The Library of the Dead

by Brian Keene

  “I’m afraid,” he said again, hating how true his voice made that sound.

  She lowered herself down beside him and put an arm around his shoulder, gave it a squeeze. It was a maternal gesture meant to comfort. It had the opposite effect, and something cold writhed within him. He had to resist the urge to pull away.

  “It’ll all be fine, I promise. Weird things like this happen to people all the time. The brain is a fickle bitch. Sometimes it revolts.”

  He nodded, looked down at his hands, at the dirt beneath his fingernails. “You’re right,” he said. “Thanks.”

  She removed her arm and stood, startling him when she clapped her hands like a coach rallying the team for a game. “Okay, so how about you take a few minutes to freshen yourself up? You look like a turd on a swing set. I’ll wait in the car and bring you to Alameda when you’re ready.”

  He spoke without looking at her. “Will you stay with me? Just until they tell me what’s wrong, assuming they can. I don’t know what to do, Lace. I feel like I’m falling apart.”

  Her pause was brief, but enough for him to sense the deliberation, the unwillingness to accompany him this far down his own personal rabbit hole, her fear of what it might mean to him after it was all over, whatever dreadful and life complicating form that ending might take.

  “Yes,” she said then, a heartbeat too late, and put a hand over his. “Of course I will.”

  He nodded, but could not bear to look at her again, not because of what he would see in her face, but what he might not.

  As he’d feared, the tests revealed nothing out of the ordinary other than high blood pressure, which he had suffered since his early twenties, a condition which culminated in ischemic strokes in his early thirties. Since cutting down on smoking and drinking and taking three aspirin a day, he hadn’t suffered one since. It was the doctor’s contention that his “hallucinations” were related and that it was something best monitored via consultation with a “medical health professional.” Lacy seemed buoyed that the doctor condoned her advice, and when she deposited Joe back at his condo, she was positively cheerful.

  “Get some rest, stay off the booze, and go talk to someone tomorrow,” she told him as he eased himself out of her husband’s silver Audi A7. “You’ll be your old self in no time.”

  How I wish you were your old self, he thought.

  He stood for a moment on the sidewalk, one hand on the open car door, his gaze fixed on the condo, which looked to him now like a mausoleum for dead reflections. The dying sun glared like a baleful eye over the flat roof, the sky bruised purple around it. It seemed to him the worst possible idea to enter that place and yet he had nowhere else to go.

  “Joe?”

  Slowly, feeling as if he were underwater, he turned to look at her.

  She gave him an apologetic look. “I have to go.”

  After a moment spared to study her face, to take a mental snapshot of the true beauty behind the brittle mask of forced concern, he nodded and summoned a smile for her benefit. “Of course. I’m sorry, Lace. And thank you for, y’know, being there.”

  “It’s no problem.” She gunned the engine. “Keep me posted, all right?”

  The lack of sincerity galled him, but he kept it from his face. Why shouldn’t she want nothing more to do with him? He was the one being unfair, his dilemma creating unreasonable expectations of a woman who had a life of her own to live. A life that no longer included him and never would. The fact that he wanted it to was redundant. He had signed away all rights to her when he’d resisted her suggestion that he get a “real” job, that he have more faith in himself. He had done neither of those things, had indeed resented the notion that his creative pursuits didn’t constitute real work. Real artists get paid, she’d once said, a statement that led to the first of the worst arguments, the ones that undermined the foundation of all that they had once been. The beginning of the end. And all the while she’d gone to work at the insurance company and made enough to keep them both afloat while he waited for his ship to come in, only to watch it wreck itself upon the reef.

  And now he was alone, so much so that it seemed not even his reflection wanted anything to do with him. The absurdity of that thought brought a smile more genuine than he’d managed in days, and Lace mirrored it. “Keep your chin up,” she said and, because he didn’t seem inclined to do it himself, she leaned across the passenger seat and pulled the door shut. Joe backed up a step as she gave him a cute little finger-wave and drove away. He watched until her tail-lights were mere embers in the deepening twilight.

