The Eye of the Moon (42 page)

‘Why?’

‘Bender ordered it, sir.’

‘Who?’

Peto, picking up on Dante’s mistake, mouthed the name ‘Benson’ to him, overemphasizing the ‘son’ part.

‘Benson, sir. Said he’s got a safe place for us to take you. Gotta hurry, though. Bourbon Kid’s on his way.’

‘Fuck! All right. I’m on my way up.’

Dante took off the headset and gestured towards the elevators at the far end of the hall. The Kid began walking towards them.

Pretty soon the light above the elevator in the middle showed that it was moving up from the basement to the ground floor.

Sanchez wasn’t much of a one for going to libraries. He ventured to the Santa Mondega Library maybe two or three times a year, and that was usually only to borrow a few books to give to friends as birthday presents. Knowing that most of his friends couldn’t read, he was normally able to steal the books back without them noticing, and return them to the library within a week or two anyway.

One of the many things he didn’t like about the library was the woman who worked behind the counter. She was the chief librarian, Ulrika Price, and she was a shitty, vindictive bitch with a deep-rooted hatred for men, based on some, admittedly unpleasant, sexual experience she’d had inflicted upon her as a teenager.

From behind her desk near the entrance she had eyeballed Sanchez as he entered, and he could feel her eyes burning into the back of his head as he made his way over to the Non-Fiction section. The library wasn’t busy at such a late hour, particularly with it being Halloween, so Sanchez had free rein of the multitude of ceiling-high bookshelves stretching out in aisles over the huge floor space.

His reason for heading to the library had been a matter of gut instinct, if he were honest. With Jessica’s disappearance and the Bourbon Kid’s return, he had decided to do a little investigative work. The local police force wouldn’t do it, for two reasons. One, they were lazy bastards, and two, they were as corrupt as fuck, so if there was anything to be found in the library they’d probably find a reason not to see it anyway.

What Sanchez was looking for was a book with no
name by an anonymous author. His reason for looking was something of a long shot. After the last Bourbon Kid massacre during the previous year’s Lunar Festival, the newspapers had run an article about all the murders being linked to a book with no name by an anonymous author. Everyone who had ever borrowed it from the Santa Mondega Library had been killed, including the detectives on the case. Now, although Sanchez wasn’t by any means a brave sort, he’d invested a lot of time in caring for Jessica over the years, and if this book (or indeed a new copy of it) was by some chance back on the shelves, then it might provide some clues as to what the hell it was that the Bourbon Kid had against people who read the damn thing. Even more importantly, it might reveal what the hell he had against Jessica, and maybe even some information about who she was. What Sanchez found was another book by the same author.

He had stumbled upon it by chance. Simply by looking in the Reference section under A for Anonymous he had surprisingly quickly found a book entitled
The Book of Death.
No author was cited. He pulled it from the shelf, thinking to take a quick look at the blurb on the back to see what it was about. It weighed heavy in his hands, such was the thickness of it, and it felt old. The thing seemed ready to crumble in his hands, it was so frail.

The blurb on the back, such as it was, wasn’t actually half as exciting as the title had hinted, either. A handwritten label pasted to the back cover simply said, in faded ink, that the book listed the names of a bunch of random dead people and the dates on which they had died.
Guess it’s a log from a morgue somewhere,
he supposed.

He flicked to the first few pages and came across a bunch of handwritten, stupid-sounding names, the first two of which were Ra and Osiris. This was almost enough to suggest he should immediately stick the book straight back on the shelf, but having traipsed halfway across town Sanchez felt the need to give it some benefit of the doubt. So he flicked forward towards the pages at the end, in the hope of seeing the names
of anyone he knew. The later pages were still handwritten, but each page was now dated at the top.

He was just about to put the book back on the shelf when it struck him that he would be interested to see just how up-to-date it was. Flicking right to the back, he came across a whole bunch of blank pages. So he flicked backwards until he found the current date, 31 October, at top left on one of the pages. To his surprise, the day’s deaths had already been included. ‘
Holy shit,
that’s quick!’ he whispered, a little too loudly by library standards.

Aware that he was drawing attention to himself, he sneaked on down the aisle and hid himself away in a quieter corner of the library by a shelf of books that rarely attracted browsing customers. He reopened the book and took a look at the names in the current day’s entry.

There were listings for Igor and Pedro and a few of the other werewolves whom Sanchez recognized as having been in the Tapioca when the Bourbon Kid had turned up.
Fuckin’ werewolves. Dirty scum. The town’s better off without them anyway,
he mused. This was hugely impressive, though. These wolfmen had only died a matter of hours earlier.
How the hell had someone managed to update this so quickly?

