The imitators
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Chapter 1:- Superstition
Byrd 1
Imitation
His mother would not read. Reading, she told him, always leads to trouble. Reading one or two words couldn’t ruin lives but a paragraph would certainly lead you down the path to damnation. However, in the same way that learning how to count money isn’t the same as spending it, learning how to read isn’t the same as reading. In her mind it was perfectly logical for one to learn how to read just so long as they were actively reading but Richard thought she made up the rules as she went.
There was an endless list of things his mother wouldn’t do. She wouldn’t watch the television in the dark, else give those imaginary things on the other side power to become real in the shadowed corners of your own living room. She wouldn’t talk on the telephone because whatever the stuff voices of phones were made of could creep into your ears and manifest all sorts of mental disjunctions. These were two of the main reason the Bultemas didn’t own a television or a telephone. If she saw you wearing a yellow bead she knew you were a fiend and if she saw you wearing blue she would try to make your dreams come true. This superstition was Richard’s favorite.
He would never forget the day that Mrs. Abbate grew undyingly frustrated with him for refusing to read pages from “Tim Gets His Wish” aloud in class. “Richard,” she yelled “you will read the sentences or I will speak with your mother.” she paused as she watched Richard shake his head back and forth in a disagreeing
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manner and with irritation she said, “I don’t know why you don’t have a phone but I will speak with your mother even if that means I have to take you home myself!”
He remembered the warmth he felt growing inside him and how it grew warmer and bigger with each act of defiance until finally he stood up and pointed his finger, the way he’d seen Mrs. Abbate do, and said, “You can’t make me,” a deliberate pause following each word. He could have said anything. He could have said my mom doesn’t want me to read this book like he’d said before when the class was reading “Becky Wants a New Chance” but he didn’t.
“Fine.” Mrs. Abbate said and continued on to another student she could make read sentences from “Tim Gets His Wish”.
Mrs. Abbate pinched him by the fat of his ear minutes before the school day was even over. She practically lifted him from his seat by pulling him along using his left arm and ear, Richard squealed and she liked it. Instead of cutting through the back door of her classroom which lead directly to the staff parking lot she took the long way around, insuring all the children rummaging around, gathering their things and playfully leaving the school grounds would see him in her grip. Routinely she would repeat as if speaking to him “ But nothing, Insubordination will get you nowhere.” She did this after passing every other cluster of children. When they finally reached her car she released him and interlocked her neat manicured fingers.
“You see, Mr. Bultema, you will not embarrass me. I will embarrass you.” He smelled her peppermint breath and decided against notifying her of his mom’s rule
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against riding in cars. He was uncomfortable with riding in a car but he swallowed the feeling, best he let her dig her grave. He’d let her dig it as deep as she could.
She drove fifteen minutes outside of town, a distance that usually took him hours to walk, what with the near constant warding he had to do to guard himself against bad luck since there was an endless supply of black cats that always found him, owls that commonly flew in his line of sight and cracks he’d always manage to step on. Some days he couldn’t get a break. Once he had to stop to bury 34 acorns each acorn in separate spot for good luck to cancel out all the bad omens he’d seen. He was young but he was tired of it. He may have hated Ms. Abbate but her car got him home in fifteen minutes and he was sure that nothing bad would happen to him once he was out of it. Perhaps it was a sign to sign that signs weren’t real he thought then quickly got confused.
Richard’s house had a few faded blue paint chips still clinging to the walls where the rest already fell away and grass as tall as he was. There was no clear place to indicate where Mrs. Abbate should park her car, so she parked off center of the house because it felt appropriate. She turned the ignition off and stepped out of her vehicle Richard watched her make an exaggerated finger motion for him to obediently follow after her. When he closed the car door she locked it with her key fob for safety reasons she told him.
She walked up the old wooden steps with caution trying not to get her expensive heels caught in some insidious rotten hole. It was bad enough she already
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had to walk through waist high grass to get to the porch and now she had to put her hand on a rusted screen door handle just to knock on the front door. Better not knock too hard she thought the wood might splinter into my hand and then what? I might have to go inside for a band-aid or something else, I might have to wash my hands in what could only hard water. She knocked three times and then looked to Richard giving her most burning glance. But the little menace seemed calm, unconcerned even. Then he gave her advice, “ better knock four times.” He said. She was about to reply to the little shit when the door opened.
“Ms. Bultema, I am sorry to be visiting you quite unexpectedly however,” she started as politely as she could sound.
