Chapter 1
Dominik walks briskly, purposefully, down Clark Street in Chicago’s north side, singing softly to himself in a mock operatic voice.
“Burning candles incantations human sacrifice….” Mimicking guitar riffs with his voice.
It’s a very sunny but cold autumn day, a beautiful day. The kind of day that makes you feel young. The kind of day when anything can happen. Dominik has been waiting for weeks to get his hands on a book from a local antique book seller. Weeks! How can anyone wait that long for anything? Dominik can’t remember the last time he waited longer than a few seconds for anything. But this book hasn’t made it into Google books, Wikipedia, or any type of online media. It’s never been scanned or typed up in e-format, it’s an anachronism. It’s also the kind of book no one wants to touch or look at, much less read. The very thought of it makes Dominik’s skin tingle and his hair stand erect all over his body.
Dominik is very tall and thin. Some people think he has an eating disorder but his friends know him much better. He used to run long distance with his university track team and was recently developing a taste for ultra-marathons when a knee injury sidelined him. He still walks fast, so fast you can feel the wind bellow around him as he passes by if you’re standing close enough, but with a mild limp. The injury was pretty bad. The prospect of being laid up for six months during the school year not only affected his position on the track team but also forced him to take the year off school. It was his last year too and he’d been accepted to Harvard for graduate school in archeology. All of this has been derailed for now while he recovers from his injury and his newfound dependence on pain killers. He’s dressed in black from head to toe. Black denim pants and jacket, though slightly faded, all black Converse Chuck Taylor Classics, even a black hoodie under the denim jacket. Dominik has a tendency to dress in layers even when it’s obviously too cold, and today he thinks he might have underestimated the weather.
He arrives at the book store, not a chain store, a local mom and pop store. Actually just pop, a dirty old pervert everyone knows to stay away from, and Dominik can’t figure out how he manages to keep the business open when no one ever goes there to buy anything. But not today. Today pops is going to make and easy $1,350 plus tax, cash. The store is a maze, amazing, but literally a maze. Not only horizontally but vertically. There is a labyrinth of book cases on several staggered levels. Some are actually up in crawl spaces, you have to get up there on a ladder and crawl on your hands and knees to get to the books. That’s when old pervo drops everything and starts fixating on whoever’s up there, with their ass in the air. Doesn’t matter if it’s a guy or girl, fat or thin, old or under aged, barely legal he’d like to think. He just likes seeing people on their hands and knees. He’s got a fetish. The floors are painted with a pattern of thick black and red stripes that appear to be radiating from a point but the book cases make it impossible to figure out where the focal point is. It’s slightly disorienting but welcoming, perfect for a pervo like him.
Dominik opens the door and the little bell at the top rings a few times as he enters. Directly opposite the door, just a few feet away, is a long glass case filled with bizarre and obscure antiques that can only be described as “things”. Some of them are so weird they must be illegal but he keeps them out in the open almost to taunt the local police. The case blocks the only entrance/exit to the bookstore. It’s so obvious that it’s a pervo trap, a way to get people cornered in the back while they look for books and he looks at them. The entire place reeks of incense. Not that any is burning. No, it reeks of 30 years of burnt incense caked into the walls, ceiling, drapes and everything else in the place, including pops who probably hasn’t showered in 30 years. The display case is clean, spotless in fact, but everything else is covered in a layer of dust. The dust is actually interesting because you can see a logical pattern to its thickness. You can actually tell about how many years something has been sitting in a particular place by how thick the dust layer is. Almost like how an archeologist determines when a particular item was buried by investigating the layers of earth around the artifact. Despite being disgusting there’s something almost homey about this place. And there’s that analogy coming back, like a hug from a creepy pervo. This whole store is one big extension of the owner’s creepy personality.
Dominik waits for someone to come out from the back. He’s impatient by nature but there’s so much cool stuff in the display case it distracts him from it. He starts to look closely at what appears to be a parchment made of skin. He hopes it’s animal but wouldn’t be at all surprised if it were human. The patch of skin is about three inches by three inches, stretched out and mounted like a giant insect on a mounting board. It has faded writing on it but Dominick can’t quite make out if it’s an old tattoo or something painted on after the skin was cured. The writing looks old, like hieroglyphs or ruins, maybe ancient Aramaic. The more Dominik looks at it the more aware he is that he’s bending over. This makes him think of pops the pervo and now his impatience has overwhelmed his curiosity.
“Hey! Jack! Get out here!” Dominik yells in sharp staccato bursts, like a drill sergeant.
Dominik isn’t like this with anyone else. He’s calm, quiet and very polite. But there’s something about this guy that makes everyone want to shout at him. He brings out the worst in people. And now Dominick is starting to think he should just leave since he doesn’t want to find out who might be in the back with Jack. He doesn’t want to be an accomplice to anything.
