Frannie whispered: “Your arm is torn. You'd better get out of here before your girlfriend sees it.”
And it was true. He brought the human arm on his right side around and saw that the table edge had ripped it from palm to elbow, the incision open and crawling with paper worms that squirmed beneath. He sat up quickly and pulled his sleeve down.
“Gosh, I’m awfully sorry,” Saul said. “Are you all right?”
“Of course,” the Book Man said, turning away and rising. Still the heat of the flaming numbers burned at his back. “Of course.” This was all wrong. They would have more tricks. He needed to get his bearings. He must summon the patience of the prosecutor of Job.
“I’m suddenly… darling Callie, I need a… let’s come back.”
She nodded, looking concerned and clearly thrilled to be able to serve him.
He allowed the woman to lead him out. He had no need to hurry. The Book Man stopped at the door and turned back.
“It's no problem.” He spoke clearly and distinctly as he adjusted his jacket and held his arms so that she would not see the damage. “We'll try again later.”
Chapter 31
“What the Hell did you do?” Frannie paced in front of Saul’s filing cabinet as her uncle took a place in his creaky old reclining chair, his desk overflowing with orders for food and liquor. The guy had actually come in the café!
“I used an acrostic,” he said. “I was hoping it would work.” He rose and went past her to open the filing cabinet. He rummaged around and found a small wooden box. “Here.”
Saul turned back to her, holding a bronze Amulet about the size of a clam. “Take a look.”
Frannie stared at the box. “What is this? The same as that metal sculpture?”
“It's for you.”
Frannie saw the glint on the metal amulet, turning it over in her hand. There were nine rows, nine columns, with a jumble of tiny numbers in them. Heavier lines on the amulet separated the big block of numbers into nine smaller blocks.
“I don’t get it?”
“I don’t either.” Newp came in bearing a pitcher of water and eyed the amulet. “You scared him off with a crossword puzzle?”
“It’s not the same, but it does the same,” Saul said. “It’s an acrostic puzzle. Solved, but you’d have to study it to make sure. The acrostic is an ancient form of magic to hold the demons at bay. This is a simple one, nine boxes, each line equals the same number. I'm not very good at them, but I've seen sixteen-box acrostics, even bigger.”
“This totally freaked the Book Man out. Why would this have power against a demon?”
“Is just the way. They see it and it can slow them up. The forces of evil are often obsessive and one of the ways it comes out is in the need to count things. So they see a set of numbers like this and are compelled to make sure all of it’s correct and equal. Did you ever meet someone who had to have things just so, their shoes tied a certain way, cans stacked a certain way?”
Newp spoke. “I do. Betty. She won’t wear anything that’s not soft.”
Frannie was thinking of Natalie, a girl from school, nice enough, but she wouldn't eat any food that touched any other food.
“Well demons are kind of like that,” Saul said. “So I want you to keep this near you. For protection.”
Frannie put it in her back pocket and Newp said, “You got another one o’ those?”
“You just stay out of trouble.” Saul held up his hands. “He wasn't supposed to be able to find this place.”
“What do you mean? Anyone can find this place. You have ads and parking. It's a café.”
“For us it's easy. For him, not so easy. I made sure.”
“How?”
“It’s a very useful spell from the Luria that renders invisible a place such as this to Kitzoynim such as them.”
“Sprit of impurity? You called him a swartz-yor, too.” Frannie was thinking of the tentacles of paper sparrows back on the cliffs.
“Demons. Same thing.” Saul waggled his fingers. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Shoot.”
“You got acrostics amulets and mystic books and spells comin’ out your ears. How did you become a guardian of these things?”
He sighed. “You really want to hear an old man talk about—”
Newp sat on the edge of the desk. “I know I do.”
“Saul, come on.”
“I came to it late. South China Sea, 1945. I was 22 when I came across my first Blank.”
“How?”
“That's a long story, but suffice it to say it hit me in the head; it washed up in a wave and hit me. It was in a casket—a wine box.” He gestured with his head in the direction of the cafe, and Frannie followed this in her head to the stairs up to the apartment where he kept the box into which they had banished the ghost. “We call them dybbuk boxes, because typically they’re used to capture wayward spirits.”
“That's not such a long story.”
“Maybe it's not. But once I had one Blank I was compelled to find more. After the war, I was a manager at that club in the Catskills. Do you remember all that?”
“Oy.” Frannie had spent two summers when she was ten and eleven vacationing at a resort in the Catskills. She had a sudden flood of memories of canoeing and bizarre Indian rituals and her parents dressing way too well for dinner every night. But that wasn’t what Saul was referring to. She had faint, distant memories of her first several years in the United States, sleeping in the spare room of the cramped apartment where her family stayed with her uncle in precisely the time he was referring to.
“So I’m managing this place and one day this fellow, this audience member, turns up dead in the club. Just keels over between sets of the Flora-dora Girls. Turns out he drank poison—actually poisoned his own drink. So we call his home and his son has just died in a car accident. Horrible thing. I found out that no one had come around to telling the guy yet. But the old guy had left a note.”
“The father had left a note?” Newp asked.
“Yeah, it said: I shouldn't have looked.” Saul stretched out his hands, looking at his fingers for a moment. “In his suitcase I found a set of books, blank books just like the one that I got in the war. And this guy had seven. I remember I opened one and felt that hot flash and closed it. Because I knew what it was. Anyway. This guy read one and took his own life. And he should have guarded it.”
“Have you read one?” Frannie asked.
“No. I don't read them. You shouldn't either.”
“Why not?” But Frannie had some idea that the answer may not be satisfactory, but it was definitely going to be the right answer. Because she had not looked, and she had a feeling that she shouldn't.
“They're not for us,” Saul concluded. “We’re the guards.”
“When you say we,” Frannie said softly, “You’re including me?”
“Frannie, the Blanks call to you. I can’t explain how. But when they do, people like us are called to protect them.” Saul shifted in his chair. “After those first seven, they started coming faster, and now I found that others, other people, would seek them. Just wander into the club like they were being pulled by an invisible leash. I didn't even have a bookstore then, just a suitcase. People would find me and ask to see one of these books, not even knowing why.”