The Book of Sharon

   It was a most inconspicuous book, seated as it was among a thousand others of a similar brown leather binding and bound by string in the old dilapidated library of a forgotten lighthouse’s inn. Left abandoned for centuries upon the craggy shores of the tiny isle now outside of modern shipping lanes. Naught but ruins of cyclopean architecture of an unknown hand before the lighthouse was built.

   A simple cleaning out by a moderate business wishing to gut and seize what they could from the dilapidated structure brought the modest collection, modest enough to garner no great attention, yet full enough to be declared a library, to the attention of a woman of high life and occult knowledge unbeknownst to her peers. An auction of no great importance, attended only as a family obligation, as though by the hands of fate the manuscript was there. Upon its cover were three symbols, a sharp edged hourglass with a line through the middle which hooks on its ends, A second with the appearance of a caricature of any number of oriental characters, the third below them in this triad a trident of sorts with a shovel on its base. Such simple symbols unrecognizable to any demonologist, theologist, or occult expert inquired into their meaning, all three held within circles; a common practice of charlatans and fiction writers of invented demonic sigils. With the added damnation the entirety of the text written in English the modest thin book was thus declared a false grimoire; a Victorian Hoax sold to gullible collectors of the occult craze at the time. Its only true value at auction being a Victorian aged book; one of an unknown author or confirmed chain of ownership; to say the manuscript was sold cheap would be to underscore its importance.

   Regardless of her knowledge of the meaning of the symbols the woman never looked between the covers for fear of being tempted by the texts. Thus it was that the book was given a place, hidden in the open between a copy of Moby Dick and some dusty old anthology of sci-fi horrors; chosen not for relation to one another but for aesthetic compatibility to a wandering eye in the study. Left this way behind locked glass for two more generations till her passing when the book and all in the glass case were handed down to her daughter, and daughter given for lack of interest herself to her own daughter. It was here that a most curious chain of events transpired as though conspired by the book its self to end its dormancy. It would happen that a visiting acquaintance of the local university, a simple man of no great importance would spy the otherwise inconspicuous book. His words were convincing, mostly that the book could have a higher value than expected by those who found it and sold it at auction all those years ago as many grimoire writers were intent on using various pseudonyms to make their works seem more authentic.

   A fire it was said claimed the book while leant to this man. His home burnt to the ground. As fate would have it, the woman who had leant the book at taken photographs of it, photographs seen by her granddaughter; an avid explorer of new age religions and “magick”. Imagine one might the surprise of this girl when the very same book in her grandmother’s photographs should appear again before her eyes at the local college. Not burnt, not even travelled by far, held by a man taught by the very man who had borrowed the book so many years prior.

   “So now Mr. Carter you must see my reason for taking it? This book is my family’s property not the teacher’s.”

   “Why are you talking like that? Why was I talking like that?”

   She holds the book aloft as wind strips through the land like a thousand frightened beasts, “I Elizabeth McStone, I alone heard the song. Not Professor Smith, Not you Mr. Carter, not the other students. No…it was me, this book has been calling to us, and by her will across time and space conspired events to force me to see her grace. To hear her divine voice! I will not surrender it to you!”

   A dark swell not unlike the lifting of a scene overcame Carter, a thickness of a shadow most unearthly swallowing his very being. When sight would next return to the poor man he would find himself standing in a dark wood with a red sky standing beside Smith; who is in a most bewildered state, gibbering relief at finding Carter although to him he had only left that morning with his old friend in a fine state of mind to search for the stolen book. So too then did Smith relate his own course of events, as best his damaged mind could muster to Carter’s understanding that while he had known only a day to pass the shadow had swallowed time as well as him, releasing him not from sleep or dream, but from one instant to the next forward across a span of many weeks to an unknown place.