The Library of the Dead

by Brian Keene

  The jar slowly rolled from the crone’s hands onto the floor.

  Franca was confused and scared and, most of all, desperate not to believe that she had just witnessed her mother’s death along with this old woman’s.

  But the crone’s eyes flickered wide.

  And the world began to tear itself apart.

  The room had bucked before but now it lurched, shaking so hard that the walls split. The roof dropped, cracked in two. The city seemed to roar outside the broken windows and Franca heard screams. She took a deep breath and slid to the edge of the bed just as it lurched again and threw her to the floor.

  The rumble of the earthquake filled her ears as she grabbed the frame of the bed to anchor her and tried to reach for her mother’s outthrust leg. Mama sat against the wall, silent gaze full of love for her daughter.

  The roof caved in. Thick ceiling timbers crashed down upon them all. The crone closed her eyes in that last moment as if in peace, and then the timber struck her, shattering her dry thicket of limbs and crushing her skull.

  A timber fell across the bed, slammed the floorboards at an angle and smashed the wood. The bedframe held. Franca lay in the small space beside it, the timber canted above her, as the jar rolled through a pool of her mother’s blood and came to rest in the cradle of her arms as if it belonged there.

  If the foreshock had lasted twenty seconds, this bucking, roaring, cracking of the world went on for at least twice that, and felt like eternity. When it eased to a rumble and then ceased altogether, screams and the sounds of chaos continued in the early morning light, and Franca could smell burning.

  “Mama?” she whispered, holding the jar to her chest. It felt warm.

  There was no reply. She was alone in the room.

  But she felt strong.

  And with the jar in her arms, a terrible understanding began to dawn.

  They walked through the devastated city before crossing the bay towards Chapel of the Chimes in Oakland, and Neville told her about her mother.

  Franca had known what her mother did, but had never understood the depths of her passion. She had grown used to seeing her disappear for days, sometimes weeks at a time, but she had not truly appreciated the reasons behind the absences, and how much each moment they were apart meant that her mother was chasing her dreams harder than ever before. Neville filled in some of the blanks while fires raged and smoke and dust hung heavy in the air, and Franca had never felt so strange.

  In a bag slung across her right shoulder she carried her mother’s funeral urn. That urn also bore something else, but she was the only one who knew the truth of that. She was the only one who could know. It was danger and wonder, charm and chaos, and even she still did not understand which.

  They had talked about it in those days since her mother’s and the city’s deaths. Neville was glum and sad, mournful, and convinced that the jar had been the bad one. Why else would Jane be dead? How else could the great city still be burning, the ground cracked, aftershocks collapsing weakened buildings and sending a terrified populace rushing into the streets once again?

  Franca suggested that the jar was the good one. She presented herself as the answer. The fever was gone, infection vanished as if shaken away by the violence of the earthquake. She said that such fortune would not be allowed by the contents of the bad jar, even amidst such chaos.

  But in truth, even she did not know.

  She had told Neville that the jar had been smashed into fragments, and then burned in the flames that consumed her house and a dozen others mere hours after she saw her mother die. He was devastated at the loss of the artifact, she could see that, but it was not something he could show. Especially to a little girl who had so recently seen her mother killed.

  They passed the ruin of a city block, burned to the ground days before and still smoldering. Dogs scavenged within the fallen buildings. The smell of death hung heavy in the air, and groups of rescue workers made their way slowly across the landscape of devastation. Franca paused for a moment and watched, but the weight across her shoulder urged her on.

  It needed to be somewhere safe, and secret, and then perhaps she could rest for a while and mourn. But she thought not. Something inside her had changed during those terrible, violent moments. She felt so much more grown up than before, so much older. Perhaps her blood had grown as thick and old as that crone’s.

  “It’s just across the bay,” Neville said.

  “Won’t they be so busy today?”

  “Not really.” He was trying to be fatherly, but Franca could see that he didn’t really know how to converse with a child. He’d sworn that he would look after her and be her guardian, but though she respected his good intentions, she knew that soon he would leave. Perhaps on another expedition, or maybe back to the museum, buried in the dusty depths where old things lay in shadowed mystery. But that was all right. Franca could look after herself.

  “Why not?” she asked. “So many dead. They say hundreds, but it’ll be lots more, won’t it?”

  “I suspect we’ll never know how many,” Neville answered. “But Chapel of the Chimes … a special place. And you have to be a special person to be interred there.”

  “And mother was a special person.” Tears blurred her vision. She was pleased, because she was still finding it hard to cry.

  “She was,” Neville said hesitantly. “And also, I know the people who keep the cemetery grounds. I’ve known them for a very long time. They granted me the favor.”

  The urn banged against her hip as they walked. It was far heavier than it should have been.

  “I’d like to do it myself,” she said.

  “Of course. We’re almost there.”

  Families huddled around fires in metal barrels, people walking with precious water in containers, impromptu stalls selling food in streets, weary men staring into the hellish distance across the bay, harried and hopeless. They smelled fire and death.

  She sensed wretchedness and hope in abundance.

