Active Reader
And other cautionary tales
from the book world
Mark Leslie
Stark Publishing
November 2008
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead is merely coincidental and not intended by the author.
“Active Reader and other cautionary tales from the book world” Copyright © 2011 Mark Leslie Lefebvre
Smashwords Edition © 2011 Mark Leslie Lefebvre
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Active Reader was first published in the February 2008 edition of Dissections: The Journal of Contemporary Horror
Browsers was first published in Challenging Destiny #5, January 1999
It was reprinted in One Hand Screaming (2004)
Distractions was first published in World Fantasy Con 2001 CD-ROM edited by Nancy Kilpatrick
It was reprinted in One Hand Screaming (2004)
DEDICATION:
For Francine and Alexander, my two favorite active readers
CONTENTS
- Active Reader
- Browsers
- Distractions
- Active Writer: Notes from the author
ACTIVE READER
“DO YOU HAVE an Active Reader card?” Douglas smiled across the counter at the pretty young woman as she plopped a pile of paperbacks onto the cash desk.
Her brow creased as she looked at him a moment, then she spied the plastic blue card hanging around his neck on a thin chain – on the card were the words Active Reader, and the NOBLE BOOKS logo of a lion sitting atop a stack of books – and recognition filled her eyes.
“Oh, the discount card. Of course. I always carry it with me.” She dug into her wallet and produced the blue NOBLE BOOKS Active Reader card.
Douglas took her card, swiped it through the machine, and then scanned in her books. As he lifted each paperback over the scanner he glanced quickly at the title and author. She has good taste in dark literature, he thought, recognizing some of the titles by Clegg, Campbell, Little and Clarke.
“Oh,” Douglas said. “The Darkest Part of the Woods. That’s a good one. I just finished reading it myself.”
She smiled at him. “I love all of Campbell’s writing. Both the novels and the short fiction.”
“UK’s finest horror author.”
She nodded enthusiastically.
He pointed at the next book in her pile. “So, have you read other books by this author?”
“Carol Weekes? Oh yes, I’ve read a couple of hers. She’s becoming one of my favorites.”
He grinned proudly. “Her writing is a real gift to the horror genre.”
The girl nodded, her blonde curly hair bouncing as he continued to scan the books in. Between books, he kept glancing back up at her, noticing the soft blue of her eyes with the subtle green tint. Not only was she very attractive, with sparkling brilliant eyes, but she was also a lover of books and of horror.
That old familiar nervous tingling flitted about his stomach, and he found himself tongue tied, unsure of what to say next. Attractive women didn’t do that to him; but an attractive woman with sparkling eyes who loved to read horror sent him into a tailspin.
At the end of the transaction, he announced the total, she paid it and he handed her the books in a NOBLE BOOKS bag and wished her a fond farewell.
As she said goodbye and walked away from the cash desk, Douglas keyed in the code that would reprint the last receipt and then slid the Next Cashier sign onto the desk in front of his register.
“Carrie,” Douglas said to the pimply-faced teen working two registers to his left. “I’ll be in my office if anyone needs me.” With that said he tore off the duplicated receipt and walked away against the background of the Friday night bustling crowd of avid readers, browsers and coffee house regulars.
Closing the door to leave the sounds of the crowd behind him, he glanced down at the receipt.
The top of it read: Active Reader Member: 5552 7958.
Douglas fiddled with his NOBLE BOOKS tie and sat down at the computer. He entered the general access password, and then flipped around on the drop-down menu desktop environment until he highlighted the CUSTOMER menu.
He pressed the ENTER key, then typed the management level password which brought him to the customer database. He typed “old” in the command line, and a small window opened, allowing him to enter an eight digit NOBLE BOOKS Active Reader number.
He entered: 5552 7958.
After a moment, a name, address and phone number appeared on the screen.
“Kim Meadows,” Douglas said, reading the customer’s name aloud. Then his eyes scanned down to the part of the screen which showed, in detail, all of this particular customer’s purchases. The titles, the quantity, the time of day, and how she paid for each purchase. Of course, the database didn’t yet include the books she had just purchased. That information was only updated once per day on a national level, once the store closed and the computer uploaded that information to the main database at the NOBLE BOOKS support office.
