The Black Notebook

Wearily he looked up at the clock. It was barely mid afternoon and the day seemed to stretch endlessly before him. He wished Miriam were home. Unfortunately she was travelling; visiting her parents out of state.

He sighed and regretfully tried to turn his attention back to his studies but a ringing at the door interrupted him.

He was surprised to see a delivery man. He knew for a fact that they hadn’t ordered anything, money was especially tight those days. The man at the door offered little by way of explanation, merely confirming his name and shoving the package into his hands before striding moodily away. It seemed a strange interaction, but by the time the door was closed he'd almost forgotten about. There was something about the package in his hands that felt...odd; almost powerful. He tried to brush the feeling aside, but his hands trembled slightly as he fumbled with the tape wrapping the cardboard box. Warily he pulled open the lid and saw... a simple black notebook.

"Well that's a let down," he mumbled. At any rate, he supposed it would come in handy for studying, you could never have too many notebooks. As he lifted it from its box however, a sheet of loose paper fell to the floor. For a moment he hesitated, grappling with a strange fear, but his logical mind prevailed. “You’re being ridiculous,” he chided himself.

He lifted the letter from the floor and read what it wrote. It was surprising. He had an aunt...that is, he used to have an aunt. She was dead now, apparently.

In her letter his aunt explained very little, except that she was afraid that she would be murdered. Her letter read like the paranoid ramblings of a maniac. He wondered if she'd developed dementia in her final days and this was a product of that. It would certainly explain the last bit... the part about the notebook. “Dangerous,” she’d called it, and “Powerful.” She even claimed that it granted wishes, but badly like a malevolent genie. “There are four pages left and they must be used,” she’d written, “but if used wrongly they will bring despair.”

He laughed out loud in the empty room. The whole thing read like a fairytale. Besides, all the nonsense about powers aside, the book in his hand was a whole notebook. There were way more than four pages. Still laughing he opened it to look, and the smile slowly melted from his face.

It made no sense, when the book was closed it seemed whole and full, but once opened it was nearly empty...except for those four blank pages. It didn’t even look like any others had been torn out. To all appearances it had been made with only four pages. It was...odd.

He laughed again, but this time there was uncertainty in the sound. He tried to reason with himself, but he wondered, deep at the back of his mind, what if his aunt was right? There was no way... right?, and yet, still he wondered.

“It’s impossible,” he decided... “but if it’s impossible then there’s nothing to lose by trying it...” He felt foolish, but nobody was there to see. Warily he took a pen from the table and held it over the first page, thinking carefully. His aunt had advised caution and warned against greed, so he thought he should start with something for her. Slowly he lowered the pen and wrote the following words, “If my aunt has been murdered, let her be avenged.” Then he gasped as the page seemed to melt away and vanish. He looked around to see if it had fallen like the letter, but it was gone. Now it was as if the notebook had only ever been made with three pages. It was incredible! Of course that didn’t mean it had worked...so he decided to try something a little more tangible; Nothing too greedy of course, just enough to be a help.

He thought for a moment, then settled on twenty. Twenty-thousand dollars would be enough. It would just cover his and Miriam’s college bills for the year. It wouldn’t even take them too far ahead, it would just be a help. He took a deep breath and wrote, “Let twenty-thousand dollars be delivered right to my door.” Like before, the page melted and vanished, but nothing else happened. He waited, his eyes glancing towards the door and his ears perked for the sound of an approaching delivery man, but none came. After an hour of waiting he began to feel foolish.

He stood abruptly to his feet and tossed the notebook into the fireplace. He’d been right the first time, his aunt was just an old lady with dementia. With a deep sigh he went back to his studying, but he had hardly sat down when the doorbell rang.

His breath caught in his throat, and he stood with a hammering heart. Was it possible? Visions of ways to spend those last two wishes flashed through his mind. If it was real, he could take Miriam and they could go anywhere, do anything. He threw the door open with a wide grin... and then his heart seemed to stop entirely.

It wasn’t a delivery man at the door... it was the police, and a strange suited man beside them. The policemen spoke first, and while his world crumbled around him, they told him of the accident. “She must have tired,” they said, “it looked like she fell asleep at the wheel.” They said more things, kind things, helpful things probably, but he didn’t hear them.

It felt as though an ocean was roaring inside his head, violent waters rushing past his ears, and the world seemed to dim. The policemen helped him back to the table and to the chair. They said more things that he didn’t hear, and then they were gone and he was alone. All thoughts of the notebook and his aunt and his job and everything else had been pushed from his mind. He sat like a stone, stunned beyond grief... until a quiet cough startled him.

