Page Numbers

Chapter Seven - Xander

The inside of the bookstore looked about as impressive as the outside. The walls were a muggish green and the bookshelves seemed to be falling apart, rotten wood just clinging to life barely holding the books at all. Some old posters were stuck up here and there, and some flickering lights were all that lit the place up. The books were a bit of a let down too, all faded with worn out covers and stains covering them, spines falling apart and pages hanging out from the sides. I looked around and sighed, noticing an old looking man sitting at a counter in the front of the room watching me curiously. A scraggly white beard overran his face, making it almost impossible to see his mouth and nose, small circular glasses sat on the bridge of his nose and a large wart sat on his left cheek. When he realised I had noticed him watching me his head immediately shot downwards and he pretended to be immersed in a book.

The guy creeped me out but I continued to walk around the store. It was divided into sections for each genre of book, so I headed for the young adult. As I headed there, I glanced over to the counter only to see that the old man was gone. I looked around the store and couldn't see him anywhere, but I figured he must have just gone out the back or something so I went to look at the books. Even the books here were old with the 'new releases' shelf's newest book from 1987. I grabbed a few books and started going through the blurbs trying to pass the time.

I was so bored in this stupid bookstore, why weren't there any recent books there? I closed the book I was looking at and got up to head out, but when I turned towards the entrance the old man was blocking the way. I realised he must have been watching me for a while, but this time when I looked at him he didn't look away. His eyes were bloodshot and his glasses were gone, in place of his wart there was now a deep gash across his cheek still bleeding. I had no idea what to do, he was standing on the balls of his feet and seemed ready to attack at any move I made. We both stood there for a solid ten minutes completely still. I was completely bored and figured with the position and look of this bookshop chances were that no one was going to come in for a while, so I had to do something.

"Hi." I called out to him bringing my hand up to wave slowly. He didn't react.

"Look, I really need to go. So if you don't mind..." I took a step forward but as soon as I moved he jumped up and started running across the shop towards me. I had years of practice in self defence thanks to someone and my first instinct was to defend my self. As he ran toward me I widened my legs and held my stance ready for anything and as he ran at me I tried to use his momentum against him, but instead of flipping him like I was supposed to, all that happened was I grabbed him as he flung me sideways into one of the shelves and ran straight past me. I rubbed my head looking up and watched as he ran forwards about to hit a wall.

"STOP! You're going to hit the-" I stopped mid-sentence, watching in awe as he ran directly into a wall and straight through it, disappearing. "What the." I said aloud staring at the wall in wonder. But how is that possible I thought to myself. Cautiously I approached the wall inspecting it in great detail. There didn't seem to be anything special about it, it was just a plain brick wall at the end of the Young Adults section. I slowly put my hand out to see what would happen but before I could touch it a hand shot out grabbing my wrist and in my state of shock it pulled me through. It was a very strange sensation passing through the wall, and it really hurt my head when I started to think about it, it just seemed so real. The hand jerked me forward once more before letting go and I opened my eyes ,realising I must have shut them somewhere along the way, to pitch black. It was pure nothingness, a blank desolate space, it didn't appear that I was standing on anything even though I could feel a cold, smooth surface under my feet. Somehow I could feel the darkness pulling, tugging at me, trying to suck me in, and it was a lot stronger than I was. The darkness overpowered me and I blacked out, and as I lay on this strange surface that was the ground I heard a voice faintly say, "Xander, it's you. Tell them it's you."