Requiem by B. Scott Tollison Read Free Book Online Page A

the door. She immediately froze. Her
eyes trained on the piece of string tied to the trigger.
    The old lady
waved her hand dismissively. ‘Oh don’t worry about that, honey.
Jessie’s for the unwelcome guests but you are most certainly
welcome! Now, I’m sorry to be such a slave driver but could you
help me shut the door?’
    Seline’s mouth
was dry. She swallowed and looked down at the woman. The sunlight
peering through the open door revealed shallow corrugations and
creases in her skin. Her hair was greyed, remarkably clean, and
flowing just below her shoulders.
    Seline's voice
cracked. ‘Do I know you?’
    She looked at
Seline, smiled. Warm. Mischievous.
    ‘Here, help me
shut this door,' she said, 'and I’ll get you something to
drink’.
     
    Motes of dust
passed through the beams of light peering through the tears and
holes in the curtains. The air was musty and stale. Seline could
feel it scratching her skin as the old lady led her down the
hallway with a single wax candle.
    She found her
eyes trailing along the surface of the floorboards following their
dark splitting grains, contorting and twisting around deep seated
knots. Seline was guided along the thin trail of exposed wooden
boards into what she assumed was the lounge. Almost every inch of
vacant floor space was occupied by towers of books stacked one on
top of the other. In the centre of the room, entombed within the
shrine of paperbacks, were two worn and faded recliner chairs.
Their red lacquered contours had been scoured out and rubbed away
in a cartoonish, grey outline of the human body. Two ornate wooden
stands had been set up next to the chairs. Abigail lit two more
candles and placed one onto each of them.
    She turned to
Seline. 'Water or tea?'
    'Uh, water
thank you.'
    'I don't have
any water.'
    'Wh-'
    'Tea it is!
Take a seat, honey. I'll be back in a moment,' she said before
shuffling out of the room.
    Dust and old
flakes of skin saturated the air. The dampness weighed down on
Seline, pushing her further into the cushions of the chair as she
sat down. She shifted her body uncomfortably and looked around the
room. At first she was looking for more stringed up guns or
possible escape routes but the stakes of books quickly caught her
eye. She tried to make out the titles of some of the books
spiralling from the stacks on the floor. The only name she
recognised was written along the binding of a thick dense volume
half way up one of the stacks. ' The complete works of
Shakespeare' read the cracked green spine in what must have
once been a gold gilded and carefully scribed font but was now
faded and weathered from dust and excessive use. There seemed to be
no particular order to the haphazardly formed library before her.
Just a mixture of letters and words amassed on yellowed pages.
    Loud clinking
of old ceramic plates and cups came from the next room as if
Abigail were opening and closing every drawer and door she could
find. As uncertain as Seline was, there was something welcoming in
the old lady's manner and the humid touch of the cramped, sunless
rooms. Seline slid off the edge of her seat and crouched next to
one of the larger stacks of books. She ran her fingers along their
spines admiring the different textures.
    She stood up
and gently slid some books from the top of another of the piles,
feeling the weight of the pages and bindings in her hand. Words and
stories existed in this place. Not letters on a screen or ideas in
her head. They were tangible. They were heavy. She wiped her hand
over the cover to clear the thick layer of dust that had settled
there. She read the title of the book in her head. The complete
Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Sherlock Holmes was
an old detective. Seline knew this because Belameir knew this.
    She gently
leafed through the brittle and fibrous pages. She stepped back to
get a better angle of light on the page.
    A deep creaking
sound arched across the room from beneath her foot. A tower of thin
spined