Tom looked across the counter at the elderly man. The man meets his gaze with steely eyes.
Taking a deep breath, Tom folds back the fabric around the ancient looking book, revealing an old leather bound tome with no obvious engraving on the cover.
If this is real, . . . if this is what he says it is, . . . Tom's hand trembles slightly as he opens the cover. Inside he finds strange scrawling writing, written in red on yellowed parchment. It looks almost Arabic, but I don't recognize any of the characters.
Horrible drawings of impossible creatures are drawn across the pages in almost every place that the strange text is inked upon its pages. Carefully, he opens the book to a random page.
The image he lays eyes on is enough to make his breath catch, his heart racing in sudden fear. It's HER. He takes a half step back, nearly knocking the book from the counter as he does so. The dreams, how could she be in my dreams when I've never seen this image before? For a flickering moment, Tom panics, fearful that this is somehow another of the horrible dreams that have been plaguing him in recent weeks.
"And now you believe me," The old man's gravely voice captures his attention.
There's horror in Tom's eyes as he looks away from the book, "How much for the book," The tremor in his voice is clear, but he doesn't care.
The old man's chapped lips curl into a grin that reveals a mouth full of rotting teeth, his breath wafting over Tom and making the young man blanch, "Ain't you curious where it came from?" There's an unkind humor on the old man's tone.
"Where?" Tom barely whispers the word as he steps back toward the book, placing a hand upon it protectively.
Leaning forward, Tom shies away from the old man but doesn't let his hand leave the old leather bound tome. The grin that splits the old man's face seems slightly too wide, his dark eyes widening as he begins to speak again, "Came from a little island out on the East coast, up North. You can barely find the thing on a map," His grin seems to grow even further, "Wanton Cove."
Tom could feel deep down in his gut, he would go to Wanton Cove, and there he would find the answers that he seeks.
Turning his attention back to the book, his eyes drift over the feminine form drawn on the page. Perfect, beautiful, feminine, naked, and every bit as terrible as she is in his dreams. The creature looked human, or mostly human at least. But her face, or lack there of, lacked any defining feature, and dangling between her legs in place of a vagina is a massive equine penis that has no place attached to the human form.
He has to swallow once to form words, "You didn't answer me, how much." Tom is surprised at how firm his tone is.
The old man chuckles softly, "Take it, it's past time it goes back where it belongs."
