She made a full circuit of the building without finding what she had come for. Only then did she head to the front desk where an elderly woman in a grey cardigan sat.
"Hi, can I get a library card, please?" Jesse asked as she eased around some milling middle-schoolers were loitering near the front desk.
"Sure thing, dear." Despite appearing frazzled by the commotion going on about her, the librarian, who was sitting on a tall stool, and looking more like a lifeguard than anything else, had a pleasant air about her. But also a curious air; a new person in a tiny town like Ashton was a rare thing indeed and sure to be a seven-day wonder. She stayed very close as Jesse filled out the form and the girl could feel the older lady's eyes hot all over the little paper.
When Jesse had entered all the information that she could, she slid the card over to the lady and it was then she felt the first chill.
The librarian glared down at the card, then slid it back and said icily, "We don't accept incomplete applications."
"I don't know the zip code here. I forgot it. Could you just tell it to me?"
"I'm sorry, but I'm not an almanac. Go look it up." The tone was as snotty as an adult could go without sounding like a teenager. Not only did this cause a stir among the middle-schoolers, it made Jesse's cheeks go red and her ears feel hot.
There was no use arguing with her; the librarian could rule supreme as a tyrant in her little kingdom. Jesse was just about to turn away and look for someone, other than one of the middle-schoolers; to ask when she saw that the librarian had a little stack of business cards sitting right in front of her. The library's address sat only inches away. Jesse snatched one up and jotted the zip code onto her form.
The librarian took the application, glanced at it and said in a loud voice, "That'll be twenty dollars,"
"Twenty dollars! That's ridiculous," Jesse exclaimed. She had never paid for a library card in her life.
"Yes, it is terribly ridiculous," the lady replied in a nasty manner. "It's the new town manager's fault. He thinks the library should be self-supporting; as if a price could ever be placed on access to this much knowledge." She waved her arm to the hundreds of shelves laden with books.
This was a new low for Jesse's father. He had done some unconscionable things before, but never something as stupid as this. Scowling, Jesse dug out what was supposed to be her lunch money for the coming week and slid the twenty dollar bill across to the grey-haired biddy behind the desk.
"If you don't like it, Miss Clarke, why don't you bring it up with the new manager? I can give you his address." The librarian held up the application and pointed at the address that Jesse had just filled in.
"Maybe, I will," Jesse replied, coolly. She then looked at the librarian, who only smiled at her in a nasty way. This went on for a few seconds until Jesse blurted out, "My library card? Could you get it, please?"
"Sure thing. It'll be ten-to-fourteen business days." Saying this seemed to make the librarian very happy. Jesse could only shake her head in bewilderment, so the older lady explained in an over-loud voice, "Sorry, Miss Clarke, but the new town manager, James Clarke, slashed our budget and we had to let three of our part-time employees go. And right before Christmas, too! What a shame." Here she put on a sad face and clicked her tongue.
The younger children behind her commenced a low whispering behind Jesse's back. This was just the beginning, Jesse thought. She knew from past, painful experience that over the next few days the whispers would grow like a storm. Everywhere she'd go, the soft murmuring would tag along in her wake, but that would seem like a treat compared to what will invariably follow.
The whispering would turn into catcalls and insults; and then would come cruel mocking laughter. After that she would have to endure threats...and then violence.
Jesse felt the heat of shame at being the daughter of a bastard who could fire people right before Christmas. She wanted to denounce him right there in front of everyone as being a son of a bitch, a jerk and every other name she could think of only, again, she knew it wouldn't save her. She had tried it before.
Like no other, she felt she had been born to be hated.
Not even her father, the bastard himself, was so despised. Certainly there were some that hated him, but mostly he was feared and his butt was kissed by everyone. He was referred to as decisive, while she was called a slut. He was described as a leader in difficult times, she was labeled a bitch. He stood defiant against political opponents; she ate her lunch alone.
And there was no one she could turn to.
Her father worked sixty-hour weeks, but that was nothing compared to Jesse's mother. Cynthia Clarke worked from sunup to long past sundown, and she had the much harder job of the two. Her sole occupation was to try to convince everyone, including herself, that she was truly a good person, despite her husband. To that end she volunteered her time to a dozen charities at once. She was always baking cookies that Jesse couldn't eat. She was always donating clothes that Jesse still wore. She was always out mentoring “at risk” children, while Jesse was left to fend for herself.
And the worst of all, the very worst, was that once James Clarke's stringent budget-cutting and Scrooge-like streamlining began to take effect, people who had once hated him would clap him on the back and thank him for his hard work. Whenever they would move on to the next bankrupt town, Jesse's mother would be gifted with going away presents and told with all honesty how much she would be missed.
But Jesse would remain hated.
No child, or adult for that matter, had ever come up to her and apologized for their mistreatment of her. Not once, and she no longer bothered to hope that it would ever happen. In fact, she really didn't care. If someone was going to be mean to her because of what her father did, then screw ‘em. Even if they did apologize, she would simply spit in their face.
She was an angry girl. A desperately lonely, angry girl and just then, with the librarian sneering the way she was, Jesse had never felt angrier.
