The Final Frankenstein

by Xavier Bonet

  Table of Contents

  COVER

  TITLE PAGE

  MIDNIGHT LIBRARY

  CHAPTER ONE: SCARE PROOF

  CHAPTER TWO: HOLEY CATHEDRAL

  CHAPTER THREE: BOOK CLUB

  CHAPTER FOUR: THE UNREAD

  CHAPTER FIVE: MARY'S MONSTER

  CHAPTER SIX: KEY TO LIFE

  CHAPTER SEVEN: BOOK BEAST

  CHAPTER EIGHT: OVERDUE IT

  EPILOGUE

  INSIDE THE MIDNIGHT MIND OF . . .

  GLOSSARY

  DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

  WRITING PROMPTS

  MICHEAL DAHL

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR

  COPYRIGHT

  BACK COVER

  Midnight Library

  The MIDNIGHT LIBRARY was named after T. Middleton Nightingale, or “Mid Night.” More than 100 years ago, Nightingale built the library but then vanished. The giant clock in the library went silent. Its hands froze at twelve. Since that day, no one has heard the clock chime again. Except for the librarian Javier and his team of young Pages. Whenever they hear it strike twelve, the library transforms. The world inside a book becomes real—along with its dangers. Whether it’s mysteries to be solved or threats to be defeated, it’s up to the librarian and his Pages to return the Midnight Library to normal.

  THE LIBRARIAN

  JAVIER O’LEARY

  – Javier is supervisor of the library’s Page program.

  THE PAGES

  BARU REDDY

  – He reads a lot of horror books. And his memory is awesome.

  JORDAN YOUNG

  – Her parents have banned video games for the summer. She hopes working at the library might get her access to gaming on the library computers.

  KELLY GENDELMAN

  – She figures helping at the library will be fun. Maybe the other Pages will appreciate her love of bad puns.

  CAL PETERSON

  – His parents think the library is a good place to expose him to more books. They never expected him to go inside a book!

  CHAPTER ONE

  Scare Proof

  Baru Reddy locked his bike to the rack in front of the T. Middleton Nightingale City Library. He checked the lock and slipped the key into his pocket.

  He glanced at his watch as he climbed the steps to the huge metal doors of the massive library. 10:39. He had just over twenty minutes before his shift as one of the library Pages began. More time to pick out books to read.

  “Good morning to you, Sir Baru,” Rolene, the front desk librarian, said as he entered.

  “Hi, Rolene,” Baru replied. “How are the poems this morning?”

  Rolene patted an old, worn hardcover. “Sad and tragic,” she said. “Just how I like them.”

  “Well that’s . . . good?” Baru said, then laughed. “I guess?”

  Rolene sighed. “I suspect that means I have strange tastes in literature.”

  Not any stranger than mine, Baru thought.

  For Baru, it was horror books. And the scarier, the better. He was fascinated by monsters and anything paranormal.

  Baru headed directly for the fiction shelves. He needed to find a horror book or two he hadn’t read yet. As he scanned through the authors with last names ending in “S,” he saw movement to his right.

  “Boo!”

  Without flinching, Baru turned to see Javier McLeary, the Community Outreach Librarian, who was also in charge of the Nightingale Library Page Program.

  “Hi, Javier,” Baru said.

  “Well, that’s no fun,” Javier said, crossing his arms around his clipboard. “You really don’t scare easily, do you?”

  “Afraid not,” Baru said. “Maybe someday.”

  Javier smiled. “You know what’s scary to me? How disorganized this library gets,” he said. “I’m so glad to have you and the rest of the Pages to help out.”

  Baru nodded. “Do you mean help with straightening the shelves or help with the . . . changes?”

  Javier raised an eyebrow and glanced around. “Honestly?” he whispered. “Both.”

