Everything Written in this Book Will Come True

A young man sat reading on a faded couch in a rented apartment room in New York. Sunlight shone through the dirty windows and gleamed over the floor, a wooden table and the couch which filled the small space.

It was a Sunday morning. He sat with the sleeves of his brown plaid shirt folded up, holding a book in one hand and a mug in the other. The air was still, with dust floating in the sunbeam as the muted noise of cars rose up from the street below. He took a sip of coffee from the mug and put the book down. He stood up from the low couch and picked up his phone just as the screen lit up. It had been on silent, nine missed calls from Mom. He took another sip and put the coffee down on the table next to a small black notebook.

‘Mom..?’

‘Jason –’ she choked from the other end of the line,

“– It’s your father...”

Saturday morning.

Jason put his hands in his jacket pockets and walked across the street towards a small bookstore with wide windows and a green painted wooden door. The bell on the door chimed as he entered, and the smell of old paper and dust enclosed the small space where books were stacked on narrow shelves and in piles on the floor. He was hoping to spend a good amount of time that morning browsing the old books, looking for classic literature to add to his collection. Quiet bookstores like this were his favourite places, secret spaces hidden away in a busy city. At the moment he enjoyed reading short stories, and as a secretly aspiring writer himself, Jason often tried his hand at writing his own stories.

He took his time picking up novels and leafing through pages. His hands were soft, reflective of his quiet life indoors. Jason worked in an office building a few streets away from his apartment. His hands were soft, unlike his father’s, who worked in the trades. Sometimes Jason missed the life of his mid-sized hometown, but he was happy to be living here in the city where he could happen upon places like this just around the street corner. Even though the city was loud and the rent, unaffordable.

On one of the shelves he came across a thin black book which stood out to him because it had a narrow, unmarked spine. He carefully picked it up off the shelf and turned it in his hand. It had a faded black cover and though old and plain, it had been a beautifully well-crafted journal. He adjusted his glasses and opened the book in the middle to thin, yellowed pages filled with sprawling ink.

It was odd that a used journal would be left here among the books. He slowly turned through the pages as looping cursive filled the lines from top to bottom. Names and dates following the entries registered as far back as the early 1900s towards the beginning of the book. It may have been some sort of record or logbook. Opened to the first page, the top line stood out in bold black text.

Everything written in this book will come true.

He quietly folded the notebook closed, and with a quick glance around he continued walking down the aisle, book in hand.

Later that evening, Jason sat at the table in his apartment with the notebook open under the yellow light of the desk lamp. He poured over the pages of the small book, reading entries which held hopeful aspirations of good fortune, love, and accomplishment. With all the different names marked in the passages spanning the narrow pages, it was clear that this old notebook had been passed through many hands. This book, meant to grant the wishes and true desires of its owner, had been repeatedly discarded.

I guess it doesn’t work, he thought to himself.

Regardless, Jason felt that he had to humor himself. He grabbed a black pen from a cup on the desk, and wrote in scrawny text on the last blank page.

__________________________

That next morning his mother spoke from the distant end of the phone line, her small voice seemed far away and muffled.

In a conversation of only a few minutes, Jason listened, standing still and silent in the room. He placed his hand on the table to brace himself.

“Are you there? Jason, can you hear me...?”

He didn’t say anything. He was looking down at the black notebook on the desk next to his hand, eyes wide in disbelief.

Stiffly removing his hand from the table, he reached for the book. Holding it as if it were a cursed object come to life, he put the phone down and carefully turned to the last page.

The most recent entry, from the night before. Sitting there on the page in his own small writing, but now glowing red as though it were written in blood.

Jason Brenart will come across an unexpected sum of money.

The feeling of dread expanded inside him.

It couldn’t be possible...

His father’s death was caused by an accident at work early that morning. Unusual for him to work on a Sunday. Jason was to receive his $20,000 inheritance immediately.

Without thought, Jason suddenly reached for the pen and laid the notebook open on the table. With a shaking hand, he brought the pen to the paper for the second time and wrote a single line below the red text which had now cooled into a deep auburn.

Across the room on the couch sat the book of short stories he had been holding earlier that morning. It laid open to a certain story which he had just started reading before the phone call. Unfortunately, for someone who was so well-read, Jason Brenart was unfamiliar with the classic horror story The Monkey’s Paw.