"Was it really a shame that they were fired?" Jesse asked the librarian. Despite being pissed off, she tried to keep her tone calm to show that she was a cool customer, but her voice rose nonetheless. "If they were as lazy as you are, then I say good riddance."
"How dare you call me lazy!" The librarian came off her lifeguard chair and, as she did so, Jesse stepped forward aggressively. This was something the old lady wasn't expecting and she flinched back.
"You are lazy. You've done nothing since I walked in here but sit in that chair like you're a queen. And now you tell me that typing a library card will take you two weeks? It's a wonder that you weren't fired as well."
Now the lady's face went as grey as her hair. "Get out. Right now! I never want to see you in here again."
Jesse smirked at this. There wasn't a ghost of humor in it—instead it was an angry, hard smirk. She loved the library. It was her refuge from the world. It was her refuge from the hate and the insults and the cruel laughter that came after the stupid, stupid jokes at her expense. However, this library was clearly infested with the very roaches she looked to avoid. Just then an image of herself holding a flaming torch popped into her head. Her lips were twisted in a smirk as she turned the torch on the building and it went up in flames. The fire ate up the books and the children with equal delight and the smirk grew into a wicked smile.
She was a desperately lonely girl who had been hated for so long that the hate had baked down deep into her soul where it roiled and burned. For some time, the hate had begun to radiate back up, coming out in little ways: the hard uncaring looks, the cutting insults, but mostly the hate came out in her imagination.
"I said get out!" The librarian rose to the challenge behind Jesse's eyes.
"This is a public library, ma'am, and as a member of the public I have every right to be here. But..." Jesse let that hang in the air for affect. "...I think I will take you up on your offer to speak to the City Manager. He and I have a surprisingly close relationship. He buys me ice
cream and frequently listens to my recommendations. Maybe I'll suggest he hires back one those part-time workers you mentioned and get rid of some of the dead weight around here instead."
"I have a contract with the town. It's..." the librarian's words were hollow and Jesse spoke over her with ease.
"So did a lot of people. In every contract, there are always loopholes. A lawyer's whole job is either to discover loop-holes or to create them." Jesse had overheard her father say those exact same words only that morning at breakfast. As was usual, when he was at home, he had been on the phone with someone from work.
The librarian went greyer still, but rallied for one last effort. "My contract is ironclad. It was written..."
Again, Jesse spoke over her, "Nothing is ironclad in this economy." It was another little gem of her father's and, because he had said it with such self-assurance, Jesse believed him unreservedly. She employed the same tone and it shut the librarian down completely.
The librarian looked as though she had been punched in the head and Jesse began to feel a touch of remorse. The hate within her, what she thought of as “rebound hate” wasn't all-encompassing; there was still plenty of room for guilt. But she didn't apologize to the librarian or try in any way to calm the fears that she had stoked. Her anger over how the old lady had treated her was too fresh, instead she raised an eyebrow by way of saying good-bye and walked to the exit. As she did the whispering behind her back increased, just as she had known it would.
Chapter 3
Stepping from the light and warmth of the library to the lonely streets of Ashton made Jesse feel like a switch had been thrown within her.
Her blood had been boiling with anger only seconds before, but the cold night, which had turned bitter in the half an hour that she had spent in the library, doused the feeling quickly. The air was sharp and it ran up her sleeves and down the neck of her coat. It searched out the spots where she had begun to sweat and froze the damp uncomfortably against her skin.
Remember the body, a voice inside her spoke up.
"How can I forget it," Jesse replied. She pulled her coat more tightly around her and strained to see into the shadows.
The dark and the quiet of the night, like the cold, had also changed; they had grown. The air of the town was thick with silence, the buildings deep in gloom. Nothing stirred on the streets, no people, no cars, not even a forgotten stray making its rounds.
Most of the towns that she had lived in rolled up their sidewalks at six and shut down for the evening, but this was much more than that. This was weird and quite a bit scary. Apart from the library, the town looked altogether dead. Not a single light could be seen in any of the nearby buildings and they appeared abandoned. It was as if she had wandered into a ghost town.
That thought made her realize just how alone she was. Normally that wasn't an issue; she was used to it. For the last ten years, she had been the most hated and lonely girl wherever she went, but again, this was more than that. This wasn't just being apart from people as they went merrily about their lives. This was being so alone that her screams would go wasted on the empty buildings. So alone that her body would decay right there, untouched and un-mourned until the...
Stop it! the voice commanded.
Jesse's was surprised at how quickly her imagination had turned sinister. It ran wild with images of her running in a panic from empty building to empty building, each of which was chained with her own lock. This flashed through her mind, but then that same mind recalled her earlier fear: the brain-dead panic she had felt at seeing the Shadow-man down the length of the berm. That's what this sudden fear was really all about. The Shadow-man.
It had been real.
There was no denying it, though desperately she wanted to. Jerry Mendel's reaction had cemented that fact within her. His look of shock over her announcement that someone else was in the forest with them hadn't been faked. He believed her, and he had been…what? Afraid? Probably, or at the very least unnerved.