Jack slowly emerges from behind a beaded curtain strung up between two book cases just behind the counter. He shimmies his way through an opening he can’t really fit through, trying not to tip the book cases over. A stench hit’s Dominik from a few feet away. It’s a sharp odor like the powdered chemicals they used to dump on puke back in grade school when someone would get sick in the hallway. The long strings of beads caress his large malformed body falling away to reveal clothing covered in old food stains. Jack loves to wear light colored clothes but they look like they’ve been used for finger painting or a food fight. Both of which remind Dominik of kids. The sight of Jack sickens him.
“Jesus Jack, what the fuck. You smell like shit, you look like shit. Are you sure you’re not made of shit?”
Jack just smiles looking down at Dominik from behind his glasses as he scoots closer to the counter. “Do you have the money?”
“Yes of course. But I want to see this thing first and look it over. I want to be sure it’s authentic.”
“Oh, yes of course. It’s authentic. You won’t be disappointed. Come in the back? Eh? We can look at it in my office where we won’t be disturbed.”
“First, no. Bring it out here. Next, no one ever comes here so who’s going to disturb us? And last, fuck you pervo, you’ll always be disturbed.”
“Okay, okay. I’ll bring it out then, right?”
Dominick always feels guilty when he talks to Jack like that but can’t help himself. Nothing ever happened between them. In fact no one has ever filed a complaint against Jack. Dominick almost feels like a bully. Everyone talks to Jack like that and no one really knows why. He’s never done anything to anyone, except stare at their asses when they enter the crawl space. He’s just odd and has poor hygiene. And no matter how abusive you are to him he just smiles and chuckles a little and doesn’t say anything back. For all anyone knows he could have aspergers or some other developmental disability. Dominik reruns what he just said in his mind and feels awful. He never talks like that anywhere else except here, except to Jack. Just as his conscience was about to get the best of him Jack returns with a small wooden box.
“You know Dom, the other day two girls were in here. I’d say they were in seventh or eighth grade and one of them had her period. I could smell her period. And…”
Dominick leans into Jack’s face and shouts “Shut up! Shut up, shut up, shut up! Fuck you!”
Jack cowers a little, clutching the box, but smiles looking intensely at Dominick.
“Well, here you are. This is it. Now I don’t mind you looking at it but I’ll have to insist on handling it until you pay.”
Jack puts the box on the counter and opens it. The inside is packed with cotton. Dominik winces and shakes his head at the sight of it. Jack then slowly removes the cotton to reveal a small book. The book is about two and a half by three inches and very thin. Almost like a pamphlet. The cover appears to be leather but is so old it looks like it might turn to dust just sitting there. Jack pulls out a set of thin metal spatulas that look almost like surgical equipment. He gently inserts one beneath the cover and uses the other to help guide while he opens the book. The cover is very flexible and fragile. Both Jack and Dominik hold their breath as Jack opens the front cover and gently lays it down. The inside of the box is large enough to hold the opened book. The front page, now exposed, has the appearance of old parchment with only a symbol written in center of the page.
“That looks like it Jack. That really looks authentic.”
Dominik leans forward to get a close look and immediately notices Jack lean sideways to look at his reflection in the window.
“Really Jack? You want me to break your fucking face?”
Jack turns away to give Dominik a moment of privacy.
“Ok, I want it but I have a problem with paying if I can’t at least test a sample of the leather or the paper. I need something, even a dust particle.”
“Look I understand. But this is business. And you know I took a lot of risks getting this. I can’t just let you do what you want and possibly say no.”
“Ok, what if I buy it right now and you give me a return window.”
“Eh, I don’t know. I usually do take returns on merchandise but this is risky.” Jack thinks for several second rubbing his hand over his chin and mouth. “Ok, you know as long as I get to look it over when you bring it back and to my satisfaction it isn’t damaged or anything like that. You got a deal.”
“Awesome. Pack it up.”
Jack carefully closes the book, stuffs the cotton back in and closes the box. Dominik takes out his wallet and counts out fifteen hundred dollars.
“So, with tax that will be $1,444.50.”
“Here you go.”
“Ok, let me get change.”
Jack walks back to his office leaving Dominik alone for a few moments. Dominik can feel the excitement grow inside him. He wishes he could teleport home immediately and get right to looking through it. Jack returns.
“Here you are $55.50. Heh, ah, you know people can’t even make change in their head anymore. I’m not impressed with all this technology. And…”
Dominik interrupts. “Don’t care. Shut up, pervo.”
Dominik turns and leaves as fast as he can. All the way home he can feel Jack’s eyes on him. He imagines that the effect of being near Jack will diminish, like an inverse square law in electrostatics or acoustics. But it doesn’t. Just being in his presence is like being molested. It just lingers on you all day. But this was worth it. Now all Dominik can think of is what’s in that box and what it means if it’s really authentic.