by Jon Scieszka
Nina rolled her eyes. “He had fangs! He was wearing a mask! Go away, Clark. Go write your paper.”
“He moved really fast,” Clark said, ignoring Nina. The room was too dark. The shadows sat thickly on his skin. He wanted to brush them off, like cobwebs. He wanted to turn on all the lights. “At first I just kind of saw him out of the corner of my eye, but then . . .” Clark stopped talking. It sounded stupid, said out loud.
“Yes? What then? Tell me.” Mr. Dunn’s hands were still in his pockets. The computer light still shone off his glasses.
He seemed taller now, even though he hadn’t moved an inch.
He licked his lips.
Clark tried not to stare. Maybe he was going crazy. Quite possibly he was sleep-deprived. “Nothing. I don’t know. I don’t remember. It happened really fast.”
“Of course. I understand.” Mr. Dunn smiled. “Libraries do funny things to the brain, I’ve found. Especially on gloomy days like this. Anyway, I’ll be at the reference desk if you need me.”
Once Mr. Dunn was gone, Clark turned to find Nina staring at him.
“What? Are you about to yell at me some more?”
“No,” she said. “I was just thinking you might be right.”
“About what?”
“About the kid with the fangs.” She swallowed. “I think I just saw him, too.”
Clark and Nina huddled beside each other in front of the computer, pretending to work.
“You’re sure you saw him?” whispered Clark.
Nina exhaled slowly. “I think it was a girl, actually. I was thinking about how mad you were making me, how dumb you were acting. I figured you were trying to distract me from being mad at you by pretending to see things. I felt so mad I wanted to punch something. That’s when I saw her.”
Clark decided to skip the part about Nina being mad at him. “We can’t both be seeing things, can we?”
“I don’t think so. One person hallucinating, sure. Two people hallucinating different things, okay. But two people hallucinating the same exact thing?”
“You could be lying, I guess. Pretending you saw exactly what I saw, just to freak me out.”
“Clark. Do you remember, in ‘Sub Zero,’ when Jones and Gertie May were stuck underwater in their suits, trying to make that engine repair, and Gertie May’s suit was running out of air, and Jones told her he’d save her, no matter what? He kept promising her, over and over, that he would save her. He swore he would. He swore on his favorite gun.”
Clark nodded. It was the first episode that had made him cry, because it was when he’d realized mean old Jones-y actually had a heart.
Nina started speaking in a fairly decent Jones accent. “I swear to you, Clark—I swear it on Clementine’s precious metal life—” Nina made a motion like Jones cocking his gun. “I am not lyin’ to you.”
Clark tried to smile. “Well, so what do we do about it? Should we just leave? What do you think it means?”
“Actually,” Nina said, talking like Nina again, “I was thinking about your grandmother.”
“Grandma Ruby?”
“I was thinking about the songs she sings. I don’t know why. I just always think about her when I go to libraries these days. I think I spend too much time at your house.”
“Seriously? I do not want to think about Grandma Ruby’s songs right now. Let’s just go.”
Nina looked like she was considering it. She glanced at the computer screen. “I still have eight pages left on this stupid paper.”
That was when the lights went out.
“Worry not, intrepid information seekers! Power should be back on soon.” Mr. Dunn lit candles and set out flashlights. “We’re on the same power grid as the police station.”
They gathered in the main reading area. There were six of them—an old man scowling as he tried to read his newspaper by flashlight, two college students checking the weather on their phones, Mr. Dunn, Nina, and Clark. Nina flopped down in one of the oversized reading chairs.
Clark paced. Shadows played at the light’s edges, and they seemed to stew there, churning, like the storm. Like they were coming to life, now that the power was off. Maybe shadows felt more comfortable in dimmer light, because there was more darkness for them to hide in.
When Clark let his eyes unfocus, the shadows at the corners of his eyes took shape, grew tendrils, snapped their jaws.
Eyes glowed behind wolfish shadow-masks.
Without moving his body, Clark cut his eyes to the side, searching the darkness, but as soon as he did, the glowing eyes disappeared. The candlelight quivered, and therefore so did the shadows. They grew and trembled and bled across the ceiling like spilled, living, breathing ink.
