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I opted to pull my hair up into a messy bun
and as I was blowing stray bits of hair out of my eyes I glanced
over at my window and saw that the sun hadn’t quite risen yet, but
was on its way. I walked over and lifted the glass as I, once
again, patted myself on the back for making such an awesome choice
in rooms.

Because our house was on the outskirts of
town and partially up one of the mountains, I had a wonderful view
of the general area from my bedroom window as the ground sloped
away towards the small valley Appleton was situated in. I closed my
eyes briefly and breathed in the air, feeling the cold of
approaching winter as it coated the back of my throat and rested
snowflake teasingly on the tip of my tongue. I released the air on
a sigh and settled down in the large circular chair that I had
situated at my window and just watched the splendor of nature
unfold. The sky was a soft mauve color that gradually deepened into
royal purple before it began to lighten into the palest of pinks
and golds as the first of the sun’s rays peeped over the ridge of
the surrounding mountains. The sky continued to lighten and I stood
up and stretched, my jaw cracking slightly as I yawned. Even I had
to admit that waking up in time to see a beautiful sunrise lessened
the blow of the early hour a little, and my earlier irritation
began to finally fade. I closed my window and headed downstairs,
where, to my surprise, I found Mom in the kitchen with a stack of
freshly made French toast.

“Oh, yum,” I said as I filled my plate and
sat down. “You’re up early.”

“It’s kind of hard to sleep when it sounds
like the ceiling is going to cave in first thing in the morning,”
Mom said drily. I blushed and decided to play it off as well as I
could. I didn’t want to let on just what I had dreamed about.

“Um, sorry about that. Hope I didn’t wake the
boys.”

“I don’t think you woke them, but your fall
made my ceiling fan wobble a little more than usual. What
happened?”

“Just a bad dream and my flailing tumbled me
right off the edge of my bed,” I replied as I dug into
breakfast.

“Did you get hurt?”

“A little bruised, but I’m ok,” I said.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

I winced and almost inhaled a piece of my
breakfast instead of swallowing.
No, no, no
! I spluttered,
coughed, then managed to catch my breath and croaked out a, “No, it
wasn’t anything important,” which Mom accepted without further
comment.

“What are your plans for today?”

I looked at her, my brows furrowed slightly,
but it didn’t feel like the usual “I want to know your every step
for rest of your life” type questioning and felt more like she was
trying to draw me out, though I had no idea for what purpose unless
she was trying to mend the small rift between us a little. That
didn’t make sense to me, as I was the one who caused it in the
first place, but I guess mothers defy logic as a general rule.

“I have an hour before I have to open the
store, so I thought I’d try to do a little homework. Then it’s
work, and I thought, if it was all right, that I’d swing by Maria’s
house and see how she’s feeling when my shift ends.”

“If you do go, make sure that you wear a mask
of some type,” Mom cautioned. “I don’t need you coming down with
the flu and then passing it to the rest of us.”

“Yeah, sure,” I muttered as I finished up my
breakfast and put the dishes in the dishwasher. There was no way I
was going to show up at Maria’s house looking like one of the
people they showed on the news during the SARS outbreak, but
agreeing with Mom would keep things on the more peaceful side.

I browsed through the books on Japanese myths
and legends that I had borrowed from Mr. Baker during the time I
had left before work, and was rather intrigued when I found that
they had their own version of Bigfoot called the
Hibagon
. I
made a mental note to bring it up to Akira when I saw him next.
That was something I thought we could use in our paper, especially
since there’s some type of Bigfoot or Yeti style story on just
about every continent. It could be used to tie in both cultures
even more and bring it into the modern day since there were now all
sorts of TV shows that centered around finding and capturing
Bigfoot.

I winced when I thought about the verbal
acrobatics that I’d probably have to dance through at the start. Ah
well, I couldn’t avoid the guy forever, and a swift glance at the
clock told me that it was time to hit the road if I wanted to have
the store open on time.

