The Ladies of Horror
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Todd on his Tod
by Mary Ann Peden-Coviello 

The bookstore huddled between a shoe store and a pharmacy. Had anyone noticed it, they’d have complained to “the proper authorities,” whoever they might be, that it was an eyesore. Somehow, no one ever saw it.

Until it was time to be seen.

Todd Fraser stared at the dingy little used bookstore. It was identified only by a cardboard sign on the door, reading USED BOOKS FOR SALE. Two largish windows on either side of the single door carried a load of grey dust, making it impossible to see inside. Todd slipped his thumbs inside the straps of his school backpack at his shoulders, hitched the bag to make it more comfortable, and then put a hand on the doorknob. A little bell tinkled over his head as he opened the door.

The air smelled of old books. Mold, sweat, ancient leather, damp cardboard, mouse-nibbled paper. No one stood behind the book-covered desk where sat an ancient cash register. Todd looked around; he seemed quite alone in the dim shop. “Sheesh,” he thought, “I could swipe the goods outta that little cash box, and nobody’d know.”

Just then, an old man stepped through a bead curtain that hung in the doorway behind the desk. “Ah, all on yer tod, are ye?”

“What?”

“’Tis a way of speaking from where I come. Means are ye all on your own?” The old man’s thick accent was difficult to follow but had an odd music to it.

“Oh, yeah, sure. That’s funny, though, ‘cause my name’s Todd.”

“Well, now, that’s a coincidence for the books, so to speak, innit?” The old man laughed raucously at his own joke. “Now, what sort of book is Todd who’s on his tod lookin’ for?”

“I was just curious. Can I look around?”

“Certainly, m’boy. Look at anything you like.” The old man paused and lowered his voice. “We have some . . . special things in the back, behind this curtain.”

“Yeah?” Todd’s father would beat him black and blue – or at least yell till he broke a blood vessel – if Todd brought home any porn. But, heck, he could look at it in this back room, yeah? Who’d know? And what else could the old dude mean by ‘special things’?

Todd followed the old man through the bead curtain.

The air here was different. Less old book smell and more copper and wet iron. These books were, even Todd could tell, truly ancient, leather-bound and gilt-edged – no mere hardcovered ex-library editions here.

One book drew him like a siren singing to a shipwrecked sailor. Todd couldn’t resist the urge to touch its binding, to stroke the cover, to open its pages. He couldn’t read a word, but he was fascinated.

“So that’s your book, is it, son?” The old man spoke in a throaty voice behind him. “I might have known. She’s always called to the solo travelers.”

The bookstore began to fade as the page of the book began to fill Todd’s eyes and mind ever more fully.

Todd thought, “That’s funny. I can see right through my hand where it’s on the page.”

A few days later, signs were placed on the front windows of the shoe shop and the pharmacy. MISSING: TODD FRASER, AGE 14.

No one put a sign in the bookstore window. No one noticed the bookstore as it hunched, waiting.

Until, once more, it would be time.

.

Fiction © Copyright Mary Ann Peden-Coviello
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com 

More from Mary Ann Peden-Coviello:

Fright Mare-Women Write Horror
Short Story: One Hour Before the Dark

Women write horror and have written it since before Mary Shelley wrote FRANKENSTEIN. This anthology is to highlight the fact women write great horror and to kill the fallacy that they aren’t in some way up to standard. They are. Read here stories by Elizabeth Massie, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Lucy Taylor, and a plethora of other great writers as they work on your nerves, get inside your head, and bang out some of the scariest tales written today. I’m proud to present these women for your consideration, as Rod Serling might say, as I ask you to step into FRIGHT MARE. Lock the door and windows, put on a light, and remember, it’s not real. It’s not real. Midnight awaits, monsters scheme to take you away, the strange and weird wait in the shadows, but it’s not real. Is it?

Edited by Billie Sue Mosiman, the author who brought you the SINISTER-TALES OF DREAD collections and her latest suspense novel, THE GREY MATTER.

Available on Amazon!