“…celebrating Syris’s birthday was never about him. At least you can’t join the enboozening with your playlist this time.” Meg’s voice carries across the bookshop from the counter before Maz and Eli’s footsteps clear the entrance, and the dull clonk of the bell above the door dies out.
“Nobody ever hears a tune properly, thanks to your interminable humming.”
Ron gives Meg a look over the rim of his glasses and drops the coins in his hand into the till, except for the last. He rolls that one between his fingers.
Meg’s ponytail lashes against her shoulder as she turns towards the door.
“Oh, perfect! Just in time for the grand unburial! Boss unlocked the basement. Inventory time it is.” She waves a clipboard in feigned authority.
“Come on, let’s find out what has been growing under the poetry section.”
Her gaze whips from Maz’s clenched tote strap to Eli’s hand over his pocket.
“Of course, if you’re not too busy moping.” She clicks her tongue.
“I’m not going down there alone. Just in case something in the dark depths asks me to identify myself, I want witnesses.”
Ron shuts the cash tray and steps towards the trapdoor.
Meg extends her hand across the counter.
“And if either of you are planning to read any more fairytales, save it for when the inventory is done.” She cracks the till open wide enough for her hand to fit, takes her notebook out, and stuffs it into her skirt’s back pocket.
“We’ve got enough paperwork as it is.”
Eli studies the very tip of Meg’s ponytail.
‘Fairytales’? What were we reading?
He approaches the trapdoor hatch and stops at a step’s reach when he sees the wood of the hatch. Its warp, the same as the floorboards, stretches from the centre towards the edges where dust floats up in slow stirs.
I would have noticed if it was always like that. It looks… I can understand damp. But airflow?
Maz offers a non-committal shrug.
Don’t worry about Meg. Bit of counting, bit of logging, you can absolutely pretend you know what you’re doing.
Ron removes the iron padlock with a twist.
“Light switch is at the second step.” He holds the lock to point its shackle away from his hand.
“Doesn’t help much.”
The hinges of the trapdoor groan all the while he lifts the hatch until his hand props it straight up. The first stone step hoards the shop light as the rest of the stairs fall into gloom.
Ron stands at the threshold.
“I’d recommend sticking close. You’ll get lost if you don’t trust the guide.”
Meg shoots Ron a look and goes through with her clipboard in hand and her stuffed back pocket squeaking.
“Move it, hopefully sooner than the under-mould decides to charge rent.”
She slaps the light switch on. What calls itself illumination in there disagrees with brightness, so she slips her phone out of her other back pocket. As she descends the stairs, her fingers tap at the screen before she flashes the phone torch behind her, and the beam pushes the shadows back with more attitude than actual power, still doing a better job than the basement lamp.
“Mind that first step, though. It’s slippery.” Her voice echoes up the stairs, accompanied by her boots thumping down the stone.
“That’s how you gain direct access to the archive.”
Maz edges closer to the hatch, tracking the phone light that deepens the shadows beyond itself. She shakes her head and carries on.
She counts the steps out of habit.
One… Two… There’s nothing slippery so far, well, apart from that handrail you’ll try not to touch.
The cold pushes in at four, the added gravity at five. By six, the air has changed enough that the simple act of standing turns into a struggle against the pressure. Each step taken through it lands louder, announced by the grinding roar of fabric scratches and the deep thud of a sole meeting stone.
Seven. Fine, might as well keep counting. You’re not even halfway down yet. How far below can a bookshop basement go?
Eli follows her. He sticks to the wall side where Meg’s torch proves more useful, as she keeps pointing towards Maz and adds to the shadow play behind her.
He opens and closes his mouth twice before forcing a dry swallow. Each of his movements pries a grimace out of him, as if the sound amplifies only in his ears.
No ear pop. Okay. So, not that kind of drop.
When he arrives last at the bottom, Eli slows his pace at the first filing cabinet of a handful that stand along the side wall. The lock on it, in place of a keyhole, holds a shape of three overlapping circles pressed into the metal and worn smooth by something that wasn’t a key.
He raises a brow.
