Most importantly, I went the whole day without once thinking about my eyes. While Heathcliff and I traded barbs and Morrie sent me flirtatious text messages from his London train, I couldn’t worry about the future or lament the sword of Damocles hanging over my head. It was glorious. Four o’clock rolled around and I didn’t want to leave. But Morrie and I had planned to work on the website in the evening, and I’d promised Mum I’d be home for dinner beforehand. I reluctantly left the shop, promising Heathcliff I’d be back around eight. The grunt of acknowledgement from behind the desk warmed my heart in a way I didn’t expect.
After a dinner of tinned beans on toast, Mum drove down to the ___field wrinkly village to hawk her wobbleators and “branded” water bottles to the unsuspecting pensioners. She was too excited about her first demonstration to notice when I changed my outfit three times. I finally settled on a Marcus Ribald jersey dress with black lace panels down the sides, black leggings, and my red patent Docs. Mum sweet-talked one of the druggies across the road into taking a look at the car, and it puttered to life once more, so she dropped me off at the bookshop on her way to the retirement home. The bakery was just closing up so I ducked inside and grabbed us some desserts from the owner Greta for only a quid, the last money I had left in my pocket. Icy drizzle pelted my face as I wrapped my leather jacket tight around my body and walked up the steps with butterflies in my stomach.
Why am I nervous? It’s not like this is a date. You’re building a website with your boss and his weird flatmate. Effectively, it’s unpaid overtime.
Even though Nevermore Bookshop was always a little gothic, at night, in the rain, it had a truly eerie quality to it. The twin peaks of the dormer windows pierced the dark clouds as the moon cast a cold glow over the glass. Bare branches scritched against the bricks like claws scraping as the rain poured from the copper spouting and pooled between the cobbles. The homeless man from yesterday slumped under the eaves, one hand thrust inside the breast of his coat. He held the other over his mouth as he sniffed back what sounded like a decade’s worth of phlegm.
From the street, I couldn’t see any lights on in the upper floors, but I had to squint even to make out the steps to the front door.Okay, now I’m thinking about my eyes.There was a lot of stuff I could trip over on my way to the upstairs flat. At least I hadn’t decided on my second outfit choice, which involved heels.
There was nothing else to do but move forward, slow and steady.Just call me the world’s fiercest tortoise.I gripped the wrought-iron balustrade and felt my way up the steps with my feet. I fumbled for the handle, half expecting the door to be locked. It turned, and I shuffled into the front hall, stomping my wet boots on the mat and smoothing down my hair.
Of course neither of them had thought to leave a light on downstairs. I stopped to wring the water out of my scarf and hat, waiting for my vision to adjust to the gloom, but it never did. I edged my way down the entrance hallway, knocking books off the shelves as I went, and up the first flight of stairs.
On the first floor a pale slash of moonlight from the window opposite the Sociology shelves gave me a clear path to follow. I managed to find the narrow flight of stairs leading to the upstairs flat without falling into any taxidermy beavers. The staircase was blocked off with a faded velvet rope and a sign which I’d seen earlier that day and knew read “cross at your peril” in Heathcliff’s neat cursive hand. I flung the rope aside, swapped the dessert box to my other hand, and pressed my fingers to the wall as I plunged into the gloom and felt my way upstairs.
This is what my whole life will be like soon, a world lost to darkness.
I pushed back the thought. I wasn’t ready to wallow in it, not tonight. I wanted to keep the truth hidden from the guys for just a bit longer. I wanted Morrie to keep flashing me that devilish smile and texting me flirty things, and I wanted Heathcliff to grunt at my jokes and force me to dictate vicious letters to The-Store-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named. I wanted the… thething… we had going that made my heart flutter and my panties wet to feel amazing for just a little longer before they started treating me as an invalid worthy only of pity.
My feet skimmed a small landing. I thrust out my hand, feeling around the three walls until I found a handle. Something creaked on the staircase behind me. I whirled around, but I couldn’t see a single thing in the gloom. My breath leapt in my throat.
It’s nothing. It’s an old shop. It creaks. I’m just scaring myself because it’s so dark—
Another creak, and a shuffling noise.
I froze, staring into the nothingness of the stairwell as though it might magically reveal this presence to me. My heart pattered against my chest.
“Hello?” I gasped out.
No one answered.
There, see? No reason to be scared.
Of course there’s reason to be scared. I’m standing in a dark hallway in the middle of a creepy bookshop with a locked door in front of me and a black hole behind me. This is the beginning of the game Cluedo, just before the good Doctor Black is brutally murdered.
My breath came out in ragged gasps as I waited for more noises. There were none.It’s just the house.
I took a few deep breaths, trying to calm my nerves. I knocked on the door, my fist blasting a cloud of dust into my face.
“It’s open,” Morrie yelled from inside.
Coughing out the dust, I shoved the door open and stepped into the room. There was another sound behind me, like the creak of a door opening somewhere else in the shop, but I was too distracted by the room in front of me to give it another thought.
This wasnotthe flat I’d pictured when Morrie and Heathcliff said they lived together above the shop. In my head they resided in the typical bachelor dump every guy I knew had ever lived in – a rack of damp laundry in the living room, the edges of the clothing speckled with mold. A kitchen so radioactive it would set off a Geiger counter – toast stuck to the ceiling like a modern art exhibit. A whiskey distillery in the bathtub. Posters of topless women with penises drawn next to their pouting lips plastered on every wall. Fungi that have evolved into a sentient species issuing instructions from behind the bathroom mirror…
Even after only knowing them for only two days, I should have guessed these guys were different. Butthis…
I stepped into a small but pleasantly furnished sitting room. A gas fire in the hearth lit the apartment in a warm glow, and I could make out the edges of a jumble of mismatched furniture. Books littered every surface – that is, the surfaces that weren’t covered in empty bottles and strange ephemera. I glanced above my head, but there was no toast threatening to befoul me. There were no posters nor crudely-drawn penises on the walls, unless you counted the large renaissance-style painting of heroically-naked gods chasing a nymph above the fireplace. Bright artworks in carved frames adorned every available surface. Prints, I guessed, because some of them looked like they might be Picasso or Monet.
Red-and-gold flocked wallpaper peeked out from between the dusty gilt frames. As I stepped toward the warmth of the fire, the mantle came into view, cluttered with weird statues, marble boxes, and empty cigarette packets. I spotted a Clash poster over the bookcase and a record player on a shelf beside the fire. Two rickety coffee tables teetered under the weight not of beer cans, but dainty china teacups and saucers. Instead of the usual smell I associated with guys – sweat and unwashed dishes and socks that had to be peeled off the walls – the air smelled of old books and cracked leather, lavender tea and woody incense.
Above the record player, the raven swung lazily from another custom-made perch. When it saw me, it opened its wings and swooped away into the hall.
“Where are you going?” I called after him. “I promise I’m not going to quote any Poe.”
Morrie poked his head out from a small alcove at the back of the hall, his tall body bathed in light from a computer screen. “Heathcliff, you useless oaf, Mina’s here!” he called out, then flashed me his wicked grin. “Welcome to our humble chambers.”
“This place is so cool,” I said, stepping toward the empty leather chair in front of the fire. “I could just imagine reading here, with Grimalkin curled up in my lap—”
