The Book: Chapter 12

Alice sat in her cosy reading nook trying to take her mind off her problems with Mick and the fallout from work. The board had expressed concerns about her mental health, even threatening to take her off the rota and she’d agreed to take a few days off to get her head straight. This was her special place in the conservatory, where calm wrapped around her like a favourite jumper. Her recliner sofa was in the corner with a radiator on both walls to either side of her and a velvet throw, though she hardly needed them on a warm July evening. Overlooking her secluded garden it was, as the name suggested, cosy. The ambient lighting from the lamps cast shadows around the glass, but those shadows were friends, they came to watch over her.

The book was open on her lap, its pages whispering secrets as she turned them, reading fast. She had it with her almost all the time now and resented every moment she had to leave it, even for her rounds at work. She hated being separated from it.

  She turned a page and the atmosphere changed. Her cosy place morphed into a manifestation of ill-doing. New shadows slithered in, devouring the friendly ones, parasites invading a host. She felt these aggressors were the book’s minions sent to spy on her. The story had changed, too. Every time she read the book it was different.

The house should have been safe, but in an instant, it was suffocating. Her pulse hammered in her throat as the words burrowed into her mind, barbed and inescapable, like a thousand fishing hooks.

The story was a mirror, grotesquely reflecting her past. A mother character in the book had wasted away from amyloidosis. Alice gasped. She slammed the book shut with hot tears blurring her vision.

The book opened again of its own accord, to the same page and she stared at it, horrified, but compelled to read on. She had no choice, and walking away wasn’t an option. Her will wasn’t her own.

She took in the horror of the character’s relentless swollen limbs and failing organs. The doctors didn’t put the pieces together until it was too late. Just like they were too late with Alice’s mum. Every agonising detail fell from the page. She read about the pain in the woman’s legs, the slow starvation as her body betrayed her—until, painfully, helplessly, her organs shut down. And she saw ugly words written about the daughter. It said she was useless. The book didn’t pull any punches or candy-coat the reality. I was an evil little cow, it wrote. I let my mother down. The daughter in the story acted out and skipped school to drink and smoke in the park. She stopped visiting her mother. And in the end, I just wanted the bitch to die, so that I didn’t have to see her wasting away. That wasn’t my mother, it was a hideous thing that had taken her place. I couldn’t stand my guilt.

And when the girl was forced to visit, she’d sat helplessly beside the bed, unable to stop it happening. And she’d looked away, playing Bejeweled on her Nokia 3310 so she didn’t have to talk to the stranger beside her. The girl in the book wasn’t there when her mother died with her loved ones gathered around her. They’d tried to find her when the time came, but she was full of Thunderbird cider and puking in a bush at that moment—so was Alice.

 The book wrote about her mother’s death, and Alice’s abandonment while their precious time slipped away. It was an autopsy, cutting through her with a scalpel and peeling back the layers of shame she’d buried. It described the rasp of her mother’s last breath. The book knew how to hurt her with every grotesque word. She screamed, ‘You don’t understand.’ But it understood perfectly and threw her neglect back in her face. Her father said he understood, but the book saw the truth and the way his gaze shifted away from her, ashamed to meet her eyes. It saw her father’s disappointment in her. It was a thorned stick to beat her with.

The mother died without her daughter present, but this was the first time she’d realised it wasn’t as peaceful as her father said. The book had told everything right as it was up to now, why lie about the final scene? The mother in the book died choking, clawing at the bedsheets. Her eyes had misted over, glassy with terror, and Alice saw her own mother in the clawed hands. In its version, the daughter wasn’t there to say goodbye.

Neither was Alice.

Despite her suffering, Alice’s mother had made her a video every day from her hospital bed. If Alice had been there, she could have told her what she wanted to say, and they could have cried together. The lady in the book was called Frances—because the book could never have written Vivien, Alice’s mother. She was the kindest soul to walk this earth. An insidious entity with venom for a tongue could never have done her perfect mother justice. Alice never watched the videos and they sat in a box in the attic. Her pain was too great.

She slammed the book shut, her breath coming fast, and this time it stayed closed.

‘You bastard. You twisted, vile thing.’  She threw it across the room. It bounced off the window and landed back on the recliner like a cat refusing to move. The smug bastard.

She wanted to rip the pages out and set them alight one at a time. But the book had other ideas.

The Law of Conversion of Momentum dictated that it should have landed on the floor. Fear palsied her fingers as she touched it as little as possible but pressed the cover closed. Something one of her patients said echoed in her mind. When she’d mentioned getting rid of the book Eddie had replied with. ‘It won’t let you.’

She heard a creak in the kitchen. Fear controlled her and she let out a small cry as she heard somebody—or something—coming for her. Someone was in the house. And she didn’t know if it had a face.

But it was just Mick. The steady reality of him interrupted the madness.

But Mick was in hospital.

He stepped into the warm light, rubbing a hand through his messy hair. He was tired, too. His face, drawn exhaustion, dulled his usual warmth. They hadn’t been getting on well—not great at all. There was a lack of patience about him she’d never seen before. ‘I’ve had the day from hell,’ he said before she could speak. ‘The bloody van broke down, and I had to cancel three fittings this afternoon.’

‘Oh, love,’ she said, upset for him. And then realised his plaster cast was gone and he was walking around as if nothing had happened. 

‘I’ve spent hours on the phone, trying to find a garage that won’t fleece me.’ He looked defeated. ‘With Furness Flooring, opening in opposition, I’ve had to slash my prices to the bone, and now this.’

