It was never my intention to start selling cursed books. I never planned for it becoming an important sideline business for the shop or imagined that it would get us raided by the Drugs Squad. But it did.
It started when a serene and caring customer offered to do a spiritual cleansing on the bookshop. Familiar as I am with all sorts of scammers coming through the door, I was dubious until that lovely customer, Mrs Blavatsky, said that this was a free service offered to friends.
So she burnt sage and whispered a few sacred words while I watched, hands in pockets, useless. And then she stopped and suddenly snatched a book from a shelf.
“This book shouldn’t be here,” Mrs Blavatsky said softly. “Its nothing to worry about but it doesn’t belong here.”
Now I like reading about the occult and the macabre, but I’m still sceptical. “What’s wrong with it?”
“It’s giving off the wrong energy. Sometimes books can entrap the negativity of a previous owner, either by accident or intentionally.” She smiled and handed me the book. It had a picture of a goat smoking a cigarette on the cover. I honestly didn’t remember picking this book up and with a cover like that, I really should have. “You’ll be better to get rid of it Bookman.”
That’s about when Harpo turned up, smiling and curious as usual. “What’s going on?” he asked, clocking the book and the smell of sage.
“I need to get rid of this book. It’s cursed.”
“Cursed!” Harpo screamed. I immediately regretted opening my mouth, realising that Harpo had a reputation as a news carrier that would rival the Sunday World.
“Look it Harpo, don’t say anything about this, right?”
“Cursed?” he repeated. “Is the book haunted then?”
“No, there’s no such thing as a haunted book.”
“So just cursed?”
“Yeah. No. I don’t know.”
“Cursed by a witch Bookman?”
“It’s just got bad vibes and we need to get rid of it cause it could be dangerous,” I told him.
“Where will we put it?”
“Just dump it in the bins by the supermarket.”
“But what if it curses them?” Harpo asked, deeply serious.
“Don't be crazy Harpo,” I laughed. “How could a supermarket get cursed?”
That little bit of illegal dumping should have been the end of it. And it was. Until the Canadian arrived in the shop looking to buy a cursed book.
“A what?” I asked him, thinking I had mistaken his accent.
“A cursed book,” he answered. “I'd like to buy one of your cursed books please. I would prefer one with pictures if possible.”
“Pictures?”
“Yes, cursed pictures. Please.”
Harpo had told everyone in the supermarket about our new range of damned books when he went to bin the offending item. Then he had gone on to the Post Office, the two pubs and the café, spreading the news about haunted books like a gossiping version of Typhoid Mary.
The Canadian was very disappointed to learn I didn’t sell cursed books. So were the next five customers. By the time the sixth came in, I had learnt my lesson. Give the customer what they want and get their money.
“Do you have any cursed books?” a small man with a pink panther moustache whispered.
“Cursed books? Why, yes I do.”
The man smiled broadly and looked from side to side, checking for other customers. Or ghosts. “I’ll take two please.”
“Of course,” I said, handing the little man two battered paperbacks.
His smile withered away and died. “These are…. books…that are… cursed?”
“Yes. Two cursed books.”
The little man with the pink panther moustache regarded both books sorrowfully. “This is a Maeve Binchy novel,” he murmured. “And this one is just a German dictionary.”
“No, not just a German dictionary, but the most horribly hexed German dictionary this side of the Rhine.” This seemed to cheer him up slightly.
“And that Maeve Binchy novel. Well that book is possessed by the ghost of a bride who threw herself off a cliff after finding her new husband having an affair with her sister at their wedding reception. She is doomed to inhabit the text of her favourite romantic book for all eternity.”
“Good God,” the little man cried, handing me a crumpled tenner. “I’ll take them both. I suppose you’ll try to warn me now.”
“No, err I mean, yes, with these books comes great responsibility. You shall be the mortal guardian of Maeve Binchy’s haunted masterpiece and the most cursed German dictionary this side of the Rhine.”
He was happy. So were the others. And I was making money.
I started putting Harpo on the bus and sending him off to random villages to spread his viral gossip contagion about my cursed books. Business was booming and never before were so many haunted Maeve Binchy books in circulation.
“This will end badly,” Stout Trout told me, after he had met two English tourists raving about their new haunted edition of Goodnight Mr Tom. “You’re playing with dark forces.”
“It’s only a bit of exaggerated selling Trout. Kinda like when Amazon pretend they actually care about their customers. None of the books are really cursed. Mrs Blavatsky got rid of the only really suspect book in here.”
“Mrs Blavatsky?” Trout asked, his eyebrow rising into his forehead. “Does she have a boyfriend, do ya know? Fine looking woman.”
When I ran out of Maeve Binchy books, a hard job for any Irish second hand bookshop, I started selling cursed Dannielle Steele and Michael Connelly books, and severely haunted Roddy Doyle Novels and demented fifty shades of grey trilogies (three times the spirits for the price of one.)
Then the Ghostbuster turned up and ruined the whole fecking thing.
Honest Abe was severely drunk and carrying an oversized universal remote control for a TV when he staggered into the shop that day, raving about ectoplasm and wraiths. “I hear you have a ghost problem,” he slurred, falling violently up against a bookcase. “I’m afraid of no ghost.”
“What’s that yoke?” I asked him, pointing at the remote control he was waving about the place.
“This? This is a genuine spectre reading metre, 100% guaranteed to show up any ghosts or phantoms hiding in your shop.”
“It looks like a universal remote that you buy in Dealz.”
“It’s a bloody spectre reading metre, ya gobshite,” Honest Abe spat. “It’s the same model used by ghost hunters in the UK. I bought it for €7.99 on eBay.”
“So it must work then sure.”
“Jaysus, you have a high build up of otherworldly activity in the shop Bookman,” Abe bellowed. “I’d say I might need to call in me friend Mad Joe to help us out. Myself and Mad Joe used to hunt pirate ghosts in Dublin Port in the 1980s.”
“There’s no ghosts here, ya mad hoor,” I told him, worried a sane customer might walk through the door. “We're just getting rid of unmoveable stock with this cursed book gimmick.”
“I think I know when a place is haunted Bookman. I have a BA in ghostbusting from the Open University.”
“You have a BA in telling lies.”
“We're going to have to get the parish priest, a three litre bottle of holy water and the menstrual blood of a young hedgehog to smoke out these ghouls,” Abe roared.
That’s when the two Drug Squad officers arrived. They had ran into Harpo in the middle of Taghmon telling locals about haunted books and cigarette smoking goats. The only logical explanation was an acid house so they had come to check over the bookshop Harpo had been raving about.
“You’re just in time,” Abe cried. “Do yas have any proton guns?”
The two officers glanced at one another, at me and then back at Honest Abe. “Proton guns?” “We're going to need at least four proton guns to capture these spooks. The bloody place is infected with them. Just don’t let our streams cross because, if you’ve ever seen the 1984 movie Ghostbusters, you’ll know how bad that can be.”
“What the hells going on in here?” one of the guards gasped. “What do ya think, ya eejit? When there’s something strange in your local Bookshop, who are ya going call? Ghostbusters!”
And that’s how my cursed book business ended as quickly as it had began, and myself, Harpo and Abe ended up in Wexford Circuit Court on suspicion of the manufacturing of cheap LSD out of mouldy bread in the bookshop.
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