Echoes of Her Past III
“…wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” he replied.
“Oh, come on, Michael, I’ll believe you,” the young lady pleaded.
“Janine, it’s just some old wives’ tale my grandfather used to tell us kids. Really it’s nothing,” Michael turned his lanky frame to leave. Janine didn’t make a move. He paused and turned back. She was giving him that look. God, how he hated that look.
“Alright, but don’t blame me if you can’t sleep tonight,” he said as he walked back into the library, “Thousands of books in this library and you grab the most foolish one.”
Janine shrugged and handed him the book, then seated herself at the large oaken table. Michael held the book by its velvety green cover and ran his hand over the front. He sat down to suppress the chill that was dancing up his spine.
“When my grandfather was a respected member of society and living outside the nuthouse,” he began, “He liked to collect books. Why, I don’t know. Most of them are strange and useless garbage. This book however, whenever he told us the story, always gave me nightmares.” His fingers flipped open the book by one of the ivory plated corners. “I don’t know the story word for word, you’d have to go visit grandpa for that, but I do know the gist of it.”
“Why don’t you just read some of it to me?” Janine asked.
Michael turned the book to face her. An unusual scrawling of symbols, in no particular order or stanza, covered the pages. “Because I can’t. It’s not written in any language I’ve ever seen, if it’s a language at all.”
Janine thought he was going to say more, the signals were right there, but they both let the moment pass.
“Grandpa said it was filled with the screams of the damned,” Michael lied through his teeth, “The language of the dead he called it. As the story goes, grandpa found the book, I don’t recall where, and for some reason was able to read it or decipher it or whatever. If you ask me, he was always a little off his rocker. Anyway, it’s some mythical tale about the dead, the language they speak and it’s power. Or something like that.”
“Come on, give me some detail,” Janine persisted.
“Alright. So it supposedly said that the screams of the dying were powerful and that they would travel on the winds. Seeing everything, going everywhere, living forever. Grandpa also said that if the screams were old enough, powerful enough and numerous enough, they could manifest into some physical being.”
A look of doubt clouded Janine’s face.
“My sentiments exactly,” Michael chimed in, “And it was said these beings would stalk the lands trying to right the wrongs, torture the torturers and wreak vengeance on those deserving. You get the idea. Then grandpa would follow it up with some related tale about some spook or another, and we would all sleep like shit for the next week. Thanks a lot grandpa!” Michael snapped the book shut and stood up, “Can we go now, please?”
Janine grudgingly got up, “Well your grandpa apparently knew how to stir things up. Maybe I will visit him and get the full story…not the abridged one.”
Michael shook his head and followed her out, sliding the book back on to one of the shelves. “Can we just shelf it? I just want to go out and have a nice dinner.”
Janine hesitated, then took Michael’s arm. “We should visit though. It’s been too long,” she said as the walked out onto the stoop.
“Yes, I know we should,” he replied, glancing at the ominous thunderheads on the horizon, “Looks like a storm is rolling in though.”
Michael turned up his collar against the wind and lead Janine toward the car…