  At last they reached Chapel of the Chimes. Neville stood awkwardly, trying to say a few words but eventually making do with silence. Franca smiled and nodded her thanks, then entered the strange building.

  Shadows of this library of the dead welcomed her. Keepers of the mausoleum met her, as Neville had told her they would, and told her what to do. Then they left her alone in a room with her urn, and the book-shaped reliquary where her mother’s remains would sit out eternity.

  Franca opened the urn and stared inside at the contents. The grainy, gritty ashes of her mother softly cradled the jar, its fractured shell tightly sealed by the ancient crone’s blood. She had killed herself to protect its contents, and in doing so prevented a full release of whatever might lie inside. She had also passed on a terrible responsibility to the person closest to the tragedy—Franca. A young girl, now destined to be the guardian of something so amazing, and so dangerous.

  When she was finished, Franca would leave this place and return once again to the shattered San Francisco daylight. And then her new, long life would begin.

  THE LIBRARIAN

  4

  You remember studying the 1906 San Francisco earthquake in school, or hearing about it from stories passed down from generation to generation: a high magnitude quake resulting in more than three thousand deaths. You wonder how many of those casualties endure in The Library of the Dead. The earthquake and resulting fire was marked as one of the worst natural disasters in U.S. history, with over eighty percent of the city destroyed, the greatest loss of life from a natural disaster in California’s history.

  Could the opening of Pandora’s box—?

  “That is only one recount,” the librarian says, returning the books to their shelves. “There are others, but not in this room.”

  Your guide leads you up a set of stairs to the second floor, and then to the third, where more golden books await, more statues, more vestiges. From this level, overlooking the balconies to below creates a dizzying effect that onc
e again seems to force you toward the walls and to the bookshelves. You follow your guide along bookshelf after bookshelf. A corner of the building houses corner shelves, which house even more of the dead; the books here have Chinese symbols on their spines instead of alphanumeric English. A memorial hangs on one wall, but the two of you move along too swiftly to read the text.

  Another covered hallway surrounds you in books, then another walkway, another balcony overlooking below, and then another hallway and another set of rooms. Already you are lost, turned around in so many directions and led down so many paths that everything begins to look the same in a labyrinthine blur of books and urns and memorials, although each room is completely different from the last and quite mesmerizing. There is no longer a north, east, south or west, no direction at all, no discernible path leading to the entrance you first encountered, nor to any new means of exit. Panic does not settle in, however, for you are enraptured, taking it all in, as if enchanted by the building and what it contains. The place seems endless.

  And then once again you and your guide overlook the two floors below, the height again forcing you toward the flat granite walls with their square tombs—which again you must touch—and the glass-encased bookshelves.

  It is then you notice that next to most of the panes of glass, which front—and keep dust at bay, you realize—anywhere from one to half a dozen books each, there are black metal rings attached to their framework: one the diameter of the ring made from touching your middle finger to thumb, and one half that diameter just below it. Out of the hundred or so sets of rings on this particular bookshelf, only three hold bouquets of cut flowers.

  How many of the dead are revisited each year?

  How many forgotten?

  JADED WINDS, reads the spine of the next chosen book. Nestled within the black metal rings next to it are three banded red roses.

  “This is one such tale.”

  While mesmerized by the vibrant red, the hooded figure had somehow removed the book from behind the glass.

  “Both this story and the last are of ancient ethnic lore, and claim responsibility for an event that transpired over a century ago, influencing the entire Bay Area. And one contains my story—the basis for a penance I have been paying for the last century as the librarian. But I will drop my cowl at the end of your tour and reveal my identity. Now, there are two others on these shelves you must see before we move on to another part of this library.”

  The other two books are of course those with the flowers. Someone alive recently visited these—

  Phasing through the glass, as if not there at all, the librarian’s robed hand reaches through to retrieve the second of the three books, for you realize he or she always chooses this magic number.

  TEARS OF THE DRAGON reads the second book, and you wonder if the story likewise takes place in San Francisco because of the title, perhaps in the part of the city now known as Chinatown.

  Before the librarian picks the third, you are drawn to its title and try to reach through for yourself, but your fingers meet what protects it: cold glass.

  PHANTOM ON THE ICE, the spine reads, a title perhaps with more than one meaning, a title perhaps mocking your attempt at phasing through to grab the book as the librarian had so easily managed.

  You want to ask the question, but the answer comes first:

  “By the end of our tour, you will be able to do the same.”

  An answer with more than one meaning?

  The librarian’s covered hand does what yours yet cannot and retrieves the third book, placing it beneath the others.

  The tiled floor tremors beneath your feet—the smallest of shakes—as the second tale of the San Francisco earthquake opens.

  JADED WINDS

  RENA MASON

  Ming Li woke to the sounds of a skeleton in motion, flat percussions reminding him of primitive bamboo wind chimes. The clacking came from the bed mat behind him. Last week, on their third wedding anniversary, he’d strangled his wife to death as she slept there.

  They married in Chinatown the first week of April in 1903, and she still hadn’t borne him any sons. He had to get rid of her before he could get a new wife, one who would fulfill her duty. Ridiculous Western laws. Ming dumped the body in the Oakland side of San Francisco Bay. Now her gu nu bone demon returned for his soul.

