The Book: Chapter 32

Alice and Mick sat at the dining table, still cluttered with cereal bowls from breakfast, but neither of them cared. The table, usually reserved for Christmas dinners and drunken reunions with her old uni-quacks, was a war room. Papers and books sprawled across it, with more piled up on the floor.

With the stacks and crumpled notes between them, the ambient dining room light cast skullcap shadows across their exhausted faces. They’d spent hours researching cursed books, haunted manuscripts, forbidden tomes—anything that could give them a lead. But nothing had come close to explaining their book. Mick said it was theirs now, a joint problem, but Alice and the book knew the truth.

Every legend they read about ended the same way: Divorced, Beheaded, Died,

Divorced, Beheaded, Survived. Or in this case, burned, buried, or lost to time. But their cursed book was different to anything they found in any archives.

For two days they’d discovered nothing of value but knew more urban myth and folklore bumph than they’d ever need. Alice had even tried confiding in Mara again, hoping she’d listen now that Alice wasn’t in this alone. But Mara brushed her off, claiming Alice was under too much stress. ‘You’re making yourself ill again. We can’t keep covering for you. You’re too close to this.’

Too bloody close? The damn thing was rewriting her life every day.

Alice’s work suffered as she locked herself away in her office, obsessively researching when she should have been on the unit. She knew the staff covered for her to keep Calvert at bay and was grateful. But she couldn’t stop. They were all talking about her again. It couldn’t go on.  

However, on the morning of day three, they had a breakthrough. Via newspaper reports, reviewing research documents, and then talking to some of the people involved, Mick had unearthed several confirmed sightings of a mysterious green book. The incidents and strange occurrences surrounding it were too familiar. It had to be theirs. 

They were euphoric and light-headed from excitement, but the reports only covered forty years with nothing before the early sixties. Then, after the mid-nineties, the trail went cold. They tried every resource available, but all traces of the book vanished after 1997.

They sifted through pages of printouts and yellowed newspaper clippings. Between work shifts, three days of digging obscure archives, and a well-placed favour from a librarian contact of Alice’s, they unearthed something tangible suggesting the book’s reach extended beyond their personal nightmare.

Alice adjusted her reading glasses, holding up an article from a Connecticut newspaper dated October 1967. The headline read:

Demon Book Stolen from Paranormal Investigators – Occult Artifact or Elaborate Hoax?

She read aloud:

‘Here we go. “Renowned demonologists and paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren have claimed a rare and dangerous occult book has been stolen from their collection. The book, described as a self-writing grimoire with no discernible origin, was reportedly taken after the Warrens had removed it from a home in Amherst, Massachusetts, where it was allegedly responsible for a string of disturbing events. Witnesses from the time claim that this book could change its contents at will, predicting misfortunes for those reading it.” Bingo. This is it.’ Alice said. She lifted her head to wipe stray hair away from her face.

‘Jesus Christ.’ Mick slammed his hand on the table, sending Erik scuttling for cover. ‘That’s it. That’s bloody it.’

‘Wait until you hear what this warren bloke had to say about it,’ Alice said. She carried on reading. “We secured the artefact to protect the family from further harm,” Ed Warren stated. “But it’s out in the world again, and someone else will fall victim. While sceptics dismissed the claims as a publicity stunt, rumours persisted that the book had been sold to a wealthy private collector in Saudi Arabia for an undisclosed sum. However, the Warrens maintain it was stolen, and they refused to disclose how it came into their possession.” Alice put the paper aside while Mick took it in.

He rubbed his temple. ‘It vanished from the Warrens in ‘67, supposedly ends up in Saudi Arabia, and then—what? Finds its way back to The States? How does it end up here?’

Alice tapped the table. ‘Or it never left them. What if the Saudi buyer was a lie? That means it ended up with a somebody else willing to risk keeping it. There’s plenty of whacked-out sickos about.’

‘So why the hell can’t we find one to take it on?’

Alice laughed and squeezed his hand, ready to delve into the next case in date order. Not that they had much more to go on. She shuffled through another pile of documents before pulling out a printed forum post from an early paranormal message board dated 15 April 1996. It was a long thread, but one comment stood out:

‘“Re: The Kendal College Deaths – Anyone Heard of a Cursed Book?”‘ she read. This is the next time the book shows up. And somebody replied to the post. Look.’

She read out the report, her voice rising in excitement. ‘It’s not only more recent, but also in England, and not twenty miles from where we’re bloody sitting. Now tell me it’s just a coincidence. So this one’s from a grown-arsed man who was a college kid back in the day. He says, “This might sound insane, but I swear I saw it. When I was at Kendal College in the early 90s, a rumour went around about a book that could predict how you were going to die. It would write names in the margins, like little notes to itself. We thought it was a prank, like those old chain letters, but people started freaking out. A girl in my year read something in the book and wouldn’t stop crying. A week later, she stepped in front of a train. Another guy refused to look at it, but it didn’t matter—he went missing in the Lakes and was never found.”’ Alice stopped reading to draw breath. ‘This is insane,’ she said.