And now she was very much alone and the thought of the Shadow-man kept her feet from venturing off the steps of the library. Beneath her heavy coat, her skin rippled with goose bumps and she began shivering. He could be out there snugged down in the dark watching her; either that or waiting in the forest that ran right up to the edge of the town, waiting for her to come back.
Like that was going to happen. No way she was going down that path again, at least not in the dark. She would call her mom first...
"Damn it!" She remembered that she hadn't yet memorized her new home phone number, and she couldn't call her mom's cell. The cell coverage out here in No-wheres-ville, USA was spotty in town and non-existent ten feet outside of it.
It would have to be a ride home with dear old dad then.
The thought of her father went a long way to calming her fears. He was such a rational man that the irrational idea of the Shadow-man's frightfulness wilted in comparison. But still she hesitated on the steps, wishing for another option.
The Shadow-man, in her mind, represented a swift, horrible, painful death, while her father represented a long, horrible, pain-filled life.
It was a testament to how much she loathed him that she actually cast a look at the forest rising up behind a darkened laundromat across the street. The trees were nightmare dark.
A sigh marking defeat escaped her. She hated to turn to her father for anything; even the least favor had strings attached. Yet her harsh feelings stemmed from more than just that. Being in his presence was another chance to be ignored by him, or worse, lectured to. He certainly would never take the opportunity to mention that he was proud of her, or God forbid, for him to ever tell her that he loved her.
No, the only emotion that he ever seemed to demonstrate was disappointment.
Jesse took a peek at her watch, 7:46 p.m. This early on a Sunday night meant that he would still be at work and it also meant a long wait for her ride home. He probably wouldn't be finished until close on a half past nine.
Heartily, she wished that she had a third option. Being kidnapped by a Jehovah's Witness with a latex fetish might have been preferable.
With a final piercing glance into the nearby shadows, Jesse hurried down the steps of the library. This time if there was going to be trouble she'd be ready. Her right hand found the chain in her pocket and she curled its cooling links around her knuckles. Had she been in the forest, the chain would've been out and ready to plow a deep notch in someone's forehead. However on the town's streets it was wiser to be more circumspect.
With the parking lot full of cars and possible ambush sites, Jesse sped along over the building's snow-covered lawn and then out onto what passed, in that dinky little burg, for a main street. Although compared to say Lansing, or even Flint, it wasn't much more that a wide spot in the road.
At breakfast that morning, upon seeing the glum look on Jesse's face— she hated moving nearly as much as not moving—her father had tried to cheer her up by expounding on the wonders of Ashton. This was nothing new. He was always the head cheerleader for whatever town was crazy enough to imbue him with dictatorial powers. Another thing that wasn't new was that he would always over-sell.
The people of Ashton were the friendliest he had ever met—he had said the same thing about Chrisfield. The school is the one of the highest ranked in the state—he had said the same thing about Copper Ridge. On and on until his breakfast was plunked down in front of him. The town had formed a hundred and thirty years earlier at the junction of two of Michigan's most unimportant highways...though in Jesse's eyes the definition of the word highway had been dreadfully abused to make that statement.
With big eyes that darted up and down the street, Jesse crossed one of these "highways", jaywalking in a diagonal, going at her fastest pace that was still technically walking. Her father's office was in the town hall that was a block past the next intersection and though she was loath to see him, she was even more loath to be out there like she was. It bothered her the way she was
so exposed. If there were eyes in the dark watching her, they had a perfect view of her slim form. The thought was unsettling.
When she got to the other side of the street, straight away she hopped up onto the sidewalk, like she had done a thousand times before, but this time the tall heel of her right boot hit an odd crack. Her ankle buckled beneath her and she went down clutching her lower leg.
"Ow! Crap!" The pain was sharp, but not debilitating. The cold fear coursing through her was enough to get her up again in a second, cursing her bad luck. "What a damned night," she hissed between sharp intakes of breath. After testing her weight on her gimpy leg and finding that it would support her, she began to hobble on again. She went for half a block, hoping that she would be able to walk off the pain, but it only started to stiffen up all the more.
"Damn," she groaned again in dismay.
The sprain was worse than she had thought. She reasoned that it was probably only so bad since it was the second time in an hour that she had turned that particular ankle. The first time, running in the woods, she had barely felt even a twinge.
Just thinking of that first time made her want to look back the way she had come. The trail and the pond were back in that direction, and so was the berm and of course what had been on the berm. It was a strangely powerful and terribly fearful desire to look. It was as if she knew, perhaps psychically, that if she turned she would see the Shadow-man bearing down on her.
She fought the need to look, at least that is until she heard a soft noise coming from behind. With her heart blocking her throat, she wheeled and her eyes ran up and down the sidewalk and then the street. There was no Shadow-man.
It was perplexing; she could have sworn she heard something behind her. Jesse stared for a second and was just about to turn away when she saw the cause of the sound.
A car as black as the night and nearly as quiet was creeping along behind her with its lights off. When she had looked back for the Shadow-man, it had been moving so slowly that she had thought it to be only parked and empty. But it wasn't and now that she had noticed it, the car came on faster.
The Undead World (Book 12): Jillybean & The First Giants [An Undead World Expansion] Page 12