Johnny Standish had only gotten the job two months ago, and already he was tired of it. He was tired of the kids, the snotty jocks who never listened to a word he said, who never stopped talking through his lectures no matter how many times he sent them to the principal’s office. He was tired of having to be hall monitor every Tuesday and Thursday at lunchtime.
He was, most of all, tired of having to assign, and grade, the constant, endless parade of essays, of themes, of papers about this or that arbitrary thing. What I Did On My Summer Vacation. My Favorite Football Team. Why a High School Education is Important to Me. Why Moby Dick is a Great Work of Literature.
Oh, Moby Dick. Moby fuckin’ Dick. Johnny remembered when he’d first read Moby Dick, back when he was an undergraduate. He thought it was all right. Certainly not the Great American Novel people made it out to be, but passable. Herman Melville seemed like a decent guy, the kind of guy Johnny might want to have lunch with, even, if only he were alive.
But as an undergrad Johnny had no idea that in a few short years he’d get his teaching certification and would then have to actually teach Moby Dick. He couldn’t have known that he’d have to read long sections of the damn thing to a perpetually and obstinately unexcited class. He didn’t know that he’d have to talk about symbolism so damn much.
Fuck the whale, was Johnny’s conclusion after only a week of the Moby Dick unit. Fuck the whale, and fuck Ahab, and fuck Melville. Johnny decided he no longer wanted to have lunch with that guy. Not no way, not no how.
And maybe Johnny was right to hate Herman Melville. If Melville had never existed, then maybe humanity would still have a chance. Herman Melville and Lanky Robbins. It was all their fault, in the end.
Lanky Robbins was a kid in Johnny’s third-period remedial English course. “Lanky” was not his nickname; it was actually his given name. Johnny could only assume that the kid’s parents had been morons. This made him sympathetic to the kid at first, made him a little willing to overlook his bullying, his transgressions, his disruptiveness. You can’t blame him, Johnny had thought. If I’d been named Lanky, I might have been a goddamn bully too.
So when Johnny was on hall monitor duty and saw Lanky giving kids wedgies, saw him stealing their lunch money, making them lick dirt off the hallway floor, et cetera, Johnny had no real problem with this. In fact, in his particular way, he was a little amused. Johnny was kind of a misanthrope.
But then Lanky started bullying Johnny. And that was where Johnny drew the line.
The issue was Moby Dick. Lanky hated the novel. He complained, loudly, every time Johnny lectured about its “themes” and “characterization.” When Johnny spoke movingly about Ahab and his search for et cetera, Lanky just snickered. Or he made paper airplanes and threw them.
One day, it got to be too much for Johnny to take.
“Stop that, Lanky,” he said. “You don’t stop that, I’m gonna to see to it that you get suspended.”
“Like I care, teach,” Lanky said. “You don’t scare me.”
“Oh yeah?” Johnny said adverbially.
“Yeah. You’re afraid of me,” Lanky said. “I can tell, teach. I can smell the fear, teach. I can smell your sweat. I can taste it, almost. You don’t wanna mess with me, teach. I’ll ruin your life.”
“Okay,” Johnny said. “Good to know.”
The class laughed; nervous titters. Lanky turned red. “You’ll see,” he muttered.
And Lanky was right. Johnny did see. That night was when it all began. That night was when Moby Dick started acting strangely.
Johnny was in his study when he saw it happen – saw the book, which Johnny had tossed carelessly onto the carpet, start rustling, moving, shuddering.
This, Johnny thought, cannot possibly be happening. But it was. The book was moving. The book was . . . alive?
Nonsense. Clearly nonsense. Johnny turned away from Moby Dick, and turned back to the Michael Chabon bullshit he was trying to read.
Johnny was one of those guys: one of those Chabon-reading, NPR-listening, Wes Anderson film-liking white guys. He was one of those guys, and was proud of it.
Johnny was working on a novel himself, actually, on his MacBook, which Johnny felt was really the only device on which novel-writing was possible, in this modern age; as an undergrad, he knew a guy who had tried to write a novel on a Dell laptop and that had gotten him nowhere. Dude should have used a Mac, Johnny felt.
Johnny knew that his novel was going to be better than any bullshit Herman Melville had ever written, Johnny knew that for sure. The working title was One Thousand Miles of Hope Betwixt the Evolutionary Feather and Reality’s Pathway to Oblivion: A Story of The Loss of Innocence in the Silver Age. Johnny had no idea what this title meant, but he figured it was the kind of thing NPR would like.
Johnny’s novel has nothing to do with anything. I don’t know why I rambled about it so much. I’m just that kind of writer, you know? I can’t stop myself. It’s like a faucet I can’t turn off. Anyway. What was I saying. Yeah, Moby Dick.
