The day I found the isolated bookstore was bright and sunny, and mostly happy. I say mostly because my little cousin Rafia was wasting no time trying to embarrass me by making kissing noises in front of my crush. We were at a resort on holiday for the summer, and somehow my crush’s family had ended up at the same resort. My cousin and I were messing around in the woods nearby, when I saw him walking towards us.
So did Rafia, unfortunately. “Mwah. Mwah. Mwah. Mwah.”
“Shut up,” I hissed.
“Hey, Ayesha!”
“Hey!” I said, waving. “Can’t believe you ended up here too.”
“Yeah! It’s a popular resort, I think. My mom was hooked upon seeing the first brochure.”
“Hahah. Uh, this is my little cousin, Rafia.” I gestured at Rafia, who threw up a peace sign. “Rafia, Ifaaz. Ifaaz, Rafia.”
Ifaaz smiled at her, and she smiled back. Thankfully she had stopped the kissing noises. She went off to inspect a bug on a tree instead, leaving us alone.
“So what are you up to? I’m getting sick of my family, honestly.”
“Tell me about it,” I muttered, sending a scowl in Rafia’s direction. She in turn showed me a gesture that she wouldn’t have dared to in front of the adults. A certain one involving the middle finger. Ifaaz laughed at once, while I rolled my eyes.
“I’m gonna go explore the woods. Either come with me or go back to the resort,” I called.
“Meh. There’s nothing in the woods.” Rafia started skipping back to the resort entrance. “You guys have fun on your date.”
I didn’t say anything, and neither did Ifaaz. I think I heard him laugh quietly though. I waited until I saw Rafia safely reach my aunt sitting by the front entrance, and turned back to the quiet trees.
“Hmm. Maybe she’s right. I mean, it’s just trees, not much to explore.”
“Never know until you look,” Ifaaz replied, shrugging.
I followed him, stepping past pointy rocks and trying to avoid random animal poop. I described the forest as quiet earlier, but that wasn’t really true. There were birds chirping, bugs buzzing around, and somewhere I could hear water rippling. It wasn’t technically quiet, but somehow the quiet overpowered those little bits of life. As if the sounds were just background noise, against a more sinister, looming silence.
“Check it out.”
I wasn’t sure where we were but since there was only one path and we were following it, I wasn’t too afraid of getting lost. I looked where Ifaaz was pointing. A little way ahead of us was a cabin, made of wood. Smoke was coming out of the chimney, and I could see some sort of wooden sign hanging above the front door.
“Whoa. Someone likes to live off the grid, huh?”
Ifaaz squinted. “I’m not totally sure it’s a house. What does that sign say?”
We couldn’t read it all the way from here, so we walked closer. The letters got bigger and more legible.
CHILDREN’S BOOKS. Cheap prices!
“A bookstore??” I scratched my head. I couldn’t think of a worse place to put a store. Does this guy get any business? Is this place even on Google Maps?
Ifaaz looked just as lost. “Wow. I mean, maybe it’s super well-known or something?”
I raised a questioning eyebrow, and he shrugged again. In a “you got any better reasoning?” way. I didn’t. And who names a bookstore just straight up “Children’s books”? That’s just being mega uncreative.
“Let’s go in,” I suggested. Ifaaz was surveying the door. It was made of light brown planks and looked pretty old and rusty. The knob looked like it would fall apart any second. I moved towards it, ready to knock, when the door opened on its own.
Not on its own. A man, presumably the bookseller, had opened it. He smiled at us.
“Customers! Come in. Everything here is really cheap and in great condition.”
“Uh, thanks!” We peered inside. It was a cozy place, a fire burning at one corner, shelves stacked with books all around and a door behind the cash register. Presumably a storage room. The carpet was a little old and fraying, but it honestly looked great compared to the state of the walls and front door.
I moved closer to the shelf on my right, reading the titles. The Boy Who Loved Puddles. The Little Girl And Her Favorite Candy. The Teddy Bear That Ran Away.
“I’d never heard of any of these,” I said out loud. “Is this like a retro bookstore, sir?”
The bookseller shook his head. “Not really. Some, of course, are older than others. But a lot are recent.”
“Ten taka??” Ifaaz exclaimed, checking the price tag of one. (Taka is Bengali currency)
“Yes. As I mentioned, everything is cheap!”
I figured it must’ve just been an indie bookstore. Trying to uplift lesser known writers, which was nice.
Hold up. I turned to look at the books again, realizing something. The area under the title was blank.
Ifaaz voiced my thoughts. “Where are the author names?”
“They’re in the books,” said the man nonchalantly. Ifaaz picked one up and flipped through it, then checked the back. I peered over his shoulder. It looked like it was printed on some type of old-fashioned parchment paper. The ink was black and faded, but somehow it didn’t look old. It was probably just printed that way on purpose. For effect.
