The street fair was in full swing, and I couldn’t have been more bored.

The usual assortment of vendors was there; local artisans who had honed their skill in little wooden knick-knacks, politicos who waved their flyers at anyone who wandered within range, and enough representatives from the local churches that everyone in attendance was bound to have their soul saved five times over. I went from stall to stall looking over their offerings. I had just decided to leave when I saw the “Used Books!!!! Cheap!!!” sign. I’m a sucker for books, new or used, and I immediately wandered over.

It was a simple card table with a grease-spotted tablecloth draped over it. Three cardboard boxes overflowing with ratty and torn books sat side by side. A large “$1” was written on each box in black Sharpie. The proprietor was a rail-thin woman wearing a dress that had seen better days. Her eyes were magnified a thousand times over behind thick lenses, and they seemed to protrude from her face. She was absorbed in a romance novel with a bountiful lass spilling out of her dress on the cover. The woman looked up when I approached her and grimaced a smile, her teeth yellowing and small. Then she returned to her book.

I peeked into the boxes and rummaged through. They were mostly romance novels, read to tatters. I used one finger to move them aside, looking for something that was more or less intact. Nothing… nothing… how in God’s name could they get away with that on the cover? Esmeralda left little to the imagination. Wait, there, I pulled a singular hardcover from under the pile of porn. It was rectangular, a deep, navy blue, gold embossed writing across the spine that read Ulster. The pages were cream-colored and thick like postcards, and the book was a series of black and white photographs, like an artist’s portfolio.

I flipped through them, feeling more and more unnerved the more I saw. Pictures of an autopsy, a dead man on cold metal, all sewn up, fluids smeared across the surface of the table. Flip. Dead babies in jars, Siamese twins, dead at birth and preserved in jars. The babies’ twin heads, one head turned away, the other one looking at the camera. Dead black eyes staring out into nothing, seeing nothing. Flip. A ghostly figure standing in front of a pool. His head gone, no blood or gore, his neck just faded away where his head should be. Flip. A severed hand resting on a wood surface. Flip. Flip. Flip.

I went back to the beginning and looked for a title, an artist name, a copyright, anything to tell me where these pictures had come from. Nothing. Just the pictures and that one name, Ulster.

“Where did this come from?” I asked the woman.

She looked up, “Don’t know. One dollar.”

“Was it a gift? Did you buy it from somewhere?”

She just stared at me, looking annoyed now, “I don’t know, it’s one dollar if you want it.”

I shut the book and looked at Ulster in my hands. I felt revolted touching its cover. I had to have it. I dug into my wallet and gave her a dollar. She took it and folded it up, stuffing it into her shirt pocket. And then went back to reading.

I sat the book on the seat next to me in the car. I looked at it and then picked it back up. I began to flip through the pictures again. Who would take these kinds of pictures? Aside from Weegee, that crime photographer from the 1940s. He took pictures of the dead. Those were crime scene photos for newspapers though. This guy was just photographing the dead. Ulster. The artist’s name? The title for the collection? The publisher?

I turned to the conjoined twins and looked into that one set of eyes. I looked at the other head and touched the photograph. I could just make out the crescent shape of a third eye, a black moon shape. I turned and turned the pages. I looked at the headless man and I could just make out the edges of the man’s head. I flipped back to the autopsy and looked closely. I could just make out that a few of the stitches had popped.

It’s amazing what you can see when you take a closer look.

I put the book back on the seat and drove away from the street fair.

When I got home, I put Ulster on a shelf and forgot about it.

I had gotten back from class and was looking for a book I had bought at the start of the semester, but had since lost. I searched all my bookshelves and saw Ulster sitting there. I started when I saw it, forgetting that I had even bought the damn thing. I pulled it down and opened it up. There was the autopsy man. I frowned. It looked like there were a lot more stitches popped open than I remembered. A thin line of blood trickled from the wound. I looked at the man’s eyes and realized they didn’t look like the eyes of a dead man. He looked alive. He looked awake.

I turned the page and I got another shock. The twin babies. Three eyes looked at me now. Black marbles that reflected the flash of the camera. I knew, I knew only two eyes had looked at me the first time. That maybe a little bit of the third eye, but that was it. It looked like the baby’s second head was turning to look into the camera now.

I looked at all the pictures again and noticed changes in all of them that I hadn’t seen the first or second time. The severed hand seemed to be changing positions. The headless man’s head was appearing bit by bit. I could now see his ears, his hair was coming into focus. Slowly his head was reappearing.

Stop that! It wasn’t reappearing. I was just forgetting what I saw before. Embellishing. They were creepy pictures and they lent themselves to such embellishments.

I put Ulster back on the shelf and went back to looking for my school book.

A few weeks later I came home late from work. The apartment was dark and the lights refused to come on. Great. I dug around in the kitchen junk drawer and found a candlestick. I lit it and wandered around the apartment wondering what I was going to do. Call the super, that was a good idea. Light caught something on my bookshelf and gleamed. I walked over to the bookcase and saw Ulster glowing back at me.

I felt a chill race up my spine and every instinct told me to leave it be.

I pulled it off the shelf and opened it.

The autopsy photo had… changed. In the candlelight I could make out two fingers pushing their way out of the man, breaking stitches. The trickle of blood had grown into a stream. The man’s face frozen in the same dead expression, but the eyes. The eyes were screaming.

Flip.

The baby’s dead eyes still stared at me, glossy black, but now there three full black moons and a half moon. The second head had turned more toward the camera. Thin pallid lips, small nose, identical on each face.

Flip.

The hand was a clenched fist now, when it used to lay flat.

Flip.

The man’s head was more and more visible. The outer edges were sharp and clear. I could make out the barest details of his eyes and nose. His mouth was still gone. I slammed the little book shut and threw it across the room. It landed under the couch.

I left the apartment without calling the super.

It was a month before I saw the Ulster book again. I was reaching under the couch looking for my shoes when I saw it, lying shut, its spine facing out, toward me. The golden letters glowed under the couch. I reached under and pulled it out.

I argued with myself. Don’t look at it, looking at it will destroy you. The side that wanted to look had no argument. It just needed to see.

So I open the book.

A hand has forced its way out of the man’s chest and I see another set of fingers pushing their way through the stitches in his belly. The man’s eyes lock with mine and I know he can see me. I turn the page.

Four black eyes are staring at me and through me. They do not see, cannot see, but they see plenty. The camera’s lens was caught in their gaze and I can almost make out the photographer in their obsidian stare. I turn the page.

The hand is gone. A blood trail leads off frame. I turn the page.

The man’s head is visible now. His face is my face.

His terror is my terror.

We scream.