Don't Touch The Book

“Don’t touch the book.”

These words wrung through my skull over and over as I sat in the aftermath of what it had done.

Let me start at the beginning. My husband and I had spent six years of our lives, scrimping and saving every penny we could to save up for a home outside of the humdrum, lifelessness of the city. Now, the city is not so bad a place, but the city was not preferable for backwoods type kids.

Luc and I thoroughly enjoyed being outdoors, but our IT professions brought us to the city setting where most big business hubs preside. So we sucked it up and moved to the area that would benefit us the most while we climbed the corporate ladder. While we still had weekends for activities, that too was encroached on by our domestic responsibilities, i.e. cleaning the apartment, and running errands.

Also, we, like so many others, had debts to pay. One does not go to college anymore without selling their soul, and we were fortunate that only parts of our beings had been on the collegiate chopping block. Even more privileged, we were both in a focus that tends to pay better when entering the corporate world and lends towards being able to work entirely from home which was now the position we found ourselves. As much as I might complain, we were happy with what our lives were and the goal we had set ourselves; the goal to own our own “green patch of country heaven” as we were oft to refer to it and fortunate enough to have a clear enough path to make that happen.

Now, this might seem inconsequential to my tale, but one thing to keep in mind, “Enough is never enough.” We always had enough.

Bearing that in mind, I digress.

Soon, Luc and I were able to save up enough to be able to move away from the city. We even found the perfect location of an acre and a half at the perfect amount of distance to drive in to work when necessary, but far enough away to make everyone avoid asking.

The property was edged on all sides by woods and old abandoned pastures, which afforded us the opportunity to explore and room to grow. It also boasted a modest three bedroom, two bathroom home that, while it needed updating, as it was built in the early 1900’s, we saw potential, and the life we had been working towards.

Signing day came and went, and move in day followed shortly after. The former owner had given us most of the keys to the property already, but there had been a few spare copies floating about, which he offered to round up before he moved the rest of his things out. So on the bright, dewy morning of our move in day, we watched his old pick-up amble up the drive to meet us at the front gate.

The older gentleman, time and sun worn, stepped out of the truck to meet us. He handed Luc the last of the keys, and with a bit of a frown looked at the house one last time and then turned back to us.

“Don’t touch the book.” His raspy words tumbled from his mouth, confusingly sending a shiver up my spine, and noticeably setting Luc on edge.

We stood there for a moment dumbfounded at this bizarre warning as he stepped back into his truck and quickly drove away, neither one of us wanting to ask for clarification.

Wanting to toss off the ominous blanket that had fallen over the two of us, I elbowed Luc in the ribs before taking off running up the drive. “Race you to the door,” I called over my shoulder as he doubled over from my jab.

We spent that whole day unloading the contents of our lives from the moving van, then the next few days unpacking the obscene number of boxes. Everything soon had a home, except for our belongings that should occupy the kitchen. Luc and I had such a small apartment; most of our kitchen things were in storage at one of our parent’s homes, and we had procrastinated on this particular room long enough to have several days’ worth of take out piling up in the fridge.

The next morning, we began the daunting challenge of unloading the last towers of boxes. We worked fairly quickly for a couple hours until Luc decided he needed an exploration break and offered me the chance to go out to one of the old pastures with him. Stubbornly, I refused as I just wanted to plow through the rest of the unpacking. He shrugged and ran out the back door, yelling behind himself that he would only be about ten minutes or so.

I sighed, frustrated with the amount still left and grabbed the tray of utensils we had seen fit to wrap in oodles of plastic. I cautiously, at first, unwound the tray from its sticky captor, but then grew impatient as the saran wrap refused to release. I struggled to free the tray and decided one final yank should do it. Not only did my yank free the tray from the wrap, but the utensils from the tray as well, and sent them skittering in all directions across the dingy, laminate floor.

I quickly grabbed up the majority of the pieces, save a few that had slid underneath the old cabinets. I dropped to my knees to begrudgingly slide my hand along the floor, praying that nothing would touch me in return. As I reached the end of the length I had been searching, having successfully grabbed a few strays, the back of my hand bushed against something taped to the underside of the cabinet. Cautiously, I pulled it loose, the yellowing tape giving way easily and revealing a small black notebook. It was worn and the pages were tattered and yellowing along with the tape remains on its cover, and the elastic band meant to hold it tightly bound was stretching loose, leaving the pages to flap around to each cover freely.

