Rob Vagle is a veteran short story writer who is becoming a regular contributor to these pages, something I am very happy about. I feel lucky to have his work here.

His stories are all different and all powerful in a Pulphouse sort of way. I can’t say much about this story for fear of ruining it. Just enjoy and find as many Rob stories as you can. You won’t be disappointed.

I suggest you go to https://robvagle.com/ to find out a lot more about his fantastic stories and books.

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The little library on Beacon Street, in front of the boarded-up and vacant house (of all absurd places), was new. Angie Beckensol, on her daily late afternoon stroll, did not find the little library there yesterday.

It was summer and she wore shorts, with mosquitoes nipping at her bare legs. The air was thick and humid even when she moved, but now that she stood still, she was sweltering, and sweat dripped down her forehead into her eyes.

She wiped her face with her hands. The air smelled like honeysuckle, everything sweet and innocent.

She stood on the cracked, broken, and upturned sidewalk from the Sissoo trees planted along the street decades ago. Weeds shot up from the cracks in places, some as high as her waist. The front yard of the house, beyond the low adobe wall, was choked with weeds. Angie didn’t care for cliches, but in this case she couldn’t stop the thought rocketing through her head: it’s a jungle in there.

The house stood back on the lot with a garage completely covered by an overgrown ficus tree, the limbs so low they completely obfuscated the garage. She couldn’t tell if it was a one-car garage or two.

The house was red brick with shuttered windows. The glass was gone on the first floor, and the second floor the windows were boarded up with plywood. The front door had plywood over it as well. Somebody had tagged it and tagged it seriously: swoops and swirls created some kind of elegant design that Angie couldn’t comprehend. She wasn’t even sure if the tagger was communicating anything. Yet, the design (hell, she thought, let’s just call it a tag. Let’s not give the tagger too much credit) looked purposeful, and the more she looked at it, she thought, beautiful.

An outline in blue paint of a human figure walking into a doorway, an outline over an outline, until the lines went beyond the plywood and vanished. The reverse was true as well, the outline went inside the human-shaped figure, growing smaller and smaller, inward and further inward. It took her mind a moment to see it.

She wouldn’t have stopped to look at the tag on the front door plywood if she hadn’t been surprised by the little library out front.

The tagging looked painted fresh. New. Just like the little library.

The little library itself looked better than the house. It was made out of the same red brick and had a peaked roof that looked like it was made out of actual roof shingling. One piece cut for each sloped side. The front of the little library had two doors with wooden knobs and each door had four panes of glass framed by wood strips like those Colonial-style windows, only this one was wood grain, not painted.

Somebody had taken care and love in the making of the library. She had heard of libraries built out of dead trees and antique milk cans. She hadn’t seen a brick one before.

The little brick library before her was supported by a metal pole. She couldn’t see the ground for all the tall weeds and the half adobe wall.

The glass doors were clean and inside she could see the titles awaiting for patrons who passed by. Titles like, Take Two, They’re Huge; War During Peace Time; The Secrets to Your Universe.

Strange titles, Angie thought. They were hardback with glossy, silver lettering on the spines.

She never liked this dilapidated, vacant house. She was glad it wasn’t on her own street and she only passed by this house out of amusement, to see how bad this place could get before anybody, somebody (the city?) would do something about it.

A little free library wasn’t bad. One could say it was an improvement.

She reached over the low wall and pulled open the little glass doors. The smell of dust and old paper rushed into her face. She looked at some of the other titles: Of Dice and Gin; Humbled and Kindness; To Whom the Wind Blows. She wrinkled her nose at those titles and pulled out one of the others: The Secrets of Your Universe.

The book, like all the books inside, had no cover jacket. The cover was hard and solid, and felt smooth under her fingertips. The feel of it took her back to childhood when she used to check books out from the library. There was an old, solid feel to it. This made Angie comfortable. Instantly. She looked at the front cover where the silver letters were embossed. There was no author name.

She opened the front cover and the pages were crisp and clean. No food stains, or sweat marks. No fingerprints. As if the book had never been read. There was no publishing information, no copyright page. There wasn’t a table of contents.

However, there was a title page with the title in bold, black letters.

Upon turning the page, Angie fell down the rabbit hole.

For the next page was blank, and while she wasn’t aware of it, her imagination filled the spaces between the covers, mirroring the things between her ears.

The Secrets of Your Universe were all her own. She should have known these all along, hindsight being what it was. But she couldn’t have stated to anyone what those secrets were because they were hidden.

In the book, the secrets lay bare.

On the page, Angie saw herself in her home.

Her taste buds were exploding with rosemary and thyme. Garlic mashed potatoes seemed to melt in her mouth. She was sitting at the dining room table with the family. Gerald, a supervisor for the grounds department at the university, sat at the opposite end of the table. He wore his maroon work shirt, with the name patch. If she had noticed sooner—before dinner was served—she would have told him to change out of that shirt. She hated it when he wore the work shirt at the dinner table. It seemed out of place. She felt out of place. As if they didn’t live in a home, but forever trapped inside Gerald’s place of employment.

At each side of the table sat their children. To Angie’s left, Hope, the sullen teenager with the long bangs hanging in front of her eyes. The bangs were dyed purple from the rest of her amber hair. To Angie’s right, Zack, the twelve year old in a round body. He could eat them out of house and home. Zack was short for his age, but his weight was out of control. The doctor hadn’t said he was obese, but overweight, and Angie had disagreed with him. Zack needed a diet, and exercise, and she made sure he had only five hundred calories worth of food on his dinner plate.

