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The Black Book

Copyright © 2011 by AJ Kirby

All rights reserved. No part of this story (eBook) may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or book reviews.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidences are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to any actual person, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Published by TWB Press

Edited by Terry Wright

Cover Art by Terry Wright

ISBN 978-1-96991-28-0

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By

AJ Kirby

The postman always squeaks twice.

Once as he grumbles and pushes open the gate at the top of the

path, which winds down to the front door while he struggles under the

weight of his sack; the second time a more light on its feet kind of

squeak after he’s deposited the heavy parcels in the metal box by the

side of my door. The second squeak is usually the one loud enough to

tug me out of my reverie and bring me downstairs from my eyrie at the

top of the house. I suppose it is a primitive form of communication.

I’m in no hurry, giving the postman enough time to get himself

fully away from my property in order that there is no chance we’ll have

~4~

to engage in conversation other than the simple squeaking of gates and

my slippered tread on the winding stairs by way of a response. Because

mornings are my reading time, I’m generally wearing my silk dressing

gown, which led to a few awkward exchanges when the postman first

took on this route, and he’d persisted in hammering away at the door

until I came down, whereupon he’d give my apparent state of undress

the critical eye as he passed over to me the parcels of the day.

If I were to critically appraise his performance, I’d say that the

dirty-orange waist-coated man became obsessed with discovering what

form of work I might undertake, which allowed me to work from home,

in informal dress, seven days a week, fifty two weeks a year. Or in

putting his grubby finger on the answer to the question of whether I was

a common or garden sponger, on the long-term sick, or a more refined

sort, independently wealthy.

Given the fact he’d seen my house, I’m sure he’d have opted for

the latter. Still, he asked me all sorts of leading questions such as “not in

the office again?” or “off sick, is it, sir?” or “I’d love to be able to work

from home. How do you find it?”

And I’d have to respond, by saying something like, “oh, it’s not all

it’s cracked up to be,” or “I’ve not had a sick day in thirty years,” or “my

home is my office.”

One day he dropped my name, Oliver Capstick, into the

conversation, and that was the day I knew I had to put an end to his

~5~

prying. Hence the metal box I installed by the door. Hence my loitering

as I reach the first floor landing. That surreptitious look out through the

curtains, just to check he’d really gone. My pause at the foot of the

second stairs to give my cat, Milton, a little tickle behind the ears. The

slow struggle with the gaoler’s set of keys as I open the front door.

Used to be that this was a real struggle. My fingers would be

sticky-hot with anticipation of the treats which would be in store for me

when I finally worked the lock and checked the box outside. Used to be

I’d barely be able to contain myself. Now the struggle’s as much for

habit’s sake as anything else.

Milton, I fear, knows this, and he snakes in and out of my legs,

hankering after another stroke of my hand. I won’t give him one though.

I won’t spoil him. And besides, bending my body so that I can reach

down as far as his fur is becoming something of a feat these days, given

my paunch, and to do so twice in so quick succession after my ‘foot of

the stairs ear-tickle’ causes my head to become bloody and blurry. One

of these days, I’ll reach down for Milton and I won’t be able to get back

up again. I’ll tumble head-first into hell.

Once I’ve unlocked the front door, I tug it back and this always

causes Milton to scurry away behind the large spider plant. He’s an

outdoor cat, but he’s remarkably afraid of the outdoors. It makes him

jumpy, growly. Back when I used to wait for the postman, Milton used

to greet his arrival with a real guard dog growl, despite being a tabby

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cat. I’m inclined to psychoanalyse Milton’s response to visitors, any

visitors, as a kind of aping of mine, which makes me a little sad because

of what it says about me, but there’s no changing him now. It’s become

his nature.

Outside it is April, which vaguely surprises me. Funny how time

flies. Seems like only a few days ago, I’d feel the bite of frost on my

bare legs, feel it icing through my dressing gown. How everything

looked sharp and crisp. Now it’s grey and showery and uneven around

the edges.

