THE BOOK

Copyright (c) 2020 by Randall R. Peterson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED This is a work of fiction. All persons, locations and actions are from the author's imagination or have been used in a fictitious manner.

THE BOOK

By R. Peterson

            Eddy Hicks and Daryl Poole watched from inside Daryl’s father’s battered pickup three houses down from their intended target. The engine was running and they were listening to Percy Sledge sing When a Man loves a Woman on the AM radio. “How long we going to sit her?” Daryl shivered and zipped up his Cloverdale Stallions wrestling jacket. “We need the heat on, and gas is up to thirty-two cents a gallon!”

            “I’ll never understand why your dad wastes that extra nickel putting Ethyl in this rust bucket.”

Daryl had just lit a Lucky Strike cigarette with the Ford’s in-dash lighter when they saw the 1949 Roadmaster back out of the garage. “Wow!” Eddy gasped. “That’s one cherry Buick! Didn’t I tell you these people got bucks.”

            Daryl leaned out the window to get a better look. “That’s Allison Weatherbee driving but I don’t see anyone with her. That means the Descombey woman must still be in the house.”

            “Who cares,” Eddy snickered. “That witch was wrinkled when my grand-pappy was young. If she’s still alive, she’d have to be at least a hundred and ten years old.”

            “Still, I don’t like breaking in a house when someone is home!” Daryl shook his head but opened his door when Eddy opened his.

            “My sister said Allison will be helping clean the library until nine. That will give us plenty of time to search the house for valuables. These old broads go for gaudy jewelry and they don’t like paste.” Eddy started to swagger. He held his hands loosely at his sides and began to strut like James Dean.  “I’ll bet she’s got diamond earrings and pearl necklaces piled next to her can of Goiter pills. I’m sure her mattress is stuffed with silver certificates. You might have to dance with her, while I check it out.” Daryl glanced uneasily at the darkened houses as they walked past … he thought Eddy was talking too loud. Eddy turned to him and grinned. “But no kissing!”

Daryl was starting to sweat even though it was almost freezing outside.   “What if she wakes up and causes trouble?’

Eddy laughed. “If the old lady gets you in a Full Nelson, I’ll report her to the wrestling commission!”

-------2-------

Eddy’s eyes lit up when they found the side door to the mansion unlocked. “This is going to be like milking a cow,” he whispered as they went inside. The hands of a grandfather clock were stuck on 8:14. They walked past a too-plain painting in a dimly lit hallway. An expensive gilded frame surrounded fine swirls of gray tones. “Looks like the artist forgot to paint his subject,” Daryl blinked several times and they walked on. The kitchen was old fashioned with new granite countertops. “Money!” Eddy pointed to the gold-plated faucet as they tiptoed past.

Suddenly a scruffy yellow cat with fevered eyes leaped from behind the kitchen table and with a loud hiss scratched Eddy’s nose as it sailed past. “Ouch! I’ll kill you little b#%$^%#” Eddy started after the feline but stopped in the hallway. “Where did it go?”

Daryl tugged on his arm and pointed. The empty gray painting on the wall now featured a yellow cat in fine Italian portraiture as solemn and as mysterious as Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa.

            “You’ve got to be kidding!” Eddy rubbed his nose and then wiped a bloody finger on Daryl’s shirt.

“I think the stairs to the bedrooms is through here.” Daryl crept through an arched walk way into a large parlor and Eddy followed. The room was lit by numerous flickering oil lamps and the walls were lined with bookshelves. Several tables held various sizes of candelabras, most looked to be made of expensive metals.

Wall to wall parquet floors were crafted of colorful, and obviously very expensive, hardwoods cut into the shapes of people, plants and animals combined to create an elaborate landscape only partially blocked with an occasion animal fur rug.

Daryl had never been much of an art student but he remembered being terrified as a child by a book of landscapes by the Flemish painter Pieter Bruegel while in school. He gasped as he recognized the tidal waves of skeleton warriors from the painting the Triumph of Death. He lost his balance on the highly polished wood, whirled his arms as if he were attempting to fly and crashed into an antique upright Steinway piano.

A large crystal jar containing hundreds of what looked like blue marbles on the piano top overturned and the glass balls rained down, seemingly at random, on the open keyboard playing the first eight measures of Mozart’s Sonata for Piano in E Minor note for note.

“You clumsy ox,” Eddy bellowed. “If anyone in this house didn’t know we were here … they do now!”

“I’m sorry,” Daryl moaned. “I think this house is bewitched.”

“Let’s grab what we can and get out of here,” Eddy suggested. He plucked the candles out of several golden holders and tried to stuff the holders in his pockets.

Daryl was reaching for a small golden statue of a half-submerged and obviously dying mermaid when a large black book fell from the top shelf and landed on his head. His lost track of several seconds and when the stars disappeared he was following Eddy as they ran through the kitchen. The book was in his hand instead of the mermaid! He flung it into the corner and started back …. Eddy grabbed him. “There’s no time!” he said. From somewhere upstairs a frail voice cried out “Who’s there?”

It was Daryl who noticed the clock in the hallway … it now showed just after midnight.  “Damn!” he whispered. “We’ve been in here … for four hours?”

-------3-------

They let the door slam behind them as they ran toward the truck. “Do you think that old woman is going to call the cops?”

Eddy glanced over his shoulder as they ran. “I don’t think she has a phone,” he said. “I don’t see any wires running into the house.”

Daryl didn’t notice the book in his hand until he reached for the ignition switch. “What the hell?”

            “I thought I told you to get rid of that!” Eddy grabbed the black book from Daryl and flung it out the window. They were no longer afraid of waking the neighbors. Daryl burned rubber from both back tires as they roared past the house. The old truck was doing over sixty miles per hour when it careened through the intersection. The book was suddenly back, lying on the seat between them. “Devil get thee behind me,” Eddy yelled. He again flung the book out the window. Three blocks later, Eddy laughed as he lit another cigarette. “Third time is the charm. For a moment there, I thought we were in trouble.”

------- last -------

The book lay open in the center of Galbraith and Main. Crackling leaves skittered across an asphalt stage … fleeing some tragic performance yet to come. A fall-born moon peered at the pages from between the ashen-branches of a Lombardy poplar … and recited each carefully crafted line as lightning made voice in the sky. The streets were barren of all but stranger-traffic … frantic trucks looking for a lost highway. Only a scattering of lights flickered from curtained windows across the sleeping town … fireflies without companions, after all clocks had whispered midnight.

Thirty seconds of silence hibernated into a tomb-like calm … as the world of mortals held its breath. Distant tires screamed and skidded just before a crash. An explosion, some blocks away, shook withered-lawns on both sides of the street and offered to sell carefully-raked leafs to a rich and perusing breeze. A hellish ball of chemical-inferno exploded somewhere beyond Townsend Avenue, lighting the sky and capturing one last disconsolate scene for all eternity. Acrid smoke drifted upward from the mayhem and wrapped the stars in a too-warm coat. A chorus of ravenous wolves began to sing as they moved down from the hills above Motha Forest.

In an upstairs bedroom, Melania’s eyelids fluttered as one misty dream ended … and another began.

The moon, the street and a jealous night … all desired, conspired and allied as they courted the approaching magic. Lost moments ticked by … before emergency sirens sounded to summon a cold and sodden audience.

And the night wind sighed as it turned the pages …

THE END ?