“Maybe we ought to get going,” said Clark, rubbing his eyes. He vowed to never again stay up until 2 a.m. watching Noctiluca. “We can’t work on our papers in the dark.”
“That’s a good idea,” Nina said, sounding relieved.
Mr. Dunn was suddenly there, his hand on Clark’s shoulder. He had been several yards away, setting up candles, and then he was there, like he’d moved faster than it was possible for people to move.
“Oh,” said Mr. Dunn, “you don’t want to do that.” He smiled, and the candlelight reflected off his glasses. It created the illusion of twin flames dancing where his eyes should have been. “The weather’s awful. You’ll crash your bikes. You’ll fall and hurt yourselves. And then what will your parents think? They’ll sue me for letting you leave the library. You’re safe here. The storm will pass soon.”
Before Clark could protest, Mr. Dunn held out a small plastic container. He opened the lid, revealing stacks of cookies iced white and pink.
“I baked these for our staff party, but I brought too many. We librarians couldn’t finish them. We absolutely stuffed ourselves. You can have some, though, if you’d like.”
The old man reading his newspaper grumbled to himself. The college students had not looked away from their phones.
“Go on,” said Mr. Dunn. “I insist. They’re nice and fat and fresh. I like my cookies chewy.”
Clark grabbed two, because he wasn’t sure what else to do. He wanted to get away from Mr. Dunn, whose eyes he couldn’t see. Clark perched on the arm of Nina’s chair.
“Here,” he said, distracted by the shadows and the glowing eyes at the edge of the room. He gave Nina a cookie, and stuffed the other in his mouth. They had bright jelly filling, and some splattered out onto his jeans.
“Eat it,” Clark said, “so he’ll leave us alone.”
“Fine,” said Nina, and popped the other cookie into her mouth. It stained her lips red. “But look.” She nodded at the nearest window. Clark looked outside, and he saw the police station, just down the road, and all the houses in between.
Their windows glowed, pouring golden light out into the storm.
“So he lied to us,” whispered Nina.
“Obviously. But why?” Clark whispered back.
They crouched in an aisle between bookshelves in the 800s section. They had claimed they might as well try to work on their papers. Mr. Dunn had said fine, but don’t wander off. Remember, the storm. It’s dangerous out there.
“Maybe something’s wrong with the library electricity,” Nina suggested.
“Yeah, and he doesn’t want to scare us. Maybe he called the electric company on his cell phone.”
“I bet someone will be out any minute now to get the power back on.”
“Definitely. I bet you’re right.”
Nina sat on the floor, her back against the bookshelves. “I don’t feel very good.”
“Me neither. We’re probably hungry. What time is it, anyway?”
“I don’t know. Maybe Mr. Dunn has more of those cookies.”
Clark brightened at the thought. “Hey, Nina?”
“Yeah?”
“You see the kids, right? You see the kids in the masks?”
“Yes.”
“Up high, on the bookshelves?”
“Yes. They keep running around. They’re making those weird clicking noises.” Nina put her head in her hands. “They’re making me dizzy.”
“There are a lot of them now.”
“I bet we’re just hungry.”
“Maybe. You can start to see funny things if you don’t eat enough food.”
Clark and Nina returned to the reading area, leaving Clark’s bag behind. In the small zipper pouch sat a forgotten peanut butter sandwich.
Clark lay with his cheek on the table. His head was full and fuzzy, his mouth dry.
Across from him, Nina licked the icing from her fingers. They had finished Mr. Dunn’s cookies. He sat nearby, reading a black book with no title on it, humming a song that Clark recognized. He tried to sing along but couldn’t remember the words, and he hadn’t yet recovered from the crushing disappointment of realizing there were no cookies left.
Nina kept licking her fingers even once they were clean. She licked her fingers until they were red and chapped and raw. Clark had this nagging feeling that he should ask her if she was all right, that there was something they should do. But every time he tried to speak, the cottony feeling in his mouth took over. He choked on his own swollen, blotchy tongue and nearly threw up, and stopped trying to talk.
