‘And?’
‘There were more Vernays than I’d expected, but I knew the one I wanted was a book collector, so I started browsing forums and blogs. I was careful. I set up a new email account to log on, and used only a Tor browser to make myself hard to trace. One evening, I opened my email and there was a new message in my in-box, from a no-reply address. It read, “Why are you searching for Vernay?” It came with a photograph attached: a picture of a child, a girl no more than three or four years old. Naked. Dead. I deleted the account, and stopped looking. I think Vernay disappeared, though. There was chatter about it on some of the forums before all references to him ceased, and all the old postings were expunged, like everyone had been told to keep quiet.’
‘You didn’t share this with anyone else?’
‘No. I’d made a mistake. I didn’t want to compound my error by bringing these people to our door.’
Parker thought Leila Patton was quite something.
‘What did Karis tell you about her time with Vernay?’ he asked.
‘Not a lot. He started out gentle, she said. That’s what Karis couldn’t understand. She felt stupid, but she wouldn’t be the first woman to have been fooled by a man. By the time she found out what he was really like – the pornography, how he enjoyed watching children being hurt – it was too late. She was pregnant, and he wouldn’t let her out of his sight. She was certain he’d kill her once the baby was born. He never threatened her that way, but she knew. It was the child he wanted.
‘And he had this weird taste in books: occult stuff – not novels or stories, but old volumes. Grimoires, they’re called. He told Karis he knew more about them than anyone else in the country, perhaps even the world. He would receive mail from all over, addressed only to “M. Vernay,” and men would come and visit him because he was such an expert, but they weren’t the type to help a pregnant woman. They were the kind that shared Vernay’s interests, and not just in mysticism: they would view films together on a screen in Vernay’s library, and exchange electronic files containing images of torture. They liked pain. By that point, Vernay didn’t care what Karis did or didn’t know about his tastes. He was done pretending.
‘Then, in her final trimester, she detected a change in him. He was excited. He started selling parts of his collection, trying to bring in money. Karis thought negotiations might be taking place in the background, because there were phone calls and arguments. Finally Vernay locked her in the basement and left her there. Karis had food and water, some books and magazines, and a little bathroom for her needs. She was trapped for two days and two nights, and when Vernay returned, he had another book. That was why he had shut her up in the basement: so he could go buy a book, a collection of fairy tales.’
‘Fairy tales?’ said Parker.
‘Grimm’s Fairy Tales, printed in London in 1908 by Constable, with illustrations by Arthur Rackham. The original Rackham edition is very valuable. Some copies go for a thousand dollars or more on the Internet. There’s also a signed edition, and that goes for more than ten thousand.’
‘And was this one signed?’
‘No.’
‘Wait: He locked Karis Lamb in a basement for two days, just to possess a book of fairy tales worth a thousand dollars?’
‘A guy in England was killed for his first edition of The Wind in the Willows,’ said Leila. ‘It was worth nearly seventy thousand dollars.’
‘There’s a big difference between a thousand and seventy thousand.’
‘Especially,’ said Leila, ‘for a book that doesn’t exist.’
Parker felt as though he’d fallen down a rabbit hole.
‘I don’t understand.’
‘There is no 1908 Grimm’s Fairy Tales illustrated by Arthur Rackham. The edition illustrated by Rackham wasn’t published until the following year.’
‘So the book was a forgery?’
‘No – or so Vernay told Karis. He wanted an audience, and she was the only one he had. He wanted someone to know what he’d found.’
‘So what exactly did Vernay buy?’
Leila pushed the shoebox toward Parker.
‘Why don’t you take a look for yourself?’
97
Holly Weaver received the call from her father as she was waiting at the drive-thru ATM. Her bank account was about to dip into three figures, but at least she was due to get paid on Friday, and with luck she’d score some decent tips over the weekend, especially if she could get a couple of tables to spring for wine.
‘Hi, Dad.’
‘I’m thinking of taking Danny to a movie, see if it might buck his mood up.’
‘Sure. Did he nap?’
‘He dozed on the couch for a while, but he’s still not himself.’
‘It’s just tiredness.’
‘Yeah.’
She heard the doubt.
‘Did something else happen?’
Owen thought about telling her of the conversation he’d had with Daniel, the one about dead mothers, but decided to keep it to himself for now. It would only distress his daughter.
‘He’s just an odd one sometimes.’
‘I think he picked it up from his grandfather,’ said Holly.
‘Yeah? Then his back talk is all you.’
‘Enjoy the movie, Dad. Easy on the popcorn, and keep the sodas small.’
Daniel sat at his bedroom window. Daylight was fading into dusk, and a haze hung over the woods, but he thought he could still discern the figure of a woman amid the trees. If he opened the window, he might even have been able to hear her call his name.
But he had no intention of opening the window.
‘Is she telling the truth?’ said Daniel.
He spoke to the girl in the corner, the one who kept her head low and seemed to bring shadows with her in order to conceal her face. Daniel should have been frightened of her, just as he was frightened of the woman: because the girl, too, was dead, except she didn’t make him feel scared, just drowsy and relaxed, like the cough medicine his mom sometimes gave him when his chest got tight. He could see the girl’s reflection in the glass, but when he looked over his shoulder, she wasn’t there.
what did she tell you?
‘That I should do what Mommy said, that I should listen to her.’
she’s not your mommy ‘She says she is.’
sometimes when people die, they leave a piece of themselves behind ‘What kind of piece?’
a sad piece, but it’s not really them, only their pain ‘She comes to my window.’
she’s lonely ‘She wants me to go with her.’
you mustn’t do that ‘She might make me.’
she can’t make you you have to want it do you want it?
‘No. I just want her to go away.’
she will ‘When?’
soon
‘How do you know?’
because she is about to be named, and she will rest after she is named ‘Who will name her?’
The girl didn’t answer at first. Then: perhaps my father will name her Daniel looked from the girl’s reflection to the waiting woman.
‘Can you ask him to hurry?’
98
Parker picked up the shoebox. It had clearly remained untouched for a long time, because Leila Patton’s fingerprints had disturbed the dust on it. He lifted the lid. The book lay amid wads of newspaper, the boards worn at the corners, and slightly stained.
‘What did Vernay tell Karis?’ Parker asked.
‘He said the book itself wasn’t important, just the pages in it. He said they had altered the volume, and changed the date, because that’s what they did. They were part of an atlas, he said, one that was old and enduring. He claimed the pages could rewrite.’
‘Rewrite books?’
‘Rewrite worlds. Be careful how you touch it.’
‘Is it delicate?’