Otherwise We Bake

"The lady Aurice. She can't think..."

That, she probably couldn't. I crossed my fingers as Mr. Leahy stopped to wheeze in a few short breaths. If he could only remember to do that every floor, I wouldn't have to worry about getting 200 pounds of landlord down three flights of stairs one of these days.

"She says you make too much noise last night too. Your clause... "

Sometimes he sounded like one of those squeaky toys you got at the dollar store.

"...no pets, no smoking and no noise. This is the third time this month. You keep it down. Otherwise I evict. It's in the..."

Squeaky toys. And money trees. That's another thing he reminded me of. Bummer they stopped doing that salt for money thing. You could have just stood him out to dry and scraped it off.

"...clause.”
“Yes Mr. Leahy. I was a little late in yesterday and the smoke..."
"Come early then."

And let them eat cake. That probably was there in the clause as well. Otherwise I bake.

"Right Mr. Leahy. The thing is the..."
"Good. I go tell lady problem solved then.”
“The smoke detector seems to be...”
“The smoke detector? It is in clause. The tap doesn't work, the lights don't light? You break it, you fix it."

He went down to tell 2B to give the thinking another shot. Rumor had it that her uncle was in the mob. She could probably have me killed off if I made more noise. Maybe the clause said it was ok.

"Book closes on dead librarian. Mob not guilty. It is in clause.".

Well, that wouldn't be right though, officially I was an assistant librarian. But I guess headline writers have their own version of a poetic license. Maybe they'd call me a book runner. It sounded more dashing.

"Book runner dead. Landlord bakes cake. It is in clause."

It still left me dead though. Which wouldn't be good for half a dozen county libraries that would be stuck with each other's books. And yeah, being dead wouldn't be much good for me for either.


It was snowing, and the Ford had a flat, again. If the pay phone in the hallway didn't work I'd have to walk five blocks to the gas station to call in late.

I had quarters in my bag from... great, there was a loose page in one of the books that was supposed to get to the Wales library today. I'd have to go back up for waxed paper and glue.

Pg. 503 didn't come from the book it was in, way too wide for that. And it was a dark shade of yellow, different from the usual yellow that old paper takes on.

"... it is important that only one figurine be used for one person, and vice versa. Multiple figurines for a person are best left to..."

There were a couple of lines of phonetics in the middle. I checked the other books that went to Wales. No luck there. And I wasn't sure we had books as old as the one this looked like it belonged to. I'd have to check with Mrs. Silverstone to be sure though. And maybe I could walk around town and look for posters.

"Have you seen this page?"

Or, we could start a new section for loose pages and stick it in there. If you weren't the reading type you could just check out a page at a time.

I got a dial tone on the hallway phone. Thank God for small favors. I stuck in three quarters and waited.

“Hello... Mrs. Silverstone?... Yeah, it’s still snowing here... Oh good. Wales is closed too, right?... Great... No... Oh wait, actually yeah. Do you know if someone called in a missing page... something about voodoo magic, old book... Ok... I’ll check with Doris tomorrow... you too, Mrs. Silverstone.”


I was trimming the cracked edges of a plastic jacket, the ones that go around the more popular paperbacks, when the beeps started. They were god-darned loud, even from across the hall, and the penknife slipped.

There were books all over the table, so I had to hold the cut over the carpet, the one Mr. Leahy had installed at the lowest per-square-foot price in the tri-state area. It wouldn't pass a fire hazard test if it studied for a year.

I tried visualizing the smoke detector turning off. That didn't stop the beeps, so I unscrewed the darn thing on my own. I did the visualizing thing once in a while, just on the off chance I was actually telekinetic and hadn't figured out how to use it yet.

I had to dress the cut before I started on the jackets again. It wasn't deep, just that I would probably get prints on the books if I left it open. And nobody wanted to read a bloody book.

I was looking for the pack of dressings in closet when I saw the little dolls. Palm sized ones stuffed with straw from last year's summer camp and... why not? I was stuck at home today anyway, unless the snow cleared, or the Ford went and bought itself new tires. I picked one that looked like Ms. Thinker and settled down to read Pg. 503.