  Inside, the shading of the fading light against the shuttered blinds made the condo seem even colder and emptier than before. For a long moment he stood by the door, considering the benefits of fleeing. But where could he go? Everywhere out there were mirrors because people need to see themselves. Without them, part of our identity is lost. We need to know what we look like, we need to know that yes, we are here. And whatever the cosmic calamity that caused it, Joe was not here, not according to the mirror. He wondered what it would be like to be alive in a world in which he couldn’t see himself, could never know what he looked like, the long term mental impact of having something so trivial and yet critical taken away, and being the only one denied it? And yet, others could see him in the glass, which meant that maybe he would show up via other methods too. In photographs, perhaps.

  Emboldened, he tossed his keys in the wicker tray on the table by the door and made his way to the bathroom. Hit the fluorescent light and gave the oval mirror over the sink a distasteful glance as he fished in his pocket for his phone. It was still jarring to be standing before a mirror he had looked into every morning and night for two years and see nothing. The specks of toothpaste and water on the bottom of the glass seemed almost like mockery now, the harsh light unobstructed by a presence that had every right to be there in accordance with natural law. Worse, however, than the bizarre lack of a reflection, was the probability of what it meant to be the only one who couldn’t see himself. He did not believe in the supernatural, had been intimidated into willful ignorance by science, and had only the most rudimentary understanding of psychotherapy, gleaned via research for a script that had, like most of them, ended up in the bottom of his filing cabinet. He knew only enough to concede, as anyone would, that whatever had happened to him, its origins likely existed inside his own head. Any relief this might have afforded him—the idea that he actually was there in the mirror and had somehow simply been blinded to it—was dashed by the greater implication of what that meant for his sanity. Somewhere up there, a cog had slipped so badly it had managed to alter the reality available to his eyes.

  He brought the phone up before him, the camera’s eye focused on the mirror, which showed only the phone floating magically in the air before the glass.

  The phone’s display screen showed a smaller version of the same impossible image.

  Joe clicked the button and the phone made a ratcheting sound as it captured the moment.

  He lowered the phone, clicked the small preview thumbnail to enlarge it, and looked down at the photo. He stared at what was there to be seen, and what wasn’t, and then attached the photo to a text message and wrote:

  THIS IS WHAT I WAS TRYING TO TELL YOU.

  JUST TOOK THIS.

  I’M NOT THERE.

  Fingers trembling, he hit send. Looked straight ahead, wishing he could see his eyes, wondered what he might see in them if he could.

  Could it be that whatever strange selective blindness he was suffering extended to phones too? When Lacy received the message, would she see him in the photograph? Mouth dry, he pocketed the phone and brought his hands to the glass, pressed them hard against it. Yes, he could feel the coolness of the mirror against his skin, the tactile confirmation that he was real and he was here. It did not yield to him and he was relieved that the sudden fear that he might sink through it and find himself in some awful netherwhere of negative space was not realized. He pushed harder aga
inst the mirror, heard the glass creak as it bowed against the pressure.

  I am here.

  He could smell the soap, the disinfectant, the stink of his own sweat.

  “Show me,” Joe told the mirror. “Please. I’ve done nothing to deserve this. Let me see me.”

  Teeth clenched, he leaned harder into the mirror, his arms quivering from the strain.

  “For God’s sake, show me,” he pleaded, his voice cracking under the weight of imminent tears.

  The light above his head flickered and buzzed.

  “Please …”

  When it became clear that whomever or whatever power controlled such things wasn’t listening, he screamed at the top of his lungs, drew back a fist, and slammed it as hard as he could into the mirror. On impact, a jagged silver crack shot upward like lightning in reverse, a smaller crack radiating outward from the side of his hand. The mirror shuddered in its frame but did not break. He imagined the glass falling away only to reveal his reflection behind it where it had been hiding all along. Weeping, Joe put his forehead against the glass.

