“Run!” I screamed down the street as I ran for my life, my lungs burned, and it felt as if my legs were turning into jelly. How else to describe the beings that seemed to chase me down the street was difficult in so many ways. Everyone leapt out of my way, and all watched in horror as I was being chased by a mob of demonic looking gnomes. Yep. Gnomes.
This honestly isn’t much different then any other job. I work at my uncle Rory’s bookstore and working there does pose similar work-related issues. Albeit of the more paranormal kind of issues. For the most part, my job has minor quirks and rules I have to deal with. unnatural beings can leap out of books, customers aren’t exactly human sometimes, and there is of course the fucking crow that keeps tapping its fucking beak against the glass window that’s on the front of the store. Sure, the animal corpses and blood randomly showing up in the weirdest of places in the store is a bit strange . . . more worrying, but I’m sure any other employee of a private owned business go through the same thing, so I really shouldn’t complain. Although I don’t think most people would be pleased by my comparison. After all the pay is great, I get bonuses if I stop whatever it is that tries to destroy the town.
Although the customers are a bit questionable at best. The other night I was getting ready to close the store, and a weird Victorian cosplaying guy came inside, I had told the man that he had five minutes to find a book because I was closing up. apparently, the man didn’t appreciate my pushiness, the man turned out to be some vampire and tried to kill me. luckily, I stick to one of the rules which stipulates I keep a gun loaded with silver and a wooden stake. Both effective, but I decided the gun was easier and less of me being torn to shreds. After shooting the vampire straight through its heart, he died instantly, and the nearby store owners called the cops after hearing the gun shots. I was interrogated by the police for two hours when they found no body, and the store security video recording mysteriously deleted, they couldn’t pin me on any murder although the town now thinks I am. next time I’ll use a stake so I wouldn’t have to be dragged into the sheriff’s office.
I’m getting ahead of myself, though. I should probably start at the beginning.
It all began when my parents were pushing me to get a job after college, I guess that journal degree didn’t get me far in life. My dad had asked a favor from his brother, my uncle Rory, the black sheep of the family for a job at his quiet bookstore in a little rural town in Colorado. my uncle wouldn’t answer my father until a few days later, when a sharp knock at the door startled all of us while we were at the dinner table. When my father opened the door, my uncle didn’t look all that good, and he agreed for me to take over his bookstore, and my uncle ended up in the hospital. Although the doctors didn’t tell us what it was, my uncle had his secrets to begin with, so keeping what was killing him a secret was normal too.
It was hard seeing my uncle in the hospital and calling me in to tell me he wanted me to oversee his bookstore. He had written down several rules for me to obey by on a napkin, (several of them), told me as long as I obeyed them, I should be fine. Told me that his bookstore was not normal, how he explained it was, there are certain portals that beings unlike us can pass through, and I’m not just protecting this portal but the fate of the human race. Although I think it was a lot of morphine that was talking at the time.
Out of sheer desperation, I actually moved to Colorado and checked out this bookstore. To all normality it looked like any other bookstore. But the inside caught me off guard. It was bigger on the inside.
Actually, I didn’t notice anything was off about the bookstore for a surprisingly a long time. I had started talking to neighboring stores, who all told me it gave them the weird feeling, but I just laughed and said Well my uncle said its here to protect humanity, and I’d get that side eyed glances and most of them now stay away from me. no one looks at me nor they don’t question me about the weird things they see.
I think the first odd thing I remember is when I was cleaning the bookstore, it was covered in dust, and smelled like mold. I don’t know when the last time my uncle had cleaned the bookstore, but if he wanted customers, the first thing was to clean. I was a bit frustrated seeing that none of the neighboring store owners wouldn’t tell me much about the bookstore, and I couldn’t get in contact with my uncle it was like all communications were cut off. and so, I had the radio on full blast while I worked. Alternative rock music helps me focus on anything including stress cleaning.
That’s when the radio started acting a bit off, slowly the radio skipped as if it was getting a bad reception and suddenly the channels started changing. I don’t know much about radios, but I knew enough that what was happening was not normal at all. I climbed down from the second landing and readjusted the knob with an uneasy look around the open space. I was the only one in here, as far as I knew. and if someone was playing a prank on me, I would hear them sneaking in through the front door, since there was a tiny little bell above the door. I had a chill run down my spine, just then.
Shrugging, I changed it back to my favorite channel and went back to dusting on top of the bookshelves, and I had only gotten it done in less than five minutes and again this time, it sounded as if the channel were surfing as if someone was trying to find their channel. I peeked over the balcony, but I did not see anyone. Slowly I descended back down, I reached for the knob and my hand froze when a man’s wheezy voice came over the speakers.
“Girlie, you change this channel one more time I’ll have to teach you a lesson,” his voice sounded as if he smoked a carton of cigarettes a day. My hand was frozen in the air, I wasn’t sure how to respond to it. when I didn’t reply back, the music slowly filled the room, jazz. I turned back around and headed back up; I chalked it up to lack of sleep. yep. The mysteries of the radio was not my business.
Since I had no where else to go, in the back of the store is a loft area, its big enough for me, I decided it wouldn’t hurt to sleep in the back. well, I thought it was a great idea until I woke up in the middle of the night with my phone blasting that jazz crap, I fell out of bed screaming in terror. I hurried and shut my phone off, glancing around in fear. I got out of bed and picked up the bat that I had next to my bed and walked the entire bookstore and when I couldn’t find an intruder I stopped and stared out the windows in front of the store out into the cobble street. Yawning, I stared at my reflection, I thought I was seeing things when I saw a man dressed like the monopoly guy, even down to the monocle, he glared at me. I turned around and no one was there.