Interested in my little treasure, having forgotten the ominous warning given to me only days before, I opened it. Not much was in it, a few scribbles and scratches that seemed incoherent and fading, but the first page was clear.

“The rules of the memory book:

Feed the Notebook a memory and be compensated.

The more precious the memory, the more compensation is given.”

I scoffed at the “rules,” picturing some child snickering to themselves as they wrote the silly nonsense and hid it for the next unsuspecting person to come along. Therefore, like the brilliant mastermind that I am, I decided to play along.

I peeked out the window for Luc, satisfied with seeing his back in the distance, as I hoped he might find the little black notebook too after I re-hid it back in its original spot. I quickly grabbed a pen and began penning in my own little memory of playing in my mother’s rose garden as a child. It wasn’t much, just a few lines about how I loved it, because I did, and closed the book back, cleaned off the old tape and re-taped it in its original hiding spot, chuckling to myself the whole time.

I quickly forgot about it and went back to what I was doing, spending the rest of the day unpacking and cleaning my new home. Everything passed uneventfully until around dinner when a migraine snuck into my brain and rendered me completely useless for the rest of the night.

The next morning, I awoke earlier than I usually did, my migraine finally waning. I got up and made myself some coffee and decided to go out to explore my new grounds and check the mail I had forgotten about the day before.

I trudged up the path, completely ignorant to my surroundings as I hummed a little tune. I looked out over the yard and had a nagging feeling pulling at the back of my mind. I had wanted to do something with it, but could not remember what it was, so I shrugged it off as I kept walking.

I quickly found the handle of the rusty, old mailbox and yanked. It was stubborn and gave a little, so I tried again with success. Several letters sat awaiting my retrieval. I quickly grabbed them and started back for the house. I thumbed through the letters, all of which were for the former owners and I made a mental note to forward them and continued through my little stash. There, at the very end of the stack, was a blank envelope.

Curious, I stopped, slung the other pieces of mail under my arm and opened it. Expecting some welcome note from a nearby neighbor, my jaw dropped as I found cash; five thousand worth.

Astonished, my foggy brain bounced around looking for an explanation when I remembered the notebook. I rushed back in, throwing the door open and tossing the mail on the kitchen island before I dropped to my knees to retrieve the book.

I grabbed it, dislodging the tape easily enough, and threw it open. There, scrawled across the pages was my handwriting, but I did not remember a word of what I wrote. I scanned through it, but nothing made any sense to me. I remember writing in it the day before, but I could not recall what about, nor did my little anecdote about a garden make any sense. Even more curious, under the last line, written in a completely different handwriting, was “$5,000, if you want more, you must write more.”

The rest of that day went by in a blur. I replaced the notebook, swearing to never look at it again and stashed the money, to avoid having to explain anything to Luc. So, there, the curious little black notebook sat for almost a year, hastily forgotten until the one fateful morning my sweet husband found it.

Luc walked into the living room, a puzzled look scrawled across his face as he looked at me. “Who are you?” He asked with complete seriousness and a terrible feeling rolled through my stomach.

I tried to laugh it off. “Stop being silly, I’m your wife,” I said, the feeling growing ever stronger.

“No, you’re not. I don’t have one.”

The words struck me hard, and I leapt up from my couch to the kitchen in a matter of milliseconds. There, on the kitchen table was the notebook. I grabbed it quickly, Luc hot on my heels.

“No!” I shouted, as I saw the terrible words scrawled across the page.

There, my sweet Luc had written about the day he met me and written under it, in the sickeningly familiar hand writing was a smiley face with, “Excellent, $20,000”.

He looked at me from the doorway, a bewildered look spreading across his face as the tears slipped down my cheeks.

I do not remember much of what happened afterwards. Luc told me I flew into a crying rage and burned the book, or at least I tried. It kept showing back up in different places after I would attempt to destroy it. Finally, I got tired of looking at it and threw it in a box in the attic.

Luc is accepting what happened, though he is still skeptical that we are married, even our wedding pictures do not convince him. The extra money we got from that dreaded little book does ease the burden a little, but it will never be enough to replace what was lost.

So, I pen my warning in this cursed little notebook, hoping that I will lose it and it may find someone else to haunt.

Enough is never enough; don’t touch the book.

“More precious memories are needed. $500.”