Keeper of the Books (Keeper of the Books, Book 1) (5 page)

For a moment, it seemed like Montgomery’s eyes shined brighter than the flame in the lamp. For some reason, he wanted this item more than anything.
 

“Finally,” Montgomery whispered to himself.
 

The man’s excitement and sense of wonder got Nate curious. He promised himself that he wasn’t going to ask questions…he never wanted to ask questions. But he also had never stolen something like this before. He had also never seen someone so enamored over the likes of a book.
 

“Why is this worth so much to you?” Nate asked against his better judgment.
 

Montgomery smiled, though he didn’t take his eyes off the book. “It would be worth a lot to you if you knew what it really was,” he answered. “This book is special.”

“Apparently,” Nate said. “According to my little brother here, two of my men disappeared because of this thing.”

Montgomery’s dark eyes darted to Nate’s face. “What did you say?”

“I said, two of my men disappeared when they opened this thing. Just vanished into thin air.”

“Oh my,” Montgomery said. “That’s a problem.”

“What’s a problem?” Joe asked.
 

“I mean,” Montgomery continued, “it doesn’t change anything…it’s just unexpected.”

“I’ll say,” Joe snapped. “Why do you want this demon book?”

“Oh it’s hardly a book of the underworld,” Montgomery smiled. “This book here is a treasure. It’s an entire world.” He took a step toward Nate, but stopped short when Joe motioned with his gun.

Montgomery took two steps back. “You weren’t supposed to open it.”

“I didn’t,” Nate said. “But two of my men did.”

“When I hired you, I figured you to be an uncurious man,” Montgomery said. “I didn’t think you would care what the object was. I should have warned you, I suppose. My mistake.”

“Yes, it is your mistake,” Nate said. “Fact is, you would have been right had I been the one to go to the bank and steal it, but I sent my men. Penrod is a hot zone for me. I can’t get near it.”

“I was afraid that if I told you about the book, you wouldn’t have taken the job,” Montgomery said.

Nate sighed. “Money is my incentive, Mr. Montgomery, not the item.”
 

“May I see the book so I can authenticate it?”

“What, so you can disappear and not pay us?” Joe said, shaking his head.
 

“Show me the money first,” Nate said.

Montgomery paused and swallowed. His neck seemed stiff as he stood straighter. He jumped at the loud clicking noise Joe’s gun made when he pulled the hammer back and pointed it at Montgomery’s head.
 

“You better not tell us there isn’t any money,” he said.

“I don’t want you to think that I don’t have the payment,” Montgomery said.
 

“Do you?” Nate asked, his hands on his hips.

“I do,” he said. “But not here.”

Nate’s eyes narrowed. “Where?”

“Somewhere else,” he said. “A place called Galamore.” He smiled when he said this.

“Never heard of it,” Nate said.

“Is that up north somewhere?” Joe asked.

“No, no,” Montgomery answered. “It’s not here. Not in the United States.”
 

“Do you like having fingers?” Joe asked as he gritted his teeth.

“I very much like having my fingers,” Montgomery said. “But you have to understand, I’ve given up everything to get this book. My life savings…my home…anything I have ever aspired for had been spent in my pursuit of this book.”

“I don’t care about any of that,” Nate said. “Where’s our money?”

“In Galamore,” he repeated.

Nate was about to tell him that that was the wrong answer, but a bellowing voice from outside caught their attention. Montgomery cursed and blew out the lamp. Nate moved toward the window and this time it was his turn to swear.
 

“Nathaniel Cole!” the voice shouted. “This is Levi Thompson. I believe you might remember my name. How about you and your friends come out of there?”

“Over my dead body,” Joe said under his breath.
 

Nate looked out the window and could see three men standing next to their horses. One he recognized as the sleazy sheriff of Penrod. The other made him snarl—Amos. The one between the two was the bounty hunter.
 

“There’s just three of them,” Nate said. “The sheriff and Amos don’t pose much of a threat, but Thompson might be a different story.”

