The Door to Lost Pages Page 3

  Inside, the book was filled with the same sort of symbols as on its cover. It was no help; she couldn’t understand anything. But then she found a bookmark tucked between the endpapers and the front cover. Printed in English, in the same colours as the skeleton’s feathers, it read “Lost Pages”—with a street address and a phone number.

  She knew the name of that street. She remembered sitting in the bus with the woman, on the way to the old crone’s house, reading street signs through the window. She could recite the name of all those streets, in order. Getting there would be easy.

  She was reluctant to leave the skeleton unguarded. But, she reasoned, no-one else could see him, and, if the darkness—or some other threat—returned, what could she possibly do against it?

  As it turned out, I didn’t even have to ask for The Clarence & Charles Old World Encyclopaedia. It was right there on the shelves of Lost Pages.

  The tables, shelves, and counters were packed with books that I had never seen anywhere before. Illustrated bestiaries in arcane languages. Histories of places I had never heard of. Theological essays on mysterious religions with equally mysterious names.

  And the dogs . . . there were dogs all over the place. Big and fat. Little and furry. Cuddly and goofy. Slobbering, with their tongues hanging down to the floor. Sleeping, with their paws stretched up into the air. And they were all friendly. This place was heaven. Everything I wanted was right here.

  I sat down on the floor, hidden (or so I thought) from the old man at the desk. I flipped open a volume of the Clarence & Charles that I’d never seen before, and, instead of frantically flipping back and forth, incessantly checking cross-references as I usually did with the encyclopaedia, I started reading on the first page. A brown Lab mutt trotted over to me, sniffed my nose, and put her head in my lap.

  Aydee’s quest to help the fallen warrior, to find Lost Pages, filled her with a sense of purpose. Never in her life had she felt moved to do or accomplish anything. She’d existed from day to day. Waiting. Waiting for nothing, because nothing ever changed.

  She would find the shop. She would help the warrior. She had to. For the first time in her life she felt needed. She could not ignore that.

  She ran toward Lost Pages, hugging the big, heavy book to her chest.

  I completely lost track of time. I was harrumphed out of my reverie by the old man, who, standing at the front desk, had been sorting through a pile of books when I’d come into the shop. He was round-faced, with a big nose, a mischievous smile, and a thick, grey beard. He was wearing the trademark “old bookseller” cardigan.

  He was holding a stool in his hands. He put it down close to me and sat. Several of the dogs came to see what was going on. All of a sudden a bunch of them were sniffing and licking my face.

  The old man clapped his hands, and the dogs stopped. “I’m afraid we’re closing up. You’ve been reading that book all day.”

  Uh-oh. This time I was really caught, I thought. There was no way I could pay for this book. He was just gonna throw me out. I wouldn’t get away with this again, I was sure. So close. I was so close. I was holding it in my hands!

  He laughed. “Don’t worry. I’ll put the book aside for you. You can come back tomorrow and read some more.”

  I was halfway back to my parents’ house when I realized that I hadn’t said a word to him. I’d simply handed him back the book and bolted out. I just ran. Ran all the way to my parents’ house and into my bedroom and shut the door.

  The shopkeeper looked anxious. He listened carefully to the young girl, all the while petting a large, goofy-looking Saint Bernard. The shopkeeper’s other hand was resting on the skeleton’s book, which Aydee had brought with her.

  “You’re very brave. And smart. You did the right thing. I’ll close up, and we’ll go right away.” He shooed out the few browsers who were loitering in the cramped shop and locked the door. “Wait for me here. I have to get something in the back.” When the man walked away, the Saint Bernard came up to Aydee and licked her fingers.

  The shopkeeper came back holding an oversize child’s wagon. “We’ll use this to carry him back here.”

  The Saint Bernard and two other dogs followed them out. The shopkeeper asked the others—the place was bustling with canines of all sizes and shapes—to stay behind. He dug into his jacket pocket and, before locking up, threw a handful of biscuits inside the shop.

  He harnessed the vehicle to the two large dogs. The Saint Bernard’s companion was a powerful-looking blond Labrador. A small, thin, black terrier mutt—barely larger than a cat—jumped on the wagon being pulled by the other two dogs.

