The New Card Captors: Chapter 1

 

The Book, the Verse, and the Release

White blanketed the street. Another one of those Christmases, Caleb thought to himself. As a company van sped by spewing out the latest Christmas jingles designed to lure people to spend all their cash, he felt annoyance; Caleb new better than to succumb to this capitalist rush. He just hated it all – capitalism aside, Caleb really had it bad for the holidays, and to think it was more special this year. After five years, a stray northern wind has brought snow to their town on Christmas season – white Christmas.

He grew up in your typical suburb, with a very typical family. The mom stayed at home, the dad worked in the city – so plain, so cliché. He had no siblings, which, you can only speculate to be the reason for his very unfriendly disposition. He had no friends growing up, so to speak. Caleb lived his childhood all by his self. The early years of high school wasn't bad, he passed by barely noticed. You'd expect that a good looking boy like him – blond hair, crystal blue eyes, muscular physique and that beautiful smile – would have gotten him in the cool kid’s clique, the populars, but it didn't. This may be owed to the fact that he never really showed that smile of his, not to anyone. This amounted to him being friendless, except for a very queer boy, Jason. But more about him later.

He was very athletic. His mom was an ex gymnastics champion, so he had weekly trainings in his mother's ex-gym. He never competed though. He didn’t really see the point in letting himself be judged by people he didn't know. But he still trained because he sort of felt there was a purpose to it which he never seemed to figure.

At this point, it's obvious that Caleb was a boy who just kept to himself. Christmas being very social thusly repelled the boy. But he didn't know that this one Christmas would be one he'd actually like.

Our little tale starts a week before the big “2-5”. He was busy with a part time job he took up in an old antique book shop called Hiro's. It was owned by this Japanese man, Hiro, who came over and made the town home after the Second World War had subsided. He decided to work through the holidays to give him an excuse away from visiting cousins and the ominously cheery folk at home. Aside from making the job an alibi, he seriously loved books. The smell of old paper succumbing to its acid, he felt was one of the few things in the world that was real and couldn’t be purged by any darkness, any evil.

It happened when his boss, asked him to do overtime for a couple of hours to finish cleaning out the cellar since by the next day, a shipment of new books was to arrive, and they needed as much space as possible. Caleb didn't mind, in fact he jumped into his boss' request cause he knew his, very touchy feely, kiss-kissy, Aunt from Florida was arriving then.

Hiro left him few instructions; clean up. Lock up and not to touch anything he didn't have to, especially the old books. The then clock struck 7 – time to close shop. After flipping securely the we're-open-we're-close door sign, he then went down into the cellar. Duster in one hand and a a frilly pink apron in the other, he headed down with a sense of mission. But just when his foot touched the cellar floor, he felt a slight tremor which then grew quickly into a fully-fledged earthquake. The ground was shaking so hard that a lone shelf, which seemed to be an accident just waiting to happen, it being really packed with just these gigantic books, got knocked down. Great! More to clean-up, he thought. The shaking stopped for a bit so he continued to the mess which lay before him. But then the shaking apparently wasn't over just yet, and now it was a notch more intense. Fearing that the building would soon cave in, he took to hiding under an old oak desk. As soon as he ducked under the table though, the shaking stopped. He waited it out for a few more minutes, just to be safe from some stray aftershocks. When he finally supposed that it was over, he stood up into what seemed to be a promise of a long night. A shell of books splattered all over the floor, some old Japanese bowls shattered – it was a mess and he was to clean it up.

It took him about an hour before he could get the shelf up, the shattered bowls thrown out and the books piled up. The next task was to re-arrange the books on the shelves. Hiro was very particular with arrangements, and Caleb knew that he'd better leave the books on the floor than put them up in the wrong arrangement. So off he went into the tedious task of rearranging around 50 humungous books into the shelf. Each, by the way weighed like a tonne.

