Heed the Call

I have a secret. Books speak to me. Sometimes they warn me.

That’s how I found myself constricted between two towering shelves of dusty western novels, tucked away in the furthest corner, out of reach from the captivating aroma of hazelnut lattes.

Heed the Call drew my gaze. A mass market paperback trapped between two behemoths, almost out of sight. I pulled it off the shelf and ran my finger along the cracking creases that had formed on the spine.

I opened it and began flipping the pages. My favorite part of any book was the first sniff. The alluring smell of old paper and ink wafted through the air. This one had a hint of sweetness, perfume even.

I carried the book back to my green leather chair that, like the spine, had started cracking around the creases set by my rump.

I found the first page of the story and started to read it. Earnest held the tip of the snake’s tail up to his ear. It was the only rattle the five-year-old boy had ever known after being left to wander the wild expanse of the Mojave Desert.

Halfway through the first chapter, a faded white slip peeking out of the book caught my eye, enticing me to take a look. I flipped to its page, Chapter 4 - The Lonely Peak.

Someone had elegantly written an address on the slip, St. James’s Circle with H691 scrawled further below it. An arrow pointed to the text below.

My first pass through the beginning of The Lonely Peak was less mysterious than the address and arrow. I started to reread it when I spotted something unusual. The first letters of each paragraph spelled come find—I yanked the slip off the next page—me.

I slammed the book shut, letting it fall to the floor where it landed beside the tattered white piece of paper. The address hollowly stared back at me.

Static crackled and I heard a voice say, come find me. But I didn’t recall hearing an intercom used before.

Then I did the one thing I never do. I burst out of the library into the glare of a hazy morning sun. I crumpled the slip in my hand in fear of the breeze stealing it away.

H691 St. James’s Street. No, Circle, I mumbled to myself as if I had stepped into a new city, braved an unknown world.

I frantically typed the address into my phone cursing, “blasted autocorrect,” under my breath. Once I had it punched in, the map revealed an eight-minute walk.

The phone shook in my hand as I realized I would pass my own flat along the way.

Passing clouds interrupted the sunlight.

A woman and her dog stared at me as they walked by.

On the park bench across the street, a hooded figure watched me.

The door to the library swung open and a rush of its cool, inviting air ruffled my clothes. I darted back inside, contorting my body to wriggle through the retracting door.

Tilly was organizing a stack of books, one of her many unsung librarian duties, when she saw me barge in. My cheeks strained as I returned her smile.

I waved then slithered through the racks of science fiction, past the darkened horror section back to my chair. I sighed as I plumped down in the chair and let the crinkled piece of paper fall from my hand.

My eyes drifted down where Heed the Call lay splayed open on the floor. I snatched the paper and shoved it into my pocket. Then I swooped the book up in my arms and pulled it close to my chest and whispered, “come find me.”

Everything I’ve read warned me not to find them. Knowing that my flat was on the way, if I changed my mind, helped move me.

I marched back through the horror, the thriller, and the science fiction novels, not batting an eye as I passed the new release section. This time I smiled at Tilly as I evacuated the library and embarked down St. James’s Circle.

The sun was back and felt like a grandmother’s warm kiss on the cheek. Everyone I passed on the street was friendly. Lively red and orange and yellow flowers hung from fences. I could even smell their sweet nectar. That is until I turned the corner.

Way down the street was H691. My phone said a brief three-minute walk remained but it seemed further away. In between was my place. I decided to walk the side of the street my flat wasn’t on.

I passed a homeless man curled up along the wall of a building. He smelled of sweat and ammonia and something else I dared not to think about.

Next, I came upon a pile of garbage as tall as me that had been sitting for one too many days. Flies buzzed around the heap attacking me as I hurried by. Some of the bags had been ripped open at the bottom and rotting food had seeped through.

I stopped and looked across the street at my building’s modest entrance. It wasn’t much but it was home. With the blanket that’s fraying at the ends but lies so softly on my skin. With the couch that accepts me a little deeper each time but conforms to my body just right. With Porter, my spunky tabby that loves to nestle on top of me. I had almost convinced myself to go there and read the Heed the Call, alone.

Come find me.

Maybe it was reading about a toddler playing with rattlesnakes, but something in me craved this adventure. I couldn’t go home. I couldn’t retreat to the library.

My phone showed that the building was around the next corner. Less than a minute’s walk. I slowed my gait as I approached it, as if something was waiting to jump me.

As I walked up to the building I stopped to double check my phone. This was the right place. Just not what I expected. It was sandwiched and dwarfed by buildings with a more modern appeal. The front was obstructed by scaffolding. Behind it, I could see that soot was caked onto the aging brick. As I got closer I realized a H691 apartment did not exist. There were only three floors.

I perched myself against the brick wall. The scaffolding provided pleasant relief from the scorching sun. I flipped through Heed the Call for something that might provide an answer, finding nothing but the author’s name, Katheryn Jones.

I dug into both of my pockets pulling out my phone and the paper slip and held them together as if one would reveal the other’s secrets.

I kicked the brick wall, a little harder than I intended, and said “I’m an idiot.”