Generally, I have no hope for the contents of the parcels on days

like this. Still, I shuffle off the front step and make for the metal box

because it’s what I do. I produce the tiny key on the lanyard round my

neck, and I perform the merry dance of tickling it into the keyhole. My

postman is the only other human being in the world who has a key to

this box. He’s been very diligent about locking it after I left him that

terse note a few weeks back. After a few false starts, key fits lock, and I

hear a satisfying clunk as the internal mechanism releases the clasp. I

prise the box open and take a deep breath, look inside.

Today, there are six...no, seven parcels, in a variety of sizes,

though all are roughly similar. Most are packaged in those chubby post-

packs, though I smell blood when I see a couple have been shoved inside

simple brown envelopes and have no bubble wrap with which to protect

their contents.

~7~

Even before I open these packages, I know they’ll be from the

smaller type of publishing house, the type which doesn’t deserve my

critical attention. It’s an instinct I’ve honed over the years. These days

I’ve gone beyond judging a book by its cover; I judge it by its brown

wrapping paper.

I’ll carry all of the packages inside, but those two packs, from the

publishing houses which couldn’t even be bothered to shell out the

requisite cash to ensure their product reaches me in tip-top condition,

will be straight for the cardboard and paper trash bin in the kitchen. I

won’t even bother unwrapping them.

Hands laden, overflowing with the parcels, as though I’m a

grumpy Santa Claus four months past his sell-by date, I head back into

the house. Dump them all on the breakfast bar in the centre of the

kitchen. What I do next is I let them find their own kind of order on the

bar, while I make busy with the percolator and chopping up some of the

steak I’d fried earlier, and which has now cooled enough so that

Milton’ll be able to eat it without thinking that its warmth suggests it is

alive. Only once the coffee has brewed and Milton’s sniffed out that the

steak is actually edible, do I deign to pull up a stool, and even then, I

don’t start unwrapping. Not yet.

First I check the postmarks. Items marked New York, London,

Berlin are automatically placed on one pile. The definites pile. Items

marked Edinburgh, Paris, Chicago go in the maybes pile. Today, there

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are two definites and one maybe, which leave five packages, two of

which can immediately be discounted due to the pathetic nature of their

packaging. Of the others, one is from Glasgow, one from Leeds, UK,

and the other from Johannesburg, South Africa. The Johannesburg one

intrigues me. The Glasgow and Leeds ones don’t. I drop them on top of

the pile of the nevers. Later, I’ll deposit them straight in the trash.

I’m aware that this may seem a heartless, almost arbitrary way of

deciding which new books I’ll review, but believe you-me, it is not. It is

calculated. It has to be done. There are only so many books one man can

read, no matter how many mornings I devote to the task. And to have

my critical eye exhausted by something which does not befit it is simply

wastage. I’ve learned this to my cost. I used to try to read everything.

The stuff from the global behemoth companies which produced Pulitzer

Prize-winners, Nobel Prize-winners, the stuff from the challenging

regional publishing houses, from places like Glasgow and Leeds, and the

stuff which came in crappy brown envelopes with no bubble wrap,

which was sent from the real independent publishers, the ones who

couldn’t afford to employ proper editors. I spent countless hours, hours

I’d never get back, poring over the new releases from companies such as

Ravenscar Press and Frontline Publishing, wading through spelling

mistakes, grammatical errors, plot-holes one could fly a jumbo through,

and in the end, I could barely see the wood for the trees, even when it

came to the quality fiction. And so, I must have a filter. It’s only fair.

~9~

I slurp my coffee—today I’d appraise it as deliciously bitter, gritty,

peculiar—and then reach into my dressing gown pocket for my letter

opener. The letter opener is vintage, ornate, has a handle decorated with

the Capstick family crest, a leaping stag. The blade is sharp, and so I

house it in a plastic sheath which was tailor-made for me by a very

reputable publishing house in New York. The knife itself was presented

to me by a London author whose novel I praised so highly, so widely, it

crept up from nowhere to grab the Bookman Prize back in the early

noughties.

