The Outsiders (4 page)

Nah, he
threw his rock into the water where his strange reflection had
looked back at him. The rock catapulted back out of the water and
landed at Max’s feet. He should have been scared, of course he
should. But Max didn’t believe in monsters and he didn’t believe in
running. Not until it was too late.

Max
hadn’t known what a giant eel looked like, not until Old Slippery
himself reared up from the water.

Now he knew.

He even knew what the inside of one looked like, and he would
have told anyone it was very dark and very scary. But as the giant
eel severed his head with a bone cracking
crunch
and dragged him quickly and
quietly down into the depth, Max wouldn’t be telling anyone,
anything.

And
neither would Old Slippery.

OLD
COGNAC & NEW LEATHER

David Niall Wilson

“
The Home of the Tome” was a different sort of bookstore. It
wasn’t flashy and glitzy, like the big chain store, but an austere
“presence” clung to the brownstone walls and shone from the
dust-gray windows. It wasn’t the sort of place you ran down to to
pick up the newest computer hardware manual, or the latest thriller
by whoever the author-of-the-moment might be. The top ten hardback
and paperback lineups might be found inside, or not, but they
weren’t separated on a shelf of their own. At “The Home of the
Tome,” all books were judged as created equal, and they were
shelved accordingly.

The
building was deep, and tall. Heavy wooden shelves - like the stacks
in a university library - stretched back into the dimly lit rear of
the store, while the front opened into a circular “clearing” filled
with tables, chairs and lamps arranged more in the manner of a
private men’s club than that of a business establishment. There was
no Starbucks, or First Colony coffee bar, but the scent of aged
leather, mixed with the aroma of cigars and pipes from the days
when such things were not socially unacceptable in public, clung to
the thick carpets and elegantly papered walls.

Large
ceiling fans whirled overhead, and the long rolling ladders you see
in old movies ran along each wall and across the back on rails,
allowing access to the second story shelves, which reached so far
toward the fans and lights above that it lent an air of
otherworldliness to the decor.

Christopher Bates stood outside on the walk, staring in the
front window of the store as the slowly dying sounds of traffic
echoed from the alleys behind and to the side of the old brick
edifice. It was getting late, and though he’d been standing across
the street at the front door to the “Little Havana Bar &
Grille” for nearly an hour, it did not seem that his date was going
to show.

Figured.
His hand slid into his jacket and retrieved a crumpled piece of
paper. Scrawled across the napkin was the word Sylvia, and a phone
number that had spread and faded where droplets of moisture had hit
it. He could remember her face, tendrils of soft black hair wisping
across it as she turned her hair, only to be flung back repeatedly
as she talked, her hands never stopping their constant motion. Her
eyes had been blue, sparkling and clear. Or had that been the
vodka?

In any
case, when Christopher had called her, she’d seemed confused. He
could imagine how she’d stared at the phone, tossed her hair out of
her eyes and considered it. They had talked for four hours straight
- or she had talked, Christopher had listened. Art. Movies.
Books.

It had
ended with books, which was, oddly, how it had begun. Christopher
had spotted her, huddled in the corner of a party his friend Tommy
had invited him to. She had been curled up beneath a small desk
lamp, turned around on the desk to drip light down the back of a
thick leather chair. Her features had been draped with hair, but he
could see that she was slender and well-dressed, in a quirky sort
of way. Dark clothes, velvet and leather. A book obscured what her
hair did not, and Christopher had finally screwed up the courage to
walk over and find out what was so interesting.

In
retrospect, the party itself hadn’t been that interesting. A couple
of dozen people who barely knew one another, gathered together and
held in a huddle by the magnetic draw of free food an alcohol.
Predatory singles stalking one another in endless circles, men
watching curves, and women checking the cut and manufacturer’s tags
on clothing. Heat and wealth, the eternal lure of the hunt. A bunch
of crap.

Christopher had been on drink number three, wandering in a
circle and wondering if even free alcohol was worth seeing so many
pretty noses turned up at his black jeans and denim jacket. Style
had never been a priority in his life, or at least, not popular
style. He had been in the midst of composing a mental note to
himself about the wisdom of listening to Tommy on important
life-issues when he spotted Sylvia in the corner.

He walked
over and leaned back against the edge of the desk. His first
instinct was to lean over her shoulder and see what she was
reading, but something stopped him. The tension in her shoulders?
The concentration? He watched her read, which was a surprisingly
satisfying way to pass the time, and he waited.

Eventually she looked up. He may have shifted, letting his
shoulder disturb her light. Maybe she’d caught a whiff of Aramis
from his jacket, or heard the clink of ice in his nearly empty
glass. Maybe she was just done reading.

“
Hey,” he said, feeling silly immediately for such an insipid
start.

“
Hey,” she agreed.

“
Must be a good book,” he said. He nodded at the leather bound
volume still clutched tightly in her hands and sipped his
drink.

She
closed it quickly and tucked it into her lap, out of
site.

Behind
her on the desk, Christopher noticed an empty glass. “Need a
refill?” he asked. “I’m on my way to the bar anyway.” He held up
his own empty in explanation.

She
seemed to contemplate the question, then nodded. “Brandy,” she
said. “Rocks.”

Christopher grinned at the way the words had come out. “Yes,”
he said, grabbing her glass and turning toward the bar, “it
does.”

He didn’t
know if she’d smiled at his play on words, but one could
hope.

By the
time he returned, two drinks and fresh napkins in hand, she had
tucked her book away into a deep purse that resembled a knapsack
more than a clothing accessory. She was sitting cross-legged in the
chair, turned to the side, and he smiled, handing her the fresh
drink with a small flourish and placing the napkins and his own
drink on the desk. He leaned back again, watching her sip slowly at
the brandy.

