The Book Speaks

The book speaks in tongues and within the babble I hear what it is I am meant to do. The book sings it’s broken song until all I hear is the soft sandy slide of brittle paper rubbing, rubbing against itself. It is the sound I hear in everything now. In the movement of doors, the slide of drawers and feet on pavement and my own lungs against the walls of my body. It keeps me from sleep, but perhaps always dreaming. And despite myself I know what it is it says, and where I am to go, and what I am meant to do, but not why I am meant to do it. I suppose I am meant to do it because the book wants me to do it.

Though it cannot possibly want anything. I have told myself this countless times. The book does not want. It is a book. It is not alive (though the book itself has told me so…) and therein has no bills to pay, no house to hold, no thirst to quench, no hunger to sate… That I know of…

That last has begun, increasingly, to give me pause. I fear perhaps that which it hungers for is something within me. Now in the empty parts of my day -which have grown ever fewer as much of my time is spent making sense of the muttering, murmuring, monologuing of the tome in my keep- I have begun to find parts of me missing and I feel as though it is taking something from me. A sneak thief, poking and pilfering from the muddled corners and tucked away hollows of my being. There is something I am losing even though I am at a loss to know just what it is I am losing. I am not sure it was ever something I knew I had. I only know that it is gone, and I do feel its absence.

The book has told me to be here. On this corner. It has also told me that there will be rain, which there is, but I am meant not to have an umbrella. It would block my face, the book says. Not in so many words, of course, but it has said it. Even now I can feel it muttering in my coat pocket. Of the way the puddle next to my damp boot ripples, of the way the clouds roil and boil above, of how they sing of more rain, and of thunder and lightning. I am soaked through, no doubt the book is too. I can see it without looking, its leather binding blackened by an unknowable number of hands leaving their oils and life along its spine, across its covers. Indeed its pages too are so full of ink from the writings and rewritings of the years. Perhaps that is why the book speaks, it has no way else to make its mind plain.

I am beginning to wonder if I should continue to trust it. But it is too late to begin wondering if I should have put even a second thought into the thing that sits heavy and eager in my pocket. I can practically feel it vibrating with urgency, its hum of incomprehensible and terrifying words sinking hooks into my skin, pricking me to alertness. I am as alert as I can be, caught halfway aware between a world and a life I knew as mine and this strange half thing I’ve fallen into. Were I more whole I think I would be… Not here. But where else other than here would I be. I, in some ways, have become like the book. I have no bills to pay, no house to hold, no thirst to quench. Not anymore.

Above, the book says.

I look above.

Rain pelts down sharp and cold into my eyes, but through my rapid blinking I see nothing. Then again, the book did not say Look, or See. The book said, Above.

Above!

I am looking above. There is nothing but sky, and wet brick, the sounds of a street I stand within and apart from, as much as I now feel strangely apart from myself. What was I, before this? Before this creature with its neck craned to the heavens and the rain pooling in its eyes. Was I the same, in some way? A wraith, a half thing, walking, waking, perhaps always dreaming. My neck craned to the ground, my eyes not pooling but pouring out bits of myself. Was I giving myself away long before the book sought to take? Were the parts of me that I suddenly find gone really so key to me if I do not know what they were at all? If I do not know if I myself might have left them at home, or at coffee. On this street corner wondering when I should stop looking and searching for Above.

Was it so meaningful, really, for me to have those things at all if I cannot even mark where it was they once laid within me, and what it was they did.

I cannot help but feel as though I wish I knew what I had given up. What the book sees fit to even now in my pocket draw from me, like a weeping wound. I can no longer tell if the water pooling in my upturned eyes and rolling down my face is rain, or my own tears. I should have liked to know what parts of me I have lost, have had stolen. Have let be taken from me. Maybe they did matter after all, and I would not have parted with them had I recalled just what it was that made them a part of me.

But then, of course, I would not have let them go.

Much as the book does not seem to want to let me go.

Perhaps I am becoming a part of it.

Below, says the book.

I look down to my soaked feet in the puddle, blinking away water or tears and find a bag. As plain and yet compelling as the book.

Take, says the book.

I do not want to take it. I know, in my bones, that I do not wish to touch this new leather thing, no matter what is inside. The book purrs in my pocket.

Good things, it whispers, good things, take, take, take.

I take the bag in hand. It does not drag at me like the book does. Does not reach for me with endless words and jabber. It is a bag, it is wet and cold and heavy.

Walk.

I begin walking, heading nowhere and everywhere all at once. The book has not made up its mind, apparently, so I wander aimlessly, wet and cold and wondering at the bag.

Look.

I slow my wandering lope and cradle the bag to my chest, tugging the clasp open. Were the book not compelling me to move, were my feet not working on their own I would likely have stopped, and not moved again for a very long time.

There is a key on a ring, an old key, not so old as the book I think, but so old that it lays in half, broken down its skeleton spine. There is a bottle, empty and cracked, but still sealed as if whatever was inside has leaked out long ago, but it was never opened. The ashen and crumb remains of some dry chunk of bread, or other food stuff is tucked beside it, inedible. And there is money. How much I do not know, but I have never before seen so much cash, no matter that it is wadded up and musty like the leather sack that holds it. Absently I realize that the book is counting, perhaps not in my numbers, but it is counting, its own pages perhaps. It surpasses 20,000 when I realize that the book is not counting pages, but counting the money.

The book does not want the money. The book can not want the money, it is a book. It has no bills to pay, not house to hold. No thirst to quench. No hunger to sate.

But then again, I realize to late, neither do it.

Run, says the book.

I run.