Cold Dead Past (8 page)

             
                                          CHAPTER 14

The next day, Jay woke up in his hotel room refreshed.  He could get used to a full night’s sleep without waking up covered in sweat, a silent scream on his lips.

Meg had left a message at the front desk that she would be busy all day showing houses.  He called Gary at the sheriff’s office from the house phone and was told that he had run into Albany for some police business.

Now, with time to kill, Jay decided to take a walk downtown.  He always did his best thinking on long walks.  Besides, it would be nice to see what kinds of changes had taken place since he had been away.

His first stop was the alley where they had found Charlie Harper’s body.  He stood, hands in pockets, looking it over.  He wasn’t quite sure what he had expected to see.  The only evidence that something had happened was a wadded up length of yellow police tape stuffed into a garbage can.

The visit only confirmed to him that this was indeed the location he had seen in his dream.  Not very enlightening, knowing the where and not the why.  At least he knew he wasn’t delusional. He couldn’t recall ever having been down this alley before, so there was no rational reason for it to have appeared to him in such detail.

From the murder scene, Jay took a leisurely walk down Main Street.  Thomas Wolfe said that you can’t go home again.  For years, Jay had taken that literally, hating the thought of returning to the town that had taken from him the two most important people of his youth.

Long sessions with his psychoanalyst had taught him all about his tendency to avoid his problems. He freely admitted to himself that the funeral was just an excuse to run away and hide from something he feared a lot more right now than his past, that damn keyboard and blank screen.  The only good thing about the whole excursion was his chance to be with Meg again.

As Jay wandered down the freshly-shoveled sidewalk, past buildings that had been sandblasted and scrubbed clean of all their character.  What an appropriate punishment for Haddonfield’s sins against him.

The Rexall pharmacy, where Meg had given him that first kiss behind the greeting card rack, the kiss Frank taunted him about, was now a gourmet food store and coffee bar.  The hardware store, an Ali Baba’s cave of wonders to him when he was eight-years-old, was now just another link in a homogeneous chain, devoid of any spirit of community.

The whole place had been turned into some blank, sterile copy of any one of a thousand other small towns that specialized in liberating vacationers from their hard-earned dollars.  There was no longer anything here to fear, or so it seemed.

The whole burg had become a monument to city folks’ over-developed need to believe that if they bought a rusty sawblade painted with poorly done scenes of country life here, it was a far superior thing to purchasing the same item from a junk shop just ten blocks from their apartment.

By the time he found himself in front of the Evil Eye bookstore, he had almost convinced himself that he was in an amusement park caricature. Then, in the display window, beneath a half-open eye outlined in gold leaf, was a handmade poster with one of the eight by ten glossy black and white photographs of him that the publisher had sent out in the promotional packet for "Raven’s End".  Next to it in red marker was his name and the words "Hometown Author" in large capital letters.

His vanity got the better of him and he decided to go in. A little bell above the door chimed to announce his entrance. The pimply-faced teen reading a copy of Jay’s book and sitting at the counter the left of the entrance barely grunted out a "hello".

Jay remembered the place as a Murphy’s five and dime store.  Now the one word he could find to describe it was "gloomy".  It looked more like a warehouse than a bookstore.  The walls had been stripped down to the bare brick and every square inch of the space was crammed from top to bottom with books.

Down the center, running from the door to the back of the store were tables covered with books. Each table had a sign marked "closeout" or "sale". Jay thought that he would have a little fun and stepped up to the counter.

"Hi. I was wondering.  Is that book you guys have in the window any good?"

The clerk looked up with nary a sign of recognition and said, "Well, I kinda like it.  My sister’s in college and she said it was dime novel crap.  I just think it’s a good read.  Not a lot of big words.  We get a lot of people asking about it."

All that filtered into Jay’s thoughts was the word "Bitch!".

"Did you want a copy?" the clerk asked. "I’ll have to get you one out of the window display.  Those are all we have left."

After the opinion of this punk’s sister, that was some consolation, he thought to himself.  They were almost sold out.  There were what, six copies in the window?  How many copies would they have started with?  Maybe fifty?  One hundred?

Jay began running the numbers on how much the royalty payment was on one hundred copies when the clerk added, "My boss bought a dozen copies of that when it came out a few months ago.  It’s what he calls a slow mover.  So, do you want a copy?"

Deflated, he answered, "No. I think that I can get it cheaper online."

He was about to turn around and slink out of the store when a thought occurred to him.

"Do you have any books on dreams?"

"You’ll find them in aisle two."

Jay looked around, instantly asea.  Nothing in the place was marked. There were three close-set rows of floor-to-ceiling shelves to either side of the discount tables in addition to the ones running along the walls.

"Aisle two?"

The spotty-faced clerk gave an annoyed look and slid down off of his perch behind the counter.

"C’mon.  I’ll show you."

As Jay followed along behind, he noticed a couple of other customers browsing around in the shadowy depths of the space between the first two shelving units they passed.  The books seemed to range from tattered used paperbacks to brand new editions with no attempt to segregate them.

The contents of each aisle were carefully delineated on typed sheets hung in frames on the end of each bank of shelves. Jay glanced at them as he passed and saw that the stock ran the gamut; from ancient history to science fiction and fantasy to ancient pagan teachings.

The clerk turned down an aisle packed with titles like "Your Dreams And What They Mean" and "Dream Your Way To Wealth".  The closeness of the shelves gave the claustrophobic feeling of being deep in a crevasse.

He turned to his guide and said, "No. This isn’t quite the kind of thing I had in mind.  Do you have anything that isn’t geared to the crystals and pyramids crowd?"

