by G X Todd
The sun became smoky as it filtered through the windows, its yellowy beams alive with floating dust motes. Pilgrim tugged his neckerchief up over his mouth and nose, feeling the motes tickle the back of his throat when he breathed in. He slipped off his sunglasses with his free hand and walked deeper into the lobby.
The room opened up, the issue and returns desk to his right, and a long table stretching out before him, dark wooden shelves lining the walls to each side. On his left, a gap in the shelving made way for a wide staircase that led down to basement level and a faded grey sign informed him that the children’s library was downstairs. The shelves were all empty of books, occupied instead by dust bunnies and dead insects.
Is this such a good time to be stopping for reading material? Especially if there could be teeth-extracting crazy people around?
‘It’s always a good time.’
Lacey stepped up beside him. ‘What’s always a good time?’
‘To broaden our minds,’ he replied.
‘Right.’ She frowned doubtfully at him.
Ahead, stacks of lateral-facing shelving ran six deep before opening up into a reading area populated with coffee tables and study carrels. An L-shaped staircase led up to a mezzanine level, which more directional signs revealed had once housed the non-fiction section; it formed a balcony over the reading area below.
‘So where are all the books at?’
He ran his eyes over the emptiness, looking for the door he wanted. ‘A lot have been burned,’ he told her absently. ‘They make good fuel for fires.’ Wandering alongside the table, left hand trailing across its smooth top, fingers unconsciously following the wood’s grain, he spotted the door marked ‘Staff Only’.
Jackpot, Voice said.
‘Jackpot,’ Pilgrim agreed.
He expected the door to be locked, but the knob turned easily and the door pushed silently inward. It was like looking into the bottom of a sinkhole; his eyes were unable to latch on to anything in the complete absence of light. He reached into the side pocket of his pack and took out a flashlight. The beam stabbed into the darkness, cleaving it open and bathing everything in harsh white. Stepping slowly inside, listening for movement, he swept the flashlight back and forth, picking out a desk and a chair, two filing cabinets with all the drawers gaping open, a cork board with curling notices pinned to it, and an overturned metal waste basket. On the far wall, another door beckoned. It was also unlocked. When he opened it, a chilly breath of air washed over him, as if the room beyond had exhaled after a long slumber, and with it came an even stronger stench of mustiness and mildew.
Six rolling stacks took up most of the space. The middle bay was rolled open and, when Pilgrim glanced into it, he saw each shelf was filled with books. Hundreds of them.
Well, whaddya know. You’ve struck gold, Pilgrim, ol’ boy.
He holstered his gun and slipped into the bay, being careful to step over the stacks’ runners, and caressed the spines of the books, his eyes scanning their titles. He pulled out a slim paperback copy of Ira Levin’s Rosemary’s Baby and flicked through the yellowed pages. The book felt good in his hands. He unslung his pack and tucked the paperback inside.
He went back to running his fingertips over the books’ spines, pausing here and there to feel the slightly upraised or indented font of the lettering.
You can’t carry them all.
‘Five,’ Pilgrim said. ‘I can carry five.’
Fine. But be quick about it.
CHAPTER 18
Lacey almost followed the Boy Scout into the back room, but he didn’t spare her a glance, too busy searching for his precious books to care if she was there or not. Forget him if he wants to go searching for some mysterious you’ll know it when you feel it book. She had better things to do than trail after him like some hungry chick waiting for its feed.
She stood next to the long, empty table, watching the light from his flashlight bob about in the darkened stockroom. She glanced down at where her hand rested on the dusty tabletop, her fingers having matched and run along the same tracks the Boy Scout’s had made through the dirt. She drew her hand back, irritably rubbing the grime off on her jeans.
Alex touched her elbow. ‘He doesn’t mean it. His people skills just need some improving.’
‘No kidding,’ she muttered.
Alex hooked her arm through Lacey’s and tugged. ‘Come on, let’s go find our own books. He can come get us later.’