“I don’t see any names,” he said, frowning. The bookseller had gone behind the cash register and was writing something down. He didn’t look at us as he responded, in an eerie monotone.
“They’re there. Check again.”
The house was suddenly feeling slightly less cozy. The fire crackling got louder, and the shelves were starting to feel a bit claustrophobic. I moved a little to the center of the room. Ifaaz was still flipping through the book, and I studied his face. He was frowning.
“Uh, sir? Did you say these are children’s books?” he asked.
“Yes. Every single book here. I only sell children’s books.”
“Uhhh,” Ifaaz looked more and more bewildered as he flipped the page. I peeked over his shoulder again, curious.
The little boy’s head smashed against the concrete, coloring the puddle with blood. Bits of his brain split apart and floated in the liquid, some of the pieces mixing with the gravel and dirt-
I blinked. Ifaaz, who had apparently had enough, closed the book rather loudly and stared at me, wide-eyed. I stared back for a moment.
I grabbed another book, and started reading. Sameeha was a little girl who loved her teddy bear. She liked to have tea parties with him, and play hide and seek. One day, the bear-
It seemed normal enough, until, like the previous one, I got to the middle.
Sameeha tried desperately to catch her bear, but he kept getting away. She made one last grasp and didn’t see the giant tree branch swooping down towards. It went right through Sameeha, impaling her in the stomach-“
I slammed it shut. “Oh-kay. Um, sir, you got a weird definition of what falls under “children’s books.”
The bookseller shrugged. “It’s what I read as a kid.”
“I’m sorry?”
“I loved such books when I was young. Didn’t you?”
“I don’t- no, I can’t say I did.”
Ifaaz was still looking kind of fazed. The description of that boy falling on the concrete was kinda graphic. The bookseller had finished whatever he was doing behind the register, and he suddenly looked up again.
“So I presume you won’t buy anything? I have more books in the backroom!”
“Oh, no. I think we’ll be going.”
“But please,” he insisted. “I’ll bring some here. Just look at them. This is my only business, you know.”
“Uhhh.” There was no way I was actually gonna buy one of these books. Gorey horror wasn’t my thing. Ifaaz looked rather uncomfortable, but the man was imminent.
“I’ll only be a minute. Wait here.”
The man opened the door and disappeared. Ifaaz and I stood there, waiting. The fire crackled behind us and I stared around the books again, still wondering about their odd contents and the lack of author names.
Two minutes. The fire crackled louder.
Three minutes.
“Where is he?” Ifaaz piped up. I shrugged, hoping the guy wasn’t lugging a boatload of books back here for us to buy.
I walked closer to the backroom door. It was too quiet.
“Hey, mister?” I said, knocking. Nothing. I looked at Ifaaz questioningly. He put one ear to the door, then shook his head at me. Silence.
I turned the handle, slowly. Ifaaz seemed to hold his breath. To my surprise, I realized I was feeling kinda stiff too. Why were we afraid?
The door creaked open, to show mostly darkness. Not pitch dark, more like a dark gray atmosphere inside the cold storage room. I didn’t open it fully at first, holding it ajar, until Ifaaz pushed it open from behind me.
The “backroom” was not a backroom. Not even close. There were no storage supplies, piles of extra books lying around, or cardboard boxes. The room was instead a museum of sorts, if you will. I have no idea what else to call it. Glass covered displays hung on the wall, and it took Ifaaz and I a second to process exactly what we were looking at. The bodies of human children, lacking any skin or blood, with only the red, fleshy muscle remaining with bone peeking out in a few areas. They were spread across the wall like one would display works of art. The raw muscly flesh on some looked dry, while others looked wet and more recent. I couldn’t even blink. I wish I had, I wish I’d shut my eyes even once, but I couldn’t.
Some of their skinless faces were distorted into screams, implying that they must’ve been still alive when-
“I see you’ve met the authors.”
A cold monotone arose from behind us, and it was all I could do from screaming. The bookseller was blocking the backroom door with his hands behind his back. He smiled, while I thought I heard Ifaaz gag.
“What-what’s that smell?” he gasped. I didn’t even notice any smells. I was too caught up in the skinless children splayed out for viewing.
“Why, I was bringing you another book. I told you to wait in the store.”
“Another book?!”
The bookseller leaned in closer. “Would you like to see how I make them? Behind the scenes?”
The smell was getting more and more pungent. I covered my face and tried to desperately see if we could squirm out from beside him. His whole form was still against the doorway, still a barrier between us and the inviting exit.