“Oh, I expected you. There was a bee in the house today, I killed it on accident.” His mother said not taking her eye off the yellow beaded neck of Mrs. Abbate’s shirt. “ A bee means there would be a visitor today. A dead bee means an unpleasant visitor. You fit the bill just right.”
“ The tone of this visit is entirely the fault of your son. He wouldn’t read in class today,” said Mrs. Abbate.
“Reading causes bad things to happen. First the bee, then reading and now you’re here. I need you to leave my property, you are a bad omen. Leave now.” She’d began to yell. Ms. Bultema’s hand disappeared behind the wooden frame of the front door she had never fully stepped out of.
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“Plus she made me ride in a car, Mom.” Richard interrupted. He had to make sure he got that bit of information in before things really got intense.
“You and your stupid omens, Blanche. You’re ridiculously foolish and disturbed. You always have been this town’s biggest joke. I should call the sheriff and report you for the disservices you do to your son but luckily I have an eye for riff raff and don’t care entirely too much if he remains uneducated.”
“Grab your warder, son.” Blanche said. She yanked a large wooden staff from behind the doorframe and begun swinging it wildly at Mrs. Abbate. “ Away you bad omen. Away you, luck thief. Fiend,” she screamed. Richard had been waiting for this moment since he’d first stood up to Mrs. Abbate. He took his warder and threw it in the direction of Mrs. Abbate. He missed but he still managed to win a prize. The warder smashed into the side of Mrs. Abbate's glimmering Pontiac G6 leaving a thick scratch in the side. Mrs. Abbate was terrified. She scrabbled back to her car, missing the first two steps on the porch, inevitably her heel falling into one of the holes she’d tried and failed to avoid. She fell on to the ground and sprung up with amazing speed. She’d gotten all the way back to her car and jerked at the car door before shed realized she had no keys.
Richard stood on his porch her keys in his hands and his mother by his side. You will not embarrass me. Mrs. Abbate limped to the other side of her car where she picked up the thin wooden stick Richard threw there. She reached for her dignity and pulled it up to the surface then began to walk to the porch. When she stood in front him she said, “Here is your stick may I have my keys?” She used her
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stern voice yet Richard was not moved. He simply stared at her, with a slight smile on his face. He wanted to tell her to keep the stick.
If Richard had to pick any moment that encouraged him to stray from his mother’s beliefs defeating Mrs. Abbate would have been it. For a long while after the incident Richard broke every superstition he could think of just to see if there were any real consequences. He found TVs to watch but the only bad consequence he found was he now feverishly wishing he had one. He rode in his classmate’s parents’ cars and couldn’t contain his aggravation. He couldn’t get anywhere as quickly or effortlessly as they could.
All in all he found that the vast majority of his mom’s superstitions had no real consequences save one: the realization of his complete inconvience. He liked eating food out of microwaves, drinking pop, riding on elevators, playing in dirt and sitting in those chairs that vibrated against your back but he could never do any of that. Not with his mom at least. Regardless, he couldn’t say his mother’s superstitions weren’t good for at least one thing. It did have one good benefit. It turned his mother into a weapon.
Even without doing any warding walking into town still took a discouragingly long time so when Richard’s birthday came around he asked his mom if there were any bad omens associated with having or riding a bike. His
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mother got the hint and for Richard’s eleventh birthday he got a brand new electric blue ten speed bike. He already knew the first place he was going to go, the library.
From the moment he pulled open those heavy doors and stepped inside he knew the library was the town’s best kept secret. Within the first day he learned all types of strange things from the “Strange facts” books. He never knew there was a word for people who loved long words, sesquipedalian, or that the plastic tips of shoelaces had names but now aglets was his new favorite word. Reading came naturally to him, despite the fact that he was not allowed to read he was an exceptionally fast reader. When he found the fiction section he devoured it completely, coming back several times a week to exchange books. He reached for a copy of Stephen King’s “It” on the lowest shelf in the section when he heard a particularly annoying women’s voice starting in on him.
“Mr. Bultema, what are you doing here of all places?” the thin woman said.
“Trying to find something to read.”
“Read,” she said looking at the boy. “ That’s classic. I’m sure your mother has no idea, correct?”
“Yep, that’s right.” Richard said, he hadn’t even looked up from the bottom shelf yet.
“ I see.” She stood quite for a while before adding, “Richard, it is clear to me that you’ve broken away from your mother’s faults and I hold no grudges against you of course. In fact, I want to share something with you. Are you interested?” she
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smiled just in time for Richard’s eyes to see it and for the first time he saw that she was not just pretty but beautiful.
