Years later, when Caitlin moved to the Hudson Valley, to this big old house, she had brought the box and had stored it in a far corner of her attic. A part of her had wanted to go through them all right away—but another part wasn’t ready to. She couldn’t explain why. There was something so personal about them; she felt she had to wait for exactly the right time to do it.
Caitlin tossed and turned, thinking about those books, and after many hours, she didn’t know how many, she finally fell into a fitful sleep.
*
Caitlin stood in a sprawling cornfield, at sunset, the only person left in a vast and empty universe. There was a narrow path, between the cornstalks, and she walked down it, under a sky alight in a million shades of reds and pinks. She walked towards the horizon, knowing for some reason that was where she had to go.
As she did, she saw a lone figure standing there, a man, his back to the sun. A silhouette.
Somehow, deep down, she felt she knew him. She felt, maybe, it was her father.
Caitlin ran, wanting to reach him, to see him.
As she ran, the cornstalks changed to olive trees, their silver branches lit up beautifully in the last light of day. The terrain changed, too, to a mountain, and now she was running up. A chorus of church bells tolled all around her. She felt herself getting closer, and as she did, he grew larger. As she nearly reached him, she looked up and saw he was now mounted on a crucifix. She could still only see his silhouette, and the image terrified her.
Caitlin ran even faster, wanting to free him, to help bring him down off the cross. She felt that if she could only reach him, everything would be okay.
“Caitlin,” he said. “I am with you.”
She was just beginning to see some of the details on his face, and knew that in another moment, she would see clearly who he was.
Suddenly, a flock of bats swooped down from the sky, descending on her like a swarm. They covered her face and hair and eyes, and she swatted them frantically. But there were too many of them: they forced her down to her knees, to the ground, and covered her like ants. She screamed and screamed, but no one heard her.
Caitlin sat upright in bed, breathing hard, sweating. She looked all around in the silence, momentarily forgetting where she was. Finally, she realized: it was a dream.
It had been a terrifying dream, and her heart pounded. She didn’t understand it—none of it seemed to make any sense. It left her sad and scared at the same time.
She jumped up out of bed and paced, too wound-up to go back to sleep. She looked over at the clock: 4:01. It was nowhere near daybreak, yet she was wide awake.
She paced the room, trying to figure out what to do, and felt more restless than she could remember. She felt her dream was more than just a dream: it felt like a message, as if it demanded some sort of action. But what?
She felt she had to do something. But it was 4 AM. Where could she go? What could she do?
She had to throw her mind into something, like an old book, an intense puzzle. Something to engage her. And then, it struck her: the attic. Those books she’d been thinking about before bed.
Her grandmother’s box. Those rare books. The greatest puzzle of all.
Yes, that was exactly what she needed. It was the perfect place to go and get lost, and not bother anyone.
Caitlin hurried out the room and down the hall. She grabbed a flashlight from a drawer and climbed the steep steps to the attic.
As she reached the top, she pulled the cord on a single bare bulb, and it lit a portion of the room in stark shadows. She turned on her flashlight and surveyed the dark corners: the attic was absolutely jammed with stuff. They had been living here so many years, and had never bothered to empty it. It was airless and uninsulated, and Caitlin hugged her shoulders in her pajamas, feeling a chill.
She could barely remember where she’d stored her grandmother’s boxes. She swung the flashlight and searched through from one corner of the attic to the other. She began to walk through it all slowly, going from box to box.
Minutes passed. Just as she was starting to wonder if this was a futile endeavor, she saw it: a small stack of boxes in the corner. Her grandmother’s books.
Caitlin moved some things out of the way—an old high-chair, a crib, an oversized toy horse—
and managed to make her way to the stack.
She opened the first box slowly, methodically, as she’d been trained to do, extracting the books one at a time. She organized them, and catalogued them, indexed them in her head. The professional Caitlin took over.
There were dozens of books, and this was exactly the kind of project Caitlin needed. Already, she could feel her racing mind and heart start to slow.
She sat there, cross-legged, taking her time as she picked through one book at a time. She sneezed more than once, the dust getting to her, but she was happy. She felt an instant connection to her grandmother as she went through each book, feeling each one, running her hands along the spine, feeling the binding, the old paper. She began to relax, as her nightmares became more distant.
An hour passed in the blink of an eye, and by then, Caitlin had already finished going through most of the boxes. As she reached the final box, she went to open it, and was surprised to find it sealed more securely than the others. She pulled at the layers of duct tape, but they would just not give. She wondered why this box would be sealed so much more carefully than the others.
She was annoyed. She got up from her comfortable position and began combing the attic for scissors, anything to help open it.
In the far corner she stumbled upon an old sewing kit, and extracted a small pair of scissors.
They were tiny, but looked like they would do the trick.
She went back to the box and set to work on cutting the tape. It took her several minutes to cut through it with the dull scissors, but finally, she did. She tore the box open.
Inside this box were a dozen books. Most looked the same—typical bindings, mostly classics.
But one book stood out immediately. It didn’t look anything like the others. It was thick, overstuffed and weathered, with leather binding. It looked as if it had been through a war. And it looked ancient.
Caitlin was intrigued. As a rare book scholar, there was almost no book she could not decipher in an instant. Yet this was different. She had never seen anything like it. And that both thrilled and terrified her. How could it be? It was unlike any book she had ever seen, and she had seen it all.
Caitlin’s heart pounded as she reached in and delicately removed the book. She was trembling, and she didn’t know why. It was strange, but somehow, she felt as if she were being led to this box.