He scrolled down the huge listing of books she had purchased, at both this location of NOBLE BOOKS and the various locations in other parts of the state, mumbling to himself. “You’re quite the active reader, Ms. Meadows.” There was a long listing of horror titles, along with thrillers and mysteries. It appeared that Ms. Meadows favored intense, thriller-type reading. It was no wonder she became a fan of Carol Weekes’ novels. Carol Weekes was one of a select few authors that Douglas just had to collect every single format in. She was a talented thriller-horror writer who had worked her way up through the small press and onto the tail end of the bestseller lists. Her precise description of details was matched only by her ability to aggressively hammer out characters and a plot that begged you to read for more. From the first time he discovered her first novel Walter’s Crossing, Douglas had been a genuine and eager fan, collecting all of her works, no matter if they were small press releases or big publishing house titles.
Finally, after a couple pages of listings he found a few titles by Carol Weekes.
And there, one of the first purchases Kim Meadows had made on her card almost two years ago, at the other NOBLE BOOKS location in the city, was the title he’d been looking for: It Creeps Up On You.
“Excellent,” Douglas said, smiling and spinning the office chair around. It Creeps Up On You was a collection of stories Carol Weekes had published mid-way through her career. It contained a selection of previously unpublished works alongside stories that had seen print decades earlier. It was, in Douglas’s opinion, the ultimate collection that could be known as the essence of Weekes’ writing career, illustrating her as a wicked mystic of the written word. It contained stories filled with hope, horror, laughter, bitter darkness and believable characters. Sure, the title story and some of the others included were stories that Weekes had penned with other authors. But these collaborations only illustrated her unique ability to mesh her own incredible storytelling voice with various other writing talents
Douglas punched the button that would print the screen he was on.
“My collection can now become complete,” he said, and a warm fuzzy feeling filled his chest the same way the tingling had filled his stomach when he had been looking Kim Meadows in the eye.
#
Kim Meadows sat curled in a big comfy chair by the window with a down-filled quilt pulled over her. One foot, dressed in a knee-high white sock, dangled out from under the quilt, resting just above where her cat Ginger lay sleeping. On the table beside her sat a steaming mug of lemon tea. Roxy Music’s “Avalon” unobtrusively filled the room from the stereo across the room that was dwarfed by huge overflowing bookcases on either side.
She was enraptured in the paperback she had picked up earlier in the week, a thriller by author Michael Slade. She’d never read Slade before, but had caught sight of a display that told her if she liked Tami Hoag, she might also like Michael Slade. She was so enthralled in the novel that she didn’t hear the front door to her apartment unlatch itself. Nor did she hear the door slowly open and close.
The only indication that something strange was going on would have been when Ginger sat up for a moment, tilted her head, sniffed the air, then put her head back down on her paws.
With her nose buried in the paperback, and not noticing Ginger, Kim continued to read.
She didn’t notice the shadow cast upon the wall to her left, nor did she hear the quiet footsteps approaching her from behind.
She did, however, feel the tip of the blade as it sunk softly into the side of her neck, producing a thin stream of blood.
She turned her head to see a face she recognized but couldn’t quite place.
Douglas smiled at her. “I need you to tell me something,” he said.
She nodded.
“Have you read everything you bought by Carol Weekes?”
Her eyes widened as she realized where she recognized him from.
“Have you?”
She nodded vigorously.
“Have you read It Creeps Up On You?”
She nodded again.
“All of it?”
She grimaced and coughed a small bubble of blood between her lips.
“Did you read all of it?”
She nodded and he pulled the blade across her throat.
She gurgled something unintelligible and dropped the paperback onto her lap.
A fresh stream of crimson flowed down her chest and onto the paperback as Douglas felt himself harden in anticipation. He sighed. He hadn’t read a Michael Slade novel yet. Too bad, he thought vaguely. This particular one had been ruined. But it looked intriguing. Perhaps the next day he would seek out a clean, unbloodied copy off of the store shelves and give it a read.