Contrary to popular perception, you didn't really need anything that belonged to the person - no hair, amulet or eyeball. All the well if you did though, you just needed the first line of phonetics. Otherwise you used set one and then set two with a name. Which was what I was going to do since I didn't think going down to 2B and asking Lady Aurice to cough up a hairball would go down very well. It was probably in the clause somewhere, with the other commandments - thou shall not ask other tenants for hair.

Five minutes and Ms. Aurice was strung upside down, to increase blood flow to the brain. Frankly, I had no idea what else I could do. Till I found the rest of the book it was either that, or stick in needles - which seemed a tad over the top. I could probably start with the acupuncture if she called her uncle.

It was still snowing outside.


I turned around after I stuffed all the flyers from my mailbox into the one marked 2B and found a pretty concerned Mrs. Gupta, 1A.

"What happened to your hand? Did something happen?"
"Cut myself. "

Talking with Mrs. Gupta was like talking to two people at once. If you didn’t want to get caught in a conversational free for all you learned to pick short answers that answered both of her.

"You could put a band-aid on it you know? It’s dangerous if there's rust, you could get septicemia. You got your shots? "
"Yeah..."
"Good. My sister cut herself on a rusty gate when she was nine, almost died. God, it's been snowing since yesterday night. Did you hear about Aurice?"

She wasn’t such a bad sort, Mrs. Gupta, but her conversations had grown up in the boring part of town, and they cycled through the same old rumors until a new batch came in.

“From 2B?"
"Yes, you know... the one whose uncle is in the mob."
"Yeah, what about her? Mr. Leahy was giving me a hard time..."
"Her car flipped turning a corner... she was upside down for half an hour. They say its..."

Someone opened a door around the corner and a cold draft blew in.

"...but I think it's something to do with the mob. You ok there?"
"Yeah... I guess... feeling a bit out of it. She's ok?”
“I guess so, we'd have heard otherwise. My! I just remembered. I’ll have see to lunch now. You take care of that hand then.”

Vampires had stakes, werewolves had silver bullets and Mrs. Gupta’s conversations had lunch, if you wanted to draw an analogy.

I realized I had my hands clenched into fists and let go. I would have to change the dressing, it was stained red. There's a tribe in Africa that believes drinking a brave man's blood makes them brave. Maybe I could make them all assistant librarians.


The snowstorm went on till evening and I concentrated on not reading Pg. 503 again. I put the Aurice doll away. I didn't want to do anything with it... not until I figured out what actually happened first. If it actually worked... hell it was dangerous... but if I could find the rest of that book I could...

There was one way to find out... and maybe get back at a certain clause maker… nothing serious of course. I found the perfect doll for Mr. Leahy, one bursting at the seams. I tied the straw in with some of the bandages from after I dressed the cut and got the page out.

The lights went out after I finished the first line of phonetics. I had candles in the drawer. I lit one and returned to Pg. 503. The little doll looked grotesque in the candle light. The shadows painted a twisted smile, and the hands... the hands weren't even - it was missing almost half the right hand. Maybe this wasn't such a good idea.

The candle was a one-dollar affair and the wick burnt way slower than the wax. I flicked at the flame and a glowing bit fell on the carpet. It started smoking and I got up to get the extinguisher. That pushed the doll, tipping the candle over. It rolled to the other side, and over the edge.

By the time I got the extinguisher from the closet I had two patches burning merrily. I should have stamped it out then instead of fiddling with the fire extinguisher. But I spent ten minutes trying to get the bloody thing to work before I figured out it hadn't been charged in like, forever.

The doll caught fire, and the strip of bandage tied around it caught my eye. It was stained, with dried blood... and I had read the first incantation. I stumbled to the kitchen in the light of the fire, looking for something to pick up the doll with.

When I came back with a spatula the whole hallway was on fire. There was no way I could walk through that to get to the front door. Where the heck were the firemen? The fire station was close by and they could be here in like five minutes once they heard the alarm.

And that’s when I realized that the only sound I could hear was the fire crackling.