Caleb already mastered this art, having been made to arrange the books in the shop for far too many times, he felt was really necessary – Hiro was a slave driver. So he went about it in a breeze. A – B – C. It seemed the shelf was of Antique Japanese leather backs. Some were as thick as Oxford dictionaries and the others as small as pocket manga. D – J – K – S – T – X – Y – Z. Done. He looked around to make sure his task was really complete. But sure enough, he wasn't. One book was left unshelled, it laid there, under the desk where hid under. He barely noticed it when he was down there, but now it was quite hard to miss. It had this aura about it – like it was a person. It was as if it had eyes and was staring him down questioning his very existence. It was clearly a very queer book.

It had a light red, almost pinking color as its leather covering with very rustic trim of brown hide. On its face was a golden metal emboss of a sun. He immediately noticed the latch and lock it had, but it was unlocked. The lock had this engraved figure of a cat's face – fierce but calm at the same time. At the back of the book, a moon was plastered in the same ominous rustic style.

Curiosity got a hold of him so he turned the cover – which was something Hiro, he knew, wouldn't appreciate. The book didn't have any title on the sides where there should be one, so he felt he had a responsible to disobey Hiro at this point. On the fly-leaf it was written, “book that holds the powers of the stars, show your true form,” and at the very bottom edge of the page there scribbled in what seemed to be a girl's handwriting, “RELEASE”. He closed the book. It was nothing but an old girl's diary, he assumed.

He placed the book down on the table and went about figuring where it belonged. R- probably, maybe the title is release. Nope. Maybe it should go with Magic books, since it did say something about powers of, what was that? Oh, yes, stars. Maybe he missed something, he thought. So again, he turned the cover to the fly leaf. Nope, he wasn't wrong, he hadn't missed a thing. He decided to turn to the next page. But upon pulling out the leaf, something curious happened. It appeared to have returned to the exact same fly leaf – the first one, with the scribbles. He turned back to check if the pages were replicates and there wasn't any other page. It was as if he hadn't turned a page at all. Again and again, he turned the pages up until he felt he was halfway through the book, but still, he found himself at the very first page – on that queer fly-leaf. Caleb started freaking out. He dropped the book and started making his way up, out of the cellar. With each step getting faster, he finally got out into the shop and so he proceeded to lock up and go home.

He told no one of the queer incident that happened that night, not even to Mr. Hiro. After a week, the event had been diluted into a shady memory - it all seemed like it was merely a dream. He went about as usual. Still dodging his relatives, and still making the bookstore his fortress of solitude. He was apprehensive with returning to the shop, but then again, he knew he wouldn’t have to go back to the cellar, and if he was going to be made to do so, then he'll stop acting like a child and buck up.

Mr. Hiro was your typical expatriate. He still clung to his roots, still ordering in green tea which he prepares in his tradition kettle and set. He still has an accent which would hint to his obvious Japanese origin, that is, if his oriental look and the flag hung over the counter of the book shop didn't hint to that already. He was a quiet man. Like Caleb, he kept to himself, apart from the occasional scolding or bossing around. Caleb didn't mind though, Hiro was old, and was a soldier or something. He knew that it came with the background to be that uptight.

Routines, too, he thought came from him being in the navy, or was it army? From the very first week he started working there, he already noticed that Mr. Hiro stuck to a very precise, almost religious, sort of routine. Caleb would take his shift at the bookstore by 3:30 in the afternoon, and Hiro would be there brewing his green tea. Hiro, would then leave a note of chores for Caleb to finish at the end of the shift, apart from him manning the counter. The chores were very simplistic, usually just one or two, like sweep up or dust or rearrange the flowers. Things to keep Caleb busy if they had no customers. Then by exactly 5, Hiro would go up to his room above the store and turn on the radio for the afternoon news. He'd then start smoking away his cigarettes, the smoke of which creeps and drowns the bookstore. By 6, Hiro would then come down to serve Caleb some cookies or biscuits, and then he'd retire. Caleb knew that he was supposed to close shop by 7 without saying goodbye to Mr. Hiro.

