A belief is not merely an idea the mind possesses; it is an idea that possesses the mind.

-Robert Oxton Bolt

  The store had no name. In the history of the city, through its busts and booms, its highs and lows, it remained, untouched, changing only insofar as it changed hands, acquired help, let its stock grow and shrink. But it never had a name.

 She stood behind the counter, fiery mane tied neatly into a ponytail, thin librarian-esque glasses perched precariously at the tip of her button nose, eyes darting back and forth over the lines of a first edition. White dress shirt, khaki pants, penny-loafers. Madeline Sekiguchi, Japanese in last name only. Thin, after a fashion, if that fashion included a dire need to eat a pound and a half worth of porterhouse steak every night for the next week.

 The 'help' sat, fighting with herself, using every ounce of herself, every last 'good to the last drop' of the coffee that had long ago replaced the blood in her veins, to keep from drooling over the pages in the volumes around her. Outfit an assault, a drive-by shooting, splash of conflicting colors, hair, brown, a shoulder-length mess, for once combed, eyes, lightning blue. The disorder to Madeline's order, the bride to Madeline's groom, in both the figurative and literal senses. Sarah Joseph.

 “Lunch, dearheart?” Madeline. Soft, warm, genuine.

 Rachel a moth to a flame, led, for once, by her nose. Flirting – a challenge-response system; author by one, famous line the other. Rachel tried, emphasis on the latter word, to feed a forkful of salad to Madeline. It missed, naught but entirely, missing the Dumas by an inch.

 Blushing laughter by Madeline, utter horror, near tears, Rachel. A hand, a gentle touch, on a shoulder. Grounding, centering. Back to Earth, back to their little, quiet world of books, their text-filled Xanadu.

 It was then, that precious moment, their brief instance of being the only people on Earth, that he entered. Clothes torn, reeking of days', weeks', old trash. Beard parsecs long, hair to match, both matted with filth. Bathed in the aftershave of poverty, the cologne of the streets and sewers and the dark places the above-grounders, the non-homeless, know yet don't acknowledge exist.

 And he was clutching a book.

 Great thought the couple as they quickly disengaged themselves from the discrete yet not discrete kiss, broke their moment of public yet private intimacy over Joyce, the Algonquin Roundtable, and a Caesar salad (heavy on the mustard powder, light on the anchovies). A loner, a streetsman, here to sell something he's stolen for booze cash.

    “I'm here to rid myself of the book that has caused me my downfall, miss, not to obtain any money. All I ask is that you give it a home, here, and that it not fall into the hands of those who would seek to use it as anything other than a piece of history, pre-history, praeternatural history, that should never have happened. I ask no money, just that you take the book off my hands.”

    A mind reader? A flight of Rachel's fancy. No she corrected herself. Just a desperate man, schizophrenic, most likely, blaming the book for his condition, thinking ridding himself of it will make the voices, the visions, stop.

    “I assure you, miss, there are no voices, no visions. Just the book rewriting itself, copying itself, in every blank book I own – owned. I used to be a writer, like you yourself, miss. Keep this away from everything blank.”

    Long pause. Awkward silence, becoming of a British comedy. “Fine.” Madeline. Defeated, almost. Cynical, always. That moment, especially so.

    The book on the counter, the man, his smell and odd ways, left, the bell on the store with no name's door the only sound. Berlioz's 'March to the Scaffold' thought the pair.

    The book defied all rules of books.

    The cover and spine were worm-eaten hand-tanned leather, aged, blackened. Centuries old by appearance. Its title had once been carefully etched in gold. The paper-cut on Madeline's finger, unbandaged, as that day was solely for the updating of the computer's database, bled a drop onto the leather.

    That was all it took.

    Leather renewed itself, erasing, undoing, centuries of damage. The clock turned back. She didn't notice as she was already inspecting the book's second curiosity – the paper of the pages. Acid-free wasn't invented until after world war two, she mused. A centuries-old binding with paper that was, at best, sixty years old.

    A second paper-cut. The pages aged. By then, she was inspecting the ink. Faded, as if the sands of time had been the Sahara, sandstorm after sandstorm blowing over the letters, the words, the phrases, the sentences and paragraphs. The blood from her finger renewed the ink, making it like new.

    The only thing that remained unchanged was the language of the text – classical Latin, prose. She mused at the curiosity of the title. De Rerum Praeternaturalis. 'Of Matters Praeternatural'. Eyes scoured the lines, looking for a meter, a pattern, clues to the author – Juvenal? Seneca? Appulius Claudius? Not Ovid. Pliny the Elder? A translation of some long-lost Greek or... “Gaaaaaaah!” Her mind was flooded, dam after dam breaking, Noah's ark overturned and sunk, with images of creatures that never were, not in man's time, warring, feeding, of what she assumed to be gods, playing some form of chess-like game. Yet man was there, observing it all, writing this history of prehistory, this natural philosophy of pre-nature, in the books she had before her.

    Weeks passed. A connection in London had received a sample of the cover, one of the pages, and a scraping of the ink. Carbon-14 dating. Madeline held in her hand the results, Rachel on tiptoe to peek.

    'Samples all show the same source age: 2020-2050. This doesn't make sense, Maddi. Is this some prank? This book shouldn't exist yet!'

    Panic. Mugger armed like Rambo standing before you panic. The pair rushed to the cemetery and buried the book in halloed ground. Holy water, a cross, various and numerous holy symbols. Incantations in all the languages the pair could find.

    The next day. There it sat as they unlocked the store with no name. It returned itself to exactly where it was before its burial. The pair went outside to find a building under construction, to find concrete in a foundation.

    The homeless man, in a three-piece suit. Tooth marks, chunks of flesh missing. No blood. Dead. Mummified.

    Their horror was minimal. Madeline was a fan of horror movies, which she, on occasion, inflicted on Sarah, a sappy romance fan. The two, after the cemetery incident, were numb. He was dead, reversal of fortune or no.

    Concrete found, they again set out to bury the book. Same ritual, plus as many others as they could find – banishments, exorcisms, blessings, prayers, wishes.

    The next day. There it sat. A smelting plant. A pool of liquid steel. It caught fire easily enough.

    The next day. There it sat.

    Resigned, Rachel and Madeline placed the book under lock and key in the safe, the safe with all of the books they, like every other owner of the store with no name, had used for books they would never sell. It was empty now. Madeline's policy was that books are orphaned children, book buyers parents looking to adopt. All books fare game. Except this one.

 In it went, door closed.

 A quick application of thermite later (Madeline forced herself not to ask how Rachel knew how to make the stuff), the safe was sealed. Imprisoned, for all time. Crisis averted.

 The next day, they received a shipment of 'My Friend Sally' diaries, named after the doll that was the 'hot toy' of the season. A girl, five or six, blue dress, blond hair in pig tails, bought the last remaining copy.

  At home, the book, the accursed De Rerum

Praeternaturalis, rewrote itself in the newly-acquired

journal.