The Name in the Book

Diana Lane could find a name anywhere - the convenience store, her gardening class, a movie theater.

Sometimes the names hid at first, seeming innocuous, pleasant even. The names would fly past the lips of friends-of-friends or the grocery cashier with the bad skin.

The most recent name came close, like a whisper. It slithered into her personal spaces. It invaded her home - concealed by the good graces of Diana’s sister, Annie.

Diana didn’t see Annie as often as she would have liked these days. She wasted no time setting up a dinner when Annie called to say her new boyfriend Brian wanted to meet.

The dinner was pleasant. “Delicious meal,” Brian had praised. Diana beamed at the compliment. It was refreshing to meet nice people!

“Thank you,” said Diana, “I’ll make dinner anytime if you’ll bring Annie. We haven’t had much quality sister time lately.”

Annie looked uncomfortable. Diana quickly added “we get so busy, of course, with doctors and the hospital. It’s perfectly understandable.” She didn’t want to shame Annie and drive her away. While Diana lived a pleasurable life, times could get lonely without family to feel close to.

“Completely understandable,” he agreed, putting a loving hand on Annie’s shoulder.

Annie gave a small smile and touched his hand, to Diana’s satisfaction. If this man could behave and keep her sister happy, maybe he would be useful to have around.

Unsurprisingly, he exposed his name for Diana’s collection not ten minutes later while she washed dishes. Like most charming men, his chivalry was an act.

She heard them through the thin wall that connected the kitchen and the living room, where the pair enjoyed some coffee she had made.

“It doesn’t make sense,” whispered Brian, “you said you always had a great relationship with your father.”

“I did.”

“So why would he not leave you anything at all, and give her the entire estate? At least some money to pay off your student loans, or doctor bills!”

“I don’t know,” Annie said tensely, “like I’ve said many times, he was acting very strangely before the accident.”

“...I’m just saying, you could actually USE the money, and I think your father would want you to have it if he was in his right mind. She doesn’t seem to be spending the money wisely, and to be honest she doesn’t seem totally right in the head herself. It’s not fair - ”

“I know it isn’t fair, Brian.” Annie’s voice raised slightly.

Coffee mugs clinked against plates. “At this point, I don’t even care about the money. I just want Daddy to wake up.”

Diana methodically dried the dishes. Another conman - and he was using her sister as the bait. “Brian” - a foul name, as suitable for Diana’s purposes as he was unsuitable for her sister. He would be dealt with swiftly. Names didn’t torment Diana like before. Cool, clear-eyed vengeance had replaced the fretting and shame and anger.

She cleaned up the coffees and walked them to the door. She gave Annie a long hug - a rather stiff one on Annie’s part. Once they had driven out of sight, Diana locked the bolt and climbed the stairs to her bedroom to begin the ritual.

She first closed the blackout curtains and shutters on her three bedroom windows. She required utter darkness.

She opened the second drawer of her vanity, moved aside a few perfume bottles and a ring dish, and removed the false backing in the drawer. She extricated a key and screwdriver. The key shone with an iridescence like heated copper. It’s handle was an oblong circle with horns. The tip could slice through meat.

She set the key on top of her vanity, and faced the center of her bedroom, screwdriver in hand. She heard the familiar humming in her ears and her excitement grew. She crouched on the ground, unscrewed the screw holding down the floorboard at the foot of her bed and pried it up. The humming in her ears grew louder but remained muffled, like a distant chorus of thousands of angels.

There rested the Black Book. Small and unassuming aside from the ponderous lock securing the pages together. Diana withdrew it. It always felt warm as a feverish body. She resisted the urge to press it against her face. Instead, she delicately set it on the floor and stood up. She let the chain dangling from her overhead light brush across her lips almost sensuously before twisting her fingers around it. She had come to relish the ritual, the seduction of the Book, the boundary between the power, the taking of the Name. She pulled the chain. Absolute darkness followed.

She located the key quickly. It glowed dimly - lit from the inside by some primal chemical.

She could also behold the Book in the lightless room. It was somehow darker than the blackness around it, emptier than nothing. It called to her the same as the first time she found it, immured in a tree knot behind a crumbling church. She had a piece of broken glass in hand, primed to take her own life. Instead she fed the Book a Name, and the release was far more rapturous than death would ever be.

She cut across her chest with the key. Coated in blood, the lock drew the key to itself. Closer to release.

The key clicked and the Book opened, almost to the last page. A fleeting thought of how many Names there were. They were on the cusp - the final pages to freedom. She dipped her finger into her blood and wrote - BRIAN SANGER - in beautiful dark letters, beautiful blood. Hot tears rolled down her face as she wrote, her body on fire, and she fell back on the ground laughing in ecstasy, triumphant.

***

Shivering and unaware of how much time had passed, Diana sealed the Name in the Book, returned her belongings to their correct places, and fell asleep.

***

A week later while running errands, Diana called Annie to discuss some family coming to visit their father.