  Aydee led the group to where she’d left the fallen warrior. He was nowhere in sight. “He was right here. I swear he was! I swear.”

  “I believe you.” The shopkeeper knelt by the lamppost the girl had indicated. “Look,” he picked up something off the ground and showed it to Aydee. “Bone splinters—and feathers.”

  “But where did he go?” Aydee bent down and carefully picked up one of the sharp feathers. She wanted to keep something to remember him by.

  “I don’t know. Sometimes there’s nothing you can do but try. You did your best.”

  “Is he—?”

  “I don’t know. I really don’t. Maybe we’ll never know. Maybe he’ll come back to the shop tomorrow to get the book again. Maybe not.”

  There was a long, uncomfortable silence.

  The shopkeeper began, “I guess I should head—” He stared at the girl’s eyes. He wrinkled his brow and scrutinized her.

  “You don’t have anywhere to go, do you?”

  “I—I. . . . No.” She started to sniffle. The small terrier immediately ran to her. He jumped up into her arms and licked her face.

  The man stood there for a few seconds, pondering, while the girl hid her face in the dog’s fur.

  “My name’s Lucas.” He exhaled deeply. “I’m really hungry. Come on, let’s have some lunch.”

  Not long after that, I disappeared from my parents’ world.

  Despite my embarrassment at how rudely I’d behaved with the old shopkeeper, I returned to the bookshop the very next day. I really needed to get my hands on that encyclopaedia again.

  Just as he’d promised, he’d kept the book for me. I apologized for the day before. He thanked me. Then, he showed me a room in the back where I could sit at a desk to pour through the Clarence & Charles. Those volumes were big. You really needed to set them down to read.

  Anyway, I started to come every day. Mister Rafael—that was the old man’s name—allowed me to help him out. Running small errands, shelving, sweeping. I loved it so much at Lost Pages. It’s where I wanted to spend all of my time.

  At first, I found Mister Rafael’s sense of humour a bit odd, a bit intimidating, but slowly I started to get it. Pretty soon, we were spending our days trading silent jokes while customers moved reverentially through the shop’s stock of incunabula and esoterica.

  By then, I knew that the shop only occupied the storefront area of Mister Rafael’s large house. I had seen enough to know that I belonged here. Here. With Mister Rafael. And the dogs! And, of course, the books. Learning about everything I’d always dreamed about and so much more I could never have imagined. Making it my life’s work.

  One night, after the shop closed, I told him I had something important to discuss. Mister Rafael didn’t look at me the way other adults did. I felt like a person around him, not like an annoyance to be dealt with. He nodded at me with that wry smile of his. “Let’s go in the kitchen,” he said. “I’ll make us some tea.” Drinking tea was his answer to most situations.

  We sat in silence for a while, but it wasn’t awkward. He waited for me to be ready to speak, enjoying sitting around with me. I was never more sure. So I spoke to him. I told him my life’s story. I told about how I felt. I stopped short of telling him that I’d come to see him as my father, much more so than the man whose genes I carried. Those words stuck in my throat. But he und
erstood.

  No-one at home or at school knew enough about me to trace me here. And, besides, I’d already begun to suspect that Lost Pages wasn’t fully tethered to the world I’d come from.

  “I was expecting something like this,” Mister Rafael said.

  I went back to my parents’ house one last time. I packed my clothes and came back to Mister Rafael’s house. I came home.

  He’d prepared a bedroom for me. Two walls were covered with shelves stacked with books, including a full set of the Clarence & Charles. There was a big, old wooden desk. The window was open to let in the cool, late-summer night breeze.

  Three of the dogs—Verso, Pipedream, and Unit; they’re long gone, now—were lying on the bed, wagging their tails. I went over to them. They climbed all over me, wrestling and playing. That—

  —sealed it. I’ve been living here ever since.” Lucas nodded, remembering. “Some years later, when I was old enough, Mister Rafael retired and left to explore all those—” Lucas paused, measuring the weight of the next word “—worlds he had only read about.”

