I’ve been a book hoarder for years now. I see a book that looks interesting and I buy it or order it online, add it to my Kindle. I haven’t gotten around to most of them. My TBR pile could fill a room. I have to read the blurbs when I pick them up, even though logically I know I must have chosen the book at some point. Despite that I often find I have no idea why I own some of them. I picked up a detective story the other day and read the back, it wasn’t the kind of thing I liked to read. I could not for the life of me recall why I bought it. I stuck it straight in the donation bag and chose something else. I chose, the book.
Normally even my second-hand books are in good condition but this one had paper glued to the cover. Wallpaper in a horrible green and cream flocked pattern. Every inch of it pasted down with old, brown glue. On the back, where the blurb should have been, someone had apparently tried to copy it out – from memory I guessed, as they’d already covered it up. Maybe that was why it didn’t make any sense. The shaky pencil words didn’t form a proper sentence. They were just…words.
bridge to the falling arc spent down drowned ever gone through
It was nonsense.
I was already annoyed about the detective novel that shouldn’t have been there. Frustrated that I had so many books yet couldn’t find anything to read. The lack of a blurb irritated me, how had this book found its way into my collection? When had I bought it and who had sent it to me in this awful condition? Had I asked for a refund? I was already late for work, just trying to grab a book to read on my lunch break. I checked inside the front cover, hoping for a title or a blurb – something.
bridge to the falling arc spent down drowned ever gone through stone moss age lost falling falling sharp taken in flash pull gone out through bone…
I blinked.
It was dark. My eyes felt hot and dry as if I’d spent hours gazing into my computer screen. I was still standing in my living room. My legs stiff and my feet swollen and aching. I stepped back and sat down hard on my sofa. The book was still in my hands, I curled my fingers around the open pages, gauging the thickness of how much I’d read the way I was used to doing – marvelling at the wedges of paper I’d consumed. My dry fingertips rasped against the inside of the cover. I hadn’t gone beyond the first page.
I was shaking and I realised as I felt tears well under my eyelids, that I was afraid to look at the book again. I snapped it closed and my body sagged in relief. I blinked my freshly moistened eyes open and looked around at the pitch darkness of my flat. My smart watch told me it was just after eight in the evening. I had two emails and three missed calls from work.
My breathing came in unsteady rasps. I felt drained, dazed. The worst kind of ‘book hangover’ I’d ever experienced. But I couldn’t even remember what I’d read. Trying to recall the words only brought a sense of…acceleration. Of moving faster and faster through a dark tunnel, flashes of light coming every minute, every second, blurring into one as I was carried onwards towards…nothing. I couldn’t name it, but I felt both a yearning and a terror of what was at the end of that tunnel.
I put the book down on the coffee table and moved the heavy fruit bowl on top of it. The covers pressed together around the pages like disapproving lips hiding their teeth.
I picked up my phone and opened the first email, subject line ‘Unauthorised Absence’. My manager’s usual curt corporate waffle spooled out after my name. I am deeply concerned by this sudden change in your behaviour, you’ve always been a bridge to the falling arc spent down drowned ever gone through…’
This time there was no trance, no time slip. I only felt a deep pull from the words in the email, a suggestive force that made me more aware of the book on the table. I think even in those early moments of confusion I managed to grasp that only the book had that kind of power. The email and everything which came after, was just an echo, drawing me back.
I didn’t want to touch the book again, so I left it on the table, under the bowl. I didn’t sleep much that night. Every time I woke to silence I felt as if I’d only just missed a voice, speaking words in the dark.
I went to work the next day and apologised to my manager. I’d just been so ill that I’d slept right through, I said. It wouldn’t happen again. She seemed satisfied. I went to my desk and logged on, opened bridge to view my current spreadsheet. Sorted by falling. Created a table of arc against spent. I had a headache. I went to the drinks machine and the display flashed down, the bottle that came out contained water, but the label said drowned.
I told my manager I was still sick and she let me go home, but looked unhappy.
The book was at home, so I didn’t want to go back there. I walked through the high-street and the bright glowing signs said ever, gone and through. Words beyond that line, words I couldn’t remember, emerged like maggots from deceptively fresh fruit. I wasn’t even sure if the signs were right or not. Was there a film out called simply, enter? A magazine named, descent?
Leaving the town behind I somehow ended up at the slip station, passing beyond into the residential neighbourhood that bordered it, Flayed Park. Nowhere near my flat. My flat wasn’t safe. I didn’t know what was happening to me. The words were following me, daring me to read them. I couldn’t stop, as soon as I saw one it was read. Before I’d even thought to look away, it was in my head.
I collided with a man and dropped my bag. He swore. We were outside a church – Saint Memory’s – Church of Edict. I wasn’t religious, I knew it was just a building, that it couldn’t protect me. I didn’t even know what I needed protection from. I just wanted to get away from the signs.
Inside it was cool and gloomy. The only sign I could see was a list of what I assumed were hymns – numbers, no words, up behind the pulpit. There were people inside, not many. Waiting for a service or something. I sat down at the back and warily eyed the unnamed book tucked into the seat back ahead of me. No words on the outside, nothing to speak the book’s message to me.
The sound of a door opening was loud in the stone building. A vicar ascended to the pulpit and looked down across the handful of people settled before him.
“Welcome, all of you, to this bridge to the falling arc spent down drowned ever gone through…”
I screamed, but I could still hear him the words, echoing around me even when he stood there, motionless, mouth open. Within moments I was surrounded by people, all talking to me or to each other.
“Is she falling arc spent?”
“Drowned ever gone ring 999!”
“…through stone moss age lost falling falling sharp taken in flash pull gone out through bone…”
They were all saying it together. I clawed my way out of the pew and ran from the church. Outside a police car came to a stop on the side of the road and two men got out, approaching me with hands up. They spoke only the book.
“Please, help, I don’t know what’s happening,” I was crying.
The tattoo on my hand said ‘bridge’. I couldn’t remember what it had been that morning. I could feel the words under my skin and I realised that none of this was the book’s fault. A book cannot read itself. A book cannot speak its own words aloud.
I shut my eyes and my mouth and held the words inside me. If I didn’t say them, couldn’t read them, then they didn’t exist. A book without a name, without a blurb, cannot tell you anything – unless you open it.
I raised my hand to my mouth, and erased the bridge to the falling arc spent down drowned ever gone through