“He ain’t better than me,” Joe said.

“Yeah, but we’re the ones cornered,” Nate said.

“I say we try to kill them,” Joe said.

“And add the murder of a sheriff and a bounty hunter to your list of crimes?” Montgomery said. “You will be hunted down no matter how far you run.”

“What’s it to you?” Joe said.
 

“Come with me,” Montgomery said. “To Galamore.”

“If you haven’t noticed,” Nate said, “we’re pretty well stuck in here for the time being.”

“The book,” Montgomery said. “It is Galamore. The book is so much more than a cover and pages. It is an entire world.”

Nate looked away from the window to watch Montgomery. Was the man crazy?

“Just give it to me,” Montgomery said, taking a step closer. “I can show you how the magic works.”

“You mean you’re just going to disappear,” Joe said. “Just like Stew and Ralph did.”

“Exactly,” Montgomery said. “And you can too.” He nodded toward the window. “Maybe you can fight off the lawmen and survive tonight, but there will be other lawmen. There will be more bounty hunters. And when you’re finished with them, there will be an even larger price on both your heads. Every capable man in the country will be looking for you.” He held out a hand. “Please…the book.”

Nate looked down at the leather-bound manuscript in his hands. Could it be true? Was there a world within these pages? An escape? It didn’t make any sense. But the disappearance of Stew and Ralph didn’t make sense either.
 

The sound of gunfire broke into his thoughts and each of them jumped to the floor. Glass and wood particles showered all around them as the sheriff and bounty hunter unloaded their ammunition on the cabin. They didn’t care who they hit. They were going for the kill. Nate looked at Joe as they covered their heads. He had gotten his little brother into all of this. What would their mother have thought of them now? What would their father have thought? They hadn’t been raised to be men like this. Was this what his life had come to? Was he destined to either be hung by a rope or shot through the chest?

But Montgomery offered a third option.

“The book!” he repeated over and over as he covered his ears. “The book is everything! It means more than I could ever explain. You were meant to be a part of it!”

Meant to be a part of it?
Perhaps Montgomery
was
crazy.
 

“Throw me the book, or we will all die!”

The bullets weren’t letting up. The bounty hunter probably wasn’t running out any time soon either.
 

Joe held his pistol up. “We can take them Nate! We’ve been in worse fights than this!”

Nate shook his head. This was supposed to be the last job. He knew all about Levi Thompson. Joe was the best marksman around, but Thompson was never a man to let up. He was a relentless bounty hunter, hungry to catch his prey, especially the Cole brothers.
 

Nate gripped the book and tossed it toward Montgomery. At first, he thought he had made a mistake when the man’s eyes lit up so, but Montgomery quickly recovered once the book was in his hands.
 

The firing ceased. Despite ringing ears, Nate could hear footsteps moving toward the cabin. He pulled a pistol from its holster and got to his knees. He let off three shots before ducking back down as more firing ensued from the outside.
 

“Look at me!” Montgomery commanded. He was flipping the pages of the book. “Normally, you could flip to the end of a book, or to the beginning. But do you see this?”

The pages just kept turning. It never stopped no matter how long Montgomery kept his fingers on the pages.
 

“There is no ending to it,” he said. “Not yet. All you have to do is start reading it and you will be there…away from here!”

The sheriff and bounty hunter were getting closer. Nate could hear them shouting orders at each other between shots.

Montgomery held up the open book. “Look!” He pointed to the pages. One of them was blank but the other…

Nate didn’t understand. On the left page, the text was moving. It was as if some invisible person was writing the text onto the paper as they stared at it. “What is that?”

“That is what is happening in Galamore right now,” Montgomery said. “The following pages are blank because it is the future. It hasn’t happened yet. Turning to the front of the book is the past.”

“Get the dynamite!” they heard the sheriff say.
 

Joe cursed. “We’re out of time.”

“Come with me,” Montgomery said. He began flipping through the pages. He looked up at Joe and Nate one last time before he turned his eyes to the book and started reading.
 