He wasn’t alone after all. The suited man had stayed behind. The stranger’s eyes were full of sympathy, and he handed a blank white envelope over to him. “Life insurance.” He explained simply, then the suited stranger rose and left him to his grief.

He sat for a while, still frozen by shock, but then a horrible thought struck him suddenly, and he tore the envelope open. They were lower class college students... in the eyes of the world their lives weren’t worth much. In fact, according to the paper in his hand, Miriam’s life was worth exactly twenty-thousand dollars...twenty thousand dollars...

Guilt and grief and despair rose up over him but they quickly gave way to anger. He turned to the fireplace... and saw the book lying unharmed in the midst of the flames. He lifted it out of the fire and it was cool to the touch, it didn’t even smell of smoke. He tried again to destroy it, but nothing worked. It was indestructible, and he could feel strongly now, it was evil too. For a moment he’d considered using it to bring Miriam back, but he’d dismissed the idea. Once he’d read a story about a talisman like the notebook... except it was an animal’s paw. They had tried to bring their dead back to life too, and it had been the stuff of nightmares. No. Miriam was gone and he would grieve later, but for now, he had to figure out how to destroy the book, and for that he needed help.

He left his apartment hurriedly, the book tucked under his jacket, and he ran... to the parking garage where the ambulances were kept. He had a friend who was an EMT, and that was in every sense of the word. He’d learned long ago that try though you might, you’d never find anyone more callous, more skeptical, more reckless, more illogical, more apt to joke about the worst of things, or more genuinely caring, than an EMT. In a nutshell, they were all insane, and he needed a little insanity right now.

He found her cleaning her ambulance in the wash bay and she listened with raised eyebrows to his story. She was skeptical as always, but he knew she would listen. Wordlessly she took the book and studied it, flipping to the end and reading what appeared to be the back cover. “Did you write these?” she asked. With a sense of dread he took it and read what was there.

It was the answer to the wishes. Recorded for all time. From the first page to the one he’d written on that morning. He read of wealth granted and the cost it extracted. He read of his aunt’s murder. He read of the sudden suicide of the one who’d inherited his aunt’s house... that following his own wish for avengement. Finally he read through tears of the answer to his last wish... and his sweet Miriam’s demise.

His EMT friend observed him shrewdly. She drew a sharpie from her pocket and held out her hands for the book. “So we’ve got to get rid of it.” She mused. She smirked, “Well it’s been a slow day, fighting to outsmart a demon wish granting book could be interesting at least.”

Before he could warn against it she opened the book and wrote in bold letters on the second to last page. To his surprise both pages disappeared... and then the book began to melt too. “You did it!” He exclaimed in delighted surprise, but despite her prevailing smirk, his friend’s eyes looked grim. “Hang on,” she muttered.

The book melted but it didn't vanish, it morphed until it was a screaming writhing creature and it flew at the unflinching EMT with gleaming claws and teeth outstretched. Then it stopped inches away from her face. She stared at it blankly, then spoke, and derision dripped from her voice. “I dealt with crazier patients than you before breakfast this morning,” she goaded, proudly showing off a tear in the side of her uniform, “one of them tried to stab me with a pen and he was screaming way louder than you. I’ve never been afraid of them and I’m not afraid of you,” her voice was becoming stronger, powerful. “Get out and dissolve!,” she demanded, “You’ve got no place here and you’ve got no hold on me! I’m protected and you know it, now go!”

The demon dissolved with a shriek and the room fell empty and silent. Whistling, the girl turned back to cleaning the truck, and her friend was left staring at her open mouthed. “Umm...,” he started, but she cut him off. “Yeah, demons can’t hurt me. I’m covered.” She said shortly.

“Oh...uh... ok... but what did you write?,” he managed to whisper.

She turned and smiled at him. “I told him to come out and face me.” She said, as easily as though she’d challenged the school bully to a game match. “He’s gone now and won’t bother you.” Her eyes turned sad, “I'm sorry about Miriam,” she said, with a rare burst of sincerity.

Then, he left. He went back and mourned the loss of his love, and he spent the cursed gift he’d received from the notebook on her funeral. His heart ached with loss and his head ached with bewilderment from the whirlwind of the past day. He buried his sweet Miriam and he went home; a sadder and a much more confused man.