Fate Accompli

The last page of the book was torn out. I dropped it onto the table next to the others. Sunlight forced its way through the grimy windowpanes and between the gap in the dull curtains to light up the specks dancing in the dusty air. I needing more light so I pulled the curtains open.

Illuminated, the room looked no better. It was untidy and unkempt, but thankfully, not filled with putrid foods and rats. The atmosphere was dry and parched. A thick layer of dust covered pretty much everything. There were piles of books everywhere, stacked irregularly on the floor or lined neatly along bookshelves. Every available horizontal surface had its quota. Some of the books had been read recently, others book-marked with strips of torn paper and left. I had thumbed a few that were free of dust. It was only after looking at a couple of the books that I noticed the last pages were torn out. Well, every one I'd looked at so far.

Now there was some light I could see that in the corner of the room was a stack of shoeboxes. Carefully stepping over the man's body, I went to investigate them. They were stuffed with the missing pages. Puzzled, I moved around the room looking for further details, desperately avoiding the more obvious search I had to do.

Going to the computer that sat on the desk in the corner. I pushed the switch on. The LEDs lit up and the screen flickered. I was surprised there was power. It was an old machine and it booted up asthmatically. After a minute it managed its task and gave a reassuring chime to alert me of its success. I went to the Internet, curious what his history files would say. I skipped over some of the more private areas of his history, and was buoyed by at last encountering some normality. I delved further and found what must have been the start of his obsession in his book-marked sites.

It was a college website with an article that detailed some academic work centred on an ancient race. The page went into depth about the culture of this race. Mostly concentrating on one facet of the society- their belief that if a person had completed all the tasks that they were destined to complete, then they would perish. Not just the body, but the soul also. So a house would be left without a tile, a wall would be missing a brick; a chair might have a nail left proud. Now the books and their missing pages seemed to have more meaning. This website must have had a profound effect on the man as I noticed a printout of it on the wall next to me with large chunks of text highlighted. I looked further through his bookmarks and found more sites not just about this society but others, all with the theme of longevity or immortality. Some were in-depth scientific work; others were more arcane pieces, detailing spells and the like. I switched the computer off. It gave a thankful sigh and shutdown. Around the desk there were various scraps of paper, all of which had hasty scribbling; notes linking references, doodles, but all seemed to suggest the formulation of a plan.

The time had come and I could avoid the task no longer. Steeling myself, I stood up and went to the body. The body was naked and looked as if it had been dead for some time. But it was desiccated rather than bloated. Like an ice-age man, discovered in a glacier or the body of a desert explorer. I don't know why this should have happened in a temperate climate. I looked him over. I judged that he was a wiry man in life, in death his tanned skin curved around every bone. This distorted some of the tattoos that covered his body. Not pictures and names, these tattoos were symbols and sigils.

He must have been in his early fifties; his greying hair was once strawberry blond and was worn long, as was his beard. He was sat cross-legged and had fallen forward when he expired. His chest and face lay on the floor. By his head there was a small patch of dried blood. This was the only sign of injury.

The floor was bare and marked out with arcane looking symbols and there were four metal dishes placed around the body. These vessels must have been used as lamps; they were coated in a sickly sweet smelling oily residue. Twisted paper had served as wicks; a few fragments still had print on them so there were at least four books in the room that would never be complete.

Next to the man lay a notebook. I picked it up and opened it. It contained more diagrams and notes scribbled in pencil. They were in the same handwriting as the previous notes I'd found but these seemed more precise. No doodles, no sketches. Unfortunately, the notes were mostly written in some form of shorthand.

I turned back to the body. From this angle I could see that there was another book under the man's chest. An old book this time. Nervously, I lifted his weight and slid it from under him, half expecting the corpse to return to life or crumble to dust. Understandable when your main reference for this sort of work is the cinema. The man remained whole and dead.