  Aydee waited for Lucas to explain what he meant, but instead there was an awkward silence between them.

  Finally, Lucas continued, “He left the shop in my care and still sends me the occasional message. My life would have been pretty desolate without him.”

  On the table, there was a spread of breads, fruit, and cheeses, on which Lucas and Aydee nibbled while Lucas recounted his story. There were large bowls of dog food and water on the floor. Aydee couldn’t keep track of the number of dogs that came in and out of the kitchen to eat, drink, or get their heads scratched.

  She said, “Lucas . . . what happened today . . . does it . . . does it happen often? Is this what your life is like?” She wanted to ask him why no-one else could see the skeleton fighting the darkness. She thought of the lioness, and of learning to trust Lucas enough to ask him if he knew about her. Soon.

  “No . . . not often. . . .” He winked at the girl. She giggled.

  “Hey! I should get back to work. I’ve got boxes and boxes of books to sort through.” He downed some apple juice. “Wanna help?”

  She nodded. Before she could stop herself, she blurted out, “My name’s Aydee.” She felt scared and exposed, speaking that name aloud for the first time in her life.

  “Well, I’m happy we met, Aydee. I really am.” When she heard Lucas say her name, she knew she’d come home.

  The giant lioness’s powerful paw shattered the front door of the apartment, which opened into the living room. She walked in, destroying the doorframe, bringing down the wall.

  The lioness strolled up to the couple on the couch—a small-faced man with a big moustache and a woman drinking from a jumbo-size bottle of cola—crushing everything in her path. The couple was oblivious to her presence; they looked right through her, didn’t notice the destruction. A thundering growl erupted from deep within the creature. She raised her paw again and, in one swipe, killed both the man and the woman.

  Blood and gore seeped into the spotless couch, splattered against pristine surfaces, dropped on the soft, clean carpet.

  She sniffed at the corpses. She devoured the stomachs and innards first. She stripped the meat from the bones. She chomped down on the skulls and chewed out the brains, the eyes, the tongues. She shattered the bigger bones with her teeth and sucked out the marrow.

  Her meal finished, she left.

  Her engorged teats cried for release.

  There were many who needed her.

  Chapter 2 - Let Evil Beware!

  Billy was eight years old.

  He was sitting at his desk in class. The teacher was talking. Billy was looking very attentive. In truth, he didn’t hear a word of what the teacher was saying.

  Monsters! His head was filled with visions of monsters. He saw himself hunting bloodsucking fiends, flesh-eating ghouls, bone-crushing brutes, would-be world-conquering despotic demons, and snickering creeps who tortured innocent victims. He hunted them down and destroyed them—or at the very least banished them to another dimension.

  Let evil beware! None can escape Billy, the monster hunter!

  The bell rang and snapped Billy out of his reverie.

  It was the last day of school. Billy ran out of the classroom, emptied his locker into his school bag, and hurried out of the school building.

  On his way home he stopped by The Golden Age comics shop. It was Wednesday. The week’s new comics were out!

  “Hi, Bert.” Bert was the guy who ran the comics shop. He was tall and friendly, with glasses that looked a bit too small for his head. He played bass in the band Another Grey Truck; as usual, he had on a sweatshirt emblazoned with the band logo. Bert always treated Billy with respect.

  He welcomed the boy with a warm smile. “Hey! How’s it going, Billy? Last day of school, I hear.”

  “Finally . . . now I can get back to work.”

  “Lots of monsters to kill, huh?”

  “You bet, Bert. It’s frantic work trying to cram in a full load of monster hunting on free weekends and school holidays. It’ll be easier now that I can be on the job almost every day.”

  Billy glanced at the new-release rack. “Wow.”

  “Yeah, I thought you’d be pretty happy. A lot of your favourites came out today. Here, I put aside the ones I thought you’d want.” Bert handed Billy a stack of new comics.

  Jade Sentinel. Doc Shadow. Mister Thunder. Strange Tales of the Sproutworld. The Adventures of Kirby & Jack. Baron Nexus. B.E.M. The Preservers. Spiderkid. Rude Dude. Brimstone Kid. The Immortals. The Time Teens. The Detective of Dreams.

