Horror Between The Pages

My friend and I finally got the chance to check out this amazing new bookstore that opened in our town. We were total bookworms. We loved reading books. But I know I am never touching books ever again. And it is all because of this.

This story starts at my house back in 1992, in Southern Minnesota. I lived with Alijah, my best friend. We were really close and lived together on the second floor of the student apartments. Once we left the house there was no holding back. We screamed so loud! Well, it was more like squealing. We quickly ran to the bus stop that took a long time to come. We hopped on it and were really excited. We reached there in about 10 minutes. We rushed inside and dramatically went up to every counter and picked every book up. I picked up a book that I thought would be a good read. So I took it to Alijah and asked her which book she bought. She picked up “How to kill a mocking bird”. I paid for both books and we left the place.

I was talking to Alijah about how the store kept such a good supply of books. Alijah agreed and we kept walking back to our place. When we reached home, I washed my hands and sat down to read the book I bought. It had a nice plot. In fact, it was the thing that attracted me to that book. I started reading it and I got completely lost in the book. It was really indulging. Right then, Alijah came to my room to tell me how great her book was. She told me it had an amazing climax and overall was a great experience. Just then she said “Oh! I see you’re reading old stories about our town” taking a peek at my book. “No, I am reading about this town called ’Millennia’. Our town’s called ‘Milbery’” I said, looking surprised that she misinterprets this. She giggled a little and then said: “Silly girl, our town was called Millenia before mayor Hudson came here.” I finally understood why I should never put up a fight against Alijah. She was an expert at Social Studies. She was training to be a professor in that subject. How stupid could I be to forget that!

I told her that this was the story of a book owner named Matt Butcher back in the ’30s. He recently opened up a book store in Millenia. He would devour his customers whenever they would buy his books. He would slaughter them and then eat them up. He was a human cannibal. He went to jail after he was caught murdering Bethany Ryans back in ’35. He always had a pattern of his killings. He would always kill teenagers that were 18. He was released in 1983 after getting bail. Since then he has been on parole. Alijah noticed something. She was a pretty good observer. The owner of the shop we went to that day he looked like he was in his 60’s. His name was written on his name tag. ‘Matt Butcher’.

Then, we heard knocking on our doors. It was growing louder and louder almost as if the doors were about to break. We quickly put on the chains of our doors. We didn’t have locks back then. Then, we rushed to the bathroom and locked ourselves in there. We wondered how we would call the police. I was wondering how to call them. While Alijah kept praying with tears in her eyes. In this situation, I was the rational one. Just then I heard the police burst in followed by multiple gunshots.