1. Meet Bill Fess.

The boy watched from his dimly lit hiding place in a tiny alcove made by an old chest of drawers pushed carelessly into a corner, clutching a knife in his shaking hands. He was a small child, his limbs thin and joints bony. His hair was a raggedly trimmed mop of dark blonde, and his clothes were worn and full of small holes.

He had been hiding there, perfectly still for hours. For days now, he had watched. Night after night spent in that space, watching Bill.

He had watched as Bill he conspired with his cronies, making wicked plans in the dim room. He had watched as Bill brought his stolen goods back to hide them in the ceiling near the window, and he had seen Bill lay on the dirty mattress against the wall, staring at the little book.

The book was small and dark brown with no markings on the outside and Bill took it out nearly every night to stare at the covers and frown. Sometimes he opened the book to look at the pages, but this only made him angry, and he would close the book with a quiet clap of paper coming together and put it away in the filthy leather coat he always wore.

Although he went hungry- for all the time spent watching did not earn him food -the boy returned night after night to see the book. He soon realized that he wanted the book. It seemed to call to some deep place inside of him, and each night he spent watching, he grew hungrier for it. Soon, he watched as Bill drank himself senseless before falling asleep on the mattress, and an idea came to him.

He stole the knife from a second hand store on Wenceslas street, and spent hours honing it with a bit of whetstone he kept among his little trove of possessions. The blade was long and narrow and thin with a needle point and the boy somehow knew that it was shaped perfectly for his purpose.

For the final time, the boy watched Bill Fess stare at the leather covers of the little book as he took long drinks from a big brown bottle. The time for watching was over. Now the boy waited.

He waited until Bill put the book away inside his coat and opened a new bottle of liquor. The boy waited while Bill emptied the bottle in long droughts, his arm becoming more and more unsteady with each drink he took.

Finally, Bill's arm did not rise again. Instead his head slumped to the side and he slowly collapsed back into the stained mattress. The boy's waiting was at an end. It was time for him to act.

Slowly, silently, he crept from his hiding place. Each careful step brought him closer to the book then he had ever been, and he could feel its presence growing, its irresistible call gaining strength. His heart pounded in his chest so violently that his body shook with each rapid beat of it, but he did not stop.

Soon the boy was standing over Bill’s limp form. He was a large man, known for his brutal methods of getting what he wanted. The boy had watched Bill, and he had learned. Kneeling down slowly, he held the knife over Bill’s chest.

He lurched forward. With all of his scant weight behind the needle-sharp blade and It plunged into Bill’s chest. There had been almost no resistance. The boy swished the blade around as if stirring soup in a bottle. He felt a puff of hot air blow through his hair as the breath was suddenly heaved from the man’s lungs, and Bill’s arms came up to batter at the boy, but they had no strength in them.

Startled, the boy threw himself off of Bill’s twitching body. Bill’s head turned toward him, his eyes wide with shock and terror. His mouth opened but he made no sound. His chest heaved outward once, and with a gurgling in his throat, Bill spat out a gout of dark blood, then lay still.

The boy waited for some time to be sure Bill was dead, because his eyes did not close, and of all the dead people the boy had seen thus far, none of them had had their eyes open. Finally sure that Bill was dead, the boy approached the body, gave the knife a few more swishes for good measure and pulled it out.

His hands shook more than ever now, but not from fear. Bill was well dead, and the boy knew it. The book. The book was no longer calling to him, it was now tugging at him, pulling at some place inside of him that he had never known was there. He cleaned the knife on Bill’s grimy bedding and hid it away in his clothes, then tugged at Bill’s coat until he found the book inside. He did not open it. He knew that he could not risk lingering in this place any longer with Bill’s corpse soaking the mattress with blood.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

He quickly went to Bill’s hidden cache in the ceiling, and took the rucksack from it. He had watched Bill many times as the man put money and stolen goods in the rucksack. It was more money than he had ever seen before. More than he had ever hoped to see, let alone hold in his own grubby hands. He put the book inside the rucksack and put his arms through the straps, but something told him that this was not right, so he found an old shirt of Bill’s, wrapped the book in it and tied it around his waist, hidden under his shirt. This felt safer to him. Even if someone robbed him of the riches in the rucksack, he might still escape with the book.

