Seize the Night: New Tales of Vampiric Terror (15 page)

The walls were lined from floor to ceiling with sagging shelves full of books, and she could see at a glance that, though the stock in this section immediately inside the entrance contained everything from academic texts to the usual classics, its primary focus was on matters philosophical and occult. Everywhere she turned, there were books such as Agrippa’s
De Occulta Philosophia
, the ancient notes of Anaxagoras of Clazomenae detailing his conclusion that the Earth was spherical,
The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
, the Hindu
Rig Veda
, the poems of Ovid, the plays of Aeschylus, Lucan’s
De Bello Civili
; there were numerous sections that contained long-out-of-print works by Robert Nathan, Booth Tarkington, even Jessamyn West and Katherine Anne Porter. Annette’s heart beat with surprising excitement. Aside from the rare edition of the McCullers novel in the display window, who knew what other treasures she might find in here?

Approaching the counter, she saw that the proprietor didn’t use anything electronic when tallying up sales; no, he or she had an antique National Cash Register two-deep-drawer, three-key bank machine in polished cherrywood with flawless persimmon inlay, the kind of register that hadn’t been in use for at least a hundred years, and this machine was in superb condition.

She was admiring a copy of
The Complete Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald
that sat by itself on a wooden display square in a delicate, exquisite bell jar. The jar was on a small table by the counter; this book, too, seemed to be a first edition. Touching her fingertips against her thumbs to be certain no detritus from the late and much-lamented doughnut holes remained, she looked around the store for any sign of the proprietor.
Okay
, she said to herself,
you know damned well that this thing has to be set apart like this for a reason, right? They’ve put it inside a bell jar, for pity’s sake. You shouldn’t even be
thinking
about this.

But even at thirty-six—just as she’d been at six, and twelve, and twenty-six—Annette Klein was never one to let common sense override curiosity, especially when it came to old books. She reached out, hesitated for only a moment, and then carefully, even delicately (for her), lifted the glass covering and set it to the side, making sure that it was balanced and in no danger of falling.

She picked up the book and began flipping through the pages until she came across “Bernice Bobs Her Hair,” always her favorite of Fitzgerald’s stories, and had just turned the page when she felt the unmistakable, fiery-sharp slice of paper cuts on her fingertips. Pulling back her hand, she watched in disgust as blood from her index, middle, and fourth finger spattered onto the page she’d been reading.
Shit
, she thought.
Oh, well—you bleed on it, you bought it
. She unconsciously stuck the tips of the three fingers into her mouth and sucked at them, tasting the faint coppery flavor and almost gagging. She fumbled the book, still opened to the pages she’d bled on, down
onto the counter and was searching her jacket pockets for some tissues, or a handkerchief, or anything at all she could use to wrap around her bleeding digits, when she saw why she’d managed to get paper cuts on all three of her fingers; each upper corner of the two opened pages facing her had for some incomprehensible reason been dog-eared so that two surprisingly sharp-tipped triangles jutted up, and the paper stock itself was of a sufficiently strong quality that these dog-eared corners felt almost solid. Why on earth would anyone do that to a rare edition of a book, let alone a Fitzgerald? Squeezing the fingers of her left hand tightly in her right fist, she leaned forward and stared at the book.

Was she imagining things, or did it look somehow thicker than before she’d picked it up? She squinted, feeling the blood running down her wrist. Her unwounded hand unconsciously went to the silver crucifix hanging around her neck, an heirloom from her grandmother. As her fingers absentmindedly traced the shape of the cross (something she always did when nervous), she stared at the book. What else was it about this that seemed . . . off? She reached out to close the book and felt the edges of the page almost snap out. She knew she felt the sliver of fierce, quick pain slice across her palm. This time she cursed out loud at the pain and turned away from the book before she soaked it with any more of her blood.

Now there was another book on the wooden display block where the Fitzgerald had been a minute before. How the hell had it gotten there?

“Oh, dear me,” someone said. “Oh, damn it, damn it, damn it. My fault, my fault, so very sorry.”