She
rolled the liquor around in her mouth, teasing her tongue over her
lips. “Not cognac,” she grinned, “but it’s free.”

Christopher nodded and grinned.

Then she
- Sylvia, hand extended to show rhinestone finery and lots of
silver rings - had begun to talk, and he - Christopher, only here
because Tommy wanted to raise the ambient IQ - had
listened.

Listening
has many levels, and Chris wasn’t really certain how many he’d
reached during their short talk. He remembered a running commentary
on the clothing and accessories of the men and women who flowed and
swirled around them. He remembered names and dates of wines and
liquors he was to try, should he ever get the opportunity. There
were snatches of poetry, mostly dark, subtle, and disjointed. He’d
asked, at one point, what she was reading, still curious after
finding her curled up in the corner with her old, leather-bound
book, but she’d skirted the question nimbly and segued into
astrology, and food.

Food had
led to the dinner they were currently not sharing at the “Little
Havana,” and here he stood. The wind had picked up, and Christopher
leaned into it slightly, craning his neck to peer up the imposing
face of the building to where the glow of the streetlights shone
just so far up into the gloomy, cloudy sky and stopped, forming a
mushroom-shaped hood of light.

He
glanced back at the restaurant across the street, but there was no
one waiting outside. The glowing dial of his watch indicated 8:30,
and suddenly the doors of Little Havana did not seem inviting. It
seemed that only “The Home of the Tome” stood between the moment
and a totally wasted evening. Placing his palm firmly on the brass
push-plate of the door, he pressed inward, slipping from the
growing shadows into the warm, musty interior of the bookstore. The
door closed behind him with a soft, solid Click!

An old
man stood behind the counter, to his left. Christopher nodded, but
got no response, only a quick glance of an inspection, then a clear
view of the balding top of the man’s head as he dropped his gaze
back to whatever book, or paper he’d been studying. The air was
heavy and silent, swallowing the sound of Christopher’s footsteps
easily and completely. The scent of old leather mingled with that
of age-dried ink and polished wood. Christopher knew that scent,
had encountered it in court rooms and the “stacks” at the
University library.

He walked
through the front of the store, which was apparently the only
section dedicated to the modern world, glancing at slick dust
jackets and displays of gold and silver slide bookmarks. There was
a small assortment of carved bookends on a low table to his right,
but he passed them with only half a glance.

Three
broad steps led down to the central reading area, with it’s dark
wood tables and leather-bound chairs. Green-globed reading lamps
illumined each surface, but no one was making use of them. The area
was as deserted as the street beyond the door. Running his finger
tips over one desktop, Christopher hesitated and glanced to the
rear of the store. The shelves were imposing, row after row of
volumes beginning just above the level of the floor and extending
upward into clinging shadows.

The thing
that struck Christopher as most odd was the uniformity of the
spines. The books all appeared the same size, color - and with the
exception of a few that were thicker than those beside it, might
have been endless copies of the same volume. The ends of each row
of shelves were marked by brass plates imprinted with numbers,
glinting in the dim light. There were no words, and with a soft
chuckle, Christopher gave up the urge to try and recall his Dewey
Decimal system from days long passed.

He
stepped up onto the thick carpet and entered the corridor between
the first two sets of shelves. He scanned right to left, top to
bottom. The spines were primarily leather, but he could see, now
that he’d drawn nearer, that his earlier impression had been an
hallucination. Each book was distinct and different, some wildly
so, and he was fascinated by titles and author’s names he’d never
seen before, some almost nonsensical in their odd arrangement of
letters and phonetics. Jarg Blorenson - Pitard Blech. Hardly
Stephen King. Hardly legible, for that matter.

Then his
eye caught an inconsistency, and he stopped. One book had slipped
from between it’s neighbors, leaning out at an angle that should
have dropped it to the floor, but had not. Christopher mused that
it was likely fatter than the bookseller had first believed, and
didn’t fit as well in the shelf as it might. In any case, his
attention focused quickly on the cover.

The book
had no dust jacket. It was bound in leather, and the front cover
was adorned by a paste-down full-color plate. On that plate, a
woman sat, curled in a chair beneath the light of a green-globed
lamp. The woman wore a red velvet dress that draped over her knees
and down toward the floor in front of her. Her features were
half-obscured by the long strands of her dark hair.

Christopher’s heart beat a little more loudly, and for a
second the breath caught in his throat. He slid the book from the
shelf, holding it up so that he could see the illustration on the
cover more easily. It was impossible to be absolutely certain, but
the sensation of deja vu was unmistakable. He flipped the cover
over and held the volume in suddenly sweaty palms.

The title was
New Leather & Old
Brandy
. No author was listed, but there was
a dedication on one of the pages directly following the title
page:

“
For Sylvia.”

Christopher could feel the sweat soaking his hair and sliding
down his forehead. The air grew stuffy and heavy, and it was hard
to breath. He closed the book carefully and turned, retracing his
steps to the stairs and down into the reading area. He glanced over
at the counter, but the old man was paying him no more attention
than before. Uncertain what he expected, he slid into one of the
desks and laid the book beneath the light.

The
frontispiece matched the paste-down on the cover. Christopher no
longer doubted who it was in the illustration. The publisher’s page
was blank, with the exception of a date. 1897. The sweat on his
brow grew chill.

He turned
to the first page, and he began to read.

Malachi walked across the crowded room as if it were a park,
and he the only living soul at the ball. It was his way, to put the
world beneath him, and the world often capitulated, fueling the
fires of his ego. Malachi’s gaze was locked on the form of a woman,
seated in a velvet lined chair by the fire.