A Book Beyond Black

Evening came and went. Darkness fell. As midnight neared, Jared was waiting. Deep down, he knew he was crossing lines, but being stubborn, and way too intrigued, he committed himself to the deed. He downed a shot of liquid courage and looked towards the house across the street. Why were there never any lights on? Too late to ponder now. He was thankful for it tonight. He strode to the end of the drive, heart pumping in a frenzy, and proceeded to sneak to the edge of the yard. Thankfully, the moon was scarcely visible and bordering bushes obscured him.

As he knelt there, he noticed something shiny near his foot. At first, he thought it was broken glass, but, with closer scrutiny, found it to be stone. It glowed with an unnatural light. The way it glowed seemed familiar, and wondered if it could be a piece of the shiny material he had seen embedded in the visitors coming and going. Upon further inspection, he saw pieces lining the edge of the yard as far as he could see. With this discovery, Jared froze with uncertainty. Something truly unnatural was going on and he imagined running far away from all this madness. Subconsciously, his mind was trying desperately to warn him, but he was so close to unveiling the truth and was compulsively engaged. He snatched up the stone, which was remarkably tepid in the chill night, and shoved it in his pocket.

Immediately, he noticed the buzzing sound. It was a low frequency but steady and shrill, and unearthly. It hurt his ears and made chill bumps pop up and spread all over. He felt queasy and disoriented. Suddenly, wanting to be anywhere but where he was, he sprinted over the greenery to the porch. After hurriedly placing the listening device on a flowerpot nearest the door, he turned to dash back to the safety of his own yard, retreating so fast he tripped over something that had not been there before. He glanced down to see a little black notebook. Something was banded to it but indiscernible in the dimness. It was such a plain and random thing to be lying there in the open, he impulsively plucked it up and sprinted back to the house with it.

As plain and simple as it first seemed, it was anything but ordinary. The luxurious binding was soft and plush. It felt warm and soft like skin. Its gilded edges were eccentrically detailed with unrecognizable symbols, and it smelled. Not unpleasant, but alluring and fragrant like it had sat in an old library that burned incense for centuries and all the varied scents had saturated the volume. He tried opening it, but the pages seemed stuck fast and would not open. He stroked the cover and binding. He savored the balmy fragrance. When he finally broke away and glanced at the clock, it was nearly 6am, and the sun was beginning to rise. What the hell was happening? Again, the buzzing sound was building in his ears, and he was aware of its keen displacement of everything else.

Jared was drawn to the previously ignored bundle, wrapped in brown paper. He picked it up, neatly tore the end to peer inside, and was astonished to see a bundle of cash. He ripped it open the rest of the way and was thoroughly stunned to find $20,000! He was surprised, but not nearly as elated as he imagined someone who just happened upon twenty grand. Somehow, he felt repulsed and completely unnerved. He tediously placed the book and money on the coffee table and made his way to the kitchen. He was parched. After gulping down two glasses of water, he contemplated the peculiar series of events. He couldn’t wrap his brain around it all. A strange book, a lump of cash, glowing implants, and a parade of creepy folks, which were the only visitors Jared could recall the neighbors ever having.

He remembered the first time he noticed. He was mowing when an elderly woman sped up, almost running through the side of the neighbors’ house. She hobbled out of the car, to the door, and knocked harshly, chattering incessantly. After being inside a few minutes, she returned to her car, backed up over a flower patch, and went to leave. As she drove past, she turned to look at Jared. Her eyes were funny for a moment like they were too big for her face, and something seemed to be shining between her eyes, but when he blinked to look again, she was already gone.

The next weekend, he recalled, another lady raced up. As she went for the door. she suddenly stopped and looked directly at Jared. How she had seen him, he didn’t known because he was hidden by the railing on the porch, but she certainly did, and stood for an uncomfortable period staring. Her eyes also seemed screwy, like they weren’t staying in the same place. She also had a glowing object between them. She made her way inside, and after only few minutes, came back out, and went for the van. She turned again towards Jared and made an odd chatter. He still could not shake the creepy feeling it gave him.

Of course, there was no forgetting the guys who showed last weekend. Something about them was odd too, other than the similar candescent protrusions. Their heads bobbed around in jerky movements in contradiction to the smoothness the rest of their bodies conveyed. Their words should have been legible, considering they were upset and loud, but Jared wasn’t able to construe a single sentence. One of the guys was invited inside and reappeared shortly, spotting Jared promptly coming from the house and without any gestures whatsoever, the rest of the group turned his direction in unison. It deeply disturbed Jared. He felt like he should hide somewhere but they held him with shifty stares, eyes dark and big, with shiny nodes in between. Eventually, the guy rejoined his comrades, and they left without hesitation. He hadn’t been able to look but felt the kooky eyes on him as they went by, standing his hair on end.