He was like a spirit, the way Montgomery disappeared into thin air. His face was drawn toward the pages like someone was pulling him in. Then, as though he had dived into a pool, he was gone, leaving only Joe and Nate alone in the cabin.

“Did you just see that?” Joe shouted. “That’s what happened to Stew and Ralph! That’s what happened today! Did you see it? Did you see it?”

Nate saw it. And with the threat of bullets over their heads and the mention of dynamite, he feared it might be the only escape.

“We gotta get him, Nate. He’s got the rest of our money!”

Nate had a feeling this went far beyond money. He had just seen the man disappear. That meant either Nate himself was insane, or Montgomery was telling the truth. There truly was a world within those pages—a different world that offered an escape. Not just an escape from the bounty hunter…but from this life perhaps. If this really was a different world, did that mean there were different opportunities? A different life?

Nate nodded toward the book. He had no time to explain his side of things to Joe, but he knew Joe would follow the money. “Then we better get him, little brother. Grab the book.”

Joe shimmied across the floor toward the book where Tyler Montgomery used to be. He closed it quickly and made his way back toward Nate. “I can’t believe we’re doing this.”

“Maybe Galamore is a lot like Montana,” Nate said.
 

“Well, once we get our money we’re coming right back,” Joe said, though it sounded more like a question than a statement.

“Open it up,” Nate said.
 

“You two have ten seconds before we blow your cabin to pieces,” the bounty hunter declared. “One…two!”

Joe opened the book and began reading the text. Nate noticed he wasn’t on the scrolling text like Montgomery had showed them. Did that matter?

But just like Montgomery, Joe started falling inward toward the book, and in a flash, he was gone.
 

“Three!”

Nate reached for the book, closing it as he scooted himself to the back wall of the cabin.

“It’s all right,” Nate said to himself. But was it? What if Montgomery was feeding them lies? But who could just make this stuff up?

“Four!” The bounty hunter had probably already lit the fuse. A single stick of dynamite would make this tiny cabin crumble, and Nate along with it.
 

“Five!”

Nate opened the book and immediately found the page where the text was being written in perfect cursive penmanship. The words he read made little sense to him.

The land was in turmoil, and for the first time for many years, President Jacob DalGaard felt happy. At least he would see one of his enemies hang from the gallows.

“Six!”

The gray elf, Marum, waited in her cell. She thought of the angry faces of the crowd that awaited her. She thought about when the executioner would tie the noose around her neck and ask if she would like a bag over her head. The gray elf would decline. She would die with her eyes open, the world in front of her.

“Seven!”
 

Nate looked up. What was this? He turned back to the page.
 

Marum buried her head into her pillow and began to cry softly. She felt like a coward, but the time was drawing nigh, and her life would come to an end within minutes.
 

“Eight!”

There was no rescue in sight. Not from her brother. Not from her friends. But what if a stranger were to help her? The man…the one who had just appeared in the cell only a few feet away from her. The door was unlocked. He was armed. He could walk out. He could save her. Who was this man?

“Nine!”

That was it. Nothing more was written. As he stared at the pages, he couldn’t help but feel something strange. It was like a breeze, perhaps a draft from the bullet holes in the cabin, but it seemed out of place. Then he could feel his face being pulled toward the open book like a magnet to metal. For some reason he tried to resist the pull but he couldn’t. He almost expected his face to smash into the pages but the impact never took place.

“Ten! Light them up!”

But the explosion never came, and all Nate saw was darkness.
 

Autumn, 903 A.O.M.

Nate awoke with a start and his immediate surroundings were not clear to him, nor could he remember what had happened only moments before. His heart was beating fast like it might be if he had just escaped a firefight or if he had been running away from someone, but such a situation was not present in his mind. He tried his best to summon a memory, some image to give him a clearer understanding of why he was lying on an uncomfortable bed in a dark room. No, not just any room. He was surrounded by stone walls but for the wall across from him which was nothing but metal bars from floor to ceiling. It was a jail cell.