Welcome to Ashford Row
PARLOR TRICKS # 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
SMOKE & MIRRORS # 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
Quiet Company
The bookshop smelled faintly of paper, dust, and rain. The sort of smell that settled into old buildings where stories had been allowed to accumulate undisturbed for decades.
Warm lamplight pooled across crowded shelves, and mismatched chairs were arranged in a loose circle near the back of the store. Outside, evening had begun settling over Ashford Row in soft blue layers, the Row itself dimming into reflections and lamp-lit windows as shopkeepers turned signs to CLOSED.
Inside The Marginalia, however, the night still held conversation.
“…that’s not really what the book’s about,” said a woman near the tea tray, balancing a paperback in one hand. “It’s about loneliness. The war is just where the loneliness happens.”
“Oh, nonsense,” replied another. “It’s absolutely about friendship. Men facing impossible odds together. Camaraderie and sacrifice and all that.”
A light-hearted sigh followed. “Men and their romanticized military stories.”
Soft laughter circled the room.
Arthur Mercer stood a short distance away near the philosophy shelves, one hand resting lightly atop his cane as he examined a cracked leather volume whose title had long ago faded from the spine. He had not turned a page in several minutes. He was listening.
At the center of the gathering sat the owner of the shop himself, Edwin Vale, a narrow man somewhere in his late sixties with silver at his temples and the posture of someone who had spent much of his life leaning over bookshelves. Round spectacles perched low on his nose. His cardigan looked older than some governments.
The woman with the paperback turned toward him suddenly.
“You were in the service, weren’t you, Mr. Vale?”
Edwin smiled with a preserved kindness, like a flower pressed between pages. “Long time ago.”
“Well then,” she said, bright with curiosity, “surely you’ve got stories like that. You know. Friendships forged in battle and all that.”
A few others nodded eagerly.
Edwin leaned back slightly in his chair. For a moment Arthur saw something move behind the man’s expression. A shifting of internal weight, although not quite discomfort. Then Edwin chuckled softly. “I suppose I do.”
The room settled in to listen.
“There was another fellow,” Edwin said. “Martin Keene. Radio operator. Smoked terribly. Claimed cigarettes kept the mosquitoes away.”
A few people laughed.
“We were stationed together overseas for nearly a year. Shared a tent half that time.” Edwin’s gaze drifted somewhere beyond the room. “One winter our convoy got stranded after heavy rains washed out the road. Supplies stuck in the mud for miles. Command wanted us to sit tight until morning.” He smiled a little more genuinely now. “Martin objected to this plan.”
“Oh dear,” murmured someone.
“He convinced me that if we waited, someone else would claim the officer’s whiskey ration before we returned.”
“Now that,” said a man near the front, “is true military strategy.”
More laughter.
Edwin nodded solemnly. “Precisely. So the two of us spent most of the night dragging a transport truck through waist-deep mud using planks, rope, and language unbecoming civilized men.”
“And did you save the whiskey?”
“Barely.”
The group laughed again.
Arthur watched Edwin closely. For a few moments, the years seemed to fall away from him. His hands moved easier. His voice steadied. Some old warmth returned to his face at the memory of shared absurdity and youthful certainty.
Then the woman asked, “What ever happened to him?”
Edwin became still. The silence was short but absolute. He removed his glasses and polished them carefully on his sleeve though they did not need cleaning. “We lost touch,” he said at last.
No one spoke immediately after that. Something in his tone had closed the subject with quiet finality. A moment later Edwin smiled again, softer now. “But I’ve kept you all long enough. Thank you, as always, for coming. Same time next week?”
Chairs shifted. Conversation resumed cautiously. Coats were collected. Books tucked beneath arms. Soon the little group filtered out into the evening one by one beneath the gentle jingle of the shop bell. Arthur remained where he was.
Edwin moved through the quiet store restoring order out of habit. Empty cups gathered onto a tray. Chairs nudged back into place. A forgotten scarf folded neatly atop the counter in case its owner returned tomorrow. The motions were practiced. Automatic. But Arthur noticed the slight tremor in the man’s hands.
Outside, rain had begun in earnest now, soft against the windows. Edwin stopped near the front display. For a long moment he simply stared at nothing. Then, from somewhere in the shop, static crackled. Edwin frowned. Arthur’s eyes lifted, but the sound disappeared. Edwin shook his head and continued toward the register.
A moment later the static returned. It lingered this time. Beneath it came the faintest suggestion of a voice.
“…llo… come in…”
Edwin froze. The color drained slowly from his face. Arthur closed his book quietly. The voice dissolved back into static.
“No,” Edwin whispered.
A low distant thump rolled somewhere far away. The sound of artillery. Arthur recognized it immediately. Certain sounds sat permanently in a person’s memory.
Edwin backed away from the counter. “No,” he repeated.
The lights overhead flickered. Static burst suddenly from an old tabletop radio sitting unplugged atop a nearby shelf. “…Edwin… respond…” The voice crackled thinly through layers of interference.
Edwin stared at the radio as though seeing a ghost. Arthur began walking. Calmly. Unhurried. The temperature inside the shop had changed. The warm scent of paper and tea was giving way to wet earth, smoke, and cordite.
Another distant concussion shook the windows. Several books tumbled from shelves. Edwin flinched violently. “Martin?” he breathed.
The radio erupted into shrieking static. Then, the voice ringing clear, young and panicked. “EDWIN!”
A mortar blast thundered somewhere impossibly close. The shop lights swung overhead. One of the rear shelves splintered suddenly apart as though struck by invisible force. Books exploded outward across the floor in sprays of torn pages.