  T. Middleton Nightingale Library had an amazing secret. Every Saturday afternoon at exactly noon, it went through a change. The library mysteriously morphed into a setting from one of the hundreds of thousands of books in the massive library. Javier said it was like being “inside the mind of an author.” He, Baru, and the three other Pages, however, were the only ones who experienced the change.

  “I really wish the horror books were in one section. It’s tricky when they’re scattered in with the rest of the fiction titles,” Baru said.

  “Oh?” Javier said. “Afraid you might find something else besides horror to read?”

  “Now that would be scary,” Baru said with a laugh. “No, it’s just that I spend most of my time trying to choose a book I might like instead of using that time to read.”

  “I’ll make a deal with you,” Javier said. “You can work the fiction shelves today if you promise to give at least one non-horror book a try.”

  “Deal,” Baru said. “I’ll see what I can find.”

  * * *

  When the rest of the Pages arrived, just before noon, Javier handed out their assignments. He kept his promise to Baru. In the fiction section, Baru did his part shelf reading and reshelving titles. He lost track of time.

  Even though his brain was a little fuzzy, he did find a mistake. There was a B author between two S authors. Warlord of Mars, by Edgar Rice Burroughs.

  How did this get here? Baru wondered. As he reached for it, he heard the distant gong of the clock. It was the gong that other library visitors could not hear. Baru glanced at his watch.

  It was noon.

  Before Baru could even touch the book on the shelf . . .

  . . . the library changed.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Holey Cathedral

  The lights went out. Baru heard wood creaking and light rain falling. The smell of a damp, dank basement filled his nose. Thunder boomed, shaking the ground beneath his feet.

  When his eyes finally adjusted to the darkness, Baru saw that the library had transformed once again.

  Baru was surrounded by the crumbling walls of an old cathedral. Through the wide cracks, Baru could tell he was in the middle of a dark countryside. A large chunk of the ceiling had collapsed, giving him an open view of the angry, stormy night sky. A full moon appeared now and then between fast-moving clouds. Silver light illuminated the inside of the ruin. Then it would go dark, then light again. Rain sprinkled the old shelves and the soggy books that were stuffed into them. Baru knew there must’ve have been pews once where the shelves now stood.

  Candles flickered inside rusted lanterns. The flames struggled to stay lit against the wind whipping through the battered cathedral. The whole place seemed mortally wounded, as if waiting for something to put it out of its misery.

  “What is this place?” Baru whispered to himself.

  He heard a familiar voice in the distance. “Did you do this?”

  Baru turned around to find Cal, one of his fellow Pages. Jordan, another Page, was right behind Cal.

  “Why do you think I did something?” Baru asked.

  “This totally seems like the kind of place you’d want the library to turn into,” Jordan said. She stared up at the stormy sky, fascinated. “Those clouds are really moving. All we need now are some monsters.”

  As if on cue, a groan sounded in the distance. It wasn’t thunder or the whipping wind. There was something alive and awful out there.

  “This isn’t from any of the books I’ve read,” Baru said.

  “Well I certainly don’t read these kinds of books,” Jordan said. “I like to sleep without nightmar
es, thank you very much.”

  Lightning flashed on the horizon.

  “Let’s find somewhere dry so we can figure out what to do,” Cal said. “I can’t think when I’m soggy.”

  The three of them moved farther into the cathedral. They stepped over puddles and soaked books that had been knocked loose from the shelves. After a while they found a dry spot beneath what remained of the roof.

  “What do you think happened to this place?” Jordan asked. “Do any of the monsters from your books like to eat churches for breakfast?”

  Despite their situation, Baru smiled. “None of the books I’ve read had any sort of creature like that,” he said. “This looks like something Godzilla could do, but I don’t think we’re in Hong Kong.”

  “And I don’t see a giant, fire-breathing lizard,” Cal replied. “But it’s still early yet.”

  Baru scanned the horizon for a giant, building-eating monster. There was another groan from further off. It sounded like it came from the cathedral’s dark altar. He glanced over but saw nothing more than shadows.