The packages from the definites pile, which I scythe open first, are

not in the Bookman Prize class. They are turnips, I see, despite their

high production costs. Used to be these pre-launch copies we reviewers

would get would be nothing more than bound galleys, but now they are

as much product as what’ll eventually end up on the shelves.

One of the books has attempted to be wilfully difficult with its

‘challenging’ front cover design, another has edged the title pages of

each of the chapters with a bold black boundary that shows up on the

edge of the book, a third has a photograph of what looks like a real dead

body on the front, contorted into a wholly unnatural angle.

I sigh, tossing the books aside. For a moment, the only sound in the

kitchen is Milton chewing, tearing, and ripping at the steak in his bowl. I

will soon be doing something very similar when it comes to these books.

I’ll devour them.

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In the maybes pile, I reach for the one from Johannesburg first, in

the perhaps pointless hope that this will be something different,

something good. It isn’t. Soon as I read the blurb, and the comparisons it

draws with a number of writers who’ve recently been put to my sword, I

feel like throwing the thing in the nevers pile. When I flip open the back

cover and read the sickly-sweet last line, that seals the deal, and I do

exactly that.

I drain the rest of my coffee and slipper over to the sink to wash up

my mug and the steak knife. Over email, one of my reviewing

colleagues asked me why I never bothered investing in a dishwasher.

Problem is, I never have enough to wash up to warrant a dishwasher. I

could leave my daily plate, knife, fork, spoon, coffee mug for a week on

the side, and I’d still never have enough. I don’t even have enough to

wash up manually most of the time.

Still, I run the faucet, splash in some Fairy Liquid, and as the

Belfast sink fills with warm, soapy suds, and as the steam rises about my

face, I look out of the window, up my path. Reflecting. Critically

appraising my life.

I decide yet again that I am happy this way, on my own. Before,

when I was married to Deborah, there were always the interruptions.

Like my postman, she couldn’t understand that even though I was

wearing a dressing gown and was flopped over my chair reading, the Do

Not Disturb sign meant exactly that. And though I pretended I was

~11~

mortally wounded when she left the room, that was merely for

appearances sake. When she left me for good, I breathed a sigh of relief,

bought Milton from the Animal Shelter, and promptly forgot everything

about her.

Once I’ve finished washing up, leaving the two items to drain on

the stainless steel ‘X’ at the side of the sink, I swing back round to

confront my work for the day, the three books I’ve marked to read.

Only, for once, there is something different about the scene. It takes me

a while to work out what it is, perhaps because of the steam from the

sink getting into my eyes, something like that, but when I do, I gasp

incredulously at the cheek of the damned cat. Milton. He’s jumped up on

the surface, despite my express demands that he not do that. He’s

jumped up on the surface, and he’s clawing at one of the unopened

packages, one from the nevers pile.

“Get down at once!” I roar.

And he looks up from his beasting of the package and he growls.

At me. It is the first time he’s ever growled at me, and for a moment, I

don’t think I can handle it. This is my companion, the one to whom I

feed steak, whole milk, roast chicken, poached herring. This is my

Milton, the only one who shares my view of the world, from my castle.

For a moment, our eyes lock. His are saucers, a putrid yellow

surrounding big black holes. There is nothing human, nothing

understanding in them. I once read that humans are the only species with

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whites in their eyes, with everything else, it’s all yoke. All instinct.

“Milton?” I say, softly now, “please come down, puss.”

I step forward, ch-ch-ching, rubbing my thumb and forefinger

together in a gesture which I vaguely realise is identical to the one which

is used when we’re signing money. Frankly, at that moment, its quite an

apt metaphor, as cats are out for what they can get most of the time, and

I’d be as well bribing him to get down off the breakfast bar with money

as I would steak, but this is my Milton. My companion. I never

considered getting a dog because of all the demands on my time that

would mean, but at least with a cat, I thought there’d be some kind of

loyalty.

