The Night Library

by T L Barrett

  “You were making anti-Semitic references in my class.”

  “No, I wasn’t. I’ve had Jewish friends. Everybody knows I’m just kidding around.” It was the artful way in which Tony mixed pleasant superiority with flippancy that finally put Arthur over the edge.

  “Get out of my class, now! I will write you up,” Arthur roared, and jabbed a finger toward the door. For a second, he felt like a pharaoh, proclaiming exile, for a second.

  “Write me up! I don’t care. Go ahead! They won’t do anything to me anyway.” Tony Demurs balled one of his fists and dug in for the customary battle of wills.

  “I SAID-” Arthur started and was stopped by the fiery cough that choked up his windpipe. He barked once, then gasped, and almost gagged as further coughs doubled him up and left him clutching the corner of his desk.

  “Have another cigarette, Mr. Klein,” Tony said, to hooting assents from the pack of cronies he kept as an audience in the classroom corner. Arthur didn’t answer. He hacked and hacked, a line of spit shuddering from the end of his lip.

  He bolted down the hall and into a lavatory that smelt like an ashtray. There, Arthur gave into the racking heaves until he emptied his stomach. Afterwards, looking up from splashing the lukewarm sink water over his face, Arthur caught his own reflection and he knew. It was in his eyes and he would never need the cool scrutiny of a physician down at Dartmouth to tell him. He had it. The big one. The big C.

  At first, for a moment he felt an almost romantic sense of victimization as he gazed back at his reddened and wet eyes with detachment. Then, that was gone as he combed his hair over the balding spot above his forehead, replaced by simple, tight-lipped hate.

  He walked into the classroom and gave them a crushing improv writing assignment, gave them twenty minutes and looked at the wall clock. He moved throughout the rest of his day like that, waiting, waiting for the end of the day to be alone with his little itching friend, as he began to think of it.

  ***

  That night he got to know the little itching friend, feeding it cigarettes that he smoked clinically on his porch, sometimes talking aloud to it, or to someone. Once or twice he almost broke down and pleaded with it, gave it great hot rolling tears, but he stopped himself. He would not give it that.

  He remembered a documentary he had watched the year before about miracles of self-recovery through meditation. It had featured a boy who had zapped a brain tumor to oblivion with mental starships. He slowed down his breathing, closed his eyes, and reached inward, feeling the thing that was burrowing into his inner-self. He felt it almost pulsing there and knew how rooted it was, how full of its own vitality it was. He knew he would not have the will to break that thing apart. He would have quit the coffin nails a long time ago if he had possessed that kind of will.

  But as he sat there for an unknown time, Arthur felt the thing as it stretched and moved inside him. Perhaps, he thought, I can direct it. I may not be able to destroy it outright, but perhaps I can move it, shift it. And that is what he set out to do.

  Each day, Arthur moved through the motions of his life. He put up with the pointless faculty and special education meetings. He bit down on his tongue when Tony Demurs and his kind tried to goad him into the conflicts from which they found a twisted sense of entertainment. All the while, he focused on his little friend. Really truly occupied wholly, body and mind, for the first time in years, Arthur Klein persuaded and coaxed the thing inside his lung to move back, through the lining that would give to its maddening touch, even through the sheet of muscles that sheathed his rib cage. In a strange way he felt the mad expectancy of some mothers-to-be, with an undeniable sense of dread over the eventual release of his condition.

  Many weeks later, it was hard for Arthur to concentrate at all. The thing inside him had moved, with slow enthusiasm into his back, and there it left him in a kind of itching agony of stabbing pain. He could feel it seething between his ribs and fingering holes through the muscles of his back. The skin there, began to bulge, and when he was very still at night, standing in front of a wall length mirror and holding out one of his ex-wife’s vanity mirrors, he could even make out an almost imperceptible pulsing.

  It burned, it itched, it hurt with such intensity, that Arthur’s vision would cut to white at times and he would wonder distantly if this was where his little itchy friend and he would part ways permanently. He called in sick to school, the second day in a row.

  Arthur would reach back to itch it, but would pull his hand back in fear at what might happen. To block out the insistent pain, like a voice calling to him, Arthur Klein would smash things. He smashed an old photo of his folks and set out to lay waste to everything that had once been co-owned by he and his wife. Sometimes, however, all he could manage was to grip the railing to the attic stairs and roar through gritted teeth. On the last night of his ordeal, Arthur grunted and hissed and barked out curses. The thing inside him had made its way through his back muscles and was undulating with a liquid fluidity against the elasticity of the skin on his back.

  Then, biting onto a wooden spoon, Arthur forced his back to give birth to the thing that had been planted for growing in him so long ago. It unseamed the skin and stretched itself out. He roared with the pain of it all. The thing, all membranes and foul brownness, twitched as it hung from under his scapula. He caught sight of it in the tall mirror, moaned and sucked in a deep breath. Arthur could feel the thing stretching itself, trying to wrench itself from its moorings between his ribs.

  He sucked in a deep breath and let out a high womanish scream. Then he bit down and pushed with all his might. Grunting, he tensed himself until large black spots filled his vision and his fingers dug into the railing he gripped.