“I was thinking we could visit Dad on Saturday afternoon,” said Diana, “unless that would interfere with any date plans with Brian? He was just -”

“I don’t have any date plans with Brian. We’re not together anymore.” Annie said flatly.

“Oh how sad,” Diana said, grinning, “what happened?”

A long pause.

“He’s… gotten sick. He caught some sort of bacteria at his gym’s pool. The brain-eating kind. He can’t talk anymore, and his family took him to a specialist in Norway to do speech therapy.” Diana’s tone barely changed.

“That’s tragic,” said Diana, doing her best to stifle a laugh. She loved Annie, despite her bad taste in men. “Are you doing okay?”

Diana couldn’t bear Annie pulling away from her. When they were little, they whispered their deepest, darkest secrets to each other behind the garden shed. In their teenage years, Annie sang songs through the door when Diana locked herself in her room after school.

Annie recoiled from Diana now. Father had certainly played his part in creating that tension. He spat in Annie’s face when she confronted him outside of her church. He was naked and covered in thousands of bleeding pinpricks. The next day, he updated his will to leave everything to Diana, then jumped off some scaffolding outside of an apartment building. Diana just wished Annie wouldn’t blame her.

“I liked him a lot, but we’d only dated a couple of months.” Another long pause. Annie said: “I guess I wish horrible things would stop happening to people I care about.” She went silent again.

Diana spoke softly into the phone. “Nothing horrible has happened to me, Annie.”

“I have to go,” Annie said. “I’ll call you later.” She hung up.

Bitterness tortured Diana following that call. She took a short detour to boost her spirits, stopping by a burned out husk of a house where an ex-lover used to live. Reliving past accomplishments soothed her.

A surprise awaited Diana at home. The door had been pried open and she could hear footsteps upstairs. The final Name! The thought leapt into her mind and carried her up the stairs, too thrilled to consider the danger of confronting a burglar.

Her excitement evaporated when she heard a humming sound. Some degenerate threatened the Book! She sprinted into her bedroom.

Annie stood there, the Book open in one hand, the lights on, blood staining the key that lay on the floor. Diana moved toward Annie to grab the Book from her, but Annie backed away screaming and brandished the sharp end of the key at Diana.

“What did you do with my sister?” Tears streamed down Annie’s face. “What are you, you evil thing?”

“It’s me, Annie.” She had to get the Book back. “What are you doing with my diary? That’s private!” She moved in closer, key be damned.

“Diary? Don’t insult me” said Annie. “A list of names written in blood?” She flipped through the pages. “Julie Flynn - didn’t she burn all those houses down? And James Ferguson drove his car into a moving bus…” She looked on the verge of vomiting, but continued to flip through the pages.

Suddenly she stopped. She held up the Book to face Diana, pure disgust on her face.

“RICHARD LANE.”

“I didn’t want to believe it,” Annie said in a low, hateful voice. “But after it happened to Brian too... I knew. I knew you were behind it, all of it. How could you do this to Dad? To me?”

Diana almost felt a twinge of guilt, but that part of her mind had succumbed to rage. The bitch needed to shut up and return the Book. Almost complete, so close, was all she could think.

“He deserved it!” Diana spat, “he threatened to commit me! Abandon his own daughter. Thwart the transcendent plan! He deserves to rot in there.” A slow grin unfurled onto her face. “Father, Brian - they all deserve it.” She took a step toward Annie.

“Do you know why I came here?” Annie said, her breath heavy with fear. “It wasn’t just Brian, or even Dad - I’ve known something was wrong for a while. I hear you laughing to yourself, speaking in some strange language, eyes rolled back in your head. I saw you visiting Dad and whispering to him - you told him to prepare for something. You used to care about people, and now everyone we meet… you treat them like cattle! My god, Diana, you reek of blood.”

Diana advanced, still smiling. So close, they were all so close.

“Dad was worried about you Diana, just like I am.” Her voice softened, beseeching. “I know this isn’t you. It’s that thing, controlling you. We should destroy it!”

“NO!” Diana lunged. She wrenched the key from Annie, the sharp edge cutting deeply into her bare hand, and threw it away. Blood soaked the floor.

“I HAVE changed!” Diana pinned Annie against the wall by her neck. Annie tried to cling to the Book, but was no match for Diana’s will. “I have become divine!”

She took the Book and discarded Annie.

“Do you see me, sister?” Diana said, opening the Book to the final page. “I select the Names for the Great Work! I mark the wretched beasts to worship at the altar of Madness. No mere mortal would be trusted with such a glorious task!”

Annie tried to plead with Diana one last time, but her eyes had gone completely dark. Nothing human gazed out from them.

Diana wrote the final Name in the Book with her holy blood.

DIANA LANE.

“I release you.”

The last thing Annie saw was the shadow pouring out of the pages of the open book, devouring the light in the room. A deep booming laugh filled the room, echoing and then entwining with Diana’s voice.

Like a chorus of angels, thought Annie, as the madness took her.