Suffice to say, I didn’t sleep the rest of the night, I swear I saw what I had but I kept convincing myself I was seeing things, that I didn’t just see a ghost.
Still despite my denial that something was going on, a certain wariness had developed in my interactions being in the bookstore. I found myself more hesitant picking up books and rearranging them. I pushed passed that until I accidentally dropped one of the books I was moving, the book fell on the spine with a thump and the book threw open. and suddenly a tentacles shot out of the pages of the book, wrapping around my ladder and hitting the shelves and more books falling open and more creatures all crawling out of the book. I held on to the ladder with my dear life screaming. Fairies, gnomes, jack the ripper, and more character from books escaped the pages of the books and ran out of the store and I had a bad sinking feeling. Still in shock I managed to leap down on the ground and shut all the books that opened. And that was the moment my uncle called me, I ignored his call, because I couldn’t tell him I fucked up. hurriedly I picked all the books with the characters that ran out of it, and stacked them near the counter, I had to put them back. but how?
My turning point was definitely when, the day after that had happened, I fell through the floorboards nearly twisting my ankle, I found a secret book in the floorboards, after what happened I was a bit hesitant to opening it. The book was a leather-bound book, with no title, and the first page looked ripped out of the book, when I flipped through the pages they were blank. but I had accidently cut my finger on one of the pages. I hissed in pain and shook my hand out, and the book started fluttering as if it was alive. startled, I threw the book reflectively down the hall.
The book arced through the air, pages fluttering and then smashed into the far wall with a sickening thump.
My stomach sank, and I felt inexplicably guilty. The thing scared me, it wasn’t my fault, I had previously been attacked by tentacles from a book and I was being haunted by the monopoly guy. Excuse me for freaking out. for fucks sake—but I still felt the need to check on the book to make sure it was okay. before I could even move, the book slide around and started hopping and clapping its cover open and close as if it was going to bite me. I pushed myself away—crab walking as I screamed and hit the counter and held my hand out.
“DON’T EAT ME!”
The book stopped and sniffed my bleeding finger, the book growled at me like some dog, I lowered my hand. And offered my hand to it, I apologized profusely at the book. I wasn’t sure how to make it happy other than feeding it beef jerky I had in my hoodie pocket.
After that, it was impossible to ignore the fact that my creepy uncle’s bookstore was not normal, in fact, its abnormal, and the more I thought about it. his words echoed in my head, how it’s a portal, and that I had to protect this store with everything I got.
I’m not okay. but I can deal with it, actually its not that bad as long as I read the rules on the napkins my uncle gave me, I was sure I could survive. I found the napkins in my stuff, a good lot of the rules were smudged, I sighed, I should have read the rules, all well, I’ll figure them out just as I had. now I knew what I had to do, I had to find those characters and bring them back to their respective books. I decided to start on the gnomes.
Poor choice on my part.
The leather-bound book had amazing information on creatures beyond my comprehension, but it showed me the page with gnomes, small, resourceful, and there were extremely prone to anger bursts. They had a dark magic that makes them dangerous, they use the power of a dark crystal, without it, they are just as an annoyance as rodents. Oh, and they multiply like rabbits, that was not comforting. So, I decided to go gnome hunting. I had put book in charge of the store. It fluttered its pages at me as if it was saluting me, or at least that’s how I took it.
Tap, tap, tap, tap, screeeeech . . .
I turned to the noises to see a crow outside the store windows. “Go away!” I shooed but it kept tapping on the window, I threw open the door and threw the last of my donut at the damn thing. It cawed a laugh at me and swooped back down and grabbed my donut and flew off, I swear everything near this bookstore is a freaking paranormal anomaly. I sighed in defeat.
I heard giggling and turned my head and narrowed my eyes, it was quicker than I thought it would be, the gnome ran to a tree and glanced around the trunk. I snuck out of the store and held my butterfly net up ready to catch the little humanoid creature. When it realized I was advancing on it, it turned its demonic little face up at me, and it grinned two rows of triangular teeth a lot like a shark, his human like eyes turned into slights.
“Oh shit—”
I wish I had the time to tell more of my experiences. I know that what I’ve written can be dismissed as a runaway imagination. But I promise this isn’t the end of my tales, I thought I’d start from the beginning when I got here to this little rural town. I know I’ve dumped a lot of information in this one part, but to be honest I didn’t want to jump into the whole mutated deer eating people just yet. I didn’t realize that telling the beginning was going to be so long. And now I’m kind of in a rush because I had trapped myself in a portable potty to get away from the mob of gnomes. So, I’ve decided that I’m just going to post what is right now. I will continue filling everyone in after I’ve dealt with the gnomes and put them back in their book. It sounds crazy, I get it. I’d understand if you didn’t want to come back and find out if I survive or not, I want to know if I survive too.
And again, the worst possible time my uncle is calling, I can’t ignore his calls forever. Wish I could, but he’s got to know what’s going on and know that I am not fucking anything up right now.
Whatever the bookstore actually is, I guess its safe to assume the bookstore will be in my capable hands. This Willow, from Rory’s bookstore, and hey, don’t accidently open books when you don’t know what could come out of it, and gnomes definitely don’t puke rainbows, more like the flesh they’d eaten.