Dad came by at 8 o’clock the next morning to sign me out. As he was filling out the paperwork, I glanced at the book the woman was filling out and saw that Aaron had been checked out an hour earlier. Dad took me home, and I sat around drinking Mountain Dew and reading Harry Potter while the Science Channel played in the background. Dad went back to work around 9:30, leaving me alone. There were a few get well cards, including one from Marry with a p.s. asking for help on a science problem. There were also two gift baskets, one of which was full of Mountain Dew and books, and the other contained beef jerky and instant-coffee. The first one was from Charlie, but I couldn’t figure out who had sent the second one. There was no postage on it, so I figured they had dropped it off. But the same went for the one from Charlie, only he added a note. It was weird, but I appreciated it nonetheless. As I searched through the basket to try and find a card, my fingers felt the cover of a book. Picking it up, I gasped.
It was the gray book. Except it was new. The lettering, the strange hide-or-fabric cover, everything. Not quite new, but certainly not old. As if it were a notebook that had been used and then forgotten. I opened it. There were the technical writings, the random fragmented passages, everything seemed the same. I opened my backpack and took out the book. Page 44. The blood-like stain. The passage. Page 44. It was blank.
Now I was really confused.
I decided to try a different page. I opened to page 10 of the new book. It was a model of the solar system, but covered in words in the English alphabet arranged into words not meant for human tongues. I could barely keep steady enough to open the old book to page 10. Eventually, I did, and sat down on the floor with a solid thunk. The pages were identical. How in the heck... No, scratch that, who in the heck... Wait, what? Thoroughly confused, I opened one of the Mountain Dew bottles. Taking a gulp, I tried to figure out who could possibly have known about the book. Because it clearly was a copy of the book; there was no way it was the same book. There had to be other copies of the book. But why was this unfinished? Maybe it was a journal style, a massed produced diary that someone had partially filled in with the stuff from my book. But how would they know what the book was? How? How how how how how? And why?
Who the hell sent me this gift basket?
My brain was way too muddled to even attempt to grasp this concept. I picked up one of the books from Charlie’s basket. It was “The Complete Works of Lewis Carroll.” Way to go, Charlie! Leave it to Charlie to pick one of the few books that I would willing reread time and time again. I had spent hours in the dusty back room of the library, just pouring over Lewis Carroll, mostly the poems, but sometimes “Alice and Wonderland” or “Through the Looking Glass.” I opened to page 700, which had my absolute favorite poem of all time written on it. “My Fairy.” He wrote it when he was 13 simply to entertain his siblings:
I have a fairy by my side
Which says I must not sleep,
When once in pain I loudly cried
It said "You must not weep"
If, full of mirth, I smile and grin,
It says "You must not laugh"
When once I wished to drink some gin
It said "You must not quaff".
When once a meal I wished to taste
It said "You must not bite"
When to the wars I went in haste
It said "You must not fight".
"What may I do?" at length I cried,
Tired of the painful task.
The fairy quietly replied,
And said "You must not ask".
Moral: "You mustn't."
Such a simple verse, I thought. And yet, I really like it. I didn’t usually like simple things. But this poem, and my rabbit book, and beef jerky, were very much exceptions. I sat there, just rereading the poem I had memorized so long ago, when suddenly, the thought occurred to me that the page did not look entirely right. In fact, there was definitely something weird about it. The page, I slowly realized, was not normal paper. It was parchment! This book was made from old materials, but it still looked new. I examined the writing. Ink, as if from a quill pen. What the fuck is going on here? I decided to go to the library and ask Charlie what he meant by this.
The clock on the wall said 11:33 when I got on my bike and rode downtown to the library. It was starting to rain, but not hard, and I had my jacket. The library was only two miles away, so I got there in about ten minutes, only slightly damp. I shook off like a dog under the stone balcony which hung out over the doorway, supported by three concrete columns. Each of the columns was wrapped with a carved concrete snake, presumably the snake from the story of Adam and Eve. This had always seemed silly to me, so long ago I had named them, from left to right, Jupiter, Pluto, and Dirk. I petted Pluto’s head affectionately as I walked inside.
Skylar wasn’t at the desk. In fact, no one was. I walked to the back room alone, feeling a growing sense of apprehension. I clutched the two gray books and the Lewis Carroll volume close to my chest, which was fluttering wildly. I felt a small amount of blood dripping down my ankle where the scabs had cracked again, and my face itched where the scabs were about to do the same. Just as I reached the door to my sanctuary, the lights in the library flickered and then went out completely.
Not sure what to make of it, I stood still for a moment, trying to discern if there was a storm outside, but the building was too well insulated. I pulled a small blue flashlight out of my pocket to avoid hitting into any shelves and walked back towards the door. It was storming, all right. Hard. How it could have gone from drizzling to a full-on thunderstorm in a matter of seconds was beyond my meteorological capabilities, but I didn’t care. I did want to get my bike in out of that, though. Which is why I was absolutely flabbergasted when the door proved to be locked.
Ok, calm down. They probably have an emergency shut-off lock. A boy, about ten, came around the shelves at that moment.
“What happened to the lights, miss?” he asked. The kid was the nerdy type, squirrely and thin, with blonde hair in a buzz cut and a big green L.L. Bean backpack.
“I think the storm knocked out the power lines. And don’t call me miss, I’m only in tenth grade.”
“Alright. My name’s Lewis. My dad left twenty minutes ago to get lunch. He said he would come pick me up, but I don’t know how,” the kid looked terrified. I was trying hard not to show the same fear.
