The Handbook of Soul

Giuliano Golfieri

© 2020 All rights reserved

 Emmanuelle woke up with an uproar, terrified for the umpteenth time
by a sinister voice. That call had been echoing in her mind for some time
now, clear and sharp as a blade. Always identical and exactly an instant
before the sound of the alarm clock: “Don’t die! Please don’t die!”

A moment of silence... Beep beep, beep beep.

She couldn’t even remember when she first heard that voice. She had
isolated herself at home for years to try to follow the macabre advice in
the most concrete way possible. She tried everything to understand
where that damn invocation came from, but no success.
She had recovered an old CCTV camera from her grandfather’s old
liquor store, among other things she decided to keep before it was sold.
So, she decided to place the old camera on the ceiling, vertically above
the bed, to see if anything strange happened during her awakening.

That surveillance system reminded her of how much she enjoyed

playing the rock star when she was a child. She used to dance to the
notes of Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit and watch herself live on the
monitor.
That was her only recreation during the endless summer afternoons
spent in the shop with her grandfather, a great admirer of grunge music.
Maybe one day, looking through all the VHS tapes in the box, she
would see herself in one of her performances, but she had never
bothered to hook up the system and look before then.
After shaking off the chilling feeling of that morning horror, which she
could not get used to in any way, Emmanuelle put on a gym suit and
prepared to install the system. The old equipment consisted of four
black and white video cameras, a small cathode-ray tube screen divided
into dials, and a VHS video recorder. It was one of the few systems of
the time able to record audio as well.
She didn’t know where to find a blank videotape, so she thought of
using the one that was already in the VCR. To avoid overwriting
something important, before setting up the recording for the following
night, she decided to check what were the last images captured on that
tape.
The video started with a slow swipe of horizontal noise, after which
the four frames of the display showed the recordings from the various
angles of the liquor store. Emmanuelle observed the environment with
some nostalgia. In the small portion of the screen at the bottom right
corner, which framed the cash register, she saw her grandfather. He was
still as young and healthy as she remembered him in the ’90s, and her
heart tightened for a few moments.

Suddenly, she saw a very tall individual entering the store in the
quarter of the screen that was showing the entrance. Passing from one
sector of the monitor to another, the man approaches her grandfather
cautiously and asks him something, whispering.
He nods and, with a small key, opens one of the doors at the bottom
of the counter, takes a little booklet, and gives it to the man. The
customer takes out a large roll of bills and places them in the hands of
grandpa, who neatly set them in the cash register.
Emmanuelle paused the video to try to understand roughly how much
money it was: the amount was exorbitant for a book of that size. “What
the hell did my grandfather sell besides liquor?” she wondered curiously.
She tried to read the title on the cover of the booklet. Squinting her
eyes to blur the pixels slightly, she made out the words The Handbook of
Soul.
She didn’t have time to wonder what it was about when she saw a
second man enter the store, then a third, a fourth. They arrange in a
row. One by one, they make their request to her grandfather. Everyone
wants the same handbook and pays for it with a thick roll of money.
Within five minutes, Emmanuelle’s grandfather had earned enough to
buy a BMW.
 Her curiosity quickly turned into an obsession. The girl ran down the
stairs, reached the garage in the basement, and began a desperate search
among the countless boxes containing her grandfather’s old junk. There
had to be a copy of The Handbook of Soul somewhere!
She searched for a long time. Emmanuelle came across photographs
from when she was a child, taken with her grandfather’s film reflex
camera. She found her first-grade diary, the dolls, and the rubber ducks
she used in the bathtub. Still, there was no trace of the mysterious little
book.
She thought that probably all the copies of the valuable booklet had
been sold before closing the business. Another possibility was that, given
their mysterious and precious contents, her grandfather may have
destroyed the remaining copies to prevent them from falling into the
wrong hands. What kind of instructions could there possibly be in a
manual for the soul?
Suddenly, she had an illumination. She remembered that long time
before, in the attic, she had seen a box with her grandfather’s vinyl
records: all the rock and grunge pearls of the early nineties. Sadly, not
having a turntable, she never had a chance to listen to them, but a
feeling in her chest suggested to take a look there too.
She went up to the attic and finally found a copy of the coveted small
book hidden between two LP’s.
On the cover, a pink Post-it was claiming: For Emmanuelle. She leafed
through the book, and in the middle of each page, she found the same
inscription: VHS #227. Nothing else.
More and more shocked by that series of discoveries, she ran back to
her room and started rummaging through the videotape box. She dug
deep and finally found the tape with the label #227. She put it in the
VCR and without delay pressed Play.

Emmanuelle immediately recognized the notes of her favorite song.

She saw herself again in the form of a beautiful eight-year-old girl,
intent on an amusing performance. In addition to jumping and
pretending to play an imaginary Fender Jaguar, the little girl sings at
the top of her lungs with completely made-up lyrics: “Adeniaaal!
Amosquitoooo! Mylibidooooo! Yeah!”
The young grandfather, proud of his granddaughter, turns up the
volume and shakes his head to the music, taking advantage of the
momentary absence of customers.
Suddenly, a shady-looking guy wrapped in a dark raincoat enters the
store. Grandpa turns the music down and nods to the little girl to join
him behind the counter.
The man pulls a sawed-off shotgun from under his raincoat and
threatens them both. He seems to be very troubled in that situation,
maybe it’s his first robbery.
A stall is created for a few seconds. The inexperienced robber
inadvertently lets his finger slide on the trigger, discharging a blow in
the chest to the girl. She falls to the ground as if she had been pushed
back by a brutal, invisible force. Grandpa throws himself on the small
body, and holding her head shouts: “Don’t die! Please don’t die!”
When he realizes that the little girl is no longer breathing, he hurls
himself desperately at the killer, trying to disarm him. A second shot
makes the small speaker of the monitor croak, and even the body of
Emmanuelle’s grandfather ends up on the ground, lifeless.
The criminal rubs his hand on his head with a devastated expression,
opens the cash register, takes the little money inside, and runs away,
without looking back.
The videotape ends like this. The still image shows two bodies lying
on the ground, close to each other, in a lake of blood.

Emmanuelle let the remote control slip out of her hands, petrified. At
first, she couldn’t realize what she had just looked at. She laid down on
the bed, stared at the ceiling, and slowly began to understand.
She turned to one side, closed her eyes for a few seconds, and when
she opened them again, she found her grandfather on the other side of
the bed, also lying on his side and facing her. He was the same age as
she saw him in the shooting video.
They smiled motionlessly for a few seconds, then he confessed to her, “I
didn’t know how to tell you, I’m sorry, my baby. Now it’s time for you to
come with me.”
Emmanuelle reached out her hand and placed it on the man’s shoulder.
Then she whispered, “Let’s go, Grandpa!” and finally surrendered to a
warm yellowish light, which enveloped them both.

___________________________________

If you liked The Handbook of Soul, please check out my novel Alter Ego: My
journeys beyond human boundaries on www.alteregostory.net

More info about me on www.giulianogolfieri.com