Moby Dick began rustling again, moving like a rat clawing through some garbage in the parking lot of a shopping mall. Fluttering like an angel that had been unexpectedly shot in the left wing with a pistol. Then the book began to growl, like a growling thing.
Johnny was terrified, and he expressed this terror in the following way: he said, “What . . . the hell?”
Then he opened the door of his study, stepped out. Slammed the door behind him. He could still hear the rustling, the growling. Johnny knew the thought was completely irrational and dumb, but he began to fear for his life. What if the book chewed through the door, like a chewing thing? What if it then ate him, like a thing that eats things?
“Lisa!” he said. “Lisa!”
He ran down the hallway. Lisa, his wife, was sitting in the living room, watching a Lifetime Channel Original Movie.
“What is it, dear?” Lisa said.
“Lisa,” Johnny panted adverbially, “there’s a . . . there’s . . . in the study . . . you, you gotta . . . you gotta see. You gotta see this.”
He grabbed her arm, started dragging her down the hall.
“Honey,” Lisa said, “what on Earth has gotten into you?”
“I don’t know,” said Johnny. “I just . . . don’t know.”
He led her to the study, opened the door again, pointed at Moby Dick.
“Look!” he said. “The book is alive!”
The book lay still. It did not move, not at all.
“Honey,” Lisa said, “you’ve had a long day at work, I know, and – ”
“No! No, I know I sound crazy. But this book was – it wanted to kill me. I swear to god, it wanted to kill me.”
“Listen,” Lisa said adverbially, “it’s late. Go to bed. Everything’s gonna be fine. Don’t worry.”
She squeezed his hand. Johnny squeezed back. He looked into her eyes and remembered why he had married her: because she was that oasis of calm in the midst of his chaotic life, etc. She was the one woman who had truly understood that he was a tortured and creative genius.
That was really what was important to Johnny: he was only interested in forming relationships with women who earnestly believed that he was smarter than they were. This has very little to do with anything, either, but I thought it might give you, Constant Reader, a little insight into Johnny’s character.
Anyway, that night, Johnny had a dream. A horrible dream, a mind-implodingly harrowing one. He dreamt that he was sitting in the middle of a cold and dark room, a room as cold and dark as a cold, dark place, such as Antarctica. He was in this room, sitting in a chair, and he could not move. He was paralyzed.
He wanted to move, though – he felt that he had to, because he could sense danger.
He felt his heart beating faster, faster, rushing like a steam train, if steam trains resembled hearts.
He felt dread creep through him like electricity, if electricity could creep.
Then he saw Moby Dick. The book much bigger than life-size: it was about eight by twenty feet, at least. The book was huge and it had jaws.
Behind the book was Lanky Robbins.
“You’re gonna get it now, teach,” Lanky said. “I told you not to mess with me, didn’t I?”
Then the book started chewing, its jaws closing on Johnny’s leg, gnawing at the flesh. Excruciating pain tore through Johnny’s nerves; he let out a long, ragged scream, a scream that no one, except Lanky and the book, seemed to hear. Lanky just laughed, and the book started snorting, as if it, too, were amused.
The book had made it all the way up to Johnny’s knee. He felt the snapping of bone – that was his femur giving way. He looked down and saw the blood gushing out of the wound, and felt sick. He wanted to scream again, but found that he couldn’t – it was as if his vocal cords were now just as paralyzed as the rest of him.
All he could do was watch – watch as this book devoured his flesh.
He woke up in the coldest, sweatiest sweat imaginable. He was shaking so hard that the waves of vibration he sent through the mattress woke up Lisa, sweet, innocent, loving Lisa.
“What’s wrong, Johnny?” she said. She put a hand on his shoulder. “You had a nightmare.”
“I had a – the book, Lisa,” Johnny said adverbially. “The book – we have to – we gotta, I’m getting out of bed right now.”
“You will do no such thing,” Lisa said. “Go back to sleep. Everything’s fine.”
“I hope so,” Johnny said. Then he said it again, for no clear reason: “I hope so.”
The next morning, Johnny ran into Lanky Robbins, who was on the way to his first-period class. Lanky was grinning widely, hugely, obscenely.
“Hey, teach,” he said. “How’d last night go? Was everything fine?”
“Everything was just fine,” Johnny said. “I don’t know what you’re – ”
“I think someone had a little nightmare,” said Lanky. “I think someone almost pissed his pants.”
“You – what?”
“Teach almost pissed his pants! Teach almost pissed his pants!”
Five or six kids were staring at them.
“That’s quite enough, Lanky,” Johnny said. “Go to class. You’ll be late.”
“Yeah, okay, teach,” said Lanky. “Let me warn you, though. You don’t have long to live. And neither does Lisa.”
“What? Lisa? How did you know my wife’s name?”
“The book’s gonna take her out, Johnny,” said Lanky. “Moby Dick. Moby Dick‘s gonna eat her.”