What the hell was happening? She covered up her confusion and adapted to this new reality. She felt as though she was dreaming. Which scenario was real? Mick after the accident, lying in hospital after an operation—or this one where it never happened? Her paranoia ran rings around her head. She couldn’t let him know that everything was so confusing. They already thought she was mad. She had to act normal. From now on, whatever happened, she had to pretend to be as sane as everybody around her. She flattened her features and went along with the conversation while she tried to think. It was so stupidly normal that it felt bizarre. She wanted to tell him about the book but had the grace to realise that his need to vent was immediate, and she had to wait her turn like a child in the lunch queue.

‘This could put me out of business after the floods in March ruined most of my stock,’ he said.  

Her brain worked faster than her mouth. ‘I’m sorry, honey. Is there anything I can do?’

‘You can put the kettle on if you like.’

Alice bristled. He might as well have told her to lobotomise herself with a wooden spoon. She pressed the button to take her recliner down and felt her temper rise with his next words as he said, ‘And give me a break from that book tonight, will you love? My head’s banging.’

 But Alice couldn’t let it go. He’d broken his leg the day before. In another place and time, he was still in the hospital eating grapes while she was taking a relaxing five minutes to herself.

‘You have to see this.’

‘I said no. Not again.’

He watched her fumble through the pages, his face hardening, and she saw him brace for a familiar argument. ‘I’m going for a shower.’ She’d never seen disgust on his face when he looked at her before. She felt like a beggar, scrambling through crumbs on her knees, hands out for a few minutes of his time.

‘Wait.’ She grabbed his wrist before he could walk away. ‘Look at this. And what about your accident?’

‘What accident, Alice? I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ Too tired to argue with her, he dropped onto the couch and looked at the book, rubbing his face in frustration. ‘Alice, I swear, I’ve just about had enough.’

‘Just read it.’ She shoved the book into his hands. ‘It’s about my mum. When she died. It’s all written down. Just as it happened—word for word.’

Silence stretched between them as his eyes scanned the text. Then, with a frown, he flipped back a page. And then another. He looked at her and two expressions battled for supremacy on his face—anger and worry. The worry won. ‘This seems to be a story about somebody dying of cancer.’

“No, it’s amyloidosis. She snatched the book back, flipping through it. But the words were different. The story had changed again. It was a fictional generic tragedy. It was the memoir of a woman suffering from cancer and a devoted teenage daughter who never left her side.

She stared at it, bile rising in her throat. She needed to throw up but choked back the vomit to defend herself. ‘It was here, Mick. Everything. Every horrible detail.’

Mick looked at her with pity and she wanted to claw the expression from his face. Pity was for the broken. And she wasn’t that. ‘Don’t look at me like that. It was there.’

‘Maybe you misread it.’ He was being kind, giving her an out—but there was no escape route to take. She shook her head and felt the first tear fall.

‘You’ve been obsessing over this for days. You’re scaring me.’

‘It’s real.’

‘You need to get help, love. This isn’t rational behaviour. You must see that. Can you talk to Calvert again? Arrange something?’

The worst part wasn’t his words. It was the rotten horror that he might be right. ‘Why won’t you believe me?’ She screamed it at him and regretted it. Throwing tantrums wasn’t going to convince him of her sanity.

His voice was tight. ‘I’m sorry. I get that something’s going on with you, but I haven’t got time for this.’

She was losing her mind, and Mick was acting as if she’d asked him to rearrange the loft. Was she? Losing her mind? She flinched. Mick was never sharp with her. He was the laid-back one. But she could see he was biting back more harsh words, and he looked at her as if she was a stranger. ‘Honey, I’ve got real problems to deal with. Don’t you get it? My van’s knackered, and I can’t work if I can’t fix it. I want to help you but I don’t know where to start.

‘Am I ill, Mick?’

‘Something’s not right, love. You need to make an appointment to see somebody.’

‘I can’t lose my job. It’s my world.’

He looked hurt but didn’t react as she realised what she’d said.

‘I’ll be with you all the way. I’ll come with you and we’ll get you proper help. But honestly?’ He looked up and met her brown eyes filled with spilling tears, ‘I’m just a carpet fitter, darling. I don’t know what you need. I don’t think you should be looking after your patients at the moment that’s for sure. I’m here for you.’

She opened her mouth to protest, but he kissed the top of her head and was already walking away, muttering under his breath as he dug his phone out of his pocket to call another garage.

Alice sat frozen, a marionette in a theatre of the absurd. The book was still open in her lap. She wanted to scream. Cry. Burn the sodding thing. What just happened? Nothing made sense.

A few minutes later she heard water running in the bathroom.

She went to the bottom of the stairs to listen. She’d take him that cup of tea up and apologise.

As she listened, the water shut off. The house was completely silent. Like a switch being flicked, calmness covered her like a throw blanket. She was alone in the house. She remembered that Mick was still in hospital. He’d had an operation and wouldn’t be home for a couple more days. This was better than him being under her feet. It was okay, she could spend the whole afternoon reading. The previous ten minutes felt real, she wasn’t dreaming. Mick had been in the house. Hadn’t he? She shook her head. It was all good.

She was glad Mick was out of the way. She didn’t have to put their dinner on like most days when he was around, she went back to her nook and turned the page. Because despite everything, Mick, the fear, her sanity—she couldn’t stop reading. The book wouldn’t let her. But that was okay. It was a real page-turner.

She turned the page—smiling.

Katherine Black Amazon Page. 17 books to choose from: all on KU.

 

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