Books Are Like People

Mark Johnson had been collecting books since he was old enough to read. He still owned his first, “One Thousand and One Arabian Nights”, which his parents had given him when he was seven. He had been particularly thrilled by the story of “Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp.”

Over the years, his bookcases had become overcrowded, with volumes stacked one against another. Some had not been removed from their shelves in decades, but Mark kept collecting. He had once been an avid reader; somewhere along the way, however, his desire to accumulate books had become an obsession.

There was one shelf reserved for the books he cherished most, though its contents changed whenever he acquired a new favorite. For months, he had been pursuing a rare first edition of “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”. When he finally secured it, at a price he preferred not to think about, he carried it into the library with both hands.

The shelf was full.

Mark studied the shelf before selecting the book that would surrender its place: “One Thousand and One Arabian Nights”. His choice surprised him. Yet the new acquisition was a first edition, after all, and he had paid a considerable sum—had gone into debt, in fact—for the privilege of owning it.

He carried his childhood book down to the basement. The room was small and damp, and it smelled of stone, dust, and things left too long in darkness. He knew it was no place for a book. Still, he promised himself the arrangement would only be temporary.

While searching for an empty space, he dropped the book.

It struck the floor and fell open to “Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp.”

Mark stooped to retrieve it, then stopped.

He remembered the illustration well: Aladdin holding the lamp, the jinn towering above him in a pillar of smoke. But the jinn was no longer looking at Aladdin.

It was looking directly at Mark.

Memory was an unreliable thing, he told himself. He closed the book and placed it on the musty bookcase before turning back toward the stairs.

He had placed one foot on the bottom step when something whispered behind him.

“You loved me before you learned to own me.”

Mark froze.

He turned, slowly at first, then all at once. The basement was empty. Of course it was empty. He lived alone; there could be no one else in the house.

The damp air must have been getting to him. That, and the excitement of his new acquisition.

He hurried upstairs without looking back.

Over the next several days, Mark posted photographs of his purchase in every book-collecting group he belonged to. He photographed the gilt lettering, the title page, the publisher’s imprint, and the shelf on which the volume now stood. He framed each image carefully, though the corner of an unopened bill appeared in one, and a stack of frozen-dinner cartons was reflected in the glass of a framed print.

Most of the other collectors congratulated him. A few asked what he had paid. Mark avoided answering until one member, a bookseller named Arthur Bell, recognized the copy and named the price himself.

“You can’t afford that, Mark,” Arthur wrote. “You never sell anything.”

Mark stared at the comment. Others had already begun reacting to it.

“I assure you, Arthur, my finances are quite healthy. Some of us collect for love rather than resale.”

Arthur replied privately this time.

“Then why did you ask me last month if I knew anyone who bought collections quickly?”

Mark closed the page. Arthur’s final message had been private, but the damage was already done. The others had seen the accusation. He spent most of the night wondering what they must now think of him.

Mark spent most of the weekend replacing the photographs. He framed each image more carefully this time: no unopened bills, no cardboard boxes, no sagging shelves, only beautiful books arranged beneath the library’s warmest light.

Each evening after work, he hurried home and went directly to the library. There he stood before his new acquisition, admiring the faded red cloth, the gilt rabbit stamped beneath the title, and the slight lean of its spine.

He did not take it down.

He did not open it.

It was enough, he thought, simply to own it.

The following evening, Mark came home with the same anticipation. He heated a frozen dinner and carried it into the library, unwilling to waste even half an hour away from his new acquisition.

He had barely sat down when he saw that the shelf was empty.

“Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” lay open on the floor.

Mark set his dinner aside and approached it. A sentence near the bottom of the exposed page had been underlined:

“Who cares for you? You’re nothing but a pack of cards!”

He lunged for the book, striking the edge of his tray as he did. The plastic container overturned, splattering sauce across the floor and onto the corner of the open volume.

Mark howled.

He snatched up a napkin and began blotting the cover, his hands shaking so badly that he nearly tore the cloth. For twenty frantic minutes, nothing else existed—not the impossible fall, not the underlined sentence, not even the voice he had heard in the basement. There was only the stain and the desperate hope that it had not penetrated the binding.