  His phone chimed to signify a text message received. With a shaky almost child-like sigh, he fumbled it out of his pocket and brought it up to his face.

  The message was from Lacy.

  I C U JUST FINE, BABE.

  U NEED 2 TALK 2 SOMEONE, STAT.

  A grim smile through the tears. So to everyone else, he did appear in photographs, just like he did in the mirror. He would just never be able to see it, a revelation that greatly decreased the likelihood that anyone would ever believe him anything other than mad. There was, after all, absolutely no proof of what he was going through other than his own testimony.

  He released the phone, let it clatter into the sink.

  Where there was blood.

  Blinking away the tears, he looked from the smattering of crimson on the porcelain to his knuckles. The skin was broken and torn across all but one of his knuckles, blood smeared across his fingers and dripping from his hand. He raised his eyes to the mirror, saw the smudge of his blood on the glass.

  And something else. Something which made him jolt and back away from the mirror as if it had burned him.

  “Jesus.” A spear of elation shot through his chest and he brought his hand up, turned it this way and that. A smile spread across his face, though he could not yet see it in the mirror. He would though, that much was clear. He was coming back.

  He thought about calling Lacy, decided to wait. First, he needed to be sure, or risk compounding the impression that he was mad.

  Almost afraid to hope, he looked down at the faucets, saw the slightest distorted blur of movement there. Next, heart thundering, he ran into the bedroom, not caring that he was leaving specks of blood on the beige carpet, and stood before the free-standing mirror in which he had last seen only Lacy’s beauty, and beyond it, her struggle with apathy. A prayer to a god he had never believed in on his lips, he looked into the glass.

  And saw what he had hoped would be there.

  A laugh disguised as a sob burst from his mouth and he dropped to his knees, the relief almost unbearable. He chuckled and wept and whispered thanks. A week ago, back when things were normal, what he was seeing in the mirror now would have horrified him as much if not more than the absence of his reflection. But things were no longer normal, and the sight of his disembodied bloody hand floating in the glass gave him the hope he needed to keep going, to do what clearly now needed to be done.

  Excited and terrified in equal measures, he rose, took one last look at his hand in the mirror, and hurried to the kitchen to get the sharpest knife he owned.

  A

  CHIMERA’S

  TALE

  CHRIS MARRS

  The Mortal

  Josh trudged down the sidewalk as he debated whether to go home to Lisa-Anne and her feeble attempts to murder him or not. She wouldn’t know his meeting with the building inspector down in the Tenderloin District ended early. Then again, she had a way of sussing things out of him. He’d quarreled with himself since he was a child and believed an angel sat on his right shoulder and a devil on his left. It drove his wife nuts. Their two teenaged boys, though, had always found it humorous and teased him every chance they got.

  The heat rose off the pavement in shimmers and thickened the air. His sport coat, hooked over one shoulder with his thumb, bounced against his lower back with each step. Sweat dripped down his sides but he was so engaged in arguing with himself, it didn’t register. Neither did the sandwich board sitting on the concrete. Josh walked into it, caught it before it tipped over and, when setting it back in place, noticed the board listed beer specials for a pub named Gary’s. A gentle tug from deep within his gut propelled him inside.

  The Immortal

  I was messing with the barflies at Gary’s when I sensed the presence of an approaching chimera. My hand paused in mid-air as the familiar pins and needles sensation rippled across my skin.

  A tattoo on the hairy arm of the biker hunched over a bourbon on the rocks begged to be stroked, but my fun would have to wait. Not that he’d see me touch him. Feel it? Yes. And with luck, might have thought the geeky dude sitting beside him trying not to make eye contact with anyone was getting touchy-feely.

