I walked back to the staircase, knowing right away: the basement door, open just a crack. My hands grabbed the edge and pulled it back. The smell of old books hit me hard; a fresh burst of adrenaline coursed through my body as my Hero Sense went into overdrive.
“Hello?” I called out. Muffled screams traveled up the stairs. I hurried down, taking the steps two at a time, stopping at the bottom only to let my eyes adjust to the dim fluorescent lights hanging from chains overhead.
Books. Paper. The old metal shelves were nearly empty; all of the books were scattered on the floor. Their old pages had been ripped out, spread all over the place and carpeting the concrete in multiple layers. I lifted up my running shoe, grabbing the piece of paper that had stuck to the rubber sole.
“The Juniper Tree.” One of the Grimms’ fairy tales, of course. Torn from an old copy that had been forgotten and shelved, rotting away down in the basement.
My right foot found a small space of exposed concrete. I stepped carefully, not wanting to damage any of the books or pages lying on the floor. There was value here, and maybe it could be fixed in some way. Not put back into perfect shape, I guess, but at least the pages could be saved … who knew which of these books would have value a hundred years from now? All those old books Briar had used to solve mysteries … one of these books might someday serve such a lofty purpose.
That was my thinking, anyway. I know, I know—it’s a bit optimistic. But it may just have saved my life.
I could see Mary and Fran on the other end of the old shelving units. They were tied up and sitting in front of the little room that I’d drawn when I first found the pen and Juliette’s instructions. Their mouths were covered with white cloths. If I were to say they looked scared, it would be an understatement. They looked positively terrified. Both of their faces were pale—not easy given the amount of blush they wore—and their eyes were droopy as if they wanted to sleep but had been passed over by the Sandman.
“Everything is OK,” I said, glancing down at the thousands of scattered pages and old leather covers with broken spines. There was no avoiding it—I’d have to step on this stuff to get to them. But still, my Hero’s Sense was stopping me. Literally stopping me from taking another step, freezing the muscles in my legs. I glanced over my shoulder, half-expecting a mutated rabid rabbit to be lunging at me.
No rabbit. Just pages. Thousands and thousands of scattered pages of dry, brittle paper and faded black typeface. Garamond. Serif. Times.
And Fran and Mary, shaking their heads wildly.
I set my leg back down, careful to keep it on the little square of exposed concrete so I wouldn’t damage any of the loose pages.
Fran and Mary nodded. Their eyes were wide. They were sweating—old ladies never sweat; they glisten. For them to sweat, it would have to be pretty serious.
They’re worried about me …
I looked down again, examining the scattered pages. It took a moment for my eyes to see it, but once they did I had to reach out for the nearby shelf to steady myself. The sudden urge to faint had boiled up and nearly overtaken me.
And that would have been the end of me.
The pages. They were scattered, all right. Scattered with a purpose. There wasn’t anything random about them at all—they were too perfectly placed, too perfectly random. They were hiding something.
“What secrets are you keeping, old familiar friends?” I slid my foot forward, burying it underneath a bunch of crispy yellowed pages of an old anatomy textbook. The toe of my shoe bumped into something hard. Mary and Fran shook their heads, mumbling something through the cloths over their mouths. I pressed harder, feeling the muscles in my thighs strain. Whatever it was, it was heavy.
I pulled my foot back. Suddenly, the pages flew up into the air. I clutched the nearby shelf, pulling myself back. Sharp teeth emerged, snapping together with a clang.
The pages floated back to the ground, resting on the steel device.
A spring trap. A big, fat spring trap with wide, triangular teeth. I could still hear the sound of those teeth coming together. The clang echoed in my head, reminding me just how dangerous this floor really was.
Right. As if the big spring trap isn’t warning enough.
“OK,” I told the librarians. “Everything’s OK. I’m just going to take it slow …” I slid my feet along the floor a few inches at a time, shuffling underneath the ripped-out pages. I forced the air in and out of my lungs as gradually as possible, keeping one hand on the nearby shelf. My muscles tested the metal bookcase to my left, wondering if maybe I could knock it over and set off anything else hiding underneath the pages.