His companion shrugged and waved for him to follow as he continued to the end of the aisle.  His voice cracked as he yelled, "Hey, Abe!  I got somebody here that is looking for a serious education."

The boy turned back to Jay and said, "Just a minute and my boss will be right out."

From behind a curtain that hid an opening in the back wall of the store came the screech of wood on concrete. A cardboard flap taped next to it had the word "Office" scrawled almost illegibly on it in black marker.

A gruff, deep voice barked, "Just a minute."

The curtain flew back with a flourish.  Into the archway stepped a man who looked to be in his early sixties, bald except for a close-cropped fringe.  His barrel-shaped body filled the doorway and a long, slim, hawk-like nose was set between wide, brown, bloodshot eyes.

Jay could feel himself being sized up as the man asked, "How may I help you, sir?"

Then, recognition filled the man’s eyes. He quickly shuffled over and clasped Jay’s hand in one of his hammy paws.

"Bless me.  Jay Putnam.  I’m Abe Greene and I own this place.  How are you boy?  What do you need?"

Jay gave a half-step back, unable to pull himself loose, and said, "Great. I’m looking for some books on dreams, but none of the trade stuff.  I want some serious literature on the occult."

Abe’s arms fell back down to his sides. A dreamy look came across his face, as if he were thinking about a land far away or dosed with Valium.  Then a smile parted his lips, revealing yellowed teeth. He turned and began walking away. When he realized that he was alone, Abe turned back and gave a come hither wiggle of his finger.

Jay and the clerk followed him down one of the dimly-lit canyons of books to a point about three-quarters of the way back to the front of the shop.  Abe pulled a library stool up to one of the shelving units and began looking through some of the books stored up high.

"Are you working on a new book?" he asked.

Jay shook his head. "No. This is for something personal."

Abe began pulling down books and handing them to him.  Two of them were quite large and covered in thick layers of dust. By the time Abe came back down off of the stool, Jay’s arms sagged and the weight of his load made them ache. He almost lost his balance trying to juggle the books and stifle a sneeze caused by all the dust floating around his head.

Abe took him by the arm and led him back the way they’d come.

"Come on with me and we’ll have a talk in my back room.  I should have some stuff more along the lines of what you’re looking for."

Abe noticed the clerk still standing next to Jay and shook his head impatiently.

"Don’t you know who this is?"

"Ummmm…no?"

Jay was startled as Abe made a sound like the buzzer on a game show.

"Wrong answer. Whose book is it we have featured in the window.  Whose book are you reading?"

He pulled the copy of "Raven’s End" out of the boy’s hand, flipped it around, and held it so that the jacket photo was about an inch away from his nose.  The clerk's head jerked back so he could get a good focus on it. His gaze shifted back and forth between the jacket photo and Jay.

"Oh, man. You’re the guy."

He took his book back from Abe and then grabbed a ballpoint pen from his back pocket. When he held them out to Jay, all the author-cum-pack mule could do was nod at the stack of books in his arms and shrug.

"I’d be glad to sign it for you. I’m just a tad busy."

"Oh, yeah. Sorry."

Abe turned to Jay and said, "You see what I have to put up with."  And then to the clerk, "Go and find another poor customer to mislead. Or mayhaps we have another best-selling author roaming around lost!"

The boy scanned the shop. "Where?"

Abe sighed, exasperated.

"Well, dust or something.  I don’t just pay you to sit on your ass and read all day."

The boy’s face turned red.  Jay could hear him mutter something under his breath.  "When you remember to pay me at all."

The clerk wandered in the general direction of the counter as Abe pulled back the curtain and waved Jay on.

Once through the curtain and in the back room, he turned to Jay and said, "He’s not so bad, really.  He’s just a little too much into the merchandise."

Jay nodded to the heavy load in his arms. "Could you?"

"Oh. Sorry."  Abe rubbed the base of his spine. "Bad back, you know, otherwise I would have helped you with that.  Why don’t you set them on the table?"

Jay grunted and walked over to a large, heavy oak table in the center of the room, where he unceremoniously dropped the books.  While he rubbed his arms trying to get some circulation flowing again, Abe headed over to a metal cabinet set against one of the walls and unlocked the doors.  Inside it were more books which looked much older than the ones from the front of the shop.

The room's layout didn’t look anything like he would have expected.  It was almost a quarter of the size of the sales floor and much more spacious.  Well-lit by a large crystal chandelier that hung over the table in the center of the room, with a corner delimited as a separate space by a large oriental rug. An overstuffed leather sofa sat at an angle there in front of a television.

Against the back wall, next to the alley door, was a large kneehole desk upon which sat what looked like a brand new computer monitor and keyboard.  Along the wall opposite the gray metal cabinet was a long, low counter covered in cardboard boxes and packing materials with more locked cabinets underneath.

Abe selected a book about the size of one of those big, fat family Bibles everyone seemed to get conned into buying.  He slung it under his arm as he reached down and pulled a cardboard box out of a bottom cabinet.

He gripped the book tightly with both hands and shoved the box ahead of him with his feet as he made his way back to the table.  With every kick, Jay could hear the clink of glass against glass.  Abe slammed the book down on the table and took a deep breath as he sat in a chair opposite him.  Jay could see that it had a thick leather cover with some symbols deeply embossed on it in red and gold.  A large metal clasp held it tightly shut.

Abe motioned with his hand as he said, "Please, please.  Have a seat."

Jay slipped into the other chair and pulled himself up close to the table, expectant.  Abe searched his face for a moment and then bent down and reached into the cardboard box next to his feet.  There was more clinking and rattling.  The way he fished around in it reminded Jay of one of those claw machines at the carnival; the ones where a person put in a quarter and tried to pick up a "valuable" prize like a sheet metal harmonica or souvenir ashtray.