‘Is that it?’

‘No, he carries on. “The book just disappeared after that. Some reckon the professors locked it in the college attic. But things like that don’t go away.” That’s the end of his story. It just stops there.’ Alice put the page down. ‘Kendal College is practically next door. Where’s it been for the last thirty years?’

 Mick let out a low whistle. ‘In the attic, apparently. And no sign of it since?’

‘Not that I’ve found.’

They stared at the documents and the horror of history stole the air from the room. The book wasn’t just their problem—it had haunted others.

Alice was on her first night shift later, and they’d been researching since eight that morning. They needed a break. She’d gone to make lunch, determined to ignore the book, but like a toxic ex sliding into her DMs, it was always there, lurking. She tried to resist, but its call was too strong. She was a literary bulimic, stuffing her brain with its poisonous prose while she stirred the sauce, then trying to purge the vile mockery from her brain after she slammed the cover shut.

The book didn’t always go for her jugular—sometimes, it played nice, spinning its tales without dragging her through the mud. But when it did come for her, it never held back. There was no butter knife jabbing—just straight-up machete swings.

She was reading its usual dross about how stupid and incompetent she was when she stumbled across the riddle as the spaghetti hit the al dente stage. Without thinking, she screamed like a banshee.

‘Mick. Come here. Quick.’

He ran in, fearing the worst and expecting to see Alice with third-degree burns or her head stoved in from some new madness. 

But minutes later, they were back at the table, hunched over the book, as they tried to untangle its cryptic clues—supernatural torment took priority over lunch and the spaghetti slumped, abandoned and congealed in the bowls beside them. The riddle taunted them with garbled words that didn’t even rhyme.

They sat in front of Alice’s laptop, where she’d typed out the riddle for clarity and had it on the screen.

‘In the city where liturgy turns into screams.

Where mercy is madness, they first whisper my name,’ Alice read.

Mick tapped his fingers on the table. ‘It sounds like somewhere with a religious history. Mecca maybe, Lourdes?’

‘You think?’ Alice asked. ‘Prayers, mercy, screams,’ her mind went straight to her job and the medical field. ‘It could be a hospital, or a monastery that went bad. One of the Irish mother and baby homes in Ireland, perhaps. Remember the film, Philomena?’ 

 ‘What about old churches that became hospitals? Or mental institutions?’ Mick read some more. ‘The crazed scribbled warnings set free in the darkness. Inked in blood and nameless fear. They beg, but nobody listens.’

‘It’s a long shot. You know how this thing plays with us,’ Alice said.

‘Have you got anything better?’ Mick smiled at her, scrolling through historical sites. They turned up nothing of any use. ‘The asylums of the 20th century were often still places of horror and brutality with people living in terrible conditions.’ There were endless supplies of information, but nothing about a mysterious book. He went back to the riddle to read it again from the book. He couldn’t believe his eyes when a single new word appeared in the margin. He saw it writing itself. The ink was still wet and had blotted the opposite page. But the addition was legible and it read Bedlam.

It took them hours to cross-reference old records. ‘It says here that Bedlam often outsourced to other places of hell when overcrowding reached its peak,’ Alice said. They scoured historical archives, adding and eliminating until one name stood out: St. Mary of Bethlehem Priory.

Alice stared as two new words appeared on the page. ‘Bethlehem...Bedlam.’

Mick gave a whoop and Erik eyed him suspiciously. ‘That brings us back to the original infamous mental hospital. But wasn’t it knocked down?’

‘They moved it a few times. The original site was in London’s Bishopsgate. But it started life as a religious institution before it became an asylum. Can you imagine the book in a place like that?’

‘It’s probably a red herring,’ Mick said.

‘Probably.’

He leaned in close and two high points of colour formed on his cheeks. ‘So do we go?’

Alice stroked his face. Every time they got closer to the truth the book twisted like a serpent.

‘We go.’

‘We’ll set off early tomorrow when you’re off work. It’s a six-hour drive.’

‘No. We’re going now.’ Alice had already stood up and was throwing the book into her bag.

‘We can’t shoot off to London fuelled on caffeine and terror. What about your shift tonight?’

‘Stuff work. This is more important.’

‘You’ve changed.’

‘For the better?’

Mick scrunched his nose up and pulled a face. ‘Hmm, the jury’s out.’

‘Let me know when they’ve reached a verdict.’

 

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