A short, stocky man dressed in clothes easily twenty years out of date came up to her and took her bleeding hand in his. “Oh, Jesus Christ in a secondhand Chrysler,” he said in a voice that sounded as if he gargled with Wild Turkey four times a day, “you really hurt yourself, didn’t you?”

“They’re just paper cuts.”

The man shook his head, in obvious pain. “No cut is
just
anything. Not to me, anyway. Come back here with me, I’ll fix you up. Lots of doctors in my family. I’m not one of them but I’ve picked up a few tricks here and there.” He started to say something else but then noticed the Fitzgerald lying on the counter and the new book that had taken its place on the display block. “Excuse me one moment,” he said. He grabbed the bell jar and covered the new book, and then glanced for a moment at the Fitzgerald. His face blanched, but he quickly gathered himself and smiled at Annette. “Sorry. I’m a bit fussy about certain things. People say it makes me colorful. That’s what happens when you get to be as old as me. You become colorful. A local character, even.” He led her to an area near the back of the store that was separated from the sales floor by a large wall of frosted glass.

“I was trying to close early. I guess I didn’t check the sign.” He wore a pressed white shirt open slightly at the collar so that the thin gray-and-black-striped tie wasn’t completely strangling him. He sported not one but two pairs of glasses: a regular black-rimmed pair with a second, wire-framed pair just an inch farther down his nose; judging from the thickness of the lenses, this second set had either bi- or more likely trifocal lenses. His vest, like his tailored, cuffed pants, was pin-striped. A chain led from one vest pocket to another, where Annette could see the outline of a gold pocket watch.

Definitely old-school
, she thought. She liked that.

He pulled out an ancient-looking wooden rolling stool and helped her to sit, then opened the tambour of a rolltop desk and removed what appeared to be a well-stocked medical kit from beneath stacks of receipts and order forms. The entire room was stuffed with books, stacked from the floor to almost shoulder height, and in some places the stacks were three deep. Annette couldn’t help but marvel.

“I’ll bet you know where every last book in this store is, even if it’s buried in a stack like one of these and in the basement or something.”

“You’d win that bet,” said the bookseller. He opened the lid of the medical kit and began assembling everything he needed to tend to Annette’s cuts. As he reached over to take hold of her hand his sleeve rode up slightly, and Annette saw the row of fading-but-not-faded numerals tattooed near his wrist. The bookseller caught sight of what she was looking at and so pulled his sleeve a bit farther up, turning his wrist to give her a better look.

“I’m sorry,” said Annette. “I didn’t mean to stare. It’s just that I . . . I’ve never met anyone who was . . . was . . .”

“Yes, I was in a concentration camp,” said the bookseller. “I was taken there as a child. My family and I were marched from our home in Hungary, along with thousands of others, to a camp called Gunskirchen Lager in the Austrian forest. Most of my family died on the way. My sister lasted until two days after we arrived. She’d hurt her feet on the march and gangrene set in. Her death was slow and agonizing—I still cry when I think about it too much. I haven’t been one for long walks ever since. If it hadn’t been for a boy named Uri who befriended me in those early days, I think I would have just willed myself to die.”

His tone was so matter-of-fact that Annette felt momentarily anxious. Was this man a little on the crazy side? Who could talk about something so horrible in such an almost nonchalant manner, and to a total stranger?

“I don’t mean to sound unfeeling,” said the bookseller as he set about cleaning her cuts with some kind of ointment that immediately killed the pain, “but I find that if I talk about it any other way, I just . . . implode. Please, don’t be offended. Sometimes I talk too much and go into stories by rote. I don’t get a lot of company these days.”

A dozen questions that she wanted to ask him flooded across
Annette’s mind: Was he a widower? Didn’t he have any children? Was he always alone here? But the question that won out was: “What happened out there with the books?”

He hesitated a moment, a fresh cotton ball hovering over the cut on her palm, and then released the breath he’d been holding and continued ministering to her. “That, I’m afraid, will take a bit of explaining, and I’d rather that you not think I’m loony-tunes and go screaming off the premises. Also it would be nice if you didn’t sue me because of these cuts.”

“Like I said, they’re just paper cuts.”