Edwin collapsed backward against the counter with a cry. Arthur reached him just as another blast rattled through the building. But now it was no longer entirely The Marginalia. Shadows between shelves had deepened into trench lines. Smoke drifted low along the floorboards. Somewhere nearby men shouted over gunfire in voices too distant to understand.
Rain hammered overhead. Or perhaps shellfire. The distinction was becoming uncertain. Arthur planted the ferrule of his cane firmly against the floor. The sharp tap rang strangely clear through the chaos. “Mr. Vale,” he said. “Look at me.”
Edwin barely heard him. The radio screamed again. “They’re breaking through! Christ— Edwin answer me!”
Books flew from shelves as another invisible impact tore through the store. Arthur glanced upward. The ceiling beams were beginning to resemble shattered timber supports. Mud slicked briefly across the floorboards before vanishing again beneath flickering reality.
A demon did not feed on something so vague and abstract as war. The unfinished shape of guilt, however, would serve as endless fodder. Arthur reached into his coat and withdrew a small box of matches. With practiced precision, he crossed the room lighting unattended lamps one by one.
Each pool of warm golden light restored fragments of the shop around them. A shelf returned to wood instead of splintered trench barricades. Carpet replaced churned mud. Hardcover bindings regained their proper shapes. The battlefield recoiled from the light. “Good,” Arthur murmured. “Symbolic geography.”
Another mortar blast shook the room hard enough to crack a front window. Edwin covered his ears. “I left him,” he said, his voice strained hoarse.
The radio crackled desperately. “…can’t hold… Edwin, please…”
Arthur moved toward the source of the voice. The tabletop radio now sat atop a shelf that had not been there moments before. Military green. Mud-spattered. Antenna bent. Smoke curled from its speaker, thickening the shadows around it.
Arthur drew a piece of white tailor’s chalk from his pocket and calmly marked a line across the floorboards. The smoke stopped at once at the boundary. The shadows writhed against it. “Containment,” said Arthur. “Old-fashioned, but reliable.”
Another explosion detonated somewhere directly behind the history section. Shelves toppled like collapsing fortifications. Edwin sobbed quietly now. “I couldn’t get back to him.”
Arthur turned. The older man sat amid scattered books and drifting dust, staring not at the shop but somewhere decades away. “We were overrun,” Edwin whispered. “Communication lines were gone. We got separated in the dark and he…” His voice broke. “He kept calling for me.”
The radio answered immediately. “Edwin!”
Raw panic. Static. Gunfire. The voice itself carried emotional shape. Enough repetition and grief had given it weight. Substance. Arthur crouched beside Edwin. “Mr. Vale,” he said, “you are trying to survive something that already ended.”
Edwin shook violently. “I left him there.”
“Yes.” Arthur did not soften the word. Outside, thunder rolled low over Ashford Row. Inside, the battlefield waited. Arthur glanced toward the radio.
The voice had become weaker now. “…please…”
“These are not lies,” said Arthur. “They would not be here otherwise.” The shelves groaned around them. “These are truths left unfinished.”
Edwin looked up at him through tears. Arthur extended a hand toward the radio. “Answer him.”
Edwin stared in horror. “I can’t.”
“You already have not answered him for several decades. I assure you, the consequences of continuing this way are thoroughly established.”
A weak laugh escaped Edwin despite himself. Good. Human again. Arthur stood and retrieved the radio carefully from its impossible shelf. The thing felt warm. Heavy. As though it carried years inside it. He placed it gently into Edwin’s shaking hands.
The battlefield around them intensified immediately. Mortars thundered. Smoke flooded through the aisles. Books burst apart in sprays of paper. Somewhere nearby men screamed.
Arthur planted himself nearby like a lighthouse keeper calmly observing a storm. “Mr. Vale,” he said. “You are in a bookstore in Ashford Row. It is raining outside. You are seventy years old. And your friend is waiting for an answer.”
The radio hissed. “…Edwin…”
Edwin closed his eyes. For several long seconds he could not speak. Then finally, he keyed the mic. “I’m here.”
The battlefield paused. Edwin swallowed hard. “I should’ve answered you.”
Static crackled softly through the speaker. Then, beneath it, “There you are.”
The voice was calm now. Young still. But no longer afraid. The lights steadied. Smoke thinned slowly through the shop. The distant artillery faded into rainfall. One by one the impossible trenches dissolved back into bookshelves and reading chairs and crooked stacks of paperbacks.
A final gust swept through The Marginalia, carrying loose pages into the air like pale drifting birds. Then stillness returned. Edwin sat motionless with the silent radio in his lap. Arthur adjusted his cuffs. “Well,” he said after a moment. “That could have gone worse.”
Edwin gave a wet laugh. Around them the shop was in ruins. Shelves leaned drunkenly against one another. Books covered the floor ankle-deep. One lamp hung sideways from the ceiling by its cord. The front window had cracked clean across.
Edwin looked around in disbelief. “My shop…”
Arthur rested both hands atop his cane and considered the devastation. “By morning,” he said, “this may all be perfectly restored.”
“And if it isn’t?”
Arthur glanced toward the darkened front windows. The Row beyond shimmered faintly beneath rain and lamplight. For just a moment, he thought he saw uncertainty pass across the sign reflected in the glass. The Marginalia. Then something different. Then back again. The Row considering its options come morning.
Arthur smiled. “I don’t believe that will be your problem anymore.” Then he turned toward the door. “Good night, Mr. Vale.” He stepped out into the rain.
Behind him The Marginalia stood battered and dim beneath the streetlamps of Ashford Row, its windows glowing softly through cracked glass while somewhere deep inside the building an old grief finally settled into silence.
That was a beautiful chapter, Matthew.❤️