Mr Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore

Mat had a huge Pyrex cauldron set up on the stove, and inside there was a slow-churning mixture of oil and dye. It was heavy and highly viscous, and with the slow application of heat from below, it was curling and blooming in slow motion. The kitchen lights were all turned off, and Mat had two bright arc lamps set up behind the cauldron; they shone through and cast red and purple shadows that spun across the granite and travertine.

I straightened and stood, silent. The last time I’d been caught like this, I was nine, making vinegar-and-baking-soda volcanoes on the kitchen table after school. My mom wore pants just like Ashley’s.

Mat’s eyes rose slowly. His sleeves were rolled up around his elbows. His dark leather shoes were shiny in the gloom, and so were the tips of his fingers, coated in oil.

“It’s a simulation of the Horsehead Nebula,” he said. Obviously.

Ashley was silent, staring. Her mouth hung open a little bit. Her keys were dangling on her finger, arrested in midflight toward the tidy peg where they lived, just above the chore checklist.

Mat had been living with us for three days.

Ashley took two steps forward and leaned in close, just as I had, and peered into the cosmic depths. A saffron blob was pushing its way up through a roiling layer of green and gold.

“Holy shit, Mat,” she breathed. “That’s beautiful.”

So Mat’s astrophysical stew simmered on, and his other projects continued in sequence, getting bigger and messier and taking up more space. Ashley took an interest in his progress; she’d wander into the room, put a hand on one hip, scrunch her nose, and make a deftly constructive comment. She moved the TV herself.

This is Mat’s secret weapon, his passport, his get-out-of-jail-free card: Mat makes things that are beautiful.

*   *   *

So of course I told Mat he should come visit the bookstore, and tonight he does, at half-past two. The bell over the door tinkles to announce his arrival, and before he says a word, his neck bends back to follow the shelves up into the shadowy reaches. He turns toward me, points a plaid-jacketed arm straight to the ceiling, and says: “I want to go up there.”

I’ve only been working here for a month and don’t quite have the confidence for mischief yet, but Mat’s curiosity is infectious. He stalks straight over to the Waybacklist and stands between the shelves, leaning in close, examining the grain of the wood, the texture of the spines.

I concede: “Okay, but you have to hold on tight. And don’t touch any of the books.”

“Don’t touch them?” he says, testing the ladder. “What if I want to buy one?”

“You can’t buy them—they’re for borrowing. You have to be a member of the club.”

“Rare books? First editions?” He’s already in midair. He moves fast.

“More like only editions,” I say. No ISBNs here.

“What are they about?”

“I don’t know,” I say quietly.

“What?”

Saying it louder, I realize how lame it sounds: “I don’t know.”

“You’ve never looked at one?” He’s paused on the ladder, looking back down. Incredulous.

Now I’m getting nervous. I know where this is going.

“Seriously, never?” He’s reaching for the shelves.

I consider shaking the ladder to signal my displeasure, but the only thing more problematic than Mat looking at one of the books would be Mat plunging to his death. Probably. He has one in his hands, a fat black-bound volume that threatens to unbalance him. He teeters on the ladder and I grit my teeth.

“Hey, Mat,” I say, my voice suddenly high-pitched and whiny, “why don’t you just leave it—”

“This is amazing.”

“You should—”

“Seriously amazing, Jannon. You’ve never seen this?” He clutches the book to his chest and takes a step back down.

“Wait!” Somehow it feels less transgressive to keep it closer to the place where it belongs. “I’ll come up.” I pull another ladder into position opposite his and leap up the rungs. In a moment, Mat and I are level, having a hushed conference at thirty feet.

The truth, of course, is that I am desperately curious. I’m annoyed at Mat, but also grateful that he’s playing the part of the devil on my shoulder. He balances the thick volume against his chest and tilts it my way. It’s dark up here, so I lean across the space between the shelves to see the pages clearly.

For this, Tyndall and the rest come running in the middle of the night?

“I was hoping it would be an encyclopedia of dark rituals,” Mat says.

The two-page spread shows a solid matrix of letters, a blanket of glyphs with hardly a trace of white space. The letters are big and bold, punched onto the paper in a sharp serif. I recognize the alphabet—it’s roman, which is to say, normal—but not the words. Actually, there aren’t really words at all. The pages are just long runs of letters—an undifferentiated jumble.

“Then again,” Mat says, “we have no way of knowing it’s not an encyclopedia of dark rituals…”

I pull another book from the shelf, this one tall and flat with a bright green cover and a brown spine that says KRESIMIR. Inside, it’s just the same.