“You were saying something about running to the ocean? Because that seems like not such a bad idea.”
“I'm with Frannie,” Newp said. “Look, I'm not saying I'm a coward or anything, but we don't have anything to fight a madman with.”
“I don't think you're a coward,” Saul said, “but I don't think he's a mad man, because I don't think he's a man.”
“Then let's run,” Frannie said. “To the ocean. We can come back for the car after…”
A pair of headlights first came into view, whipping around the lot. A huge green Morris Minor pickup pulled into the decrepit lot, until it came to a halt with its beams on high and cutting across the front of the café.
“Get down!” Saul hissed. They ducked below the front window.
“We should get behind the counter,” Frannie suggested, and they scurried low through broken tile and bits of plaster until they reached the other side of the counter. They took shelter with apparently nothing to protect them but shelf paper.
Frannie put her fingers on the aluminum edge of the counter and pulled herself up, looking out. Gauzy curtains hung in the front windows, the beams of light from the pickup truck showing through the window and sending clear-cut shafts of light through the café. Motes of dust shimmered in the light as the truck moved again, causing the beams to sweep across the room. Frannie whipped her head down.
Saul whispered seemingly to himself, “What is thy suit, swartz-yor?”
Crouched behind the counter, Frannie watched the headlight beams light the room blue and filthy overhead, illuminating a calendar that said Southern California Water Department 1952. And then the beams cut out, and the engine of the pickup truck stopped.
All was silent for a moment as Saul stood, moving into the shadow of the door to the kitchen and through. Frannie and Newp slid through the door into the kitchen behind Saul. From there they could see through a window out of the kitchen, across the counter, and out the front of the café.
The door of the Morris Minor swung open, and after a moment the Book Man emerged and stood still, facing towards the café.
Below his felt hat, Frannie could not see his face. But she could see the feather in his hat band shivering in the wind. The Book Man shut the heavy pickup door with metallic thunk. Then he stood there in the moonlight, his hands by his sides, staring out from under the brim of his hand. His brown hush puppies shifted a second and he kicked up a small cloud of dust.
Whispered Newp, “Hey Professor! Out a little late, aren't we?”
“What does he want?” Frannie hissed.
“Well, obviously he wants the Blanks. He thinks maybe we have them,” Saul said. “And right about now, I think he is considering either he made a mistake, because blocking spell or no, this place doesn't look like a bookstore or a place where we might keep anything.”
“Why did you even pick this place?” Newp asked.
“Did not tell you? My ex-wife and I used to own it.”
“When?”
“Before she ran off.”
“Guy has an ex-wife.” Frannie mumbled. “And all this time…”
And then a loud flutter spat staccato outside and Frannie gasped, then cursed herself for gasping.
The Book Man had not moved, but his form was shifting, swiveling left and right without actually moving, and then the elbows of his jacket burst like a popped piñata. The elbow patches split open and a long spray of something white and fluttering shot out, and now as this stream dispersed in the air, Frannie could make out tiny movement, strange and differentiated, white and fluttering loud as it began to swirl around the Book Man's body.
She shifted her head a little to see across the room through an open curtain. And as the clouds merged and started to flutter around the Book Man, she could describe them no better to herself then to say that the Book Man seem to be surrounded by a fluttering cloud of origami sparrows.
Each sparrow flitted all of its own, its paper wings stuttering in the wind, each one no bigger than the size of a cigarette pack.
Frannie retreated into the shadows even more. Newp was still staring over the counter, mouth agape.
The Book Man remained still, but a section of the cloud of origami sparrows moved off and swept away from him. Then the fluttering cloud dipped and coiled across the ground, up onto the porch, skittering over the peeled wooden railing and support posts. The sound of paper from the cloud of birds echoed loudly and could be heard all the way into the kitchen.
Frannie bit her lip as the birds began to thump against the screen door and the windows. They flapped faster now against the glass, some of them rapping hard, a white blur behind the curtains. One of them whacked the glass so hard she thought that it might break. The doorknob seemed to rattle as though the sparrows were trying it as they bashed against it.
“What the hell?” Newp spat.
“No idea,” Saul said. “This I haven't seen.”
The cloud spread out and stretched beyond the length of the front of the cafe, slapping clumsily against the windowpanes all around the house. Then Frannie saw nothing outside at all. The whole café went even dimmer, because the sparrows had covered every window.
She heard a creak in the back and something metallic crashed loudly. Buckets hitting the floor. Saul cursed.
“What was that?”
“That was the back windows,” he said, “I have buckets of tools stacked against them. They’ve made it in.”
The sound of fluttering wings, soft and papery, filled the air in the kitchen, and now the double doors into the kitchen began to swing. Frannie heard hundreds of tiny paper beaks against the door to the kitchen, and then the doors crashed apart and the birds began to flow in. Frannie froze as the clouds moved into the front of the café, creating little tendrils of origami sparrows, snaking up-and-down and everywhere, searching.
Frannie lowered herself until she lay flat on the floor beside the refrigerator. She brought her hands to her chest as a column of paper birds fluttered down among discarded cups and pots and pans behind the counter. They moved past her feet, brushing past it by inches. Beyond the refrigerator she saw that Saul was surrounded in the corner near the kitchen door, the tendrils sneaking past him, just missing him.
Then the tendril of paper avians whipped around in front of Frannie and came back, one sparrow flitting angrily in her face, just an inch or two from her nose. She gasped, watching its little paper wings flap as it hung before her. Written—no, printed—on the wings were hundreds of lines of text.
They were made of books, she realized, and then: he is made of books and his touch is made of paper cuts, and then the sparrow pecked her in the eye. Frannie screamed, clamping her eyes shut and the birds set upon her. She felt them peck at her head and hands as she waved her arms and lost all reason rising up and flailing. She hauled and smashed her toes against the stainless-steel legs of the counter, it's in my hair get it out, and she heard Newp flailing against them as well. Frannie smashed against the refrigerator and pain shot through her as one of them sliced her forearm. Her hand fell on a towel wrapped through the handle of the refrigerator. She grabbed it.
“Aargh,” Saul shouted in pain and Frannie ripped the towel from the refrigerator handle and waved it, swiping it in front of her face and all around with no real goal or thought.