“What!” said Johnny.
“You left your copy of the book at home, didn’t you, teach? Too scared to bring it to class with you, right? Well, who’s at home right now, teach? Lisa is. Isn’t she?”
“What!” said Johnny again.
“She might still be alive when you get back,” Lanky said. He grinned again. “Or she might not. Later, teach!”
Johnny knew he had to rush home – to hell with his job. He didn’t care if he lost it; he had to make sure Lisa was all right.
He got in his car, gunned the engine, and sped down backroads, around hairpin turns and dangerous corners, through the foggy streets of Whatever, Maine, which is, by the way, the town where our story is set. Sorry I didn’t mention that earlier.
When Johnny got home, he was afraid – he knew what Lanky had said was objectively ridiculous, and yet . . . and yet . . .
He opened the front door.
“Lisa!” he said. “Lisa! Where are you?”
No reply. He walked to the living room. Nobody there. The television was turned off.
The study. He had to check the study. He went down the hall, opened the door, and . . .
The room was splattered with blood. And hair. Lisa’s hair. In the corner was Moby Dick, chomping on . . . oh god, Johnny thought, a sliver of flesh. Was that what that was?
The book began hopping up and down when it saw him. Then it belched, loudly. Johnny wanted to vomit, and in fact slammed the study door closed, ran to the bathroom, and did so, right in the kitchen sink. It was green. Just in case you wanted to know what color it was.
Johnny crept back to the door and listened. He could hear scrabbling at the other side – the book, trying to – was it trying to get out? What if it started chasing him?
Johnny had to put as much distance as possible between himself and the book. He knew that.
He sprinted out the front door, and almost collided with Lanky Robbins, who was standing in his front lawn, again grinning that infuriating grin.
“You son of a bitch!” Johnny said. “You killed my wife!”
He swung a fist; Lanky dodged.
“Moby Dick killed your wife, teach. Not me. I just helped.”
“How did you do that? What have you done?”
“Powerful stuff, teach,” said Lanky. “Powerful black magic. You wouldn’t understand.”
And then Lanky disappeared – vanished in thin air.
Johnny got into his car. He knew what he had to do: he had to get a drink, that was what he had to do.
So Johnny Standish went to the bar, Whatever’s local watering hole. The barman was a guy Johnny knew fairly well, an older black man named Charlie. Since he was black, Charlie spoke like an offensive stereotype.
“Hey there, Johnny,” said Charlie. “Ya wantin’ the usual?”
“Yeah,” Johnny said. “The usual.”
Charlie made “the usual,” whatever it was, and passed the mug to Johnny, who took a big swig.
“How’s yer wife been, Johnny?”
Johnny laughed adverbially.
“Dead,” he said. “She’s dead.”
“What? Dead? What done happened?”
“I’ll tell you,” Johnny said, and did.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Charlie said. “Black magic, ya say?”
“Yeah. I wish I knew . . . what. What the magic was. How to reverse it. I feel like I’m not safe in that house anymore. I’m afraid to touch the book, afraid to go near it, even.”
“Don’t worry,” Charlie said. “I know just what to do ’bout that black magic.”
“You do?”
“Sure,” Charlie said. “I gotta book o’ black magic myself. Been handed down in my family for generation after generation. Book goes by the name of the Necronomicon.”
“Pretty good name for a book of black magic.”
“I know, right? Anyway, Johnny, we’ll jest head on down to my place and look up how to reverse the curse that kid done put on your Moby Dick.”
So they went to Charlie’s place and found the Necronomicon. It was big, thick, dusty. It had a dark leather cover.
“Here,” Charlie said, “we’ll be needin’ to perform a rite, a ritual of sorts. We’ll need to summon a demon, and ask that demon to exorcise the demon what be in that Moby Dick book o’ yours.”
“Okay,” Johnny said. “What’s the procedure for that?”
“It’s a little complicated,” said Charlie, “and it involves makin’ . . . a sacrifice.”
“A sacrifice?”
“Yeah.”
“What kind of sacrifice?”
Charlie told him. Johnny puked again, all over Charlie’s floor.
But if he had to make that sacrifice to get the demon out of Moby Dick, then so be it. He wanted to get rid of that demon, wanted to kill it. He had to avenge Lisa, sweet, beautiful, darling, dead Lisa.
So after the sun had set (“It’s real important ta do the rite after dark,” Charlie had said), Johnny and the barman made their way back to Johnny’s house. They crept through the door, then down to the study. The door was still closed. A faint scrabbling could still be heard on the other side.
“Here goes,” Johnny said. Charlie nodded and gave him an encouraging pat on the shoulder.
Johnny opened the door and stepped into the center of the room. The book started jumping up and down again when it saw him, squeaking with a kind of hungry glee. Johnny could swear that it was even drooling.