The book was thick and leather bound. The age-browned pages were heavy and stiff. More diagrams, runes and paragraphs but in a foreign script this time. I recognised some of the symbols from the notebook and on closer inspection it transpired that the notebook was a translation. I leafed through the pages of both books. They matched page for page until the last page. The last page of the great tome was torn out. Curiously, its translation appeared fully in the notebook. I placed the books back down and I went to the shoeboxes. Opening them I looked for the missing page but found nothing. I returned to the body. I was getting bolder now. I moved his hair and found he wore a pendent around his neck. The blood had come from his nose and mouth, still no sign of a wound.

His fingers were free of rings but he did have something gripped in his right hand. It was a screwed up piece of paper, thick and brown like the old book. I started to prise open his rigor mortised grip. I slowly eased his cold, dry and leathery fingers lose, fearful that they might snap off entirely. I got the paper but my victory was short-lived, for as I dropped the arm, I was surrounded in a cloud of dust. Coughing and spluttering, I walked back to the desk. I tried to spit to clear the dry coating from my mouth but to no avail.

The piece of paper did appear to be part of the old tome's missing page but a part solved mystery is as much use as an unsolved one. The translation still detailed areas of the page that were missing. Unless the final piece of his work was conjecture? I sat down, puzzled, but I had been confused since the day began.

I had been working from home and taking a break to get some coffee I noticed that a paperback had been pushed through my letterbox. That in itself was strange enough but when I read the cover I was more surprised. It seems that there are always some films or books that you are desperate to see or read but fate does its level best to stop you. The video fails to tape; flicking through the TV channels you come across the closing credits; a friend had the book but gave it to a charity shop two weeks ago -'...if only you'd said something...'. The book fell into this category. An old, obscure book, that was long out of print. I assumed a friend knowing I wanted to read it had dropped it off and I hadn't heard the doorbell.

Work immediately fell off the itinerary, as did my coffee. I sat on the stairs and read. I moved to the living room and sprawled on the sofa. Then getting towards the end I noticed the last page had been removed. Outrageous! Who could do this to a book? Written along the stub of the missing page was an address. I decided that I would follow it up. It must have been written for a reason. The address was nearby; I grabbed my keys and sunglasses and walked out into the fresh summer afternoon.

The address was a three-storey building. A shop with a flat above. It was the only house in the street. The rest was a building site. No doubt the old terraces were being demolished to make way for a new shiny office, a gaudy retail park or maybe just row upon row of cloned houses.

I knocked, waited then tried the door; it was unlocked. I called and went in. Climbing the stairs, I continued with my tentative 'hellos'. The flat's door was unlocked as well. That's when I found the room, the body and the books, more questions but no answers.

I tried to look at the room afresh. The body bowed forward as if worshiping a long forgotten deity, which may well have been the case. The unfinished books, the obsession with longevity. It seemed ironic that a man performing some ritual in the quest for immortality should die in the middle of it. Then again, maybe he died at the end of it. Was completing it his destined task? All those books he could have finished. Perhaps so long as he hadn't completed the ritual eternity might have been his. I mused on the fruitlessness of trying to cheat fate and fate was against me in my task to complete my book. With a wry smile I shrugged and got up and start to leave.

As I did I heard a noise upstairs. At first it was just some movements, then a small cry. I crossed to the stairway. It was narrow and uncarpeted. I walked up the steps carefully. Each one creaking with my weight. I half expected my foot to go straight through them. There were two rooms at the top. A bathroom, with the fittings stripped out, and a bedroom. In the centre of the bedroom was a blanket and lying in the middle of this was a small baby. He had a shock of strawberry blond hair and a piece of paper clenched in each hand. I walked over and picked him up. His right hand gripped the remaining piece of the tome's last page and his left held onto the final page of my book. I carried him downstairs, wrapped in the blanket. Then I noticed smoke coming from behind the computer and flames had started to flicker under the desk. Some faulty wiring must have caught some of the paper. I took the child and the great book and left quickly. I walked straight out and across the road. I kept going to the corner and then looked back. I could see the flames licking at the inside of the windows. The builders had noticed the blaze but seemed unconcerned. I left them to call the fire brigade.

Fate twice cheated. I had nappies to buy and a book to finish.