When he had done all he could, a faint red shadow remained along the lower corner.

Then he examined the underlining.

It was dark, uneven, and unmistakably deliberate. The book had been advertised as being in fine condition, free of inscriptions and markings. Mark photographed the page and emailed the seller at once.

The reply came ten minutes later.

“The copy I sent you contained no underlining. You inspected the photographs before purchasing and confirmed its condition upon delivery. I cannot accept responsibility for damage that occurred after the sale.”

Beneath that, in bold type, the seller had added:

**ALL SALES ARE FINAL.**

Mark sank into his chair.

After a moment, he reopened the seller’s listing and examined each photograph. The page containing the passage was shown clearly. There was no line beneath the words. No ink. No blemish of any kind.

He enlarged the image until the individual fibers of the paper blurred across the screen.

Nothing.

Then Mark remembered the photographs he had posted in the collectors’ groups. He opened the clearest one: “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” standing on his prized shelf, its faded red cover illuminated by the reading lamp.

There was something in the narrow space beside it.

At first, Mark mistook it for a shadow cast by the neighboring books. But the longer he looked, the more definite its shape became: broad shoulders emerging from a column of smoke, arms folded across a powerful chest.

The jinn.

Its face was no larger than Mark’s thumbnail, but there could be no mistaking its eyes.

They were looking directly at him.

Mark closed the photograph. He had no time to indulge his imagination. The book was damaged, and every hour the sauce remained in the cloth increased the chance of a permanent stain. What he needed was a professional restorer.

At last, Mark contacted Arthur Bell. Arthur recommended a restorer within the hour, but the estimated cost was more than Mark could afford. He read the figure three times, as though repetition might reduce it. Instead, the number seemed to grow with every glance.

“What happened to your “Alice”?” Arthur asked.

Mark hesitated. “Nothing. I’m researching restoration costs for a few older purchases.”

“Send me photographs. I might be able to advise you.”

Mark closed the message without replying.

His anxiety hardened into panic.

He thought of the book in the basement.

Mark hurried downstairs and found “One Thousand and One Arabian Nights” where he had left it. A pale bloom had appeared along the lower edge of the cover. Mold, he thought, though it had been only a few days. He rubbed at it with his sleeve.

The mark spread beneath his fingers.

“No,” Mark whispered.

He lifted the book and saw that the shelf behind it was no longer empty. A narrow recess had opened in the wood, tall, dark, and deep enough to accommodate something much larger than a book.

Something his size.

Mark backed away.

The volume stirred in his hands. Its pages turned by themselves, slowly at first and then faster, whispering beneath his fingers. They stopped at “Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp.”

The jinn no longer looked at Aladdin.

Aladdin was gone.

From the darkness behind Mark came the voice he remembered.

“You loved us before you learned to own us.”

The basement light went out.

Mark turned toward the stairs, but the bookcases seemed to lean inward. Shelves pressed against his shoulders. Their edges closed around him like the jaws of a vise. He tried to cry out, but his throat filled with the dry rustle of pages.

The last thing he heard was the closing of a book.

Months after Mark’s disappearance, members of the collecting groups still discussed him. They remembered an eccentric and reclusive man, certainly, but also a wealthy connoisseur with impeccable taste. Some wondered what rare volume he had gone away to acquire.

None of them knew that the bank had owned more of Mark’s magnificent house than he had.

Eventually, the house and its contents were sold at auction.

A seven-year-old boy discovered “One Thousand and One Arabian Nights” in a box beneath a table. He carried it to his mother and asked if she would buy it for him.

She smiled, pleased by his interest in reading. “Of course. It can be the first book in your collection.”

The boy opened it before they had even left the house. In the story of Aladdin, the jinn towered above a small figure trapped inside a dark wooden recess.

The figure was oddly dressed for the story. He was an older man with bruises on his face and terror in his eyes. Both hands were pressed against the illustration as though against a pane of glass.

The boy thought it was a wonderful picture.

That evening, he carried the book to his bedroom and placed it carefully on the shelf beside his bed.

From between its closed covers came a sound too faint for him to hear.

Someone was begging to be taken down.