The Bloody Pages
This short horror tale appeared in the March/April '94 issue of Gathering Darkness. Story copyright
1994, William D. Cissna.


From a very young age, I can honestly say, I've never been much of a people person. Not that I'm a
hermit or anything, but while some folks enjoy the heck out of a cocktail party or a fall football
clambake, I'm much happier at home, alone, with my nose in a good book.
Sadly, for a one time college English major, my twin loves are the horror and detective genres, a
confession I would never have made back then, and wouldn't make publicly even now if the signals
were not so crystal clear that my literary preferences really won't matter much longer.
In fact, the juxtaposition of the love of horror tales and the frequent habit of slipping the fictional
actions of work a day sleuths into the slightly vague reality of my life has brought me here, for better
or, probably, worse.
At first, the discovery had barely grazed my conscious mind. One late evening last week, I was
consuming one of my favorite author's latest tomes, one that had just arrived for me in the library's
reserve section that very morning.
I had reached the part where the author described a particularly grisly series of serial killings when,
turning the page, I was surprised to find slash marks of brownish red spattered across the next spread.
With time, and then a frequent revisitation to tentatively confirm the theory, I concluded that the
markings on these two pages were caused by someone literally bleeding onto the publisher's carefully
printed paper, leaving behind visual evidence of some sort of traumatic moment.
Why it is that this discovery ultimately gripped me with an obsession equal to that of some backwoods
demagogue, I cannot say. But those untrained yet deeply engrained detective instincts took over,
driving me. I wanted to know who, or what, left their bodily fluids in the midst of the horror of this
book.
Yes, okay, I knew all along it might have been something as stupid as a housewife, reading while she
trimmed the carrots and clipping a finger with the sharpened knife. But I didn't believe such a
mundane finding would result.
I should have been so lucky.
Living alone as I do, though, bereft of relatives and blessed with a smallish inheritance, boredom can
take on the dimensions of disease.
Because I have had the luxury of frequent, unrushed visits to the local library, I have come to know the
librarian quite well. Better yet, her habits are also familiar. In a small town like mine, some library
afternoons are, you might say, unpopulated. With patience, one might even find one of the main
computer terminals unattended and unwatched.
I know. I did.
Conveniently, the county's sharp record keeping machinery made it relatively easy to gather up the ID
numbers of the library patrons who had borrowed the book over the past six months. Watching
carefully in case she would pop up unexpectedly, I tapped into another file where I could match the
numbers with name, address and telephone data. Not daring to print anything, I scribbled as fast as I
could, then backed out, folded the note paper and strolled casually away.
I now possessed complete contact information for the seven individuals before me who'd read Death
After Death.
Somewhere on that list, I'd concluded, was the answer to the mystery of the bloody pages.
I returned home and immediately began the tedious process of trying to reach these fans of the
macabre, a tricky, touchy process, especially given my secret anticipation that just maybe one of them
was no longer with us. What a tale I could inscribe for the local newspaper: "Book Drives Local Reader
to Suicide!"
Working backwards through the list, I eliminated the first two ladies simply by calling, pretending to
be a surveyor, confirming that each had read the book recently. One enjoyed it, one was disappointed.
No, nothing peculiar occurred while they had the book -- strange question, young man. Thanks,
appreciate your time, goodbye.
Then no answer for three calls straight, an answering machine with a squeaky voiced man asking me
to leave a message (I didn't) and finally a guy who worked second shift, liked that horror stuff, thought
Death After Death was too long and a little wimpy. Cut himself while reading? Huh? No, why?
I let a few hours slide by while I read and ate. I caught and eliminated one more reader who'd been at
work, then managed to reach the squeaky voiced guy in person.
"Oh, yeah, I read that one alright. Heck of a story. Huh? Like it? Loved it! Haven't read anything in a
long time meant quite so much to me," he said with barely disguised enthusiasm.
So I dropped the $64 question and he clammed up. "That's kinda personal, doncha think?" he finally
responded. "I mean, I don't talk about personal things over the telephone. My momma brought me up
that way."
"Sorry," I said, backpedaling furiously.  "Didn't mean to hassle you any."
"No problem, really. Listen, you live round here?"
"Sure do."
"You want to come by and talk?"
"Yeah. Why not?"
He gave me directions, set a time. I listened, said yes, put on my jacket and headed out. Didn't want to
be late for an appointment with a fellow enthusiast.
When he answered the door of the slightly faded Victorian on one of the slightly faded but still
respectable streets, I found that his size and the apparent power behind his handshake belied the
mental image I'd created from his telephone voice. Not too bad looking except for the pockmarked skin
of an adolescent acne victim, he stood a good six inches taller than me though probably he had a couple
of years on my fresh faced 26.
"So you're researching readers of Death After Death?" he asked after he'd gotten me seated in the turn
of the century lounge. I stared around at the remnants of a time gone by and nodded my head, sipping
at the proffered iced tea.
"Well, like I said, I found it downright inspirational."
"Anything special happen while you had it?" I had to ask.
"Funny you should mention it. Something special did happen. You with the library by any chance?"
"Not exactly. But sort of."
"They mad about the blood?"
My head shot up and caught his eyes, which skittered away as he turned and paced off. "You know
about the blood?"
In a perverse form of an answer, he was suddenly behind me, wrapping my leaden arms and chest with
smoothly handled ropes, binding me securely to my chair as my head woozily battled with identifying
the substance he must have put in the tea.
"I told you the book was an inspiration, didn't I?" he said petulantly as he tied my ankles together and
I began to drift off. "So I let it be there for my first, um, project."
I mumbled something meaningless as he stared up at me, eyes gone gray and infinite. "I got a new
book now," he said. "I'll let you see it soon."
***
I've come to now. Maybe an hour has passed, maybe a millennium. The room's empty, giving me time
to contemplate the discomfort caused by tightly bound hemp, before I hear footsteps on uncarpeted
wood somewhere else in this museum disguised as a house. They grow louder.
I'm sorry to say he's returned now, and he holds a wicked looking carving knife in one hand, and in the
other, a hardback, one I recognize as another of the serial killer titles I've so avidly consumed. Guess
I'd have to say I prefer fiction to reality in this case. But at least the man's a student of his profession,
ha ha.
As for me, I find my life is literally racing before my eyes. I find I cannot push from my head one of the
many favorite old sayings I've harbored and employed over my few, short years (sign of a non creative
mind, they say, as if it mattered worth a damn right now). You know the one: "Curiosity killed the
cat."
Meow.
***
Horror shorts -
by Bill Cissna
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