The Last Bookstore (Part 2)

Evelyn waited until the last slant of afternoon light faded from the shop’s front windows before she pulled the black book back from under the counter. She had hidden it beneath a stack of outdated cookbooks, no one ever bought those anymore but even so, she felt as if the book radiated a kind of watchful presence.

She set it on the counter and fetched a small desk lamp, angling the beam to rake across the page. The faint script gleamed briefly in the light before disappearing again. Invisible ink. Old-fashioned, but effective.

She remembered the other books, the ones she’d found years ago in the “dead stock” section upstairs. Marginalia in faded pencil, strange strings of numbers, even crude illustrations with odd symbols tucked into the corner of the page. She had chalked them up to eccentric former owners. But now, with the black book sitting in front of her, they felt like breadcrumbs she’d ignored.

Her curiosity prickled against her better judgment. She grabbed the brass shop key from the hook, locked the front door, and climbed the narrow back staircase.

The “dead stock” room was colder than the rest of the store, the air dry enough to make her throat catch. Here the shelves were taller, packed with titles long out of print. Few were cataloged. Most hadn’t been touched in years. She pulled down a battered leather volume of poetry and flipped it open.

In the margin of the first poem, written in the same looping hand as the black book, were the words:

Riverbank. 12 May. Before the second chime.

She checked another book, a worn paperback thriller. On page 173, a single word had been circled: Beneath.

Her heart began to race. These weren’t random. Someone had been leaving these messages for decades. And they had all ended up here.

The wooden floor creaked behind her. Evelyn spun around.

No one.

But she was certain she’d heard the boards shift, not the gentle complaint of an old building, but the subtle weight of a step. She scanned the doorway. Empty.

Her phone buzzed in her pocket, making her flinch.

Unknown number. One message.

Some stories aren’t meant to be read, Miss Chase.

Her mouth went dry. She turned the phone off, shoved it back into her pocket, and headed downstairs, every step echoing too loudly.

When she reached the bottom, the front door stood slightly ajar. She knew she had locked it.

Her eyes flicked to the counter.

The black book was gone.

She stood there for a long moment, frozen, the smell of cold air creeping into the shop. Whoever had taken it had been inside while she was upstairs. And they had left without a sound.

That night, she couldn’t sleep. Millhaven’s silence felt heavier than usual, broken only by the occasional groan of the wind through the trees. She kept replaying the words in her head — February 14th. 9:15 p.m. Millhaven Square. 37 lost.

The Valentine’s festival. The one bright spot in Millhaven’s year.

The next morning, Evelyn decided she wasn’t going to the police, not yet. She’d tried once before, with the warehouse fire note, and had been met with a polite smile and a suggestion that she “get some rest.”

Instead, she went to the library archives. If she could find records of past incidents matching other messages, maybe she could prove this wasn’t coincidence.

Millhaven’s library was even deader than her shop, run by a single overworked clerk named Dottie. Evelyn told her she was researching old town events for a “bookstore display.” It wasn’t a complete lie.

The microfilm reader wheezed and clicked as she loaded the first reel. She scrolled through old newspaper headlines:

Fire Destroys Riverside Mill, 12 Dead.
Gas Leak Blamed for Night Explosion.
Bridge Collapse Leaves Seven Missing.

She felt her skin prickle. The dates matched the margin notes she’d seen upstairs.

Someone or some group had known about these tragedies before they happened. And they’d chosen to hide those warnings in books.

She was still staring at the screen when she noticed a reflection in the glass. A man in a dark coat, standing just beyond the library’s front desk.

The same man from the street.

By the time she turned, he was gone.

That evening, as she closed up the shop, an envelope slid under the door. No stamp, no return address. Just her name.

Inside was a single page, torn from an old novel. Across the text, in that same looping script, someone had written:

Leave it alone. Or PageTurners burns next.

-Click for Part 3-