  The prickling sensation deepened into sharp stabs, indicating the reshaping of my present form. Colors bled until everything I saw was cast in black and white. The scents of beer, disinfectant, piss, and mold heightened, yet the change never affected sound. While I rode out the transformation, Sammi, a cute little bartender, laughed with four guys seated near the pool table. The hooker, Jane, provided the soundtrack by coaxing a lively Hungarian piece from her violin in hopes of receiving tips or booze or a trick. A junkie in the corner twitched and scratched as he waited for his dealer.

  When my pieces settled into their new place and the ache receded, I knew my appearance had become that of a female. A bartender, too, based on the black skirt, apron, and tight shirt with the name Annalise stitched over one breast. Which meant the approaching chimera was a male, and unfortunately a mortal, just a man born with two sets of DNA. He may be earthly; I, on the other hand, am not. I’m a celestial chimera, a creature genetically angelic and demonic, light and dark, and I’m the only one in existence. The Powers that Be deemed me too good to be accepted by the dark and too evil for the light, so until they made up their minds, I was stuck here. Sucked to be me.

  I shook out the last of the tingles. Then, because I could, and because the last couple of chimeras had been female, I flashed the bar. No reaction. Ha! So I did it again, but the satisfaction wasn’t there that time. I felt a little pathetic and gave up the game to lean against the back counter and wait.

  Impatience crawled through me. I wanted him to show up now. After all, he’d be able to see and talk to me and we’d be spending copious amounts of time together, at least until he grew old and died. My last chimera passed away over fifty years ago. The excitement caused my angelic side—the right half of me—to glow with a soft blue light and suffused me with happiness. Finally, he walked in.

  The Mortal

  Goosebumps pimpled Josh’s arms and the sweat quick-dried when he stepped into the air-conditioned bar. He spotted an empty table in the corner and, ignoring the stares from the bikers playing pool, plopped down onto a wooden chair, varnish worn thin in spots.

  A cute bartender with short blonde hair nodded at him in acknowledgement as she tipped a mug beneath the spigot. While she poured, an old man chatted her up while he leaned forward to gaze down her shirt, but she ignored it. After giving the letch his draught, she sauntered out from behind the bar. Her short skirt revealed a great pair of legs to go with the ample cleavage.

  “What’ll it be, hon?” she said.

  “Mug of draught, please, Sammi,” he said as he read the name on her shirt. “You pick the flavor.”

  “I recommend the lager or the lager.” A slight grin brought a dimple to the surface of one cheek.

  He l
aughed then said, “A lager then.”

  Off she went, seductively twitching a perfect ass with each step. While he admired her butt, the little hairs on the nape of his neck stirred. He checked to see if the bikers were watching him but they were engrossed in their game so he scanned the room for the culprit. Then he saw another bartender leaning against the back bar counter.

  She looks just like Lisa-Anne. The long black hair and trim body was an exact replica of his wife’s, but the violet eyes staring back at him clinched the illusion. He noticed a pale blue glow surrounded one side of Lisa-Anne’s doppelganger. Josh blinked, hoping the heat was affecting his mind, but the aura still clung to her. Sammi blocked his view to set down his draught, moved to another table, and the other bartender slipped onto the chair across from him.

  Up close the similarities were more apparent, right down to their Roman nose, full lips, and diagonal scar running through one eyebrow. According to the name on her shirt, even their names were alike. Josh deconstructed Annalise’s face, examined her for any little flaw or difference to shatter the resemblance, but found none.

  In his mind, the angel and the devil started to yammer.

  The Immortal

  “I’m Annalise. Mind if I join you?” I said.

  By his narrowed eye expression, I thought he might tell me to leave, but he said, “You look like my wife. She’s trying to kill me.”

  “Wait. What?”

  “No, she isn’t. Don’t be paranoid.”

  I wished I could, just once, meet a normal chimera who didn’t have a private war going on inside them, but then they wouldn’t be a chimera, would they? It’s a curse of the dual natured genetics and one even their closest loved ones never suspected.