The Unexplainable Notebook

The Unexplainable Notebook

By Seth Bramwell

It all began on an average Saturday for die-hard thrift store hunter Amy Taggart. The crowds weren’t too bad, and she was more than happy to take her time looking through an unruly bin of books for anything of interest. She had just placed a copy of Macbeth in her cart when a small black leather bound notebook atop a pile of romance novels caught her eye. She reached for it with curiosity and opened it to see how much had been used. She found just a few lines of neatly written script that read “The Story of John and Amy. John first met Amy while chatting online one lonely night.” Amy stared at the book, absolutely transfixed. The book was devoid of writing save the title and the one sentence, but the coincidence was too much to ignore; It was exactly the way her husband John had first met her. Amy immediately took a picture of the page with her phone to share online later before adding the book to her cart and leaving quickly. She found John working in the garage when she arrived home. He kissed her cheek and asked her how her trip had gone. Amy smiled mischievously, the mysterious notebook in her hands.

“You won’t believe this.” she said with a grin. John wiped his hands clean and took the book from her, turning it over as he studied it.

“What, some kind of journal or something?” John flipped through the book from back to front before noticing the handwriting on the first page. “Not much writing in it. Nice little book for you to use, I guess.”

“No, John. Read what that page says.” Amy said with barely hidden excitement.

John opened the book again and began to read aloud. To Amy’s astonishment, the story of their first meeting and first date was now completely written on the page. She was too stunned to speak until John finished the story and looked to his wife with a smile. “Aw, babe. This is awesome. I guess you’ll keep adding to it?”

“That book didn’t have all that in when I found it,” she said softly, taking the book from him and studying the page.

“Well… sure. You wrote it, right?”

“You know that’s not my handwriting.” She pulled up the picture on her phone and showed it to him. “I found it like that and came straight home.” John stared at the phone in amazement.

“But… how can that be?”

Amy stared at the book. “I have no idea… but I can’t wait to see what it does next.”

Over the next month, John and Amy checked the book daily and found to their amazement that new writing would consistently appear, always detailing more and more of their relationship. Their first apartment, their long term dating, the day John surprised Amy by proposing to her, good times and bad times alike. Somehow, this unknown hand knew their story and could recall it with more detail than their own memories could. It seemed that the book would become a chronicle of their love, perhaps a treasured heirloom to pass to their own children someday. Still, John wondered one thing. The book could tell their story to be sure, but with each day it grew ever closer to their present time. What then? Would the book stop? Document their lives in real time? Or would it perhaps do something all the more unbelievable and start writing their future? The thought always gave him a chill up his spine while Amy looked at it with childlike curiosity. She watched as the book started covering days, then weeks, then months at a time until it reached the day she found it in the thrift store and brought it home. It was one typical morning after John had left for work when Amy plopped down on the couch with the notebook to see just how far it had gotten. To her shock, she watched as the neat script appeared, telling the events of that very morning in greater detail than it had used in the previous entries. The writing reached the point of Amy picking up the notebook and sitting on the couch to read it. It finished with an ellipses that seemed to pulse in the book as if it were pausing, thinking. Was it waiting for her to do something? The book decided to answer her question by talking about John’s morning and his plans to buy a lottery ticket after work. It was nothing new; John usually did this on Mondays. Again, the ellipses pulsed on the page before slowly revealing more details. The words made Amy grab her phone. The book had just predicted that the ticket John would buy would be a winner.

John took the call and listened to Amy’s excited rambling with disbelief. He tried to tell her to not put too much stock in the message but he too felt excitement hit his stomach at the thought. He confirmed that yes, he would buy his usual ticket and scratch it off with her. When John arrived home that night he sat with Amy at the kitchen table and the pair held their breath as he scratched the flaky covering away to reveal one winning symbol and then another. John’s hand trembled as he hovered the coin over the final spot and locked eyes with Amy. “Do it.” she whispered. John pushed the coin to the ticket and scratched away the last of the flaky silver to reveal the final match. Their baited breaths were released in a victorious cheer as the ticket confirmed that the book was right! For the cost of five dollars, John had managed to win twenty-thousand. Amy grabbed the book and threw it open just as it documented their joy.