  Then came a whisper from the opposite direction. “You guys! Over here!”

  Baru squinted to see half of Kelly’s face peering around the edge of a damaged bookshelf. Above her was the worried face of Javier.

  Baru led his small group toward the others. In no time, all of the library Pages were reunited. But before anyone could say anything, Baru heard voices nearby. He moved between the shelves. In moments he came upon a lighted area just a few feet from the cathedral’s altar.

  I think I know where we are now, Baru thought.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Book Club

  Seated around a rough-looking, warped wooden table were three pale women. They were dressed in elaborate, dark gowns, as if they’d just left a fancy tea shop.

  The tallest woman had a short hairdo, parted down the middle. She had a long neck, a skinny nose, and dark, piercing eyes.

  Baru knew immediately who it was. “That’s Mary Shelley,” he whispered.

  “Mary and Shelly? Who’s the third lady?” Cal asked, standing beside Baru.

  “No,” Baru said. “Mary Shelley is one person. She’s the author of Frankenstein.”

  “Frankenstein? That big, green guy who hates fire?” Kelly asked.

  Baru groaned.

  So many people assumed the name of the creature in the book was Frankenstein. But Frankenstein was actually the name of the doctor who created him: Dr. Victor Frankenstein. Baru had always wanted to know why the famous author hadn’t given her monster a proper name.

  “He’s only green in movies and comic books,” Baru said. “But really he was sewn together from a bunch of corpse parts.”

  “Perfect,” Cal said. “Then who are the other two?”

  Baru wasn’t sure. Thankfully Javier piped up. “I think that’s Ann Radcliffe and Charlotte Brontë,” he said. “They were all gothic authors who lived around the same time.”

  “What’re they doing?” Kelly asked.

  Baru watched the trio from the shadows of his bookshelf. The women were writing in small notebooks. They paused every few minutes to glance over their shoulders. Occasionally one of them would read from her notebook while the other two listened.

  “It’s like my mom’s book club,” Jordan said.

  “Or a writer’s group,” Baru said. “They might be reading each other’s work and commenting on it.”

  “Goofy place for a writing group to meet,” Kelly said.

  Baru continued to watch the writers. Why would they be sitting in a ruined cathedral in the middle of an approaching storm? When the Midnight Library had changed in the past, the Pages needed to do something inside the altered world to help make things right. If not, they couldn’t go back to where they belonged.

  But what are we supposed to do? Baru wondered. Help them write their books? Give them an umbrella?

  “I’m going to go over there,” Baru decided. He stood up and straightened his shirt.

  “Aren’t you afraid of interrupting them?” Kelly asked.

  “No,” Baru said.

  “They look like they’re scared of something,” Jordan added.

  “Well, I’m not,” Baru said with a shrug. He noticed the three women kept glancing toward the altar.

  “Be careful,” Javier warned. “And, you know, be friendly.”

  Baru nodded, then took a step forward. “Hello, my friends,” Baru said, raising a hand in greeting.

  “Stop where you stand!” the woman in the fancy hat shouted in her English accent. “Are you one of them?”

  “Calm down, my dear Ann,” said the woman with the frilly lace collar. “He doesn’t have the appearance or stink of them.”

  “Monsters take many forms, Charlotte,” Ann snapped.

  Mary stood and looked at Baru carefully. “Who are you, young man?” she asked. “And why do you disturb our private gathering?”

  Baru felt strange. Three famous authors were staring him down like he was the monster.

  “I am Baru Reddy,” he said. “I’m from another world—or time, rather—and . . .”

  “I knew it!” Ann shouted. She pounded the table with a fist. “He means to steal our work with the aid of his terrible minions!”

  Baru’s mind raced. Steal their work? Terrible minions?

  “Ann, lower your voice!” Charlotte hissed. “You’ll lead them right to us with your unseemly outbursts!”

  Baru held his hands up to show he was harmless. “We are not minions. I promise, my friends and I are here to help you!”