Johnny took a piece of chalk out of his pocket and drew a pentagram on the floor. Then he looked at Charlie, who nodded again. Johnny cleared his throat.
“Great Satan,” he said, “we call upon thee. Send us one of thy messengers, please, thanks.”
The pentagram began to glow. Then a reddish light suffused the room. The book seemed to cower in fear, which Johnny considered a good sign.
“I am the archdevil Raziel,” said an impossibly-deep voice. “Why is it that you have summoned me to this place?”
“Well, there’s this book, see,” Johnny said. He briefly explained the situation.
“I see. And what will you give me? What is your sacrifice?”
“This,” Johnny said, and he took a deep breath. Then he reached into his pocket again, pulled out a knife, and cut his nose off. It hurt kind of a lot.
Johnny threw his nose into the center of the pentagram, which began to glow even more fiercely, and also started emitting, you know, smoke and shit.
“Not a great sacrifice,” the voice said, and for a moment Johnny’s heart sank. “But it’ll do.”
The reddish light in the room intensified, and Johnny watched in amazement as an actual, bona fide demon appeared in the center of the pentagram.
“Where’s the book?” the demon said.
“Uh, over there,” said Johnny. He pointed.
“Alright,” said the demon.
It stabbed the book with its pitchfork. The book seemed to scream, and then it shriveled into ash.
“Is that all?”
“Yeah, that’s – ” Johnny began to say, but then he looked, in horror, as the book . . . seemed to reappear, in that same corner of the room.
“It’s back!” he said. “I thought you killed it! You lied!”
“Don’t you talk to me that way,” the demon said. “But yeah, it does appear to be back. Lemme take a look at it.”
The demon did so.
“Okay,” it said, “it’s not the same book. It’s a child.”
“It’s a . . . what?”
“Sometimes,” the demon said, “sometimes these possessed books, they fuck. And they have offspring. I think that’s what happened here. I think that Moby Dick book probably boned that one.” The demon pointed at the Michael Chabon novel on Johnny’s desk.
“Oh,” said Johnny. “Well, uh, can you take care of this one, too?”
“Yeah, it ain’t no thing,” said the demon. It stabbed the second book with its pitchfork.
“Are there any others?”
“Let’s wait and see.”
They waited a good several minutes. No other books appeared.
“Looks like we got the situation contained, then,” said the demon. “What are you giving me for the second book?”
“What am I . . . what?”
“Look, you paid me for the first book, right? You gave me your nose. Not a great sacrifice, but I took it. Now I need to be paid for the second book. What are you gonna give me for that?”
“I, uh . . . I don’t know,” said Johnny.
“What do you mean, you don’t know? Fuck you, man. You know what? I’ll take him.”
Before Johnny could say a word, the demon rounded on Charlie and stabbed him with its pitchfork. Johnny watched Charlie scream and then dissolve into ash.
“A lot tastier than that goddamn nose,” said the demon. “Anyway, yeah, be seeing you.”
It disappeared.
“Oh, Charlie,” Johnny said. “I’m sorry.”
“But are you really, teach?” said a voice. “Are you really?”
“Lanky, you bastard! Where are you?”
“Right here, teach, right here in your hallway. I’ve been here all along, watching. It’s kinda cute that you thought you could stop what I started. It really is. I wanna show you something.”
Lanky opened the hall closet. At least a hundred snarling, snapping books fell out.
“Turns out,” Lanky said, “Moby Dick and that Michael Chabon shit – they fell in love, teach. They were very happy together. All that Michael Chabon book ever wanted was a partner who’d make it feel smart, intelligent, special. And that’s what it got. Those books were lovers, teach, and these – these are their progeny.”
“Progeny?” Johnny said. “How do you know that word? You’re failing remedial English.”
“I’m not who you think I am, teach. A high school student? Hardly.”
“Who are you then?”
“That’s not for you to find out. Nothing, right now, is for you to find out. Not anymore. I’ll leave you to your books.”
And Lanky disappeared, again, into thin air.
Johnny backed into the corner of the study, and watched the books close in on him. He saw them leap through the air, felt them seize onto his ankles, his knees, his elbows, his arms, his face. Biting at him, tearing and rending flesh.
He felt the blood begin to flow. The books ripped away bits of scalp, slices of skin. They snapped bone and serrated muscle.
They picked Johnny clean, they chewed on him until there was almost nothing left. Then they burped, collectively – a huge sound, a meta-sound. And they bounced through the house, chewing through doors and windows, escaping into the cool night air, chewing through everyone and everything they saw with their slavering book-fangs, fucking occasionally to keep their numbers strong.
There are now more Moby Dick progeny on Earth than there are people. The population gap widens every day. Lanky, from the mothership, watches this happen, and he smiles.