It was a Tuesday afternoon and a boy with the very unfortunate first name of Staples was slogging through three inches of gutter water, a rainstorm, and far too much wind for a walk home. His mother had named his Staples after C.S.Lewis, thinking it was a fun and interesting name, not realizing until after all the documents had been signed and authorized that Staples was actually a last name and that most people his age would not, in fact think that the name Staples was fun and interesting. 

Truthfully, Staples himself didn’t think that the name Staples was fun and interesting--I mean, who would? It’s an office supply. Staples was actually quite irritated, because for being named after one of the greatest fantasy writers in the history of twentieth century fiction, his life was rather devoid of magic, adventure, and, well, friends. 

No one was all that interested in being friends with an office supply. 

And so that is why Staples sullenly trudged through a rainstorm on his way home from the library, vexed, bored out of his mind, and entirely alone. Fortunately for Staples, that was all about to change. All he needed was a little nudge in the right direction, a little guidance from fate towards something interesting. Or in this case, tripping over a rather large book lodged in a gutter and falling face first into several inches of gritty rainwater. 

Staples was not a fan of fate. 

“Of all the things to happen,” he groaned, hauling himself and his bag out of the gutter. “A perfect ending to a perfect freaking day…” He abruptly trailed off from cursing out his day, distracted by the object of his downfall: an unusually large, very wet, and rather old looking book, seemingly chucked in the gutter and left to dissolve.

Curiosity getting the better of him, Staples gingerly picked the book up by the corner of its hard cover. It appeared to be a library edition, its plasticine cover bubbling and separating from the muted colors and abstract shapes that decorated the front. It looked to be some old book from the sixties or seventies. The title was mostly eroded away, but sodden as the yellowed pages were, they were still legible when Staples flipped to the title page. 

“The Complete Guide to Demon Summoning...3rd edition,” he read out, the wind threatening to rip the dissolving page from his fingers. 

“What the heck? Is this fiction?” He tried to flip through the pages but the strong winds were threatening to tear through them. 

And so, Staples found himself carrying the vaguely suspicious book home, and fanning through the many pages with a hair dryer until the water was gone, leaving them warped, stained, and pleasantly crackly. 

---

He opened the book again that night after his homework had been done away with and he finally had a moment to himself. The book was pretty beat up, but it was still legible which was really all that mattered to Staples. He figured that the book was some fiction novel, the author thinking themself clever by giving it a name that sounded like it could actually be a research book. 

Unfortunately, this was unequivocally false, not least because there was no author’s name to be found anywhere in the compendium. No, this book, as Staples swiftly found out, was written in such a way that if you wanted to summon a demon — and truthfully, who wouldn’t? — you could. 

---

The beauty of living in New Hampshire, Staples discovered after a concernedly brief Google search, is that it was very conveniently located for finding elder wood. So, two bus rides and a lengthy hike later, Staples was tramping through a field towards the edge of the wetland he'd read would be here, all in the hope that he could find an elderberry bush and snip off some branches to burn. 

Staples was still half in awe of the idea that he was actually going to try and summon a demon, so he figured obtaining elder wood would be the easiest first step. It was readily obtainable, and if his mother discovered a stock pile of elderwood in his bedroom, he could always just say that he was trying to propagate plants or something. Or...well one didn’t really propagate plants from whole branches did they? He could always say it was a project for his high school’s horticultural club, which would be a far easier explanation for his mother to swallow than one for the presence of demon summoning sigils on Post-It notes. 

Unfortunately, Staples was not a botanist, and identifying a very specific type of shrub among the hundreds and thousands of shrubs and trees and undergrowth that boarded the wetland was far more difficult than he had anticipated. 

It took several hours of aimless wandering and cursing at the sky every time he tripped on a root or realized the shrub he’d just cut a branch off was the wrong shrub for Staples to finally wander across the right shrub. He snipped off two or three branches, placed them in his backpack with the twiggy, leafy ends sticking out the top, and proceeded to run towards the highway in the early evening light. 

By the time Staples ambled his way up the stairs to his bedroom at a quarter to ten, he was exhausted, grounded, and in possession of some lovely elderwood samples. 

The unfortunate thing about getting grounded for taking off in the middle of the day to go “frolic in some meadow without thought or concern for his mother's worry over him”, as she had said, was that it somewhat hindered Staples’s plans to summon a demon. 

The summoning sigil wasn’t that difficult. He had written out a clear and concise statement, dictating what exactly was supposed to happen: 

I have a pact with a benevolent, friendly demon who means me no harm.

And then reconfigured the letters into a general shape. All he needed to do was draw that symbol on his floor, burn his other two ingredients on top of that, and sprinkle some salt around the whole thing as a ward, and he was golden. 

The only problem was the third ingredient. 

Datura Stramonium, otherwise known as thorn apple, jimsonweed, devil’s snare, or devil’s trumpet (for the lavender, trumpet shaped flowers that decorated the plant) was once said to have allowed witches to fly. According to the book, this was because it had unique magical transportation powers. According to the internet, the plant was so highly toxic, dangerous, and apparently, hallucinogenic, that people had to get this plant removed from their premises, should it ever show up. 

So. Not something one could buy from the plant emporium down the street. 

Staples supposed that this meant it was time to give up his quest to summon the demon. He had no clue how he was going to buy an apparently highly dangerous and hallucinogenic plant. Maybe it was all a hoax anyways...you throw a hallucinogenic plant on a bonfire, hallucinate that you summoned a demon because it was on the brain, and never realize you were duped. 

In fact, thinking about it clearly, it probably was all some hoax. Dangerous hallucinogenic plants? He had no idea what the author of the book stood to gain from writing this book, but he could clearly see why he found it chucked in a gutter during a storm. The last owner was clearly displeased with the phony compendium and chucked it out because it was altogether useless. 

Scowling, he picked up the book and dropped it on the paper recycling pile downstairs in the garage, and, flicking off the light, he tried not to think about it for the rest of the afternoon. 

--- 

The following evening, he was walking back to the garage from dropping the garbage in the can at the end of the driveway when he stopped up short. There, in the middle of the empty garage, was the book, sitting front cover up in the center of the floor. 

“That’s weird,” he muttered, picking it up and looking around the garage. “I could’ve sworn that I left this on the recycling pile. Maybe I knocked it off when I left for the library this morning?” 

What Staples should’ve realized was that, when it comes to occultish books, you very, very, very rarely “knock them over” or “forgot where you put them”. 

They moved. They moved, all on their own, and they are waiting for you to realize it. Whether they’re trying to help you or consume your head within its papery jaws...well, that depends on the content and who wrote the book. 

Staples, ignorant as he was, merely placed the book back on the recycling pile, flicked off the garage light once more, and went to bed feeling only a little uneasy. 

---

Saturday morning, he once again found the book in the middle of the garage. Anxiety setting in, he picked up the book and studied it, looking for some way, no matter how crazy, that would explain why on earth the book had moved from the recycling pile. 

For the third time he dropped — or at this point, threw — the book onto the recycling pile. He had only turned his back on it to take three steps towards the door when he heard a loud thump behind him. A thump that sounded suspiciously like a rather large book falling onto the floor from a low height.

The book was on the floor, dead center in the garage, about six feet from the recycling pile.