Tonight, that was a small portion of garlic mashed potatoes, twice that portion for the boiled green beans, and small slice of roast beef. Zack drank from a glass of whole milk.

Their dining room had windows that looked over the backyard, which was nothing like the yard at the abandoned house on Beacon Street. From her window she could see the sprinklers throwing spires of water (like spider legs) over the lawn in the low light of dusk. The green grass and oak tree were under an orange glow.

Their dining room was lit with wall sconces also giving the interior an orange glow. The walls were lined with curio cabinets and a buffet board. The curio cabinets had fine, hardly used china, some with an old sailing ship motif. The buffet board had a cooling pan of brownies covered with a white towel.

She could smell the brownies, sweet, hot, and decadent. Zack wouldn’t get one for she hadn’t baked sugar-free. Zack never liked the artificial sweeteners.

“This is good, Ange,” Gerald said as he stuffed his mouth with more roast. He never called her honey, or sweetie. Always Ange for short.

“Thank you, dear,” she said.

She looked at Hope, her eyes hidden behind those ridiculous purple bangs. Hope was pushing those green beans around plate, careful to avoid touching the mashed potatoes. Hope had chosen not to eat the roast.

“Don’t be such a finicky eater,” Angie said. “Clean your plate before you go upstairs.”

Hope blew at her bangs, and Angie saw her daughter’s eyes for a moment. A pop of blue irises shooting daggers at her mother.

“Yes, Mom,” she said.

Hope wore a band shirt. Some musical group called Slipknot. The shirt was black and that, Angie acknowledged, fit her daughter’s mood.

She wondered why they named their daughter Hope. Everything about her was dark, dramatic, and pointless. No hope there.

Angie caught her tongue before she could call her daughter hopeless. It wouldn’t be the first time she called her that.

In that moment, the first secret of her universe was revealed. She relished the digs, like knives prying into the emotional well-being of her children.

Calling Hope hopeless caused her daughter such anguish. Sometimes that resulted in Hope screaming back at her. Maybe a slamming door after fleeing the room. Hope couldn’t get the joke. It was meant to be playful, joking.

Her children should not take things so seriously.

Then there was Zack. Sometimes Angie called him Chubs or Chubby Checker. That usually made him cry. Angie always thought teasing should change someone, that if they didn’t like the name (and the name did fit), they should change themselves.

Her children never could see that.

She wondered about Zack. Gerald, was a strong, silent type. A brooder. He was not a crybaby at all. Where did Zack learn to be so emotional?

“What’s going on, Ange?” Gerald asked. “You’re staring off into space. Earth to Curiosity. Come in.”

This made Angie smile.

“You know that old abandoned house on Beacon Street? It had a little library out front.”

“A little library?” Gerald said. “Like a little building? With books in it?”

“Literally, Gerald,” she said. “It’s a lending library. A lot of neighborhoods have those. Homeowners put them in their front yards.”

“Gotcha. This one is in front of a house nobody lives in.”

“There were books in there.”

“Like what, Mom?” Zack asked. He liked to read. Thrillers, science-fiction, and even horror.

“I looked at a book called The Secrets of Your Universe,” she said.

“We know your secrets,” Gerald said.

Gerald’s fork clattered on his plate. There was nothing left except for a spoonful of mashed potato. His face was serious. His eyes bore into Angie’s and she didn’t like the feeling of that at all.

“You know nothing of unconditional love,” he said.

“That doesn’t sound like you,” she said.

“I’m always somebody I shouldn’t be,” he said. “I should always be like this person or that person, not who I am at all. Nothing about me is right in your eyes.”

“He’s right,” Hope said.

When Angie looked at her, Hope’s bangs were brushed aside and her daughter’s blue eyes pierced her heart. She felt an ache in her chest, like there was a lump inside.

“You never consider our feelings. You can thump on them until you’re delirious. You never think that it hurts,” Hope said. “That’s why everything seems so pointless.”

“Don’t take everything so seriously,” Angie said as Hope’s bangs fell across eyes once again.

“You always say that, Mom,” Zack said. “Maybe you don’t take things seriously enough. I eat because I’m afraid of you. It gives me comfort, when you only bring pain.”

“Well,” Angie said, “this is just ridiculous. Pick on your mother day!”

“You’re not my mother,” Gerald said. “Thank the universe for huge favors.”

The ache in her chest grew like a hot explosion as if she had drunk a shot of alcohol. She had never thought of herself as Gerald’s mother (her mother-in-law was piece of work, and an alcoholic), but she’d hoped she was motherly. Or had motherly intentions.

“None of these things are true,” Angie said.

Her family spoke in unison, “All of these things are true.”

Then she slammed the book shut and found herself standing in front of the little brick library on that cracked and broken sidewalk. She swatted at the mosquitoes on her bare legs and then felt the welts from the bites there.

The light seemed darker, the sun lower in the sky, the shadows longer.

She shuddered at the book in her hand and instead of replacing it inside the library, she threw the book into the weeds on the other side of the adobe wall.

The secrets of herself hadn’t been known before. Not known to her. She started gasping for breath and she waved her hand in front of her face. She couldn’t believe she was hyperventilating.

She caught the title of another book inside the library: Humbled and Kindness. With sweaty palms, she opened the doors and pulled that book from the shelf.

She opened the book and pieces filled inside her, parts of her she hadn’t known existed. Pieces she hadn’t been aware of missing.

And she fled Beacon Street, away from that little brick library, clutching that book to her chest.