The Book of Baal

On a Friday night one could make a safe assumption that the university library would be empty by 11:45. Kenna would rather be out at the bar with her friends than stuck at work behind a checkout desk, but on the bright side it gave her an excuse to get her homework done. She had finished her homework for Journalism-448: Information Ethics nearly half an hour ago and was now aimless scrolling through Facebook on a library computer.

While scrolling an add jumped out at her: “Short Story Contest! Grand Prize $15,000”. Fifteen thousand dollars could go a long way for Kenna. It could certainly help cover this semester’s tuition and the less student loans she had to take out the better. The add was probably click bait but intrigued she clicked anyways.

The contest seemed legitimate; however, the deadline was only a week out. There was no way she could crank out a novel short story in that amount of time. She had struggled enough through her creative writing class last spring and would be a bad idea to recycle one of those pieces, they were atrocious.

Kenna’s boredom was interrupted. “Kenna, have you restocked the returns yet?” Called her supervisor, Ms. Hamman.

Kenna rubbed her temples to relieve the headache induced by the computer’s blue screen then closed the internet window. “I’m on it,” she informed as she got up from the chair and grabbed the cart of books sitting next to her that she was supposed to take back hours ago.

After a long hour of lazily returning books to their appropriate shelves, Kenna was almost finished. She looked up at the analog clock hanging on the brick wall. Slowly it was clicking away towards one o’clock, the end of her shift.

One book lay at the bottom of her cart: Religions of the Sumerian Peoples by Karl Gordon, Dewey decimal number 932. Kenna wheeled her cart into the nonfiction section. She scanned the wall of books checking the tiny number placed on the bottom of each book’s spine. She counted 929, 930, 931—between 931 and 933 another book was already in place. A little black book, unmarked.

She pulled the book out carefully. The binder of the book was loose but still safely intact. Its pages were yellowed and beginning to feather. Inside the pages stuck from light brown stains made long ago. The text was handwritten in what appeared to be the red inked penmanship of a middle school boy. The first page of the book was reserved for four words written in large scratchy red letters: The Book of Baal.

Kenna scanned the library to see if anyone was near, but it was still the same empty library it had been all night. How strange it was that the diary of a young boy was sitting on a shelf in a college library. Kenna returned the Sumerian book back to the shelf in the place it belonged between 931 and 933 before going back to her desk to wait out the rest of her shift. She took the little black book with her.

Kenna rolled her cart behind the counter and Ms. Hamman looked from the book she was nose deep in. “I’m afraid no one else is coming into tonight darling. Would you like to go home ten minutes early?”

Kenna paused for a moment, normally she would accept in a heartbeat, but she had planned to skim through that little black book for the remainder of her time on the clock. “Yes. Thank you, Ms. Hamman,” she decided as she gathered her things into her backpack. She supposed she could just take the book home with her. It wasn’t like it belonged to the library or anything and either way she could return it tomorrow and what would be the difference.

When Kenna got back to her dormitory, she didn’t call her friends to see if they were still out, nor did she go to sleep right away. She sat down at her desk, flicked on her lamp, and flipped open the worn book to its first page.

It was a disturbing but a captivating book. It took her longer to read than usual due to the scratchy handwriting and the sporadic doodled black ink sketches of rams, bulls, snakes, agriculture, and humans committing various sexual and murderous acts that disguised words which were placed underneath.

It was about an American man backpacking in the Middle East in the late 1960s. The man became lost in the desert and soon became thirsty. On the horizon he could see the silhouette of a man. The American hiked to the man hoping for help. The man on the horizon was a tall healthy Middle Eastern man with a well-groomed oil beard. His clothing looked fresh but from a time period long long ago.

The American fell to his knees at the Middle Eastern man. He would have shed tears if he had water to spare. He begged the Middle Eastern man for help. The man only stared at the pitiful American. “What do you need weakling?” he asked the American.

“Water. I need water,” the American begged.

“I can give you water and I can give you more. But it will not be free,” the man informed.

The American kissed the man’s feet. “I will give you anything please. I am so thirsty.”

“After I give you eat and drink you must walk towards the setting sun to a village. There you will make arrangements to return to your homeland. There you will conceive a son before the first snow fall. That child will spread my story, but you will never know the boy for by wintertime I will reclaim the soul that is mine.”

