GLASS SOUP by Jonathan Carroll (funny books to read .txt) 📕

“No, this is different. One time in your life you dream exactly how you will die. And it is the truth. You see everything very clearly and every detail. Where, when, how—everything. All people have this happen to them. Everyone. But because we have so many dreams in life, we forget this one as quickly as we do the others. We don’t even remember what we dreamed last night, right? How many dreams does a person remember?” Petras raised his index finger. “But once you dream the truth about the most important moment in your life. One time. You dream your death exactly as it will happen. For some people this is a nightmare, for others it is all right. For them it is quiet and peaceful.

“So, if you need to visit death or one of the dead while you are still alive, then you must find that one dream and enter from there.”

On hearing this, Isabelle’s head and heart warred furiously between skepticism and wonder. Could this really be true? “How do we know that we’ve even had the dream? Couldn’t it happen sometime in our future? Isn’t that possible? What about the people who don’t have the dream until later in life?”

Petras shook his head. “Everyone has it before they are eleven years old.”

“Eleven? Why eleven?”

“Pubertat.”

“Puberty?”

“Yes. Everyone has their dream before they become an adult.”

“Why? Why before?”

He started to answer but was interrupted by the sound of the bell ringing over the front door. Both of them turned toward it, annoyed at the interruption.

Ettrich watched all this from his perch on the couch. Obviously they were not aware of his presence there. Isabelle had never told him the details of how his resurrection had occurred. She’d said she was not permitted to. But now he was finding out exactly how she’d brought him back from the dead and he was fascinated. It was like watching a home movie of his life, but with the huge added advantage of being able to see what was going on simultaneously in the next room or in other people’s heads. He remembered a line he’d once read to the effect that you never really know who you are until you learn what others think of you.

“Guten tag.” A nondescript bald man wearing large brown glasses and holding a cheap brown plastic briefcase entered the store. He moved hesitantly, as if sensing from the first moment that he wasn’t welcome here.

Petras said to him in German, “I’m sorry, but the store is closed. Please come back another time.”

The man appeared confused on hearing this, but then grew highly indignant. He brought the briefcase halfway up his chest and held it there with both arms crossed over it in an X. “What do you mean, closed? The door is open and the sign in the window says open.”

“The store is closed. I’m the owner. When I say it’s closed, then it is closed. If the door is open and I say it’s closed, then it’s closed. If the door is closed but I say it’s open, then it’s open. Should I continue or do you get the point yet?”

“But you have no right to do that. There are municipal laws involved here—”

“Are you Kifnitz or Mangold?”

The angry man was about to spew out some more but Petras’s question stopped him cold. Closing his mouth, he licked his lips and looked apprehensively left and right like the walls were listening. “Mangold. But how do you know who I am?”

“That’s not important. Just tell them that she must be told. Tell them the child says she must be told.”

Mangold slowly lowered the briefcase. His voice was incredulous. “The child said that? Really?”

“Yes, the child. So go and tell them that and tell them to leave us alone.”

“All right. Yes, all right.” Mangold scurried away without saying another word.

Isabelle looked at the front door as it closed. Then she looked back at Petras. “Who was that? What were you saying to him?”

“What I’m telling you now is very dangerous, Isabelle. It has not been done for a very long time and there are many who think it should never be done again.”

“But you just said that they did it all the time when you were young.”

Instead of answering her, Petras crossed the room to one of the floor-to-ceiling bookcases. He stood in front of it for a while, obviously looking for something in particular. When he located it he pulled a book down from a high shelf and brought it back to the counter where he laid it in front of her. It was a faint mustard color, thick, and judging from its musty smell, rough-cut pages, and beat-up condition, quite old.

“This book is very rare and valuable, if you can even find a copy still. I do not think that there are many of them left. It was written by a distant relative of mine, a professor at one of the universities in Vilnius.

“He was the greatest scholar of his time in national folklore and myth. This man spent his whole life going around my country searching for every story that he could find. Then he would return to his home and add them to what he had already collected. This book is the result. Thirty years he worked on it.” He slapped the book with his hand and paused both to let this information sink in and Isabelle to look at his treasure with new eyes.

“I have read the book several times. Some of it is very fascinating and of course some of it is boring. But you know what it is most of all? It is very sad. Why do I say that? Because it is all gone now, Isabelle. In Lithuania, Latvia, Finland, here in Austria… In all of the countries their magic has disappeared and will never return. The stories of the magic are still there, yes, but the truth of them is gone forever.

“If you