Right. Obviously, the basement would have unusual hardware, and I’m just… moving on.
Meg waves a hand under her nose.
“Gods, it smells like rot and missed deadlines.”
She subtly sweeps her torch beam in an arc. The light shines on a crate on top of a desk, which overflows with books that lack any cover or title and look water-damaged beyond resurrection. The glow moves onto the wooden shelves opposite, where the folders lie slumped. Some of the labels on them look smudged out of legibility.
Meg points with her clipboard.
“Eli, that stack of doom. Maz, those back shelves. I’ll take the terrifying bit in the middle.”
They take careful steps as they make their way through the basement under its weak light.
A paperback falls out of the crate with a dampish splat when Eli bumps into the desk. He scoffs.
“I meant to do that.”
He starts sorting the wonky stacks by arranging them on the desk before moving them back inside the crate. Stacks of blank covers find their order without having to display any helpful cues.
His hands move faster than his thinking. He catches himself midway through the pile.
Since when do I know where these go?
Maz straightens the folders that have no labels on them and flips one open. Her eyes widen at the unsheathed papers punched into the spine ring, as they seem handwritten in a language too archaic for the words to make complete sense.
She rifles through the pages, all tidy and similar, goes back to the top, tilting it to catch the beam from Meg’s torch, as if the dim light makes it unreadable.
Maybe some sort of an ancient form?
For a moment, the letters seem to resolve into phrases she almost understands before they scramble again.
Nope. Bad lighting’s fault for sure.
A cardboard box beside the crate catches Eli’s eye. It carries a label ‘arrival receipts 197-/20– (questionable).’
“Quirky old stuff, right?” The question carries his shaky laugh with it as he drags the box closer and stops, staring at the shadow revealed on the wall. It takes him a couple more blinks for the dark patch to resolve to be nothing but thick layers of spider webs.
“Ah, we’ve got–”
The webs hold uniform lines and curved edges that cross over one another, strung in patterns that flirt with ancient geometry. As Meg moves from desk to desk, the lines bend the light at odd angles. They create shapes that resemble a typed script without waiting for Eli to be sure they aren’t.
Maz turns to Eli and drops the folder she was holding.
Are those…? Of course not. Spiders don’t write.
Meg steps forward and shines her phone torch aimed at the webs. Whatever meaning the shapes might have hinted at breaks apart, now showing the dust that coats them and a cluster of large spiders patiently holding their place amid the disturbance.
“Sorry, love. No secret messages.”
She knocks the spider webs aside with a paperback bent double. The spiders skitter off into fresher shadows.
Eli’s smile arrives weary and a second late.
“There goes my chance to learn spiderish.”
Maz crouches to pick up the folder from the floor that has already punched the dust upwards. Her eyes stay fixed on the patch of wall that the webs hid a second ago.
The dust holds its place in the air before shooting to the floor faster than logic allows.
Meg rips the lid off a cardboard box.
“I’m throwing out anything that isn’t haunted or first edition.”
Eli steps towards Maz’s side, keeping his voice low.
“Did you see…?”
Maz glances at Meg.
Don’t give her anything. She’s apparently masquerading as the basement’s cheerful face for some reason.
“It’s nothing.”
Meg’s torch turns ahead of the rest of her. The cold glow hits a corner of a cardboard box on the desk beside them with all its harsh and impersonal glaring might. It throws enough light and shade over a hint of cursive signature beneath a faded ‘Queen’ stamp.
Maz sees it. Eli sees it. Meg sees them see it.
Before Maz’s hand finishes its journey to reach for it, Meg takes a side step, and her shadow falls across the paper. A larger box resides on top of it by the time she returns to her previous spot.
“Found the encyclopaedia graveyard.” She heads for another desk past the stairs.
Maz slots the folder in her hand onto a shelf.
You know that stamp. From where? Probably wherever this cold is from. Possibly too old to be important.
Eli steps back towards the desk of boxes.
Right. Queen. I’ve obviously heard that word from somewhere… somewhen? Unless I’ve seen it? Definitely not. Move… I’ll move on… What would happen if I didn’t?
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