Summoning

Chapter 1

Taking a deep breath, Aaron blew across the open book and watched dust fly off to join its friends. The book looked so old that he was afraid to brush it off with his hand as that might tear the page or wear off the ink. He blew again and then squinted at the handwritten passages and strange little drawings. It was English but barely readable. Way older than Shakespeare. Chaucer, maybe.

"In... suster... sister? ...night..." he began to sound out the words. Tackling them phonetically and letting himself hear them helped sense of the peculiar spellings. "And... brother? ...blood... bathed... croon... deerne? What's a deerne? Is it even a what?" His eyes skipped ahead two lines to another impossible to guess word; "Eftsoone?"

With a wrinkled nose, he looked up from the page. It was one of many very old books but the only one on a stand. All others were shelved neatly by subject. Which meant that this was the book his grandfather wanted to display - the prize of his collection. Or it was the one he referenced most often.

Looking back down at the book, he gently lifted the front to look at the cover. It was highly textured yet devoid of anything that looked like a title. He moved the book a little to peek at the spine. No title there, either.

"Huh," he exhaled as he settled the book as it was. What was his grandfather into that he had a book like this? From the things he could pick out and the odd symbols, it looked occult.

It didn't entirely surprise him, the old physics professor valued knowledge of all kinds. When they used to visit him during summers as kids, he would spend hours sitting with the man speaking on every subject. Anything from religion to science-fiction, physics to biology, history, language, architecture. However, despite all the times he was sent to go get a book to further explore a topic, Aaron didn't remember this one. He wasn't sure he remembered the stand, either.

Leaning closer, he blew away a bit more dust to get a closer look at one of the drawings. And then he jerked back. It glowed. For a fraction of a second, the red ink had reacted to... what? The heat of his breath? The moisture?

"Aaron!" His sister's voice startled him. "Aaron!" she called again.

"In here!" he called back and started to move away from the book.

"Of course you are." Rachael appeared at the door. "We're going to order pizza. The kitchen is too frightening to cook," she informed him. "You want wings?"

"Yeah," he nodded.

"You do know you're supposed to be cleaning not reading, right?" she teased.

"I can do both," Aaron answered; "I'm special like that."

"Special's the word," she flashed a smile and was gone.

***

Later that night, Aaron returned to the library. He knew he should be asleep, but something about the book kept tickling the back of his mind. Carefully moving in the dark, he found the lamp and clicked it on. The ancient incandescent bulb didn't give much light: he moved it a little closer to the stand.

Peering at the pages, he tried again to read the words aloud in order to coax meaning from them. What started as stuttering attempts became fluid as he continued. This had nothing to do with getting used to the language. The book wanted to be read.

He felt it pull at his chest. A warning went off in his head, but he couldn't stop. The compulsion expanded through his core and he felt a tingle even lower. His hands felt glued to the sides of the book, ensuring he would finish. And the drawing in dark red ink glowed.

Finally, he came to the end of the passage. He gasped for breath and felt spent. Like he'd just run up the stairs from the campus quad to the hillside dorms.