Jared snapped out of his recollection as the memory made his hair stand on end all over again. He stood gasping with shaky uneasiness trying to make sense of it all when he remembered the stone. He dug it out from his pocket and gazed at it lying on his palm. Its surface rippled with movement and shined brightly in the dim light. It made him dizzy to look at it. He laid it with the book and money and feeling exhausted meandered outside to curl up in his favorite hammock. The sun was rising, tinting the sky pastel. Any other day, Jared would have thought it lovely, but today, it seemed sinister. Something was coming with that rising sun and there was nothing he could do to stop it. It wasn’t the money either. He could give back the $20,000, but somehow it seemed irrelevant.

As he sat idly swinging, the buzzing in his head was relentless, causing him to feel confused and weak. Today is the day, he thought. Whether he was prepared or not, what was going on would become apparent, once and for all. He was one hundred percent positive he did not want to know anymore but somehow felt inexplicably involved. He worried obsessively until he drifted off to sleep.

When he woke, he was acutely aware of the buzzing sound. For just a moment, the buzzing seemed like voices. He jumped up and felt something drop. He was surprised to see the stone and the book lying at his feet. Hadn’t he laid those down before going to sleep? He picked them up, entered the living room, and laid them back on the table. The book was so black it seemed to suck the light out of the room. Avoiding them, he powered up the tv to see what he could see or hear with the newly installed surveillance equipment. He was relieved that he could continue to spy relatively unnoticed.

To his shock, the neighbors were standing at the edge of the yard, looking his way. No, not looking his way. Staring at him with horrible eyes that shifted and gleamed. Through the walls, through the equipment, they were perfectly still, staring at him. It spooked Jared so much, he dropped the remote, and grabbed the phone to call for help. It was dead. He knew at that moment, something terrible was going to happen. He stood paralyzed with fear as he saw the book moving slightly and the stone shining intensely. The agonizing buzzing sent waves of nausea through him. He looked again at the TV to see the neighbors, or whatever they were, still staring at him. Now, they had raised grotesque long fingers and were pointing at him too.

As he watched in horror, they opened their mouths and emitted a black fog that grew and twisted and morphed with a life of its own. The buzzing was so loud that Jared tried plugging his ears but pulled away in surprise at the wetness he found there. Looking at his hands, he was hysterical to see blood on fingers way longer than they should be. The piercing buzzing made Jared feel as though his brain was melting. He tried to yell for help but knew no one could help him now. What came out was a high-pitched chatter. He cast a wary glance to the wall mirror to see hideous eyes, huge and black gazing back. The things across the street still stared and pointed at him through the TV, though barely visible through the dense blackness that had covered the yard and presumably the entire house.

Abruptly, the luminous stone slammed into and penetrated the skin between his eyes. In a frenzy, Jared tried unsuccessfully to dig it out. The black book sped across the room and crashed into the door beside him. When it fell open on the floor, images of people that weren’t people anymore, were drawn on the pages, also staring and pointing at him. The whole world turned chaotic. He bent and flipped through the pages frantically. He recognized some of them from the scenes he had witnessed himself. The elderly woman, the lady in the minivan, and even the group of guys he had seen, were all drawn there. Mouths were opening, and black fog came from them too, filling the room. It was alive and formed around Jared, entering his ears, up his nose, and into his mouth. The buzzing became slow and comprehensible . Its crescendo screamed a single word- “HELP!”.

He dropped the book in panic and as it landed, it turned a new page where the faint outline of another was forming. In absolute terror, he saw his own face become distinct. His eyes became blurry, and as Jared rubbed them, noticed they were weeping blackness. He hysterically tried to wipe them clear. When he could faintly see again, Jared watched in terror as a fiend of a creature, with his face, reclaim the money. With a contemptuous smirk, it placed the cash into an ornemental box the black fog was swirling around and disappearing into.

When the fog had all vanished inside, the miscreant reached for Jared. With monstrous fingers, it dug the stone from Jared and placed it in the same place upon his own flesh, where it fiercely pulsated. It bore his black eyes down into Jared’s soul, igniting fear that would never be extinguished. Fearfully, he realized that he no longer was in the living room but looking up from inside the book. It retrieved the book from the place it had fallen. The thing hideously laughed while closing the book, and Jared’s world went black with nothing but screams of the condemned for company forevermore.