I let the slip fall to the ground and clenched my phone with both hands. A tremor surged through my body into my phone as I glared at the screen. “Autocorrect got me again. The dang thing took me to 169 St. James’s Circle.”

Scouring the internet for a 691 St. James’s Circle yielded no results. To think, I could have been reading this whole time. This wasted time.

Tilly would enjoy the story at least. She seems to find amusement in my misery. Something we have in common.

I snapped a photo of the lifeless, now graying slip of paper then kicked it towards a pile of trash nearby that smelled of rotten vegetables. As I’m typing up a witty narrative about my adventure, I noticed I had taken a picture of it upside down.

I positioned the phone over it again. As I reached down to flip the slip around, I looked more closely at the numbers.

I read it aloud, “169H.”

“Holy moly!”

Another passerby walking their dog shot me a perplexed expression. I waited just long enough to not rub shoulders with them before I ran up the steps.

I wondered if it was the same woman I saw earlier.

The entrance doors were unlocked. Security obviously wasn’t the selling point of the building. If there even was a selling point.

I eagerly made my way into the building but the dimly lit hallway made me feel as if I had a rock in my throat. Leaves blown in from outside were scattered about. I didn’t spot a single weather-worn welcome or hope you brought wine door mat.

“Of course it’s at the end of the bloody hall,” I muttered to myself. I imagined a tidal wave of blood come crashing down the hallway.

I made it to 169H without being attacked or drowned in blood.

The door’s paint was chipping off. In the low light I couldn’t tell if it was gray or blue. My double knock echoed down the hallway.

Nothing happened, so I tried the door knob. It was unlocked.

I nudged the door open and the familiar scents of the library lured me to enter. As I did, another biting repugnant smell quickly consumed the comforting smells.

I squinted my eyes as if the air was toxic and shoved my nose into my elbow. I couldn’t see a thing.

A soft buzz directed me into the living area of the apartment. Soft lighting spotlighted shelves bursting with books. Some had fallen to the floor. No television was in sight.

A fern next to one of the bookshelves drooped to the floor, the gnarled leaves looked like tiny mangled umbrellas after a tornado.

I bumped into something in the middle of the room. The buzzing was the loudest it had been and something kept diving at my ear. My elbow was no longer protecting me from the smell.

Digging into my pocket I pulled at my phone but the case caught on the lining of my jeans. I stiffened as it thudded to the floor, waiting for someone to flicker on the lights.

Once I determined no one was here, I dropped to my knees and ran my fingers along the roughly carpeted floor in search of where my phone landed, holding my breath.

Finding it, I jumped to my feet and turned on the flashlight and immediately dropped it again. It landed with the flashlight up, spotlighting the chair and its lifeless occupant.

Sparse strands of red hair dangled at her sides, the wrinkled skin of her face pulled back, sunken into her bone structure. The sockets of her eyes protruded like cave entrances in a craggy mountainside where a mess of flies was nesting. Her mouth hung open and maggots crawled around her lips.

Her arm’s graying skin sagged under the force of gravity. I followed it down to her lap where she clutched a book with both hands, her fingers twisted in alternating directions, more bone than flesh. I instantly recognized parts of the cover that hid under her mutated fingers, the sun setting over a barren mesa, a rattlesnake’s tail.

I flipped around, covering my nose and my mouth with my hands, my head started into a convulsive shake. I was no longer in control of my body.

I spotted more copies of Heed the Call on a coffee table that her bony heels rested on. Slippers concealed her decomposing feet. I wondered why she had so many prints, forgetting about the burning in my nostrils and the incessant hum in my ears.

Picking up my phone, I directed my spotlight around the room at the shelves overflowing with books of all authors, recognizing most of them, Bradbury, Christie, Vonnegut, Atwood; I had them all too. My shelves were crammed, books on top of books. Rowling side tables, Hemingway entry table, King coffee table.

I eventually turned to Katheryn, avoiding her hollow eyes, settling on the book in her hand, Heed the Call. That’s when I noticed the green leather chair she was in. The armrest had a crack running along it just like my chair.

Her hand clasped around her book except for one finger that was extended as if it were pointing towards the coffee table, the Jones table. I picked up a copy from the jumbled pile and opened it towards the back. On the cover slip was a picture of the author, red hair falling over a blue flannel shirt. Underneath her picture was an excerpt about her. I read it quickly, but the last line stuck with me, you can find me curled up in my green leather chair in my cozy slippers with my tattered blanket draped over me and my best friend Moxy purring in my lap.

My arms began to tingle and the hair on the back of my neck stood rigid. Suddenly I could see the room more clearly. There was my cramped bookshelf, there was my coffee table, there was my green leather chair and my fraying blanket. I could even hear the gentle purrs of Porter and feel him flexing his paw into my thigh.

I drifted towards the open door, shuffling out of it. The hallway seemed darker, longer than I remembered. Someone said, “911 what’s your emergency.”

Leaves fluttered around me as a breeze blew into the corridor, the light from outside dimmed and brightened, dimmed and brightened.

Shadowy figures emerged from the light. One of them knelt down in front of me. His lips moved but a white noise in my head muffled his words. Then I heard it, ever so faintly, “Did you heed the call?”