It was a couple of days before I was to start my company's celebration tour of the Virgin Islands, at the beginning of an unexpected late April blizzard, that I happened to be rummaging around in the loft above the barn searching for an old straw hat my grandfather had given me when he returned from the South Seas many years ago. I decided it would be the perfect thing to take with me to the islands, and I vaguely remembered that some time back my father had carelessly tossed it into one of the old boxes that littered the barn's dusty loft floor when he was clearing out the closets in the main house after my mother died.
As I brushed the cold dust off one old frayed cardboard carton and opened the top, several mice darted from a hole at the bottom - one leaping straight out of the box onto my arm.
"What the...?!" I shouted, jumping backward in surprise. I tripped against a broken ironing board and fell backwards - the mice scattering in all directions. I grabbed the corner of an old chest of drawers, but it crashed to the floor with me. Shaken, I got slowly to my feet, and noticed a strange leather-bound book lying on the floor.
I might not have given it a second glance, as many old books and boxes of books were stored over the years in the barn loft. But the book that lay before me was different. Although it was lying with its back cover facing up, it wasn't the plain back cover that attracted my curiosity. It was the reddish-orange glow sliding out from beneath the book.
At first I did nothing, as I couldn't believe what I was seeing. But then, with a tattered fly swatter I picked up off the floor, I flipped the book over.
Just then I heard a shout from below. "Hey, Neil! You up there?"
"Yeah! Come on up, Tom. But watch it, the stairs are slippery."
Tom was my neighbor and close friend, and one of the most curious guys I knew.
"What'ya doin' up here?" Tom asked, shutting the door as a flurry of snow blew into the loft behind him.
"Come over here and take a look at this."
Tom stomped the snow off his boots and then walked over beside me. "What the devil's that?" he said, his breath blowing out a cold cloud of frosty air.
"When I first saw it, I had no idea... But when you hollered up to me, I remembered where I'd seen it before. It was a long time ago... when I was a kid."
The faint reddish-orange glow that had been coming from beneath the book was now more than just a glow - it was a small pool of swirling colors, no longer red and orange, but greens mixed with purples, blues, and blacks, all churning as if a thousand dying stars were racing toward a tiny black hole.
As Tom and I stared at the colors dancing madly over and around the book's cover, I realized that what I was watching was connected to my grandfather. Images of him reading to me flitted through my mind. I saw him sitting in his room, barely a shadow against the darkness - and there was always a strange light that seemed to magically encircle his hands.
With the colors from the book whirling in front of Tom and me, I understood that what had encircled my grandfather's hands so many years ago was the same surrealistic light that lay before us on the cold loft floor.
"This was my grandfather's book," I said, not taking my eyes off it. "He used to read to me from it in the dark. I remember asking him about it, but he never got around to telling me. He never told me where he got it or why it had this strange glow... And then - he disappeared. Weird, isn't it?"
"You can say that again. What'ya going to do with it?" Tom asked, shuffling his feet from side to side as if to ward off the cold. But I suspected he was just nervous, seeing something he didn't understand.
As a matter of fact, I didn't understand it either. But my curiosity wouldn't let it rest. I glanced at Tom, and then, blowing into my hands to warm them, I said, "I'm going to take a look at it." As I leaned toward it, the colors surrounding the book intensified Poking my finger into the purple-black mist, I felt nothing - but the colors began to fade, and then vanished. In front of us lay an ordinary leather-bound book.
But the book's light brought back memories. I remembered my grandfather telling me that he would some day let me in on its "real secrets." And then it struck me - the book was not only a link to his past, but could very well be connected somehow to his disappearance.
As I pondered that thought, I heard Tom say, "I'm going down to your house where it's warm. Why don't you bring that thing down with you?"
"Yeah, okay. I'll join you in a minute."
But as Tom left the loft, I continued staring at the book. More memories flew through my mind: the expectant return of my grandfather from one of his mysterious trips to the loft - probably right where I was sitting - and then the call to my parents from a person of no name saying my grandfather was feared dead.
Remembering those events of long ago, I began to tremble, as if the winter's cold had sneaked in through the cracks of the floor and walls and seized me - like an awful dread had grasped my soul and wouldn't let go.
How long I sat there thinking of my grandfather and feeling like something unusual was about to begin, I don't recall, but it must have been no more than a few minutes, as the late afternoon shadows coming in from the frosted loft window hadn't moved more than an inch or two across the book that lay in front of me.
Somehow, I knew I had to pull myself together, to place all my attention on that book. It still lay there, dark and foreboding, its leather-bound cover staring up at me. But although the desire to examine it cover to cover was as overpowering a desire as I'd ever known, I hesitated, as investigating what appeared to be something supernatural, was a little more than unsettling.
I looked up at the darkening loft window. Evening was fast approaching. Tom had been right - it was freezing in the loft. Shaking in the cold air, I stared down at the book. Since I had to get outside and collect more firewood before nightfall, I decided to leave it where it was for the time being.
Opening the loft door, I saw the snow falling in heavy flakes across a gray sky. I hurried down to the yard, gathered an armful of logs for the fire and got into the house just as the wind began to howl.