But no. The case was too heavy. I could tip it if I really tried, but not without tipping myself over, too.
Right onto all those pages. And what’s under them?
Mary and Fran were crying now. It made me mad, seeing it. I wanted to hurry over and give them a big bear hug and tell them how sorry I was that they got dragged into this.
No. Keep going. Slow. Steady.
My toe bumped up against another trap. It was covered by pages and pages from a paperback version of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. I recognized one of the lines, which someone very much like myself had underlined: “I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book!”
“Amen, Jane,” I whispered. Although you might second-guess yourself if you were in my shoes …
I used my foot to press the trap a little harder, but couldn’t move it. I pulled my foot back, thinking.
“OK,” I said. “I’m just going to set this thingy off …” I carefully bent down, grabbing one of the book covers near my feet: The Count of Monte Cristo. The pages had been ripped out but the old damaged brown hardcover was heavy, maybe heavy enough to set off the trap. Mary and Fran whined through the cloths. “Don’t worry,” I said. “I kinda know what I’m doing.”
I threw down the book in front of my feet, flinching when the massive metal jaws appeared from underneath the papers. The teeth clanged together, catching two unfortunate pages and tearing them in half.
I stepped around the sprung trap, sliding my feet underneath the pages until I came upon one more. I crouched, and grabbed another hardcover book, A Farewell to Arms, and this time gave myself an extra foot of distance before tossing the book. Steel teeth chomped together, sending yellowed paper fluttering up and floating back down.
“See?” I said with a forced smile. “Nothing to worry about.” I willed my shaky legs around the last sprung trap, bending down and untying the cloths around the librarians’ mouths. Red marks ran along their jaws where the cloth had been tightly pressed. The painful-looking mark refused to fade. They’ve been here a while.
“Oh thank the heavens,” Mary said. Tears were welling up in her eyes. “It was a rabbit man. A rabbit man, I swear it!”
“It was a man in a rabbit suit,” Fran said. She looked angry, frowning at me as I untied the rope around their bodies. There’d been no heroic escape plans from these ladies. Where I might have tried at least to stand and find a twisted piece of metal on one of the old shelves, Fran and Mary had been content to sit with their backs to each other and wait for rescue.
“When did he come?” I asked. “Who was he with?”
“He was just so strange,” Mary sobbed. The moment the rope was loose enough, she wriggled one arm free and grabbed for the white cloth that had been around her mouth. She used it to dab at her eyes. “He kept laughing and telling us we were doomed. Then he destroyed all of the books. He said we wouldn’t need them anymore.”
Briar. There was no point denying what he was. No point dwelling on it, either. I needed more information. I helped them up one at a time, clutching their blouses to hold them up. “How long have you been down here?”
“We fell asleep,” Mary said with a whimper. Her legs weren’t putting in much effort so I gently moved her to the bookcase so she could grab the shelf. I wrapped my arm arou
nd Fran’s waist, moving her next.
“We’ll go upstairs,” I said. “We just need to take this one step at a time.”
I got them to the staircase, helping them get up the first couple stairs to the bannister. “One step at a time,” I said. “We’re in no rush, ladies. We’re …”
A message. It was written in red paint right above the basement door, complete with a little paw print under the question mark:
Are you still alive, hero?
A note hung from a nail underneath the message. “Come on,” I told the ladies, keeping one hand on each of their backs. They were too busy focusing on the steps to notice the message. I reached up and grabbed the note, stuffing it in my pocket.
“I need to use the bathroom,” Mary whined. She sounded so distraught that a fresh wave of anger washed over me. How could Briar have changed so much?
Because Corruption, hero.
