Eigengrau

“Books don’t have anything to offer girls like us, Fern,” her mom had always said, buried behind knitting needles or the fashion magazines she got delivered once a month. 

Untrue, she’d always thought. Or maybe it was right but either way, that didn’t make her want to pick it up any less.

Sleek black leather skin without scratch or stain, sitting, pretty in the middle of the gravel road. 

She thought, for a moment, how on earth had she missed it on the way to the mailbox but an empty stomach after long summer hours in the fields always played tricks on her mind. 

It was heavier than she had imagined and she half expected the pages to be lined with lead when she flipped it open.

Empty, how odd, she thought. It felt almost like a gift. So new and directly in her path. 

The dinner bell rang from the porch. 

Not wanting to share her treasure, she stuffed it into her shirt and turned back towards the field, acknowledging the beauty of the sunset against the empty farm one last time before sprinting into her room. 

“Dinner, Fern!”

“Be down in a sec, Ma,” she bellowed over the creaks from the stairs. 

Her room was small and at the end of the hallway. It was nice because no one ever had reason to wander that far back into the house, so she was alone, and all her things stayed undisturbed, just the way she liked it.

She deposited the book on her desk, without another glance, and raced back down, to beat her dad to the dinner rolls. 

The evening summer breeze brought in the smell of rain. She smiled at the prospect of falling asleep to thunder and sat at the table.

“You expecting anyone, hun?”

“Whaddya mean?” Her dad swatted her hand away, taking his seat at the head of the table.

“There’s a man coming up the driveway.”

“Bill?”

“No…” Her mom went silent at the window, wringing her apron tight.

“Alright, let's take a look, better not be your second husband or none,” he grumbled, shooting her a wink. 

She giggled and took advantage of her head start on dinner, not caring for whatever was happening outside until there was a loud knock on the door.

“Quick one,” her dad grumbled. 

Her mom ditched the apron, and tried in vain to fix her hair into a low bun, but made little progress before the front door swung open. 

“Evening, sir,” a silky voice cooed.

She winced. That most definitely wasn’t one of the neighbors. They couldn’t be from town, with a posh and calculated voice like that. She saw her father’s hand rest on the mounted shotgun behind the front door.

“What can I do for ya stranger?”

“Helman, please, I insist,” the voice spoke like it had no clue how rude it was showing up unexpectedly before dinner time.

There was a beat. He was sizing the stranger up.

“Helman, then, what can I do for ya?”

“I was hoping I might bother you for a moment. I’m afraid I’ve lost something in the area.”

She sucked in a breath, nearly choking on her food. Don’t let him in, she thought.

“Well sure, c’mon in.”

Sharp footsteps on wood make her eyes go wide. Her dad approved?

“Thank you, thank you, lovely of you.”

A stick of a man materialized through the door. Pin-striped legs extended over the threshold, followed by a matching torso and an auburn head. She heard her mom tut in approval of the man’s elegance. 

“The family, wife ’n daughter.”

“Pleasure,” he purred, peering at them through mirrored glasses that covered the tops of his cheeks but barely reached his eyebrows. 

Against the backdrop of their modest farmhouse, he seemed otherworldly. Her imagination floated the idea that he’d simply walked out of the television set from a program they’d watched last night.

“Welcome, welcome, Helman, was it? Let me take your coat. Must be boiling. Not from round here are ya?”

“Don’t trouble yourself, Madame, I run cold. Thank you for the warm welcome, I already feel at home.”

She scoffed at the unnecessary flattery and regretted it as the noise drew his gaze back to her. 

“Hello, my dear.”

All she could do was nod as he came to his full height in the kitchen. His last few steps seemed disjointed like his knees were losing too many screws. For a moment, she thought he might fall, or hit head on the low beams but her parents didn’t seem to notice. Her eyes met the loose black tie halfway down his chest but she was too afraid to look up at his face.

“Well, whatddya lose then, Helman?”

“A black book, leather-bound and brand new.”

Her heart skipped a beat and somehow she knew that he was studying her.

“What kinda book?”

“A journal…it’s got some information that is…indispensable to me.”

The family went silent. Her parents looked to each other, silently asking the other if they’d seen it. He must have taken it as hesitation because he continued quickly, sounding almost embarrassed that he’d admitted to losing it.

“There’s a reward, of course,” he announced, pulling a hand from behind his back, to reveal a black briefcase. She couldn’t remember if he’d had it when he’d walked it. “Twenty thousand dollars for its recovery.”

Her pa nearly tipped over in his chair as Helman unlatched the clasps to reveal stacks of freshly minted green paper.

“Some information! You got the nuke codes or what?”

She looked at her mom, clutching her heart. Before her teeth could stop her tongue, polite instinct kicked in. 

“I have it,” she squeaked. “I found it…out on the road.”