Carefully opening the window in the back of the room, he climbed out, shutting it behind him and scurried up the drainpipe to the roof for the last time. He did not look back at the squalid little room and its cooling occupant as he left.

**************************************

It took him nearly all night to make his way back to the old churchyard. The trip was normally much quicker, but he had been frightened of losing his prizes to any of the many thugs and cutthroats who roamed the city at night, so the trip had been made in alternating spurts of furtive scurrying between hiding places and vigilant spans of watching and waiting until safety was assured. Now he was home.

Saint Gregory’s church had been left to rot decades ago, and the church had burned and collapsed sometime afterward, but the boy had found uses for it. When his sister died a year before, he had told his mother of the place, and they had buried her beneath the overgrown lawn behind the ruined chapel. When his mother died six months later he could not carry her body to the churchyard, even emaciated as she was, so he had traded all of his food and his mothers meager possessions to Ned and Randall Sulley for their help. They helped to carry her, and he had dug her shallow grave in the sodden soil and carefully laid her in it and covered the body with earth and stone to keep the dogs from digging her up. When a group of thugs had decided they wanted the room in the rundown building that his family had lived in for his entire life, leaving the boy homeless, he had returned to the place where his family lay.

In the center of the churchyard, there was a stone sepulcher with a statue of a woman on top. The door was sealed shut with mortar and he could not enter there, but he found that the soil had washed away in one back corner, and the sagging foundation had loosened several blocks from the wall. He had slowly prised the blocks from their place, making an opening just big enough for him to slip through, then collected rubble from the collapsed church to pile around the opening until it could not be seen unless one was very close and knew what to look for.

He had always been good at hiding. He had learned at a very young age to hide from his father when he flew into drunken rage, and when his sister was born, he had learned to hide her as well. He had hidey holes all over the city where he could conceal himself and his sister when needed, and he had needed them often.

After the day his father did not return home from the brickyard where he worked, the boy had learned to hide for many other reasons. He hid, and he watched until he had chances to steal. He hid and he followed to learn secrets. He learned where thieves kept their stolen goods and their money. He learned where they took the goods to trade for money. He also learned about how to hide and take men by surprise. He had seen many times how the cutthroats used the shadows to accost their victims. This made him more cautious, because he also learned that it could be him who was attacked from the shadows at any time.

Later he learned to hide his money and his food from his mother. She had given in to despair in his father’s absence and turned to opium. Any money she could get, she spent on opium. Any food he brought home for his sister and mother, she would trade for opium. He took to feeding only his sister and himself, and running when his mother tried to take the food. Later, he learned that it was easier to bring her opium to placate her, then feed his sister once she was gone. After his sister was gone, he stopped trying to feed mother at all and she wasted away over time. This is how he learned that death doesn’t always come at the hands of others.

He removed the two flat stones that concealed the opening to the sepulcher and climbed through, pulling the stones back into place behind him. Once inside he lit a candle and covered the opening with a bundle of damp old rags he kept there. The place was always damp, never warm and the air inside was dusty and stale, but no one could find him here. Inside, the center of the space was taken up by a stone coffin, but around that, there was room for him to sleep and store his belongings. He had very little, but anything remotely useful could be stolen if someone knew he had it.

He dropped the rucksack on the floor near the nest of rags he used as a bed and untied the book from around his waist. Unwrapping the bundle, he held the book in front of him, but could not see much in the dim light, so he lit several more candles. He had loads of candles because they were easy to steal from churches, along with the matches he used to light them. Once he was satisfied with the light, he took up the book again and examined the leather covers. They were dark brown with no print on them, and felt smooth and warm, as if just oiled. Now that he held the book, the tug had subsided, the call had quieted, like a crying baby who had been picked up and cradled in warm arms. He no longer felt that frantic pulling inside him. The tug had been replaced by soothing calm. Even his hunger seemed more distant with the book safe in his hands.

Slowly, he opened the cover and started turning the pages. Each page was a blank white sheet of supple paper. He ran his fingers over the pages, feeling the rough texture. The paper was warm to his touch, and the turning of each page sounded like a barely audible whisper. The boy continued turning the pages, slowly, one by one as the wordless whisper grew louder until it became a humming song. He fell asleep before he could turn the final page.