“Here,” I said, giving Mary a gentle push toward the bathrooms just past the check-out desk. Despite Fran’s stern façade, I could tell she was as weak as a kitten and ready to collapse, so I guided her into the librarians’ office and helped her into the chair. I went over to the little black fridge in the corner, pulling out a few cups of applesauce and two little bottles of milk. “Eat and drink,” I ordered. “You’ll start to feel better.”
“We need to call the police,” Fran said.
I took a deep breath, nodding. “Definitely. And then we’ll get the basement clean.”
Fran snorted. It was the kind of snort she’d given me last year, when she’d been so grumpy all the time. She’d been grumpy because Sam Grayle’s company was about to take her house. She, like so many others, had suffered at the hands of a Corrupted. There was no telling who else was in danger, even right now. Any Corrupted that had lasted this long were clever. And strong.
It has to end.
Mary came back, keeping one hand on the check-out desk, taking little baby steps. The light streaming in through the windows seemed to penetrate her skin, revealing dark blue veins and highlighting the little brown freckles on her forehead.
They could have died down there. If I’d spent any more time in that other world …
Mary sat down at her desk. I gave her a cup of applesauce and bottle of milk. “Eat and drink,” I ordered. “No arguing, Mary.”
She smiled weakly, pulling at the top of the applesauce cup with a shaky hand. Fran had already finished hers and was in the process of dialing the police. I nearly stopped her, worried about what they might say about the message and the hidden door and the big traps downstairs. But then a terrible thought came to me:
It doesn’t matter.
Carefully, I unfolded the note, reading the scratchy handwriting. It was Briar’s, all right. Br’er Rabbit’s.
Dear Hero:
Do be so kind as to join me this evening at my home.
We’ll have a spot of tea …
And then we’ll end this farce once and for all.
Yours,
Br’er Rabbit
“Hello, police?” Fran said in a shaky voice. “I need to report a break-in at the library.”
I folded the note, then slipped it into the paper shredder underneath the check-out desk. My entire body shook. I grabbed the edge of the desk, walking around to the other side. I needed to go back downstairs and get one of those spring traps. I needed to get home—to hell with what people might think seeing a girl running down the street with a massive pair of metal jaws. I needed to stop thinking about the last few moments of my life.
There was no going back now.
I had to try and end this once and for all.
Chapter 3
Back home, I threw the spring trap on my bed and paced, thinking. There had to be a way to show up with more than a trap. It obviously hadn’t been drawn with the magic pen, which meant it couldn’t kill Br’er Rabbit even if he was stupid enough to step on it. I needed something magical.
Wait. Wait, wait, wait.
I crouched down, reaching underneath and feeling around for my super-secret saber. My fingertips ran over the fluffy bodies of my favorite stuffed animals—I’d buried all of them under the bed after my nightmares with Agnim. He’d infiltrated my dreams and tried to break me and somehow I’d survived, but I’d had more than enough of the stuffed animals to last a lifetime.
I crawled around the bed, patting the secret hiding spots again and again. No saber. It should have been right there, but it was gone.
I took one more look around the room—convinced Br’er Rabbit was just waiting for me to lower my guard so he could sneak in and kill me—then crawled under the bed, using the flash on my cell phone to illuminate the nook.
Nothing. Just a bunch of creepy stuffed animals.
“Crap,” I whispered, crawling out from under the bed. I had no pen. No weapons. Just a single spring trap that wasn’t even magical.
And a door in the floor.
I blinked a few times. The wooden door lying on the floor at the foot of the bed refused to disappear like a good little hallucination. That can only mean …
I crawled over, grabbing the doorknob before it could disappear. I pulled it open, half-expecting to see the familiar stone steps lead to the living room on the first floor.
Nope.
I walked down the steps, well aware that there could be a crazy Corrupted rooster waiting. But I had no choice. I had nothing. Images of Chase and my parents and Fran and Mary ran through my head. I had everything to lose now. If it meant giving my life to save my loved ones, I would do it.