He crossed his arms and leaned against the doorway. Finally brave enough, or perhaps, stupid enough, she met his eyes. The glasses were hardly even a second thought as she took in his face. Pale, hard skin, like marble, was gashed with an opening that on paper, technically counted as a mouth. His lips were so thin she thought that it really might be some sort of excruciating cut and that perhaps he wasn’t born with a mouth. 

He smiled at her admission. Razor-sharp teeth. She wondered if he could see the fear on her face. He looked like a child’s bad drawing of a monster. 

The breeze from the open door pushed his red hair in front of his face. Sulfur. He smelled like sulfur and it burnt her eyes. She turned away to hide the look of disgust and expected her parents to be in a similar state. They sat and looked up at her, patiently smiling, buzzing with excitement about procuring a small fortune. 

Inexplicably, she moved towards the stairs. It was a relief to be away from him as she ascended. 

Why did she say that? 

Why was she entering her room? 

She stared at the $20,000 book. All that for empty pages? That couldn’t be. 

The black cover greeted her fingers like old friends; it wanted to be open. 

Who was she to deny a book such a simple pleasure? She threaded her fingers through the pages again, looking for something other than pristine cream paper. There was nothing. 

Please, she thought, show me. The paper moved quickly beneath her fingers, as she let her thumb release the pages in a flurry from one cover to the other. Just a cream-colored blur. 

Show me. 

Space grey scratches caught her eye. 

Her breath caught in her throat. It was the second to last page that had been marked. She carefully flipped back to it, still holding her breath as if it would disappear again.

A single word was scribbled at the bottom of the page. Connected, scuffed, and barely big enough for the eye to see. Her short stint in the schoolhouse down the road did her well as she moved through the swirling letters.

Eigengrau

She tried it out on her tongue but it didn’t fit. 

The information he needed. The information he was willing to shell out more than she’d ever seen in her life. The information worth coming into a stranger’s house. 

How odd. 

On the descent, she kept her eyes fixed on the driveway through the front door, while she chanted the word in her head, trying it by emphasizing the ending, or sometimes the middle. No matter how she said it, something didn’t seem right.

Helman stood, hunched over the kitchen table. She stopped on the last stair. He was alone. 

“Where is my family?”

He didn’t turn to look at her, opting instead to continue fiddling with the bills in his briefcase. The room looked darker, even though the sun had barely made any progress on its descent. Sulfur choked her.

“Who?”

She knew that her parents were gone but the room remained the same. No sign of a struggle. She knew that she had parents but there was no sign of them. 

“My parents.”

Now he turned and looked at her like she’d slapped him. His smile faded, mouth disappearing into his chalky skin.

“Don’t play games that way. It’s always just been you and I, Fern. No one else is here.”

All she could hear was her heartbeat as he shook his head in disbelief. The skin on his neck seemed looser every time he moved as if he was wearing a mask. 

“What do you want?”

He nodded to her hands. She clutched the book to her chest, wondering if anything would help her now. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up straight under his gaze. She realized that his sunglasses had been discarded and now he regarded her with eyes that looked like the sky right before a tornado. Disturbing, yellow-green, and dangerous. 

“Bring them back.”

He snarled, teeth-gnashing, and yelled. “There is no one here. You know that.”

“I’ll destroy it if you don’t.” 

Her fingers moved to the pages quickly, threatening to rip it to smithereens. 

“Hand it here, dear. It’ll all be over soon.”

Something about the way he spoke made her sick to her stomach. He spoke through her like the words weren’t even meant for her ears. Or rather, that she wasn’t hearing it from outside of her own head, at all.

“Maybe, for you.”

“Now your folks wouldn’t like that, would they?”

He shook his head and turned to look at her straight on. He struggled to stand up straight. His hips slanted towards the chair for support.

“Then it’s unlucky for you that I was the one that found it.”

“Hmm…fate often is.”

His eyes darted back to the pages in her hands. 

But she was faster. 

She flung the book, as hard as she could out the door and into the dirt. Before she could register movement, Helman was on all fours, bones breaking, shrieking furiously, and running after it. As soon as he crossed the threshold, she lunged towards the door and turned the lock, nearly breaking her fingers in the process. 

“What a nice gentleman.”

She jumped out of her skin and turned to see her parents exactly where they had been, looking at the briefcase adoringly. 

“Well, Fern,” her dad chuckled, shaking his head. “Whaddya want? Got the money for anything you could want, now.”

They seemed unharmed, amused even. Movement from the corner of her eye reminded her of the thumping in her chest. 

She pressed her forehead to the window carved into the front door in time to see pinstripes disappear in a snap. The road at the end of the driveway was empty. The fields were still. The sky threatened rain over a pink and red sheen. 

“A notebook,” she whispered, eyeing the end road with a feeling she couldn’t place. 

She closed her eyes, sorting through excitement and fear. 

Eigengrau, something whispered, pronouncing the word correctly. 

Not anymore, she said back.