The routine was followed strictly and not a single day was it ever missed. Even if the old man fell ill, he'd still leave the note, the radio would always turn on, cigarettes would always be lit and a plate of snacks would always be sent down to Caleb, either by making Caleb get it himself or by him deliberately getting out of bed to just serve Caleb with the platter. That's why when, Mr. Hiro didn't leave a note, didn't turn on the radio, didn't light the cigarette and didn't send snacks to Caleb, he knew something was very wrong. He stated to worry, so he toyed the idea of going up into his room and knock just to check up on his boss. By 7, he decided to do so. But no one answered him. Mr. Hiro was a very light sleeper. One time, when he was new to the job, he went up to say goodnight. The first squeak of the step woke Hiro up. So you couldn't blame Caleb if a plethora of possibilities flooded his very teenage mind. He knocked again. No one answered except for a creaking. The door was open. He fought the instinct to back off, Hiro had never let him in his room ever – he knew he'd get really pissed off. He knew he had to do it, though, so he tossed his senses out and he motioned to turn on the lights. No one was there. He slowly made his was to Mr. Hiro's bed. Empty. It seemed that it hasn’t been slept in for days now. Freshly formed cobwebs sheeting the sides of the headboard and house dust all over, was proof enough of that. On the bedside table, there were still butts of Mr. Hiro's cigarettes which proved that he did stay up there, only that he never slept in his own bed. Caleb estimated that it had been probably a week or less that Hiro had not been sleeping in his room.

If he really didn't sleep in as he usually does why did he make it seem to Caleb that he did? Just as usual he retired by six. If he had things to do, why did he have to wait till Caleb closed shop to do it? It was his store, and Caleb and him – they really didn’t have a relationship that would espouse some asking on Caleb's part and secrecy on Hiro's. So why?

Out of nowhere, it came to him. The book. He wasn't sure why it came to mind, but he was sure it was the only thing that has ever happened that was queer in the last few days. By then, his imagination took hold of him. He had pictured a sinister event, a villain, a victim. He took to the cellar that very instance. He had then started picturing Hiro, as a mad scientist, experimenting on that book – that pink book, or probably a sorcerer, offering a dog to his god to gain powers. Oh, the excitement in Caleb's face burned only making his assail on the cellar more intense than what is technically normal. With such vigor, he threw the cellar door open expecting a wondrous, gruesome, fantastical sight, only to be welcomed by nothing.

The cellar was empty. No villain, no victim, just the same old shelves and the same old books plus some new crates he figured were the new stocks that were delivered a few days ago. Having concluded that nothing was out of the ordinary and that simply, Mr. Hiro was just not in the shop, he slowly withdrew to the stairs. He was somewhat pleased that nothing did happen – he figured that if it were something out of a mystery novel, he wouldn't be able to reign himself into moving. But as this thought – this idea came across, he felt a glowing presence behind him. He slowly turned.

There it was, the pink book – floating, almost sneering at him. It had an effect on Caleb, consciously or unconsciously. The boy drew nearer to the apparition and upon clasping the item with both hands, the glowing stopped, and he snapped out of the semi-hypnoitc state he was in. He then mechanically opened the cover to the first page, and again, he read the words, only now, out loud.

“Book that holds the power of the stars, show your true form, RELEASE.”

And in a flash the pages of the book turned wildly to reveal that it was a case of odd looking cards. On top of the deck was an image of a woman in a flowy gown, with the title rusticly written at the foot of the image's frame. “Windy”. Caleb picked up the card and with a questioning tone, uttered the syllables which would change his life forever; “Win-Dy”.

At the very moment he uttered that word, a huge presence, a wind, like a swelling wave drowned the room. He fell to the floor. While he slept, a series of events triggered by what he had done, took place, and various forces asleep have now been awaken.