At the bottom of the steps, I turned left, half-expecting my old foils and sabers to be scattered on the floor just as Briar and I had left them. But now they were back up on a new shelf as if nothing had happened. A neat row of blades, ripe for the taking. I reached out, grabbing a saber, running my fingers along the hilt. It was wrapped with leather—Briar’s idea—so that it wouldn’t slip out of my sweaty grasp quite so easily.
It was the saber that had been under my bed. My super-secret saber.
The sound of flapping wings echoed above. I grabbed the saber and stepped back, searching the ceiling.
“That’s hardly necessary, young lady.”
I stepped out from behind the shelf. The rooster was settled beside the pile of knives, looking up at me through one eye, his head cocked. “What are you doing here? Was there a battle? Did I miss it? Usually, I hear it happening. Then the door appears. Then we grab the weapons. Or I suppose I grab the weapons.”
I shrugged. “Sorry to disappoint.” I lowered my saber and took a shaky breath, looking around the massive room. The rooster had managed to clean up our entire mess from last time, minus the black snot marks staining the stone floor. The lights were still on, casting shadows between the piles of daggers and spears and old swords. “I need weapons.”
“Plenty of those,” the rooster murmured. He flapped his wings a few times and flew over to the opposite wall, perching on top of a cracked rectangular shield. “Plenty of other things, too. Still, I can’t help but wonder why the devil the door appeared right in front of you.”
“Um … well, I kinda lost the magic pen.”
The rooster turned back to me, his feathers puffing out. “What, what?”
“It’s not my fault. It’s been a really weird past couple of days.”
“I see.” He clucked a few times, looking around the massive room. “What do you need?”
“Lots,” I answered. “Enough to win a tough fight. That shield.” I pointed to the circular shield hanging on the wall above the rooster’s head. The dragon emblem had been colored in green, scratched in a dozen places so deep that the wood underneath the paint was showing. “And that armor.” I pointed to the chainmail shirt hanging farther down the row of shields. “And a couple daggers.”
“A bit extreme, wouldn’t you say? Who are you fighting? A griffon? A dragon? … Hmmmm … don’t think there are any of those left … oh! Is it a lion?”
; “Death.”
The rooster’s eyes widened. Just saying the word aloud had the same effect on me: I blinked and my eyelids were cold, sliding uncomfortably over my eyes. “So you’re insane, then.”
I shrugged. “Well, first I have to kill my friend.”
The rooster nodded. “Can’t say I’m surprised. But if you’ve lost the pen …”
“I know.”
The rooster cleared his throat, ruffling his feathers. He flew onto the top of the wooden case full of my old gladius swords. “Why do it, then? The portents are bad … the magic pen no doubt has already chosen its next owner. If the pen has no faith in you, surely it would be wiser to let bygones be bygones?”
“I have to try.”
“But why?” the rooster urged.
“Because I’m the hero.”
He grunted. “A bit too melodramatic of an answer for my tastes. But maybe I can be of some help before I’m dispatched into nonexistence …”
I chuckled. “Rooster, if you had any idea of the awesomeness waiting for you on the other side ...”
“How would you know!”
“I was there. All of the dispatched Corrupted are there. Your musician friends are there, too.” I stepped up to the circular shield hanging on the wall, running a finger along the scratch marks. “So I guess you’re lucky. You know where you’re going. But me? Gawd, who knows.”
Silence.
I turned around. “Rooster?”
The top of the case was empty. A single feather floated gently to the ground, burning blackness slowly consuming it.
The moment I closed the magic door, it disappeared. Just like that, not even an outline on the old carpeting. I went into my parents’ empty bedroom, to my dad’s closet, and pulled out his old softball duffel bag. I emptied the bat and the two leather gloves and the old green softball t-shirt, then took it back to my room.
The weapons were splayed out on my bed, another grim reminder of just how insane all of this truly was. Where just a year ago the foot of my bed was lined with stuffed animals, now a fencing foil sat in their place. I’d pushed aside my fluffy pillows to make room for the spring trap.
The Grimm Chronicles, Vol. 4 Page 33