The old man and the college students had left. Maybe they had never been there at all. Maybe they were like the kids with the glowing eyes and the masks, watching from the shadows. Maybe this was all a dream, Clark thought.
“Don’t worry,” said Mr. Dunn from his chair. “We’ll get there soon enough. Not much longer now. No, not much longer at all.”
Clark wet his cracked lips and looked up. There seemed to be trees now, growing throughout the bookshelves. Tall and dark and crooked, they grew to the ceiling, where the sky was black velvet. There were no stars in this sky, but there was a tiny red moon.
How strange.
The Mandigore, he’ll find you
The Mandigore, he smells so sweet
The Mandigore, he wants a treat
The Mandigore, he has a crown
Clark figured he was dreaming, because he was lying on the library floor beneath a canopy of trees, and there was a red moon, and in the branches overhead curled a wide, white snake with ruby eyes.
“My hunters never fail me,” said the snake, with the voice of Mr. Dunn. “How swift they are. How clever. They always find such fresh, interesting cuts.”
Then the snake slithered away, into a bookshelf, and on the shelf sat rows and rows of black books with no titles. The books grew and elongated and became shadows—child-shadows, with glowing eyes and fierce masks, and they reached for Clark. They drew him into their skinny, cold arms and squeezed and pulled. It hurt to be pulled like that, through a surface hard and thorny.
“Clark?” called out Nina, from somewhere far away.
“Clark, where are you?”
“Clark? Is that you?”
The Mandigore, he howls at breakfast
The Mandigore, he howls at night
The Mandigore, he has red meat
The Mandigore, he has white teeth
When Clark awoke, he was pretty sure he wasn’t dreaming because his head hurt like crazy.
Pinch me, I must be dreaming. His mouth tasted like vomit, with just a touch of jam filling.
“Ow,” he muttered, sitting up. “Nina? What’s going on?”
“Don’t move, Clark,” came Nina’s voice. She sounded stressed.
Once Clark opened his eyes, he understood why.
They were in a forest of tall, dark, crooked trees. Above, the sky was velvet black, and there were no stars, but there was a tiny red moon. Throughout the trees, two dozen pairs of glowing eyes stared. Two dozen masks in the shapes of wolves and pigs and goats and birds faced Clark and Nina, showing off their fangs and their carved pink tongues.
“But I’m awake,” Clark said. He pinched himself, and nothing happened. “I don’t understand.”
“I don’t know where we are,” said Nina, “but they won’t stop singing that song. Stop it!” She reached into her pocket and pulled out her Noctiluca trading cards, the special edition pack Clark had given her for her birthday.
Nina hesitated, then threw the pack at the masked children. She threw a pen, then a few quarters. Once her pockets were empty, she took off her shoes and threw them, too.
The masked children were swift. Nothing hit them. They moved as the shadows had moved in the library—jumping and darting, dragging themselves from tree root to tree root with long, spindly arms.
And they were singing:
The Mandigore, he’ll find you
The Mandigore, he smells so sweet
The Mandigore, he waits for you
The Mandigore, he won’t wait long
He won’t wait long
He won’t wait
Clark took off his shoes, too, and emptied his pockets. He and Nina found pebbles and sticks, and scooped up mud from the forest floor.
The masked children dodged everything thrown at them, and began to laugh as they sang. They took off their masks and beat them against the trees like drums. Their faces were stretched thin, their eyes flat and cold.
The Mandigore, his eyes are keen
The Mandigore, he has a crown
The Mandigore, he says hello
The Mandigore, he says good-bye
Good-bye, good-bye
Nina started to cry, which Clark knew would make her mad, because Nina hated crying. Her Noctiluca cards, scattered in the mud, looked pathetic. Captain Farriday’s smirking face stared up at them.
“We’d better run,” she said. “I don’t know where, I don’t know what’s going on, but—”
“Wait,” said Clark, because one of the children had long, pale hair, and freckles across her face, and though her eyes were now black instead of blue, Clark recognized her. He had seen her every day, in the picture frame on Grandma Ruby’s nightstand.