“And like I said, no cut is
just
anything, not to me.” He finished cleaning the cuts and began rummaging around in the kit for a small tube of superglue. “Cyanoacrylate,” he said, showing her the tube. “Believe it or not, it wasn’t invented so guys could suspend themselves with their hard hats from steel beams—it was developed for medics to use in the field during Vietnam. Best way in the world to quickly and safely close a bleeding wound.”

“Believe it or not,” said Annette, “I already knew that.”

“Of course you did. Anyone curious enough to take a Fitzgerald out from under glass
would
know something like that.”

Annette cleared her throat. The bookseller paused and looked up at her.

“Speaking of the Fitzgerald . . . ,” she said.

“You’ll think I’m crazy.”

“Will I? Let’s review: I took a book out from under a bell jar. That book had pages with dog-eared corners that I swear
bit
my fingers. The pages absorbed my blood and the book grew thicker. And when I turned around, another book had taken the Fitzgerald’s place, even though you were back here and I was alone in the store. Does that about cover it?”

“A worthy highlight reel if ever there was one.”

“Do you think
I’m
crazy?”

“You don’t strike me as being particularly unbalanced, no.”

Annette smiled. “So tell me what happened out there. It wasn’t normal.”

The bookseller shrugged. “That depends on your definition of the word
normal
.”

“Please?”

He stared at her for a moment, then rubbed the back of his neck. “You want a drink? I’m going to have one. Pick your poison; I got a little bit of everything stashed around here.”

“Got any wine?”

“White or red?”

“Red?”

He went behind the rolltop desk and emerged a few moments later with a bottle of red wine and a pair of tulip-shaped wineglasses. After pouring each of them a glass, the bookseller held up his wine and said,
“Doamne apara-me rău.”

“What’s that mean?”

“It’s a kind of Romanian blessing. It’s a good thing, trust me.”

“Okee-day,” she replied, and took a drink of the wine. It was incredible. “This is the best red wine I’ve ever tasted.”

“Really? I made it myself. I have another bottle in the back if you’d like one to take home.”

“Oh, I’d
love
that.”

The bookseller smiled widely; this genuinely pleased him. “What do you know? Someone thinks something I made with my own hands is the best they’ve ever encountered. And here I thought there wasn’t going to be anything special happening today.”

He put his glass aside and returned to Annette’s hand. “Have you ever heard those rumors about Hitler seeking occult or supernatural assistance during the war?”

Annette shrugged. “I just thought it was the stuff of legend, or pulp fiction.”

The bookseller snorted a laugh and shook his head. “Not all of it was as far-fetched as you might think. The Longinus spear, for instance, the spear that supposedly pierced Christ’s side while he was on the cross—I know, I know, what a very Catholic way to describe it, it’s late, I’m tired, so sue me. Anyway, that spear was purported to possess great power. It was said that whoever possessed the spear would have the power to conquer the world. Hitler very much believed that, and until the moment he blew his brains out down in the bunker, he had hundreds of people searching for it.

“One of the things that made Gunskirchen an oddball among the concentration camps is that the majority of people sent there were professionals—physicians, lawyers, professors, artists, musicians. During the first weeks there, Uri and I could almost get
drunk
on the conversations that were whispered at night in the barracks. Philosophy, music, law, mathematics, and myth . . . it seemed early enough on that maybe it wasn’t going to be as horrible as we’d been told. That notion was quickly put out of its misery.

“The conditions were subhuman. There was a series of twenty toilet pits that had been dug out at the far edge of the camp, and if you went to the bathroom anywhere but in one of those pits, the Germans shot you dead on the spot. These pits were never covered and so the stench of it was always in the air. But the thing is, disease spreads quickly, and many people became afflicted with diarrhea. It didn’t matter if a person was standing in line for one of the pits; if they lost control of their bowels—and many did—and soiled themselves in line, they were dragged out of line, made to kneel down, and shot in the head. We weren’t allowed to move their bodies. The Germans liked to laugh at the dead Jews lying in a puddle of their own liquid filth. Of all the images I can’t rid myself of, it’s the image of all those people, those
skeletons
, standing in the pit lines, shuddering with all the strength they had, trying not to shit themselves.”
He blinked his eyes and shivered. “Yeah, I’m a cheerful guy with many happy stories . . .”