  There was a thick tendon-popping sound and a release. He felt the thing sliding down his bloody back and heard it hit the floor with a soft, wet slap. Then the blackness, tinged in red, overtook him.

  When his eyes opened he was looking across the floor at it. Carcinogenic mucous glistened brown over the black lined network of its mass. Little wavering membranes lifted themselves like tentacles from where they had been adhered to the floor linoleum upon the thing’s fall to earth. He stared at it, and as if it was aware of his observation, it took a sudden shuddering lurch toward his head.

  He bolted to his feet, ignoring the pain in his back and stepped away from it. He studied the thing in the fluorescent light for long moments as it feebly tried to snail itself toward him.

  He had done it. He had forced it out into the world, and it was no longer his deep dark thing, hidden away, only to itch him in secret. Now, it was the world’s. He had done it; and the thought of it filled him with a mad, gleeful pride.

  He got a flat cookie tin from the cupboard and scooped it up with studied tenderness. Then he placed it on the table, sat down and continued to study it. He spent the rest of the night trying to listen to the whispering itch, like the memory of pain that he could just hear. He answered it back with a string of loving curses. Finally, just before dawn, he brought out a butter knife, as it had instructed, and removed a little brown segment of the thing. Then he took the cookie tin down into the cool darkness of the basement, where the thing could call out to the vermin that would sustain it.

  ***

  Mr. Klein was back in school that next day, looking worn and dark eyed, yet hale and exuberant at once.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Tony Demurs asked with suspicion as Arthur pulled out a stack of test copies he had made early that morning. He flipped the edges. They were stained an odd color. His cancer had told him to do this. He had taken the segment and mixed it with warm water and made a fine paste out of it. This he had brushed across the tests with a basting brush. He remembered the principals mantra “to share a little of what’s inside yourself to inspire what’s in them”. He smiled proudly.

  “Hmn? What do you mean?” Mr. Klein asked with calm.

  “You look so happy. You got laid when you were gone didn’t you? You did
. Mr. Klein got lucky,” Tony sang out to the class. The usually chorus of snickers followed. A girl leaned over and said in that ridiculous stage whisper that Mr. Klein was so familiar with: “Who would do Mr. Klein? He’s old and gross.” More snickers from the crowd. Arthur carried on, moving about the room, unruffled by it all.

  “Seriously, Mr. Klein, why were you out of school, and why are you so happy?”

  “That, Mr. Demurs, is for me to know and you to wonder about.” With that, Arthur stopped in front of Tony’s desk, thumbing up a copy of the pop-test he had sprung on the class. Then with a flourish he wafted the paper down in front of his student.

  “Hey, my paper’s all nasty,” Tony declared, grabbing it and pulling it close to his face. “I need a new copy.” Arthur Klein turned his back and sauntered around the room as his third block class studied the contents of the speech unit test.

  Students whispered to each other, asking nervously if this was some kind of sick joke. A few kids in the corner snorted out nervous brays of laughter.

  “I hope I don’t have to remind you, this is a test. There will be no talking during a test. Those who do talk will lose their papers and receive an automatic zero,” Mr. Klein reminded them. He sighed and looked down at Miranda Roy’s low-cut top in the front row. The sight of these anatomically-perfect beauties was usually enough to lighten his mood. Miranda looked up from her test, her wide eyes misting up, her face contorted in disgust and horror. Arthur frowned and looked down at the extra test sheet he held in his hands. His eyes widened as they fell on the instructions for part one of the test:

  Below is a list of famous speechwriters that you should have studied if you had owned enough self-worth to learn how to become literate. You should match the Miranda Roy has the best set of tits in this school facts listed below with the corresponding speech writers. Warning! Not all I’d love to rip those melons out and just go to town on them the speechwriters have a fact.

  Arthur felt his stomach drop into his shoes. A strange kind of vertigo assailed him. He remembered typing up the test in the morning dark, but he didn’t remember typing anything like this. All of his private thoughts, his anger and longing were jumbled into the test itself. Students, historical figures, co-workers, nothing had escaped his insane satirical insertions.

  Panic took hold of Arthur in its white-knuckled grasp. He would have to run around and grab them all up, take them away, claim ignorance. He could tell anyone who cared that his tests must have been copied and switched out for this one. He would believe it himself. It wasn’t beyond Tony Demurs and his ilk to stoop to such a low; except, Arthur remembered thinking all of those very thoughts that morning.

  “What the hell is this? What the fuck?” Tony Demurs had made his way to the second part, where among multiple choice questions Tony‘s homophobia was discussed at length, including suppositions about how he spent his lonely evenings. “This is bullshit!”

  Arthur barked. It brought him up short, half way to reaching for Miranda Roy’s exam. Arthur had never made that sound before. It sounded like a laugh. He tried it again. Yes, it did sound like a laugh. That was better, he thought; best to not get outrageously anxious over anything. It would sort itself out. It was only high school. Furthermore, he had to have faith in his beloved cancer. It knew what was right. They had been through too much together for Arthur to start doubting it now.