Lacey let Alex draw her away. They wandered over to the stairs, the light growing fainter the further they walked from the library’s entranceway. On the wall, its detail lost in the dimness, a six-foot-tall painted bunny greeted them at the top of the stairs. Lacey pulled out two candles from her pack and held them steady while Alex lit them. They followed the bunny downward into the dark, holding on to the bannister as they went, a new painting of the rabbit, mid-hop, spaced every five steps or so. The candlelight threw their shadows back on to the walls, the bunny coming alive in the wavering flames, jumping and bouncing along with them.
The children’s library was a cave of gloom. They kept to the right when they reached the bottom, running their hands along the shelves to orientate themselves.
Alex stopped, and Lacey almost bumped into the back of her.
‘Wow, look at this.’ In front of Alex, a large green-bodied caterpillar hung from the ceiling. Alex poked it with a finger and it swung away on its wire. It came back and she caught it in one hand.
‘It looks like it’s been eating chillies,’ Lacey said.
Alex laughed softly. ‘It’s the Hungry Caterpillar – it’ll eat anything.’
Lacey stared at the thing, not getting the reference. ‘OK?’
Alex looked at her as if she’d sprouted her own caterpillar out of her eye socket. ‘Good Lord, you’ve never heard of the Hungry Caterpillar?’
For some reason, Alex’s surprise at her lack of knowledge annoyed Lacey. ‘No. I’m sorry my grandma wasn’t a library user and didn’t read to me much. I was, like, nine when everyone decided to throw themselves off bridges and in front of trains and kill each other and stuff. I never got the chance to read widely.’
Alex let go of the caterpillar, and it swayed gently on its wire. ‘I’m sorry. I was reliving my childhood there for a second. I didn’t mean to imply you should know it just because I do.’
Lacey’s irritation vanished instantly. ‘God, I’m sorry, Alex. I’m just being a shit. Ignore me, OK? What kind of book is it?’
Alex smiled, but it was melancholic, distant. ‘A children’s picture book. Our nanny used to read it to us when we were little.’
‘Not your parents?’
‘They weren’t the bedtime-story type.’ Her smile became tinged with bitterness.
‘They’re gone, too? Your folks, I mean.’
Alex reached for the caterpillar again and cupped it in one palm, stroking her thumb across its body. ‘Same thing happened to them as to most everyone else. My mother was a little more imaginative about it, though – she did the whole Sylvia Plath thing. Always did have a flair for the dramatics, did dear old Mom.’
Sylvia Plath was another reference Lacey didn’t understand, but she wasn’t about to ask for an explanation. She wanted to say again that she was sorry, but she was so sick of those words. Sick to death of them. They tasted hollow and dusty in her mouth.
‘You think we could find the Hungry Caterpillar book in here?’ she asked instead. ‘I’d really like to read it.’
CHAPTER 19
To save on weight, Pilgrim was picking out three more slim paperbacks – Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle, Wyndham’s Day of the Triffids and Matheson’s I Am Legend – when he realised it had been too quiet for too long.
He swung the flashlight towards the open door.
No one stood there.
At the rare discovery of all these untouched volumes, he had momentarily forgotten the girl and the woman, but now the silence screamed at him in their absence. Even the fai
nt vibration in the ground had disappeared. He quickly slid a fifth book off the shelf, not bothering to glance at its title, and stuffed it into his pack. He made his way out of the stacks, slinging the pack on to his shoulders, and went back through the outer office and into the library proper.
They weren’t waiting for him out there, either. Only silence and dust greeted him. He stood motionless and listened.
Maybe they—
‘Shhh.’
He heard nothing. He considered calling to them but decided against it. There was no reason to call attention to himself if he didn’t need to.
It doesn’t feel safe here, Voice whispered. Not for us, and not for them. Trouble always seems to find us.
Pilgrim’s eyes were drawn to the open doorway. He could see the parking lot from where he stood, and for a second he envisaged striding out of the library, not looking back as he brushed past Alex’s car and carried on walking. The girl would be upset to find him gone, he knew, but he wouldn’t have to face her wounded expression or the sad betrayal in her eyes because he’d be two miles up the road and placing more distance between them with every step.