It was so nice driving to the bookstore
without having to drop my little brothers off somewhere that I
decided to take a brief detour and picked up some coffee from one
of the many fast food places that served breakfast. Opening at
Baker’s was always a little different each time I did it, so I
figured I needed all the help to stay awake that I could possibly
get. Sometimes there would be a line of people waiting for the
doors to open, other times it seemed to take hours before a single
person came in. And then there were the days where it was a steady
stream of people in and out, some buying, some browsing. Today was
one of those days, and I remained fairly busy up until lunchtime.
It was nice to be busy, because it meant that I didn’t have time to
dwell on, well, anything but the typical actions that are involved
with running a bookstore.

I was shelf reading during one of the quiet
lulls in traffic, which meant I was going through the books to make
sure that they were all arranged in alphabetical order and in their
correct section, when someone cleared their throat behind me and I
nearly choked on my heart as I spun around and faced the customer.
I pressed both of my hands against my chest as it heaved and I
stared into the sheepish face of a young Asian man. He looked to be
in his early twenties and was dressed comfortably in jeans and a
button down shirt, but all I could really focus on were his eyes.
It wasn’t that he was Asian; we’re a small tourist destination and
get in people from all over the world. I stared because, despite
the affable, slightly embarrassed half grin, there was something
disturbingly off about his eyes and I found myself taking a small
step backwards as goose bumps erupted all over my arms.

“I’m so sorry, miss,” he said, his voice soft
and velvety, but instead of calming me down it increased my feeling
of being trapped with something I had no name for, and I took a few
deep breaths to quell the sudden nausea that threatened to empty
stomach bile onto his expensive looking shoes. “I didn’t mean to
startle you. The sign said open, so I came on in.”

“How did I not hear you?” I asked, my voice
high and breathy as I fought down panic. I frantically began to
scratch at my cuticles and hoped that the familiar sensation would
help to calm me down and settle my nerves. The old trick worked and
I could feel all the nervous energy as it traveled into my fingers
and out through the repetitive motion, though I knew that more than
one finger would most likely be bloody after this encounter was
over.

“The door was very quiet as I opened it?” he
asked, and I could tell that my question had confused him.

“The bell, there’s a bell over the door so
that we can hear whenever someone comes in if we’re in the
backroom,” I said, then snapped my mouth shut when I realized I now
sounded accusatory instead of baffled.

“There was no bell,” the man said, his
eyebrows scrunched together.

“Never mind,” I said, having finally
remembered that I had a job to do and that I needed to do it,
regardless of whether or not I was still convinced that there was
something very wrong with his eyes. I shuddered. “How may I help
you?”

“I’m looking for a book on the Blue Ridge
Parkway,” he answered.

“Are you looking for any type of book in
particular?”

“Yes, I was wondering if you had one of those
large, oversized books with a lot of pictures. I can not remember
what you call them, but they make good conversation pieces,
yes?”

“Oh, you’re looking for a coffee table book,
something that you can leave out for guests to look at while they
visit?”

“Yes, that is correct,” he said and smiled. I
forced myself to swallow a whimper when I noticed that the smile
never quite reached his eyes.

I led him over to the section where Mr. Baker
had all sorts of photography books about the Blue Ridge Parkway and
the Appalachian mountains in general. I had one in particular in
mind; it was oversized and full of beautiful pictures of the
mountains during all four seasons and had some stunning photographs
of some of the Brevard Waterfalls as well as a few photos of
Appleton itself. Because the author and photographer were both
natives of the mountains, each picture had a small paragraph next
to it that gave the reader a small bit of trivia or fact about the
location where the shot had been taken. It was one of our more
popular books for tourists and Mr. Baker always made sure to keep
one copy on the shelves and several extra copies in the back.

I sighed when I noticed that the book had
been mishelved higher up than where it usually lived, most likely
the result of a browser not taking the time to find the book’s
correct location, and I had to stand on my toes in order to reach
high enough to grab onto it. I had just started pulling it towards
me when warm breath ghosted over the exposed skin on the back of my
neck. I jerked the book off the shelf and then lost my hold on it.
I threw my arm over my face and cried out when the huge tome
bounced off my skin and smacked onto the ground at my feet.