“Please just let us go. We won’t tell- I mean, we won’t call the cops or anything-“
The bookseller’s smile widened, ignoring Ifaaz. “You see, first I get rid of all the blood. You need that to tell the stories, you know, otherwise what would fill the pages? That’s one of the two most important parts.”
I guess I just didn’t look closely enough at the black faded ink.
I found myself backing away as the bookseller leaned in closer. “The second is removing the skin. Stretching it, binding it together. Sometimes they are still alive when I do it, holding on with any blood remaining, but they die soon.” The bookseller popped his hands out, and started wringing them together. They were dripping with blood. I attempted to dodge past him, in a total panic, but the bookseller was quick. He moved back to the doorway at once, going tut-tut-tut.
“I tell their stories! I even credit them as the authors. There’s little Sameeha over there, she was an easy one. The tree branch was exactly in the right spot. And there’s the little boy who I so gently tossed on the concrete sidewalk. His brain was a sight, I tell you!”
“Just-look, what do you want? Just let us go. This’ll be our secret!” I cried wildly, feeling kind of stupid. The bookseller frowned.
“But don’t you want to know how I do the most fun part? The skinning?”
For the first time, he grinned. A full toothed grin, except his teeth weren’t exactly human. It was a grin made of sharp carnivorous incisors, from one end to the other, each one nearly the size of my palm.
“I was just in the middle of finishing little Amir here, when you interrupted.”
He pointed to a far left corner of the room, and Ifaaz and I realized where the smell was coming from. A little boy’s corpse was at the edge of the floor, with his torso and legs skinned, but face still intact. Patches of skin were spread all around, with a tub of what was unmistakably his blood sitting to his left. Something, I couldn’t tell from this distance but I assume it might have been a quill, was dipped into the fluid.
“I’m almost done. I will be out with the book soon,” the bookseller continued.
“Please don’t hurt us,” Ifaaz managed to murmur, barely. I grabbed his hand and squeezed it. Yeah, this is not how I imagined that scenario going.
To my surprise, the bookseller frowned again. “Hurt you? Oh no, no. You’re way too old. What are you, 14?” He leaned closer again. “I have no use for what you can offer.”
He took a step forward, leaning even further, widening the gap between him and the door entrance ever so slightly. Just enough.
“That little girl I saw with you, though…”
This time, he wasn’t quick enough. This time, still holding Ifaaz, I pulled him as hard as I could and shot through the gap. I didn’t stop running until I saw green. The trees, the leaves, the grass. Shrubs teeming with all sorts of bugs. The sound of birds singing. All that background noise I had taken for granted. I didn’t stop running until it was all there again, and the bookstore was only a speck in the distance.
Ifaaz fell on his knees, panting. I didn’t say anything to him, and he didn’t say anything to me. At least not for the first minute or so. After I had caught my breath, I slid down on the grass next to him, grabbing his hand again. He finally spoke.
“That little girl- at the end, he said something about a little girl with us- was that-“
“Rafia. He must’ve seen her playing with us.”
“You gotta- you need to-“
“I know, I’ll-I’ll keep an eye on her. Until we leave.”
Ifaaz was quiet for a moment. “Do you think they were all on holiday here? Those kids?”
“I guess.”
“And… I mean, you’d think it would be a bigger scandal right? That many kids going missing?”
“I guess. Do you think he was human?”
Ifaaz thought for a second. “No. Those didn’t look like human teeth to me.”
“Yeah, agreed.”
Pause, except for the birds and the leaves rustling. I could see the resort in the distance.
“You wanna head back or something?” I mumbled finally. Ifaaz nodded.
“Please. I’ve explored enough for today.”
I managed to crack a grin. “Same.”
“Too bad Rafia’s kindly sentiment wasn’t true after all.”
“Her sentiment?”
Ifaaz shrugged, grinning. “This date wasn’t really enjoyable.”
We both left the resort a week after that day, but Ifaaz and I did try to figure out what to do about the bookshop, which led to more revelations. First we assumed we could call the police and take them to the place, but we realized we didn’t exactly know where in the woods that place was and needed some kind of bearing. So we went off to find it again (mind you, we would keep our distance), but we didn’t. We never saw that cabin again. We went down the same path, the same direction, but the cabin just wasn’t there. I doubt the bookseller had just demolished his precious secret project like that, so I can only assume he relocated elsewhere.
Maybe that’s part of his process all along. Relocating, grabbing kids from different locations and making his children’s books. It would explain why there isn’t some big news story about children going missing in the same spot.
I think the weirdest thing is how me and Ifaaz were both pretty unfazed about the bookseller being a non-human. In my case, it was because I had seen my own share of weird crap in forests, and apparently so had Ifaaz. He told me the most insane story about an incident with his family at the local zoo. It kinda makes me wonder what else might be happening right under my nose, that I have yet to discover.