“My name’s Thally. I biked here, so my bike’s out there getting ruined, and there’s no one at the desk. Did you see anyone else here at all?”
“Nope, just you. It’s like everyone left for lunch,” he speculated.
“Huh. Well, I’ll never forgive myself for this,” I muttered, then shouted, “HEY, IS THERE ANYONE ELSE HERE?”
Lewis appeared as startled as I was that anyone would ever make that much noise in a library. “That was loud,” he said, “I hope we don’t get in trouble.”
“I don’t think anyone cares at this point,” I said. “Especially since anyone is here to care. Come on, there are some candles in the vault.” I said this without thinking, but then realized that it was true. There were some elaborate silver and wooden candlesticks back there, fully equipped with candles, as well as an oil lamp. Whether or not there was actually oil in it I couldn’t be sure, but I had a box of matches in my pocket for the candles, anyway.
“The vault?” he asked, confused, “Like where they keep money and stuff? I don’t think there are vaults in a library.”
“No, the book vault, where they keep all the really old books,” I explained. This kid is an idi- No, wait, most people really don’t know about the book vault. Poor dears.
“Oh. Ok. Lead the way, I guess,” he said.
So I walked back to the door to the vault, this time with Lewis close on my heels, or, once or twice, actually on my heels. “Here we are,” I announced, trying to be dramatic to hide my apprehension.
Lewis tried to open the door, but it was locked. Of course. Charlie and Skylar were the only ones with keys. “Well now what do we do?” he practically wailed.
I wanted to do the same, but a locked door was really the easiest challenge Lewis and I had faced in our time together. “Calm down,” I pleaded.
“Why? Do you have a key?” a glimmer of hope reached his watering eyes.
“No, bu-”
A cry of despair, high pitched and pitiful, from Lewis.
“But I do know how to pick a lock, and I’ve seen the key a thousand times, which should make it even easier.” With that, I dropped my books into Lewis’s arms and pulled some of the pins out of my ponytail. Startled, he dropped the books, but took the flashlight I handed him and pointed it steadily at the lock.
It took me all of two minutes to get all the tumblers lined up correctly. The handle stuck a bit. “Did you get it?” asked Lewis.
“Yeah, it’s just sticky,” I lied. This was the most well-kept door outside a door emporium, if those even existed. Why is the door sticking? It never sticks, never! I tried to rationalize that the sudden weather probably had all sorts of atmospheric problems going on which might have warped the door. I suddenly remembered that Lewis had dropped my books on the floor, so I picked them back up, feeling safer with the volumes, mysterious as they were, giving a weight for my arms to lift. Then, with one final shove, I opened the door.
The smell nearly knocked me out. Lewis pulled up his shirt collar, “Is this the smell of old books?” he asked.
“No, Lewis. Something is very wrong here.” I couldn’t quite place the smell. It was rancid, like rotten meat. Rotten meat... Charlie! “Charlie!” I cried out loud.
“Who’s Charlie?” asked Lewis, who was still using his shirt to blot out the smell. I ignored him.
“Charlie! Charlie!” I screamed as I ran to Charlie’s favorite chair, which lay empty. I fumbled for the candlesticks on the table, lighting two of them with the one match that I didn’t drop onto the floor in my mad dash.
“Would you please tell me what’s happening? I’m SCARED!” Lewis. I had completely forgotten about him in the thirty seconds since he had last spoken. I whipped around to find the 10 year old quavering like a leaf with a big green caterpillar on its back.
“Lewis, I know you’re scared, but there something bad happened here, and I need to figure out what. Sit down in that chair,” I pointed to the chair next to Charlie’s, “and, when you can talk normally, try to call your dad’s cell phone.” I handed him my flip phone. “I’m not going to leave the vault, so just shout if you need me for something.”
Lewis nodded. I felt bad for being harsh on him, but at this point, my main concern was not the emotional instability of this random fifth grader who was locked in the library with me. I picked up one of the candlesticks and moved slowly through the book cases.
Each step felt wrong, horrible, intrusive. The worn floorboards didn’t creak like they normally did, making my passage over them eerie. The candlelight flickered over the spines of books, such familiar sights thrown into terrible relief by the harsh flame. The dust seemed to be watching me as I walked among it, the only sound being Lewis’s whimpering. Softly, I called out, “Charlie? Charlie? Are you here?”
I knew the answer.
This foreknowledge did not in any way prepare me for what I saw in the aisle. It was towards the end of the fifth aisle of books, on the ground below the Mark Twain section. The smell of decay was strongest here, nearly causing me to faint, but I forced myself forwards towards the collapsed mass that had been Charlie. The books tumbled from my arms as squatted towards him. “Lewis,” I called softly.
Sniffles. “Yeah...?”
“Call 911. Tell them...” I paused, trying to compose myself, “Tell them that a man has died in the library and that we are locked in. Answer all of their questions and for crying out loud, don’t cry!”
He immediately began crying. I ignored him. I had to prove that he was actually dead, even though the evidence was literally overwhelming. I put my fingers on his neck and checked for a pulse. His skin was wet and slimy, causing me to pull back my hand. Get a grip! It’s no worse than frog skin. The analogy did not help, but I still forced my fingers back to his vein. No pulse. Obviously.
I reached around to pick up the nearest overturned book. My fingers, I realized, had something wet on them. Blood, I realized, disturbed. I flipped over the book, which now had a blood stain on it, and froze. The place where I had grabbed the book, which was the new gray one, was about a third of the way down page 44. It looked like a smeared dot.