I thought you wanted to help them, Voice said.
Pilgrim saw the woman’s eyes in the rear-view mirror again, except now, standing in this empty library with nothing but the weight of the pack on his back and the weight of Voice in his head, he thought he understood what she’d been trying to tell him: This is all she has. Don’t take it from her.
We might even get some scones out of it, Voice added.
‘You know as well as I do her sister is dead.’ But his tone lacked bite. He was staring at the trails his fingers had made in the dust on the tabletop. Next to them he saw a smaller set where the girl had run her fingers along the surface, criss-crossing over his own.
He wasn’t a heartless bastard, after all. Not completely.
‘I guess I did tell her I’d get her there,’ he said quietly.
You did.
‘And it won’t take long.’
It won’t.
Pilgrim moved off, his head down as he studied the scuffs of footprints in the dusty carpeting.
Just so you know, for a guy who’s always complaining about wanting to be alone, you play Papa Bear very well.
‘If you’ve got nothing useful to say,’ Pilgrim told him, ‘do us both a favour and don’t say anything at all.’
Like a child needing to have the last word, Voice added, You’re as cranky as a bear, too.
Shaking his head, Pilgrim flicked on his flashlight and headed down into the basement, where Winnie the Pooh, Elmer the headless Elephant and the Gruffalo waited for him in the dark.
The children’s library was a low-ceilinged, sprawling area the size of the whole adult fiction and non-fiction lending library put together. The dark gave it an eerie, claustrophobic feel, despite its open-plan design. With the child-sized, dark wooden shelving and floor-level kinder boxes, there were plenty of places for someone to hide. Pilgrim took out his gun, keeping its muzzle pointed at kneecap level.
The bookcases nearest to the stairs were empty but, as he moved deeper into the maze, books began to appear, some fallen over, others collapsed in a pile in a domino effect, the odd one still standing upright as if placed on display by the librarian only that morning in order to catch the eye of an excitable child. Obviously, the chore of carrying these books up the stairs had been too tiresome an enterprise for the book thieves, who had limited their efforts mainly to the ground floor above.
At the end of many aisles, homemade creatures or animals had been hung or exhibited, each one designed to capture the imagination of young visitors. They captured the imagination of older visitors, too, and Pilgrim gave the grotesquely long-legged spider a wide berth as he reached the end of one particular aisle, the arachnid’s papier-mâché body as big as his head. Far too easily he could imagine the spider unfreezing and stretching its spindly legs before quickly scuttling towards him with an unexpected burst of speed. He hurriedly walked past.
Hidden under the stairs, an arched doorway drew his attention, a soft glow of candlelight dancing over the alcove room’s walls. There he found the girl standing in front of a tree. Alex sat in a beanbag chair with a book open on her lap, a candle on a shelf above her left shoulder, its wax base melted into the wood. She glanced up at him when he appeared, a faint smile of greeting there and then gone. He nodded to her and looked over at the tree with which the girl was so entranced.
Looking closer, he could see it was made of card and paper painted brown and stuck in long strips to imitate bark. The leaves themselves were cardboard dressed with green tissue paper.
Lacey reached out and laid her hand flat against the imitation bark, head tilted back to gaze up into the tree’s canopy. In the branches, two colourful birds sat silent and watchful.
‘Someone made all this,’ the girl said in a whisper.
Pilgrim stepped closer and, unable to resist, holstered his gun and rested his own palm on the trunk. It was rough to the touch but not cold.
Like bark, Voice said.
‘Yeah,’ he murmured.
‘Must’ve took hours and hours. Isn’t that amazing?’ Lacey looked over at him. Her eyes shone in the low, flickering light from the candle. ‘That somebody took so long to create something like this, just so kids could look at it and play under it.’ She turned back to the tree, her hand stroking the bark as if it could feel her caress.