  Never one to fear a woman, supernatural or not, Ming turned over and opened his eyes. Face to face with Xi, he marveled at the way her long, black hair undulated in the air above as if under water. Her porcelain skin glowed and rippled in the moonlight. Stark eyes squinted at him, but Ming felt no remorse for what he’d done.

  “Come closer,” she whispered in a soft voice, a timid expression on her face. Xi parted her robe, exposing flawless breasts.

  A pinch of excitement tweaked his groin. Then he rolled away from her. “Go, now.”

  “Not until you have me one last time.”

  With his back to Xi, Ming reached for a wooden box on the floor.

  “No. Please don’t,” she said.

  He struck a match, lit a candle, then turned toward her and held up the light. Xi’s mouth opened wide and she screamed, her jaws unhinging until half her face became a howling orifice. Her cries grew louder as her flesh melted, leaving nothing but animated skeletal remains. She reached for him, but he moved the flame closer, forcing her back. Xi’s bones clacked once more before falling away and disappearing.

  Ming smiled, blew out the candle, and slept deeply.

  Packed within a throng of other Chinese immigrants in black robes and beanies, many with queue braids swinging behind them, Lew Hong spotted his business partner Ming. They acknowledged one another with a nod, wove around people, and met in the middle. Together they shuffled to their small ironworks on Sacramento Street. Morning mist from the San Francisco Bay clung to the sides of brick buildings, vaporous specters defying the sun.

  The men jostled forward in rhythmic surges with the crowd. Lew listened as Ming spoke in Cantonese. “The Dragon Boat Festival is only two months away. Are you certain ours will be ready?”

  “Yes, of course. The men work hard to keep us on schedule. They know it’s important.”

  “Will you be going straight to Oakland this morning?”

  Lew paused before answering. “I planned to but shouldn’t. Yu is due any time.”

  “May the heavens bless you with another son. Yes, they will. This is your year, year of the horse,” Ming said.

  Lew smiled and nodded. He’d thought the same thing when he left his wife sleeping. She nearly bled to death on the floor of their cramped living quarters after the premature birth of their first child. He’d made a vow then to work harder and give her a more comfortable living.

  Images of a bigger house and a better life for his family occupied every moment of his days for the last decade. After the success of their small ironworks, they’d started a fishing boat manufacturing business, and he couldn’t be happier with how well production moved along.

  Lew’s good fortune made him feel somewhat guilty after Ming’s wife had recently run away and left him.

  “I’ll go,” Ming said.

  “You’re a good friend and business partner.” Lew patted Ming’s shoulder.

  After Lew entered their factory, Ming turned down Stockton Street. He despised walking alone outside of Chinatown where Chinese often became targets for prejudiced cruelty. Mechanical sounds thundered behind him as he crossed Kearny. He quickened his pace, stepped into a small crowd of Westerners and tried to blend in. Someone shouted, “Chinaman, stop!”

  Every muscle tensed, he scowled and clenched his fists. People scattered with shocked looks of disgust. A covered motorcar pulled up alongside him. The metal demon twitched and sputtered. The driver ignored Ming’s presence, kept focused on the road ahead. Dark curtains over the windows concealed everything inside.

  A door opened. A familiar voice came from within. “Need a ride?”

  Ming scanned the area then got in.r />
  “Shut the door,” said Carl Worthington.

  Ming did, and the car rumbled forward.

  “You headed to the docks?”

  “Yes.”

  “Take the long way, Sam,” Carl said.

  The man up front nodded.

  “Well, Mr. Li, have you talked to your partner?”

  “No. Not yet, but—”

  “You’re not trying to get out of our little agreement, are you?”

  “I need more time. My partner’s wife is about to have a baby.”

  “No one on the city council cares. We made a deal, didn’t we?”

  “Yes.”

  “So?”

  “Very soon. I promise.”

  “Soon isn’t good enough, Mr. Li. If you want payment and more acreage around your boat business in Oakland then you need to be faster. You people aren’t in short supply, if you know what I mean.”

  “No.” Ming shook his head. He didn’t understand, but even with the language barrier, the Westerner made his air of superiority clear.

  “My goodness, your kind are slow in the head.” Carl pointed to his temple. “I mean someone else will take my offer of money and land to move Chinatown across the bay if you don’t want it—other Chinese. I bet you understand now.”

  The driver laughed.

  White devil!

  “Yes,” Ming said.

  “Next week, then. Sam and I will find you. Make sure you have the signed papers.”

  Ming nodded.

  “Good. Now get out.”

  The motor car stopped and Ming had barely stepped down when the car sped off again.

  Anger roiled his insides on the ferry ride to Oakland harbor. He walked up to the bow’s railing, looked over, and vomited morning tea. It stirred the dark water below. A pale white, familiar face floated up to the surface. Xi! It couldn’t be. He’d weighted the body.

  The prow moved through her and into a thick fog bank. Damp, frigid air embraced him and squeezed the breath from his lungs.