill. It began with small things- animals and birds- then progressed to my neighbor. I had never liked him anyway, so I took that same shovel with which I buried and unburied the red book, and I crept into old farmer Sorrel’s home. He awoke that night to see me standing over him. With my burn-scarred hands, I lifted the shovel and I beat him until his blood sprayed up at me. As I left the house, I smiled. I passed a mirror in his hallway, and caught a glimpse of myself. My hair came down my head in thin threads, and my eyes were red-rimmed and wide. I grinned. I had never looked better.
Aaaaand that's it! Creepy, relatively low description, just my messing around with a writing prompt that I found at about 12am this morning. I hope you enjoyed!
Blessings!
Marisa
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