“Aunt Mara?”
Aunt Mara tilted her head from side to side, quick and sharp, like a bird.
Clark felt ill; people weren’t supposed to move like that. “Aunt Mara, is that you?” He didn’t understand it. Aunt Mara had disappeared years and years ago, and yet now here she was, in this forest, beating her goat mask against a tree, looking just as young as she did in that old picture.
“Grandma Ruby went looking for you when you disappeared,” Clark said, “but she couldn’t find you. Is it seriously you, Aunt Mara? I’m your nephew. My name is Clark. I’m David’s son. David, your big brother.” He put out his hand, like he might invite a strange cat to say hello. “Do you know where we are? Do you know what happened to us? We were in the library, and the power went out—”
“Clark,” Nina whispered, “stop talking to it!”
“Ruby,” hissed Aunt Mara. She bit at nothing, her teeth clacking together three times. She spat black liquid onto the ground. “Ruby came. Ruby got away.” Aunt Mara smiled. “But you won’t.”
Aunt Mara threw back her head and let out a horrible rattling sound from the back of her throat. The other children did the same; a chorus of howls filled the forest.
Nina grabbed Clark’s hand, and they ran.
They ran until their socks were soaked with blood. It didn’t take long; they had lost their shoes, and the ground was sharp with brambles.
They ran with the sounds of clicks and growls and panting at their heels. Aunt Mara’s laughter was high and thin like a bird’s cry.
They ran even though they had no idea where they were going.
They ran until they found the Mandigore.
The Mandigore wore a dirty golden crown.
He had white teeth in a wide-hinged mouth; when he opened it, his pulpy throat glistened in the light of the red moon.
The Mandigore smelled sweet, like cookies iced pink and white.
The Mandigore had white flames where eyes should have been.
The Mandigore sat sprawled on a pile of b
ones, his flesh pale, his belly swollen and shiny, his knobby arms and legs draped like never-ending snakes across that pile of bones. His head was too small for his body, too small for that wide, smiling mouth, but the mouth somehow fit anyway. His jaw cracked and shifted.
He didn’t speak, but Clark imagined, if he did, it would sound something like Mr. Dunn. Mr. Dunn, of whom Clark had been jealous. This struck him as hysterical, and Clark began to laugh. He laughed so hard he started crying.
And as he laughed, Aunt Mara and the other masked children surrounded them, hissing and clicking their strange language. They hovered in the trees, waiting. What next? What now?
“What are you doing?” Nina screamed. She punched Clark’s arm, then his chest. When he didn’t respond, she kept punching. “What’s wrong with you? Are you insane? Why are you laughing? Stop laughing. Calm down! We’ve got to do something, attack him or—I don’t know! We’ll just keep running. There’s got to be someone here who can help us!”
But there wasn’t. Clark knew that, and he knew Nina knew that. It was pretty obvious. It was just like ‘Waylaid,’ when the Noctiluca crew went on that deep-sea exploration mission for Section 47, and they got swarmed by that tribe of giant squid-human mutants, results of a Company experiment gone wrong. Except this time there were no cool TV tricks to get them out in a nice, tidy 45-minute episode.
There was only Clark, and Nina, and a really freaking terrifying Aunt Mara, who seemed too far gone to be helpful.
Clark thought of Nina’s Captain Farriday card, back wherever they had left it, in the mud, filthy and abandoned and smirking to no one in particular.
What would Captain Farriday do?
“When I say go, run,” Clark said, straightening. “Run fast, and go throw up somewhere.”
Nina stared at him, crying. “What?”
“It’s those cookies, I bet. The cookies had something in them that brought us here. Run away, throw up, and maybe you’ll be able to get away, back to the library.”
Nina took off her belt and started whipping it at Aunt Mara, who was creeping closer. All the masked children were creeping closer, inching Clark and Nina toward the Mandigore. What had Mr. Dunn said, in Clark’s dream? The snake with the voice of Mr. Dunn: My hunters never fail me.