Carter & Lovecraft by Jonathan L. Howard Read Free Book Online Page B

that.
    Carter didn’t read so much anymore. He wished he did, but he never had the time, or he could never find a book that really grabbed him. Owning a bookstore was not a good fit with him. Rothwell would give him a good price, he was sure. He wasn’t so sure he wanted to go that way, though. Part of it was personal dislike, true, but he also wondered what would actually happen. Rothwell would just hand the place over to Emily like he said he would? Or maybe he’d just quietly dismantle it to take it away from Emily. Either way—a patronizing “little pastime for the little lady” or getting rid of it so he was her only focus—Carter didn’t like it. The more he thought about it, the more it appealed to him to keep the place a going concern. Maybe give Emily a 10 percent stake in the place to keep her involved, a bonus on top of her wages. Yeah, she’d like that. Even better, it would irritate the fuck out of Ken.
    Cool.
    The stairs to the second floor were in a combined kitchen/storage area at the back of the store behind a door. Carter stood on the lowest step and inhaled. The air did not seem especially musty. He went up.
    The staircase rose directly into Alfred Hill’s apartment, performing a right-hand turn to come out into a notional line that separated the front bedroom end of things from the rear bathroom and kitchenette. It felt claustrophobic there, not least because the walls were as dense with bookshelves as the store below. Dark wood and a dull rainbow of book spines served to eat most of the light coming through the small front window. By it was a double bed, stripped of bedding and the mattress wrapped in plastic. The room smelled fresh. Carter realized that the building’s only toilet was upstairs, so Emily must have had to come up here a few times a day. She had kept the place dusted and aired.
    The mattress looked clean, and the idea of sleeping here no longer seemed so unreasonable. He made up his mind to go across the street and buy a sleeping bag. It probably wasn’t very adult of him, but he liked the sense of this small adventure. He wouldn’t eat there, but he would get some basic stuff while he was out.
    He was just finalizing these plans when he heard the bell ring on the door below. His first reaction was his heart sinking as he thought a customer had come in and he would have to explain that the store was shut. Then he remembered he had turned the sign to Closed . He had locked the door and tested it. It must be Emily.
    He took a step toward the top of the stairs.
    But she had given her keys to Rothwell, and he had handed them on to Carter.
    He walked down the stairs as quietly as the wooden steps would allow. The storeroom/coffee-making area was empty. He moved into the store proper and found it empty, too. The tone of the bell still hung in the air. He looked closely at it. It hung motionless.
    *   *   *
    The sports store was having a sale, and Carter got a good deal on a sleeping bag. On an impulse, he bought a cheap foam roll to lay over the mattress. He had no intention of sleeping on plastic and being disturbed by its crackling all night, but part of him maintained an irrational belief that the old but barely used mattress would harbor bedbugs. Exactly how they’d survived for seven years without feeding was part of the irrationality of it.
    He hesitated before buying the bedroll. He knew he didn’t really need it, just as he knew he hadn’t really heard the door chime. Logically, he knew there was no way it had rung. The door was locked, the rear of the store was secure, and he was the only person in the building. There was, he admitted willingly, the possibility of something other than the door ringing it. Perhaps it rang in sympathy with other frequencies. A passing truck might have made the building shudder. Perhaps even the sunlight filtering through the tinted windows was enough to make the metal of the spring expand and shake the bell as the tension was released.