Pilgrim glanced up into the branches and found a stuffed bird staring down at him, its black button eyes unblinking. A dead sentinel for long-dead children.
Listen, Voice whispered.
Faintly, Pilgrim heard voices. Real, outside voices.
Lacey must have noticed his head swing around, the sudden stillness in his stance. ‘What is it?’ she asked him.
‘Something upstairs,’ he said. ‘Wait here.’
Alex was already on her feet, the book she had been reading hanging down by her side. There was a green snake on its cover. She asked a question with her eyes.
‘Get ready to move,’ he told her, and left them, turning his flashlight off, finding his way back to the stairs, the voices coming a little louder as he began to ascend.
At least three of them. Maybe more.
Pilgrim stopped halfway up, high enough for him to tune the voices into actual words, but the speakers were still out of sight.
‘. . . we gonna do, Jeb?’
‘We’re gonna see what the hell these folk are doing here. Why they’re transmitting shit on our CB channel and why the fuck they’re driving around these parts.’
I told you trouble has a way of finding us, Voice whispered.
‘But the signal we was followin’ shut off. How’d we know if they’re the same folks?’
‘They have an antenna on the fucking roof of their car and a CB unit inside it. The hood’s still hot. It’s a safe fucking bet it’s the same people, you moron. Now, we search this place till they turn up and hope to Christ they’ve seen her.’
A third voice joined in. ‘Boss wants Red back. So we look till we find her.’
The first voice spoke again, sounding miserable. ‘She won’t let us find her. Not after what got done to her. She don’t wanta be found.’
There was a meaty slap followed by a yelp.
‘For chrissakes, stop moaning like a fucking bitch.’
The whiny one whined some more. ‘You don’t gotta hit me, Jeb. Jeez.’
‘Then shut the fuck up and go check out the rooms through there. Bill, take the downstairs. Holler if you see anything.’
Pilgrim retreated, silently retracing his steps back to the alcove room. He motioned for Alex to blow out the candle, and then drew her and the girl close. The darkness was impenetrable for the moment, but he knew his eyes would quickly adjust.
‘There are three of them,’ he whispered, voice barely audible. ‘One’s heading down here. We keep quiet and we keep together. No shooting unless there’s no c
hoice.’
They were huddled so close together he could feel the tension vibrating off them, the burning heat of their anxiety. Already the girl’s breathing was fast and shallow.
It’s not going to work, Voice said.
He was right. The girl was practically hyperventilating. They would just get in the way, or make a noise and draw the man to them, but either way they’d all end up dead, and that wouldn’t do.
‘Never mind,’ Pilgrim whispered quickly. ‘Stay here. Keep the gun on the doorway. Shoot anyone who appears – don’t worry about the noise.’
‘But what about you?’ Alex whispered.
Murder in the dark? Voice asked, a grim glee to his words.
‘Murder in the dark,’ Pilgrim replied.
CHAPTER 20
He shucked off his pack and left it beside the tree, then slipped out into the dark of the children’s library. The bright beam of a flashlight bounced down the stairs as the man – Bill, he had been called – headed down to them.
Leaving his gun holstered, Pilgrim slid a knife out of the sheath at the small of his back. Keeping low, he ghosted behind the nearest shelving, ducking down and passing under the hanging papier-mâché spider just as the man stepped into view.
Bill’s footsteps stopped while he surveyed the library, the flashlight’s beam arcing over Pilgrim’s head in a long sweep.
The guy whistled under his breath as he started down the aisle directly in front of the staircase, two aisles from where Pilgrim crouched. A pool of light marked his progress under the shelves. Pilgrim waited for a few seconds and then slid back under the spider, went two aisles over and glanced down the walkway. The man was a black silhouette with his back to him, his head swivelling left and right in slow panning motions, the flashlight coming up every couple of strides to direct the beam over the tops of the bookcases and punch holes in the gloom. He was armed with a shotgun, which was propped, barrels up, against his shoulder. Bill reached the end of the aisle and turned right.