The next morning, John called the state lottery office. While on the phone with the lottery representative, arrangements were made for John to go to the office after work to complete the tax paperwork needed to claim his prize. It was no longer any surprise to John when he called Amy to tell her the news only to find out she already knew, thanks to the notebook.

Hours passed and day fed into evening. Amy paced nervously around the house. John was never this late to come home. The notebook sat with ellipses pulsing as if it knew something but did not want to say. When words finally did appear, they simply stated, The doorbell rang… Amy jumped when it did just that. She raced to the door and threw it open happily to welcome John home, but instead found two highway patrol officers who confirmed her identity and uneasily gave her news nobody wants to receive. John had never made it to the lottery office. He had been driving alongside a cement mixer truck when the giant cement tumbler had somehow broken free of the truck. The officers spared Amy the explicit details but explained that the tumbler had fallen to the side where John was driving and effectively crushed the car. They offered her a ride to the hospital as she was obviously too distraught to drive. Amy made it just barely in time to see John die as she held his hand and cried. The lottery ticket was never found.

The next two weeks were a nightmarish roller coaster for her as she dealt with funeral arrangements for the first time in her life. The notebook sensed her distress and actually guided her through the process, writing out exactly what she should do at each turn. When John’s ashes were ready to bring home she tearfully placed them on the table in the entryway with his wedding ring, their wedding photo, and a gold watch her father had given John as a wedding present. The house was so empty even with John “home”. Amy dried her eyes and sat on the couch with the book, waiting to be guided yet again as if seeking counsel from an old friend. The notebook began to write out advice in perfect script once more. John was home, and Amy could not ask for more than that. Still, the silence of the house haunted her. She knew she was truly alone. The emptiness inside would soon become too much to bear.

Amy blinked at the words breathlessly. “What are you saying?” she asked aloud in a trembling voice. The notebook replied by writing more. Amy Taggart saw little choice as she made the decision to kill herself. Amy’s mouth hung open. “I would never do that!” she yelled at the notebook. Words again appeared. Amy was angry, but she knew she could not escape- Amy furiously threw the book across the room. She was seething as she stomped to it full of the anger she had not allowed herself to express since John’s death. She grabbed the book from the floor as she marched to the kitchen, shouting at the book all the way. “John is dead because of you! Because of your prediction! You want to see something die again so badly? How about you???” She grabbed a long candle lighter from the counter and held it to the corner of the book over the sink. She almost expected the book to fight her but the paper caught fire and burned like any other. She dropped it into the sink as she sobbed and watched it be engulfed by flame.

The sound of the front door being kicked open loudly made her spin around, the fire in her sink forgotten. She ran to the front to find a disheveled stranger scooping up John’s gold watch. A hunting knife glinted in his hand as he jumped in panic. He had clearly not expected anyone to be home. Amy scowled at him with fury. “Put that watch down! I’ll give you all the cash I have, but leave that watch alone!”

The burglar raised his shaking hands, eager to be well away from here but not empty-handed. “I don’t want no trouble, lady. I’ll just take this and I swear you’ll never see me again.” He looked to the doorway when Amy suddenly screamed and lunged forward to tackle him. He reflexively raised his knife in defense.

Amy was hit by shock. Her eyes looked down wordlessly to find the handle of the knife buried in her chest. Her fight disappeared as she fell to the floor, coughing and sputtering on her own blood. Panicked, the burglar bolted out the door as his heart pounded and Amy’s slowly stopped. From within the house the smoke alarm beeped away as the book burned...

Months later and miles away, a bored young woman leaned against a bookshelf as her boyfriend Billy dug through a pile of books in a thrift store. He suddenly came bounding up to her with excitement. “You won’t believe this, Kensey!” He held up a simple black notebook. “I got no idea how, but someone has written how we met!”