  “’Tis a fool’s errand, I’m afraid. No one can help us,” Mary said.

  “Why?” Baru asked. “What’s the problem?”

  And just like that, from out of the shadows, they appeared.

  “Them,” Mary whispered solemnly.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The Unread

  A group of hooded monk-like figures stepped out of the darkness. They wore tattered, shabby robes that hid their faces. Baru counted nine of them shuffling toward the writers’ group and the Pages.

  One of the monks moaned and held a twisted finger in their direction. His fingernailwas long and jagged. It looked as if it had been torn and chewed by a nasty creature.

  Another monk held a stick. Without warning, the end of the torch ignited.

  “Fire,” said Charlotte in a shaky voice. “I don’t care for fire.”

  “Um, Baru?” Jordan asked. “What did you do?”

  “Nothing,” Baru replied. “I swear!”

  Mary, Ann, and Charlotte gathered up their notebooks and backed away from their chairs. Charlotte kicked the table over, slowing the monks’ advances.

  The monks groaned and kept coming. One tried climbing the overturned table. As it did, a jagged splinter caught its robe, tearing it off.

  Baru was horrified—and also fascinated—to see that it wasn’t a monk after all. It was a worm-eaten zombie!

  “Wow!” Baru shouted. “Rotten monks!”

  Javier and the other Pages stepped forward, armed with heavy books they had picked up from the floor. Hoping to keep the zombie monks at bay, they threw the books at them. A giant book smacked one of the monks in the head, knocking it from its shoulders. Its head hung from its neck by strings of rotting flesh.

  “Nice shot!” Baru shouted.

  “Thanks,” said Javier. “I think that was War and Peace!”

  “If we don’t do something pretty soon, we’ll all end up in pieces!” Kelly shouted. She flung a smaller book at the monsters. A zombie caught it and began to gnaw at the book’s binding with its rotten teeth.

  “Perfect,” Jordan groaned. “These things eat books!”

  Baru watched as the three authors kept backing up, clutching their notebooks tightly.

  “How do we stop them?” Cal asked. “These hooded horrors just keep coming!”

  Mary shook her head. “As I said, it’s impossible to stop them. They crave the freshest literature they
can get. That’s why they want to eat our work.”

  Baru was stunned. Zombies in books and movies only wanted to eat the freshest flesh and the tastiest brains. These zombies were looking to eat . . . words? Well, words come from brains, he thought.

  “I suspect they like to eat people too,” Ann added. “We just haven’t tested that theory yet.”

  “Let’s not do it now,” Kelly replied. “We should get out of here!”

  Lightning flashed, lighting up the entire ruined cathedral. Rain came down in sheets, soaking them instantly. The women tucked their notebooks under their arms.

  “There’s nowhere to go!” Baru cried. The wind plastered his wet hair to his face. “This cathedral is the only shelter we’ve got!”

  The zombie monks advanced, passing the overturned table. They lurched closer to the group. Rain soaked their robes. The wind blew more hoods off, exposing their rotten faces.

  “Is there nothing else we can do?” Javier asked. He threw another book at the zombies.

  Ann and Charlotte both turned to Mary. “You must show them your secret,” Ann said to her. “It may be our only chance.”

  “Yes, of course. You’re right,” Mary said, glancing at her fellow writers. “Even if it seems rather foolish.”

  Without a word, Mary led the group through the shelves and toward the back of the cathedral. There, she climbed a long flight of stone steps. The women’s long gowns didn’t keep them from rushing up behind her.

  “This leads to the choir loft,” said Javier.

  “As long as they don’t expect me to sing,” said Jordan.

  Finally, at the very top, Mary led them around another shelf and into a wide-open space. Baru gasped at what he saw.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Mary’s Monster

  Lying across two water-damaged tables was a large, human shape. When the lightning flashed overhead, Baru saw the figure wasn’t human at all.