“Milton?”

I step forward again, and this time the cat curls back his lips,

arches his back, and hisses at me. He’s never done anything like this

before. It’s as though the parcel is some treasure he’s found, and he’s

warning me off it. Not because he fears it’ll be dangerous to me, but

because he doesn’t want to share. As though he’s hissing the word mine.

“No. Bad cat.”

He hisses again, then bites the edge of the parcel. He’s worked a

tiny strip of the brown packaging loose now and is tugging at it. I hear a

soft rip as he exposes the book inside. And I don’t know what to do.

This scene has never played itself out before. I’ve never had to wrestle

one of my packets from an obsessed cat before, never felt so defeated in

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my own kitchen.

In the end, I do the only thing man can do when confronted with

nature, red in tooth and claw. I fall back on technology. I sidle over to

the pantry, push open the lock.

Milton’s body snaps to attention. He stares at me as if daring me to

open the door.

After a moment’s hesitation, I do, and I reach inside for the

vacuum cleaner. A big, unweildly thing. With a practiced cowboy’s skill

with ropes, I untangle the coil of cable and find the plug end, head for

the socket on the wall. Now Milton’s ears are pricked, the tabby fur on

his back has formed a spine, his tail has bushed into foxiness. He hisses

once more, but now I manage to stick the plug in the damned socket,

slam my slippered foot down onto the on/off button, and the vacuum

cleaner coughs into life.

Milton immediately darts off the breakfast bar, almost slips on the

shiny tiles as he tries desperately to escape the kitchen before he has to

hear any more of the infernal racket. When it comes to a battle between

man and nature, technology always wins out, and Milton’s always been

scared of the vacuum cleaner.

Heaving a sigh of relief, I slam my foot back down onto the on/off

button, and then slip over to the breakfast bar to see what the fuss was

all about, already thinking that perhaps the small, independent publisher

had read an interview with me—God knows where—and heard about

~14~

my feline companion, and thought they could win me over into writing a

good review by placing some cat-nip inside the envelope, something like

that. But when I find the package, which Milton has so badly mauled, I

find there is nothing inside but a simple book. I even remove it from the

envelope and shake it, just to check.

When I touch the book, something strange happens. It is as though

the book has been charged with static electricity. Immediately I drop it,

and it falls open onto the kitchen floor, face down.

I eye it with some trepidation. I’m now thinking that perhaps said

small, independent publisher has already had some dealings with me,

like perhaps I’ve massacred one of their titles in the past, and now

they’ve sent me some kind of booby-trap by way of revenge. Perhaps

Milton was trying to protect me.

To purchase this story, go to www.twbpress.com/theblackbook.html where

you’ll find the links to Kindle, Nook, and other online booksellers.

~15~

About the Author

A J, Andy, Kirby is the award-winning published author of three novels and over forty short stories. He is a sportswriter for the Professional Footballer's Association and a reviewer for The New York Journal of Books and The Short Review.

Andy's work has been described as “vivid and intense,” “deeply disturbing,” and “intriguing.” He writes about the darker side of the street: that place people hurry past without quite knowing why. He revels in creating unease in the reader. After entering his world, “you may want to run up and down stairs just to calm down,” as one reviewer put it. He lives in Leeds, UK with his girlfriend, Heidi, and his incredibly noisy, but lucky cat, Eric. A season ticket holder at Manchester United Football Club, he follows the Red Devils across Europe when he's flush. Otherwise he is an avid reader. He enjoys travel, film and theatre, and he would love to be better at chess. He'd also like to learn about palaeontology and dreams of a perfect world when he no longer has to work at a day-job. To find out more, visit Andy's website: www.andykirbythewriter.20m.com.

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~22~

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