  “Wow,” repeated the awed little boy. “This is great! I can’t remember getting so many good comics on the same week.” He carefully inspected all the new releases. “Looks like you got everything, Bert.”

  Billy paid for his comics (his dad always gave him enough money for comics because he read them, too) and headed home.

  “Hey squirt. You look happy!” Billy’s father was cutting vegetables for tonight’s supper.

  “Hi Dad! You bet! Look at these!” Billy whipped out his new comics.

  “Whoa! You hit the jackpot today!”

  “Did you record my—”

  “Of course I did, squirt. Why don’t you read your comics now? I’ll be done here in forty minutes or so; then we can watch the cartoons together.”

  “Sounds great, Dad!”

  Billy hurried to his bedroom and threw his schoolbag on the bed. Clutching his new comics, he went to the living room and buried himself in the couch to read while he waited for his father to join him to watch today’s episodes of World’s Best Heroes, Chuck Amuck, Leave It to Lucky!, and Opus the Cat.

  Tomorrow, he thought (flipping back the cover of Baron Nexus), tomorrow I’ll hunt monsters.

  “Hi, I’m Billy. I’m here to get my stuff.”

  It was nine, Thursday morning. Aydee had just opened up Lost Pages bookshop for the day. This was the first time she had done it by herself, and already she felt out of her depth. She’d started the day confident she could handle anything. “Your . . . stuff?”

  “You’re new here, right? Where’s Lucas? What’s your name? What do you know about monsters?”

  “Hey, slow down . . . Billy,” Aydee said, remembering the little boy’s name.

  “You don’t look much older than me. Do you really work here?”

  For a moment the two children faced each other down. Why was this annoying kid giving her a hard time? Exasperated, Aydee broke the duel and busied herself tidying the counter.

  She sighed, and said: “Yeah, I do. I work here. Listen—Lucas will be back soon.” Aydee would be glad to shoo this strange little boy onto Lucas. He should have warned her about him! What else should she know but hadn’t been told?

  Billy looked around. “He must be walking the dogs, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, maybe you can help me in the meantime.” He rummaged through his knapsack
and pulled out some sheets of paper.

  “Do you know if you have anything on this critter? I think it’s a Low Bunny,” he pointed at a drawing of a rabbit with giant fangs and yellow scales, “but I’m not sure.” He pressed on, oblivious to her anxiety. “What about these?” He indicated a roundish construct made up of smaller, multicoloured spheres. “These, I’m pretty sure, are the Bouncing Balls of Boomworld. Or what about these?” He showed her a picture of naked men and women with rainbow skin. “I have no idea where they come from. Do you?”

  Aydee was saved from the barrage of questions by the arrival of Lucas’s dogs. They swarmed over Billy, greeting him enthusiastically.

  Billy was playfully wrestling with some of the dogs when Lucas spotted him.

  “Billy! How you doing? Haven’t seen you around for a few weeks.”

  “Yeah . . . I just couldn’t get away. Family stuff, blah, blah, blah.”

  Lucas nodded knowingly. “Mmm . . . school must be over by now, right?”

  “Yeah, I’m free! But I got lots of work to do today.”

  “Busy dreams last night?”

  “You bet! Take a look at these.” He handed over his drawings to Lucas.

  “You don’t usually dream about Yamesh-Lot,” Lucas said with concern, inspecting the pictures.

  Aydee’s blood grew cold at the mention of the dark god’s name. Sometimes, she thought it was crazy to stay here, where she was confronted with these kinds of dangers. But then she remembered that when she had almost fallen prey to Yamesh-Lot she had never heard of him or of Lost Pages.

  She strained her neck to get a glimpse of Billy’s drawing. But there was no detail; only a black mass inside a thick white border.

  Billy dismissed Lucas’s anxieties. “Don’t worry. That border? That means he’s still contained. It’s all under control.”

  Lucas nodded approvingly at the boy’s words, but Aydee wasn’t convinced. Just who and what was this strange little boy? How could he be a match for the lord of nightmares?