“Are you all right?”

I lowered my arm and stared at the customer
as he bent down and picked the volume up off the floor.
Had he
just
. . .

“Did you just . . .,” I tapered off when he
stood and gave me a quizzical look.

“Did I just what?” he asked. “Are you all
right? How is your arm?”

“Um, I’m ok, a little bruised,” I said and
glanced at my arm where a large red mark showed the point of
impact.
I know he blew on my neck
, I thought as a familiar
surge of irritated anger started to form.
I know he did, but
there’s no way I can ask him about it! He’s a customer, and Mr.
Baker would have my head if he heard I had been rude!

I bit my tongue. I hated my thoughts but I
knew that they were correct, so I turned my attention to making the
book sale so that Mr. Creepy would hopefully leave. I had my cell
phone in my pants pocket if I needed it, and I REALLY hated the
fact that Mr. Baker wouldn’t hire another person to at least be
here when I had to be on my own, but thankfully, for my peace of
mind, the man decided that the photo book was what he was looking
for. He thanked me profusely in such a way that I had to fight off
the urge to break his nose, especially since I could have sworn he
eyed me up and down at least once while he did so, but I didn’t
comment about it as by that time I just wanted him gone. I had
actually contemplated physically shoving him out when he pulled
open the front door and the bell gave out its usual cheerful dingle
as he sauntered out. I stared at it, baffled as to why it had rung
then, but hadn’t rung when the man had come in. There’s no way I
wouldn’t have been able to hear it, because it’s ring had a very
distinct sound being that it was an old cowbell that Mr Baker had
brought back from a trip to Texas.

I pulled my eyes from the old bell and my
shoulders sagged when I saw that the man had not lingered outside
of the store and was gone. My entire body trembled, and I ran to
the bathroom and frantically washed my hands. I steadfastly ignored
the stinging from the self-inflected wounds in my fingers as I
tried to get rid of the dark, slimy feeling that fairly oozed out
of my pores. There had just been something fundamentally wrong with
that man, and I didn’t think it was the over all skuzzball feel
that I got from him. Damned if I could pinpoint what it was,
though.

Once I finished washing my hands I stood at
the sink and stared into my reflection. I let out a relieved breath
when I noticed I wasn’t as pale as I had been when I first entered
the bathroom, though my pupils were still slightly dilated from
residual shock. I picked up my hands and frowned at the faint
tremor that coursed through my fingers.

All right
, I thought to myself.
Enough of that. He’s gone, it’s over and done with, let’s get
back to work
.

I couldn’t bring myself to continue shelf
reading, so I went into the back and started to open up some of the
newly arrived boxes with a little too much gusto. I squealed when I
saw that Mr. Baker had included the latest work by my favorite
author in this shipment, and I set it aside to check out later. The
familiar happiness that always accompanied opening up a new box of
books banished the lingering uneasiness that had me looking over my
shoulder every thirty seconds, and I returned to my usual routine
of entering the books into the computer system and scanning their
bar codes to check them in before I moved off to shelve them.

I had just finished putting away the last
volume when I heard the cowbell dingle-clunk and my first thought
was that the creepy man had come back. I took a breath and let it
out as my muscles tightened up under skin that felt too small to
contain them, though I worked to try and keep the unease off my
face as I turned around with what I hoped was a welcoming smile.
The smile didn’t last very long, though. It’s kind of hard to keep
smiling, even if it is fake, when Akira Yamaguchi is standing three
feet from you with his arms crossed and a determined, almost angry,
look on his face.

“Well, hopefully I have you somewhere where
you can’t run away again,” was the first thing out of his mouth. I
idly wondered why he didn’t have thunderstorms, complete with
lightening, swirling around his head. I actually looked up for a
brief moment to double check, but no thunderheads to be seen.