  Miranda Roy leaped from her seat with a moan of terror and dashed from the room. A friend jumped up after her, paused half way to the door, looked over at Mr. Klein, who had turned to absently look out the window, and then bolted out as well.

  “You can’t do this! This is bullshit!” Tony screamed crumpling the smudged paper in his hands. Mr. Klein smiled approvingly as he saw the young man’s fist curl over the stained sheet of paper. Mr. Klein’s face softened to a saturnine gentility. A single tear spilled out over his left cheek.

  “But I did do it, Tony. I did, because I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you…” Mr. Klein just kept repeating, ticking his head, repeating, like a program caught on loop.

  “He’s gone crazy,” a student gasped, and the others tried to push as far away from the advancing teacher as their desks allowed. One girl screamed. That was all it took. The teens were up out of their desk and cowering in a group, as the teacher walked to the door and left without turning around.

  The principal was halfway up the front stairwell of the English wing when Mr. Klein was coming down.

  “Arthur, what’s going on up there?” he asked, and then his eyes narrowed. Mr. Klein just strode by, lifting his middle finger and holding it out at his superior.

  “And your down-home folksy bullshit, too!” Mr. Klein stated and was out into the spring sunshine.

  ***

  Not for the first time, Tony Demurs was unaccounted for at school. He had walked up over the playing fields and had taken the woods to Route Seven and back into town. On the Guyette Bridge, Tony had stood a long time looking at the spring waters rage so against the rocks below. He wanted to throw himself over. Instead he threw up again. He had done so twice in the woods. His head buzzed, and it was hard for him to think, but that was all right. He didn’t want to think. His feet carried him in the usual fashion, toward home.

  When he got there his stepfather and mother were fighting again. They didn’t notice him. He hardly even noticed them. His head was so full of buzzing, and his skin had started to itch so badly. He went into his bedroom and pulled down everything off the walls, knocked the screen from his window and began tossing everything out. When he had finished, he sat down on the empty floor, took off his clothes and began to tear at his own flesh.

  That night, both toked up, Mr. And Mrs. Demurs sat in their separate chairs watching the tube with half-lidded eyes. Tony’s sister, Andrea, sprawled on the old shag carpet, texting.

  “The school called about Tony, again,” Mr. Demurs said, taking a sip from his beer can.

  “It’s probably something to do with that English Teacher of his, that Mr. Klein,” she sighed and rolled her eyes, reaching for her husband’s drink. He pulled it away and took another swig.

  “Oh, that faggot,” he said.

  “I’ve told the principal, I can’t be expected to iron out all the little disputes that that man has with Tony. Some of us actually work for a living,” Mrs. Demurs said.

  “Here, here!” her husband toasted, raising his beer can. Mrs. Demurs watched him empty the can with forlorn eyes.

  Tony walked into the blue light of the television. At first, Mr. Demurs didn’t notice that his stepson was naked and his flesh was torn, as he tried to crane his head around to the flickering television glare.

  “Oh, gross!” Andrea yelped, and scooted back toward her parents.

  “What the hell is wrong with you, boy?” Mr. Demurs managed, squinting in the glare. Was his stepson’s skin gashed and pulled like flaps back in places? Was there stinking brown gelatinous matter undulating from those places?

  “Mommy, Daddy, I wants a hug.” Tony drooled from the corner of his mouth. Tony stepped forward, arms out raised, the stinking stuff on them wavering.

  Mother, father, and sister scrambled to get away. But, as Mr. Demurs had always said, before he had given up on his stepson for a no-good troublemaker, Tony was a fast tackle and might have made one hell of a football player one day.

  ***

  The phone had been ringing off the hook as soon as Arthur got back to his house. He unplugged the phone from the jack. The silence made him smile, just one more happy moment in this, his new life. He went down stairs, and his cancer was waiting for him. His eyes widened in the cool gloom at how much the cancer had grown. It was the size of a large cat now. A rat tail was sticking out of the thing. He wanted to talk to it, sing a song to it, maybe even a musical number that he had always sworn to hate, but secretly had always loved, but the cancer seemed preoccupied. The way it undulated told of a concentration on distant matters. He caught a wave of fetid gr
atefulness for the part that Arthur had played, but the real work was ongoing.

  Arthur swept a spot on the floor and sat lotus style before it. He allowed his mind to open up, could feel the cancer reaching out, adding his strength to its own. Arthur shuddered at the pure violet hate that bathed him in a great cleansing light. Away faded the fits of doubt and worry that had plagued Arthur.

  Time passed and Arthur floated back into a fully-conscious state. The twilight of a warm spring evening filtered through the high dusty panes of the basement window. He looked down to find the cancer, heavy and warm, sitting on his lap. It, now bigger than any cat Arthur had ever seen, purred with affection. He stood and ascended the stairs, holding the cancer like a small child or a bride over the threshold.

  In the refrigerator he found a couple of beers left over from a visit from his brother a month or so before. Arthur rarely drank, and never alone. But if there ever was cause to celebrate it was now; and anyway, he wasn’t really alone was he? He never would be.