Scouring the list of names, Sanchez suddenly felt a cold shiver come over him. ‘Now that’s fuckin’ weird!’ he said, much too loudly. Immediately realizing he might be attracting unwelcome attention, he looked around. Through the gaps between the bookshelves he caught sight of Ulrika Price. She was sitting behind her desk, looking in his direction. She had obviously heard him break the golden rule of silence. Their eyes met for a moment and she squinted at him through her glasses. Then she got up from her chair.
Fuck! That crazy bitch is coming over here!

Sanchez couldn’t prevent the sudden feeling of paranoia that came over him. That spiteful old spinster had been a prime suspect in the questioning over the murders of all the people who had read
The Book With No Name.
It was suspected, but never proven, that she had been supplying the names of all its
readers to the killer.

Speed of thought was required. There wasn’t time to put
The Book of Death
back where he had found it without her seeing him, and there was no way he was signing the damn thing out and having his name logged against it. He took one last look at the open page before closing the book. His eyes had definitely not deceived him. The list of the names of the dead carried right through to 1 November, tomorrow’s date. These were the names of people who weren’t even dead yet.

Before he had time to digest the short list of names set under the following day’s date, he heard Ulrika Price bounding over towards the aisle he was in. She was in a hurry, too.
Fuck it!
He closed the book and thought frantically about where to hide it. Up his shirt? Nope, too obvious. There was no time to come up with much of a better solution, so he quickly tucked it down the back of his trousers. It was a damn good job, Sanchez thought, that he was wearing sweatpants because the sheer size of the book would have made it impossible to slip down the back of any normal pants. As it was, anyone standing behind him would have seen that he had an enormous ass, shaped like a book. As opposed to just an enormous ass, which was the usual state of affairs.

Knowing that the chief librarian was about to appear at the end of the aisle, Sanchez blindly grabbed the nearest thick hardback book from a shelf to his left and began to walk awkwardly towards where he thought Miss Price was most likely to appear.

Sure enough, no more than a few seconds later her face appeared around the corner of the aisle. She looked as irritated as ever as she peered over her spectacles at him. ‘Sanchez, what are you doing back here?’ she snapped. ‘Are you masturbating?’

‘No!’ Sanchez bridled in disgust. ‘How dare you even suggest such a thing?’

‘Hmm. Well, good,’ said Ms Price, though with a note of suspicion in her voice. ‘We close in fifteen minutes, so could you
please
hurry up and choose a book?’

‘Already got one,’ smiled Sanchez, holding up the book he had just snagged from the shelf.

‘Very well, then. Come on. Get it checked out and be gone. I want you out of here. It’s Halloween, and I want to be home before the drunken hooligans show up.’

‘Sure thing.’ Sanchez breathed a sigh of relief and followed the librarian back to the reception desk. The book stashed down the back of his sweatpants made his walk look rather unnatural, potentially giving the impression that he had just shit his pants.

He allowed Ulrika Price to get a fair way ahead to ensure that she would be less likely to notice his curious walk. After making her way around to the reception desk via the raised counter flap in the corner, she sat herself down in her usual seat next to the computer. Sanchez stood on the other side of the desk smiling broadly at her, and congratulating himself on concealing the large book so cleverly down the back of his pants. His only problem now was that he was going to have to walk out backwards so Ms Price wouldn’t see his book-shaped ass.

He placed the book he had picked from the shelf down on the counter and waited for her to log back in to her computer. He hadn’t actually bothered to check what sort of book he’d picked up, and when he saw the title on the cover, and saw that Ulrika Price had also seen it, he cringed.

The Gay Man’s Guide to Anal Sex

Dammit. How unlucky is that?
he thought.

Purse-lipped, the librarian logged the book on to the computer under Sanchez’s name and gingerly nudged it back across the counter to him. To his annoyance, he could feel his face burning with embarrassment. There was nothing for it, though, so blushing heavily, he picked the book up and then, smiling like an idiot, he slowly backpedalled all the way to the exit, maintaining eye contact with the judgemental librarian the whole time.

Fortunately, she was so appalled by his choice of book, and so disconcerted by the fact that he was grinning at her like
a demented baboon while holding such a book, that she didn’t take time to wonder why he was walking out backwards. If she had, she might well have considered the possibility he had a large hardback book concealed in the seat of his pants.

Sanchez now just needed to get back home and check the evidence of his eyes. He had seen some names he recognized in
The Book of Death.
Was it possible that the book was predicting that these people were going to die on 1 November?

Tomorrow.