The sky still drips black and blue when Mr. H arrives at The Frayed Spine. The dogs stand by his heel as one loyal shadow in the low dawn. Beyond them, the street seems empty apart from the rippling puddles.
Mr. H keeps his eyes on the counter through the bookshop’s glazed door as the rain that trickles narrow rivers down the glass stops.
His gloved hand drags out a keyring wrought in iron from his coat pocket. Its large hoop holds a cluster of keys with no clip to set even a single key free; he picks one out without looking.
When he unlocks the door and pushes it open, the bell offers a one-way ring. It travels long past the warped wood before returning with the sharp echo of remembering its best marbled manners.
Paper dust and silence remain uninterrupted in the bookshop as he steps in. The door swings to an almost close until its latch rests on the frame.
He doesn’t turn the ‘Open’ sign outwards. No need for company this early.
His gaze lands on a blank point behind the unmanned till where Ron would often be positioned.
“Mr. H.” More a sigh than a name that targets only the empty shop and the absence of anyone who might correct him.
Approaching the trapdoor, the poetry shelves mark his passing where the floorboards breathe underneath his shoes. The dogs keep close. Neither the paws nor his footfalls make a sound against the wood.
The moment he stops by the hatch, his chin tips up.
“Mister.” The word sounds foreign in his voice.
He lowers himself to one knee to fit a smaller key from his keyring into the iron padlock. It yields with a grudging clack before he unloops the lock from the ring and lays it aside on the floor.
“For all the names I have had for millennia, the Ferryman journeys to mister.” He gives the till a final glance and lifts the hatch.
A chill announces itself when the shop’s entrance bangs shut in the clash of draughts between the door and the basement. The hinges creak as a sour mix of mildew rises. An ancient musk chases after them, smelling of an age much older than the bookshop, than the street outside’s memory of itself.
His gloved hand reaches down, finds the switch on the side of the stone steps, and flicks the light back from dead. It only deserves the name by its job title, since it adds not much more than a rumour of brightness.
He returns the keys to his pocket as he stands. The dogs pad ahead to lead the way. At the threshold, the dog with golden eyes stops, looks at the shadowed steps below before descending with the others. Mr. H follows and closes the hatch above him.
Across the stone wall on the side, the mould appears to have started its own calligraphy. He keeps to the middle without reaching for the pitted iron bannister.
Down past the long throat of shadows for stairs, the basement awaits, holding the dust and gloom of a neglected stockroom.
He passes the desks where warped crates and cardboard boxes slump under and on top of them. A hoard of books leans against each other on the floor beside the sagging boxiness.
The neglect continues along the other side wall where metal shelves stretch from the floor upwards and fade into pitch darkness.
He runs a gloved finger across a row. Tidy stacks of folders fill the shelves, carrying their own neat labels. Every hardcover binder holds the same ‘P’ in a red wax seal, as if stamping shares the same sense as branding.
Each carries a date sticker that has given up the ghost to damp and time yet still manages to give a suggestion of when. The folder labelled ’20–/19–‘ rests beside another with ’13–/120-‘ leaning against ‘Bronze Gate Era’, which leads on to a set of two with the same ‘Year 14’ tags.
The rows themselves have their own names. ‘Intake Forms’ marks the bottom shelf, ‘Routing’ the one above it, then ‘Transfer Records’ below ‘Overflow’. The rest of the labelling becomes more illegible the higher the shelves go past the bulb, which dangles on a wire from nowhere.
He steps towards the back wall and stops halfway. A handful of office chairs that should be in a repair queue rather than a basement stand forgotten a few paces away from the brickwork at the rear.
The dogs trot ahead with soundless paws on the stone. Their ears perk up when they reach the chairs. Three tails lift and whip in a unanimous wag. The one with red eyes turns to the shelves while the green-eyed takes a closer look at a chair. Gold eyes stare over the furniture at the back wall.
“I know,” he remarks to the dogs.
“Not yet.”
A desk beside him snags his gaze; another cardboard box with a wayward lid flap flopped aside waits alone on top. From inside the box, a sheet of paper secured on a clipboard faces up, covered with a veil of dust, and stamped in red wax ‘Queen’.
His hand lowers to the page. He slows down, careful not to disturb the dust. The dogs watch him, and on some old cue he hasn’t given, they bark a short note. The sound circles the room in echoes pinging off one another.
“She’ll find her way back.” He takes his hand back, but not his eyes away from the red stamp, as if trying to console the dust that has been keeping the paper left behind company.
“Not a soul ever stays gone for good.”
He turns his attention back to the rear wall.
The stone there looks more ancient with its duller colour and more pronounced dips. It can persuade anyone that it has been standing there since long before the rest of the building ascended around it. As shadows gather in the stone’s splits, the basement feels even deeper by the second.
He pulls his gloves off finger by dictatorial finger and slides them into his coat pocket. His bare hand presses against the stone.
The bricks in the stonework on the wall give a slight tremor. They begin to adjust their order in minute shudders. Each block keeps moving until, at the centre, the cracks between the next unite. The rest line up on the outer edges to suggest a large outline with four corners. A white light oozes through the widening gaps.
He removes his hand while the shape becomes something that isn’t quite a door yet.
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