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17

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Mort awoke on the floor a few hours later. He raised his hand to his throbbing head and felt it. It was cut and there was blood trickling down his face.

He groaned and looked around the room. It had been torn apart, this time much worse than the previous night. And Liana now was nowhere to be found. It had probably been her the other night as well. Funny, he hadn't even thought to place her on his suspect list.

I guess it's always the last person you think of, Mort thought.

But, obviously it hadn't occurred to him because Liana hadn't seemed like the type to want to bring up the devil. And why should it? She had mocked him when he had asked her if her friend had attempted to summon the devil. Therefore, it was not his fault that he had failed to see her desire to own the book.

But why did she want it so badly? He had interpreted from Balkan that the book was not working and if Liana had seen the book at her friend's house, surely she would've tried to bring up the devil and saw that it was not working as well. Therefore, if the book was not functioning properly, there should be no reason for her to want it.

Mort thought about the whole puzzle that he had become entangled in. He thought and thought. And he came up with... Thinking really hurts my head.

He managed to get up off the floor and make his way to the bathroom. He stood in front of the mirror and inspected himself.

Mort grabbed a towel from the rack and rolled it into a ball. Then he turned on the faucet and wet the ball with water. He placed the wet towel ball over the cut on his head. As the towel made contact with the cut it stung a bit and he winced.

Mort left the bathroom and went into the other room, holding the wet ball of towel over his wound. He sat at the desk in the room and pondered. He needed to get the book back from Bernie. It just wasn't safe. He had to hide it somewhere else. Somewhere where... a man he couldn't trust didn't reside.

Mort picked up the phone and punched out Bernie's number. Unfortunately, he got the answering machine. "You have reached Bernie's Rare Books. Please leave your message after the beep..." The recording instructed.

There was a beep.

"Bernie," Mort said into the receiver. But there was no reply on the other line. "You there?" Mort asked. There was no reply.

"Bernie?" He repeated. No reply.

"Pick up," Mort said, annoyed. No reply.

Mort sighed and replaced the receiver. "Fuck," he said simply, and softly. He looked off to the side of the room. There was a window there. Suddenly, for some reason Mort began to have a flashback of his ex-wife.

"Why don't you come to the flea market with me. It'll be fun," Amy said. She was standing near the window in their house and she was wearing his bathrobe. "We've got to get rid of some of this stuff. Look at this, it's awful," She said, picking up a teacup and placing it on a ledge. Then she grabbed a chest of drawers and pushed it aside. "No wonder they left it."

She looked at what had been hidden behind the chest of drawers. "Oh my god, look. There's a window!" She exclaimed, bending down next to it and looking out of it. "It's a secret window," she said, smiling at him. She opened the window, revealing a garden below. "Oh, this is perfect. I'm gonna put my garden right there," Amy said. She turned to Mort, "It's a secret window and it'll look down on a secret garden."

The flashback faded away.

Mort turned away from the window, a bit unnerved. He didn't want to remember anything about Amy.