The American looked up at the Middle Eastern man who stood with a grin across his face. The strange man had promised him death in three months, but if he did not accept, he would die now. The American nodded frantically having made his decision.

The Middle Eastern man bent down to the earth and dug his index finger into the sand two knuckles deep. When he pulled his finger up water bubbled out of the whole the man made and welled into a pool. In the wake of the water green fertile sprouts propped up the scorching sun. The American bent down cupping water and slurping it into his mouth one handful at a time. He yanked the green sprouts out of the moist ground. They were delicious carrots which he crunched down on regardless of the mud caked roots.

As the sun started to fall the pool of water drained back into the hole from whence it came, and the carrot tops shriveled up in the sand. The Middle Eastern man did not say a word and walked off towards the north. The American got up and brushed himself off watching the strange man leave before getting on with his own journey towards the setting sun. The American trekked to the village and stayed there for the night at the hospitality of the locals. In the morning, a bus came to take him to the city from there he would depart back to America.

When the man arrived home his neighbor across the hall had been replaced by a woman he had never seen before. The woman was rather beautiful and invited him for coffee. Not wanting to be rude to his new neighbor the man graciously accepted.

They sat on the sofa and sipped their coffee making small talk for a short time, but soon the woman sat down her mug and moved closer to him she wrapped her lips around his and he felt a tightening in his pants. Soon she tried to undress him. He had just met this woman and felt it strange. Then he remembered what the man in the desert had told him. If he did not conceive a son the man could not take his soul. He squirmed on the couch eyeing the door trying to fight his passion and find the will to leave, but the urge was too strong. He gave in. It was the best sex of the man’s life and he had energies he never knew he had.

When he finished in her he felt the emptiness fill him. He buttoned his pants, picked up his shirt, and without acknowledging the woman left, walking across the hall to his own apartment. That night his brain was on fire and he could not sleep. He got up several times but could not quench his thirst. In the morning the man left his apartment to find his old neighbor had been reinstated. The woman was gone, and by first snow fall so was the man.

Kenna flipped the old book shut. She tapped her fingers on the wooden desk thinking about the bizarreness she just read. A strange story, a strange story indeed. But better than she could write. She hesitated for a moment. She reached into her bag and pulled out her laptop. Whoever wrote it obviously wanted it shared, that’s why they left it at the library. Besides the story didn’t even have any character names. She could fill them in and spruce up the details. Then the story would be practically unrecognizable. She opened a Word document and began typing.

Months passed and snow now fell gently from the night sky at the bus stop. The fall semester had ended and university students were headed home. Kenna’s friend dropped her off at the bus top on the edge of town and now Kenna stood by herself waiting for the next bus home for winter break. She had won the writing contest earlier this semester and the fifteen thousand dollars certainly helped with her tuition. With her finals finished, she was ready to go home and take a month off from studying.

Across the empty street an old woman emerged in the darkness. She hobbled on a cane across the sidewalk. About halfway across her cane gave out beneath her and fell to the pavement. Kenna rushed to help her. “Thank you young lady,” the old woman said in the sweet voice of a grandmother. “Would you mind walking me the rest of the way across the street?”

Kenna kindly obliged. When they got back on the sidewalk the woman kept walking forward towards the woods behind the bus stop. Kenna tried to pull away, but the old woman’s grip was a vice. “Oh, I’m sorry. I need to wait for the bus,” Kenna explained.

The woman kept trying to walk towards the tree line. “You need to come home.”

Kenna laughed. “I am going home. I just need to wait for the bus first.”

The old woman turned her haggard face to Kenna and through her cracked teeth spoke in the grizzled voice of an old man, “home to Baal. You have profited of his name; he only asks his retribution.”

Kenna’s eyes grew wide into the wrinkly face of the old woman, “No. No. I just wrote a story. I didn’t promise anything,” Kenna explained.

The old woman tightened her grip, “not your story; Baal’s.”

The cold wind sent electricity into Kenna as she shivered in the old woman’s death grip. The old hag began to walk towards the woods again dragging Kenna’s arm. Though everything in Kenna’s mind screeched to resist her legs ignored her and stiffly marched like creatures of their own into the trees taking Kenna with them.

The greyhound drove into the vacant bus stop. There was no one to pick up so it drove one into the night.