The Book

The book lay unopened on her father's desk for years, deliberately ignored and eventually forgotten, buried under a stack of ten others that appeared to be more important - although not by much, given the thick pall of dust that had always covered them. A month after he died from the oppressive late-summer heat, Marie covered her nose and mouth with her grandmother's flowered kerchief and went to retrieve it.

The door didn't want to open. Still swollen from the autumn rains, it fought her, and she wondered if it was a sign that the house and its questionable contents were best left alone. But it needed work. The property wouldn't sell in its current condition, which according to the inspector was uninhabitable at best. Two contractors and four realtors had advised her in no uncertain terms to raze it and sell the land, and one of the contractors had gone so far as to recommend a formal exorcism and cleansing of the entire twelve-acre plot after the demolition. His matter-of-fact tone made her fairly certain that he wasn't joking, although she couldn't be sure. The people in Ratchet were odd, even for deep-woods Appalachia, and they seemed to enjoy playing it up for outsiders.

The possibility of lighting a match to the place or planting a bomb therein was tempting, she had to admit. But before she caved to the locals or satisfied her own urge to blow the reeking mess sky-high, she was going to get her book back.

~Andi