She walked away from him, her long black dress swaying from side to side to an unheard rhythm. She led him away from the fiction down what felt like the longest hall he ever walked through into a different section of books, one that he hadn’t discovered, yet. At the end of the row there was a key locked door.
“Where are we going,” Richard said his voice hardly above a whisper.
“ Ah ah ah. Haven’t you heard? Curiosity killed the cat.” She said mimicking his tone. She slid the key into its rightful place and twisted.
She opened the door and the darkness of the room attempted to escape its chasm. The room, Richard thought, seemed to suck light into it. Mrs. Abbate stepped inside and turned on the light. The room was an immaculate white space only cluttered by thin, ceiling high, wooden shelves that housed some of the oldest books Richard had ever seen. The shelves went on for some distance, Richard noticed without noticing himself first stepping into to the room and then walking in further.
“My personal collection. You see my father opened this library because he had a passion for books. All theses were his.” Mrs. Abbate said. “ Here, take this.” She handed him a thick brown book. The sweet old scent of the book was nice. Seeing that there was no title on the front cover of the book Richards flipped the cover
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open but he couldn’t read the words inside. The book was written in some language he could not understand.
“ But I can’t read this.” He felt disappointed. Everything about the book excited him, the gold trim on the binding, the gothic font on inside. He brushed his hand against the lettering of the text it felt bumpy.
“ Well, sound it out. It will help you learn some Germen, besides there is an English translation in the back of the book courtesy of my father.”
“Can you tell me what its about?” he said a little too loudly.
“It’s a book about suicides but I think you’d like it. Its full of mischief, just like you. Give it a try. It’s getting late, I trust you can find your own way home or should I give you a ride?” her peppermint breath breezed his face and he thought for a moment that he liked it.
“ I have a bike now. Thanks for the book, I’m going to start on it today.” Richard said then he left and rode his bike as fast as he could all the way home.
Sounding out the Germen was more fun than he thought it would be. He thought maybe he would learn to speak Germen one day and travel abroad to eat all the Germen chocolate he could handle. He saw a Germen chocolate factory one of the few times he’d watch TV and the idea permanently ingrained itself in his memory. He was really enjoying himself. He didn’t realize how quickly he’d reached the fifth page. He readjusted the pillow he propped between him and his bedroom door then flipped to the next page. On the sixth page the text ended mid way
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through. Richard flipped to the seventh page. Nothing. He went to the end to find the English translation still nothing. There was nothing. Of a 300 and some odd number page book only six pages had words. What a rip. Something in his stomach churned and knotted. His skin burned the way that alcohol burns when you saturate a fresh cut with it. He thought he might be being pulled away from himself but that couldn’t be it. That couldn’t happen. Then it did. He saw himself from the outside of himself and stood up in disbelief. Then he fell.
He fell through the floor. Fell right through the living room where his mother was knitting with her warder laying across her lap. Richard couldn’t feel any of it, all he could feel was the lack of a pit in his stomach that should have been there. He was scared that he couldn’t feel his heart beating when he knew was terrified. He fell through the damp basement and into the earth. He could taste dirt, dirt and worms and for a brief moment his mind shot back to a fact he’d learned in his first weeks at the library about how worms tasted like bacon. He didn’t agree. He fell until just like the pages of the book, there was nothing.
Richard couldn’t tell of he was moving or if he was still. His orientation was spinning or maybe it was because it was just too dark. He could be standing and he wouldn’t know it. Despite the fact that he couldn’t feel anything, he tried relaxing and when he did he began to be able to see. His eyelids, they must have been shut so tight instinctually from the panic of falling. But now he could see faces. Standing above him were kids that he’d recognized from school and some other people that
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he didn’t recognize at all and one person that he recognized all too well. Mrs. Abbate.
“What did you do to me” he saw spit flying from his mouth but he hardly cared.
“Wait, you don’t understand. She tricked you, you think she is me but she’s not. You’re in the other place now but it’s not too late for you. You can still go home but not the way that you want to.” Her voice carried some sort of accent that he never associated with her before.
“What?” he said more hostile than before.
“This is where the suicides get a second chance. They watch and wait for someone to read their words. They will hide their words to trick you into reading them aloud and when you do,” she stopped “they will take your body and your mind.”
She spoke so quickly almost spewing words at him but the one thing she said that he did understand was this, “ Until you steal someone else’s body, you’re stuck down here, with us.”
Byrd 1
Imitation
