The Two Sided Man

Be warned of the man beneath the hood. The black straggling veil. For he has a wicked tendency to tell you you’re untold future. He will ruin you, he will spite you with his words and cast you truths at the palm of his hand. Be warned of the truths of this two sided man.

           “This book is stupid,” AJ says, skimming through the pages.

           “What book?” I ask

           “Have a look at this,” he hands it over.

           “Wow, this looks old.”

           “Yep,” he points to the title, “Two Sided Man, what does that even mean?”

           The cover of the book is dark red. The letters are dirty gold, embroidered with some sort of silvery color. I flip it open, warning, do not read this if you value your life. “Um, hey AJ, maybe we should put this back.”

           “What?”

           “You know, back on the shelf where you got it.” I close the lid and gently place it on the counter next to me. “The library closes soon anyways, and I have to get home for dinner.”

           “Oh, I get it,” he folds his arms and paces the floor.

           “Get what?”

           “You’re scared,” he laughs a little.

           I put my hands up in the air, “well yeah, how many books do you know of that come with a warning. I’m not trying to die tonight, moms making pie and I’d hate to drag the night down with my death, you know.” 

           “Yeah, alright, fine.” But one more thing before you go.

           “What now?”

           He picks the book up from the table, and flips to a random page, scrolling his finger through the passages. “The two-sided man Is not your friend—“

           “Come on AJ would you just cut it out?”

           “He seeks these words when they are read, till those that hear are long and dead.” He stops and closes the book dropping it on the floor.

           “Yeah, you see what I mean now,” I say.

           AJ stands there for a moment, staring off in the distance. “Any chance I can sleepover tonight?”

           “Uh, I don’t know man—“

           “Come on pretty please!”

           “Okay fine, but on one condition.”

           “Anything!”

           “We go turn this book into the librarians, and then never talk about it ever again,” I say.

           “Done deal.”

           “Okay good, now who’s going to pick it up,” I ask.

           AJ takes his jacket off and wraps it around the book. We both head off to the front counter. A woman in a sharp knitted white cardigan approaches the desk.

           “What do you want?” Her tone is snappy, like the gum she is chewing.

           I look at AJ for a moment, then turn back to her, “we uh, have a misplaced book,” gulp.

           AJ empties his jacket out onto the desk, then backs away steadily.

           She picks the book up to examine it. “Nope, this book isn’t ours, doesn’t have a bar code.” She slaps it back on the counter. “You boys should get going, it’s getting late and I don’t have time for this.”

           “What, your job?” AJ snaps.

           The woman snarled at us, then chased us out of the building with her rolled-up newspaper. It was exactly like the movies.

           When we reach the corner, we stop to catch our breaths. “Man, what a—“beep! Beep! AJ was interrupted by the sound of my mother’s car horn. We both hopped in and said very little on the way home. Most of it was answering my mother’s questions like did you have a good time? We said yes to most of them to pass the interrogation.

           When we got home, we all had a large slice of cherry pie. AJ went over to the fridge and indulged himself with a whole entire can of aerosol whipped cream. That kid is so rude, reminds me of my dad when he gets home from the late shift at Toilet Depot.

           Mom yells through the hall in the dining room “hey, can you boys take the trash out?”

           “Sure mom,” I sigh. We grab the bags and tie the red strings into knots. Then we dragged them out back, the sound of plastic take-out containers shrieking against our ears.

           A rustling sound omits from high up, “Hey, what’s that?” AJ points to the large tree, its branches five times taller than us.

           “I don’t know, a squirrel? We do live in the city you know.”

           “No, someone’s up there,” he says.

           I throw the trash in the bin then look up again. He’s right, it looks like someone is dangling their feet above one of the top branches. But it’s too dark to know for sure.

           “Yeah, I think I see it!” My voice was a little louder than I anticipated, and the feet from which we weren’t so sure was dangling, disappeared.

           AJ didn’t say a word, he just ran inside and let the door slam like a mad man. I would have criticized if I wasn’t right there behind him wailing like a baby.

           After a while, everything settled down. AJ and I made ourselves feel better by playing video games and drinking mountain dew. An hour later, something else happened.

           “Boys!” Mom yells from down the stairs.

           “Yeah, mom?” When we got downstairs, all the lights were turned off. “Mom where are you?”

           “Come to the kitchen,” the voice no longer sounded like my mother's. Rather someone trying to sound like her.

           AJ steps towards the dark frame of the kitchen, and peeps around the corner. He nudges me in the shoulder, “there’s someone hovered over the sink!” He whispers, “I don’t think it’s your mom.”

           “What?”

           “Keep your voice down! It’ll hear you like it did outside!” AJ tiptoes away from the frame.

           I lean over and have a look. The thing twitches its head over its shoulder with two sharp clicks. AJ and I both ran up the stairs screaming until I ran into something.

           “Boys, what is going on? It’s late why you are up? Get to bed now.” Mom was upstairs the whole time.

           “We think there’s someone in the house!”

           “What do you mean?” She asks.

           “Downstairs, we saw someone in the kitchen!” AJ nods his head again, trembling in fear.

           Mom went downstairs to check it out. She comes back up five minutes later, “there’s no one in the house.”

           “A-are you s-sure?” I ask.

           “Yes, I checked every room, now please go to bed.” Mom pulls me off to the side before I could go to my room. “Wait a second.”

           “Yeah, mom?” I ask.

           “What have I told you about renting scary books?”

           “What are you talking about?”

           She pulls out the red-covered book from the library. The same one AJ and I dropped on the counter before leaving. “I found this on the porch, one of you must have dropped it on your way in the house. I expect this from AJ, but not from you.” She flips through the book, “the lies of the two sided man will lure you close…this is unacceptable.” She slams the book shut.

           “But mom that’s not ou—“

           “I don’t want to hear it, go to your room.”

           I walked into my bedroom and closed the door behind me. AJ huddles himself under every blanket in the room, petrified. His only words being, “I wish I was at Disneyland.” Over and over.

           “Out of all things you’ve done AJ, this is pretty crappy.” I cross my arms.

           “What are you t-talking about?”

           “You brought the book back with us, even after I told you not to.”

           “Did not!” He points his finger in my face.

           “Shut up, I know you did, my mom just confronted me about it.”

           AJ stands there with a confused look on his face. Something I had only ever seen when he was telling the truth. I just didn’t want to believe that there was a monster in our kitchen.

           Something taps at the window, “what in the world?”

           AJ stands up and hurdles towards the door, grasping the knob. “Hey, I say we bolt and just go to my house!”

           The tapping gets louder, like hail on glass. I walk over to the curtain and peer through the side. A face stares back at me, its eyes red, and its smile black. “What do you want?” I say.

           It floats away from the window, drifting off into the murky night. Something is written on the front of the window, I lean in angling my head to read the word, “lies.”

           The lightbulb in my room blows, and a devious voice asserts from the corner of my room. It pleads in a joking tone, and cackling laugh. Breathing heavily between the words.

Be warned of the man beneath the hood. The black straggling veil. For he has a wicked tendency to tell you you’re untold future. He will ruin you, he will spite you with his words and cast you truths at the palm of his hand. Be warned of the truths of this two sided man.

The voice bounces around the room in a playful jig. Be warned of me the two sided man. Be warned of me the two sided man. Be warned of us, together we stand. The book drops down in front of us from the ceiling, and I slowly tilt my head.

He is so close to my face that his nose almost touches mine. His foul breath makes the room smell like dead rats. His voice darkens, be warned, be warned. Then he was gone, and so was AJ.