Story Time

by Edward Bloor

  Once Pogo closed the mushroom cap on the roof, the secret room below should have turned as black as a tomb. But it did not.

  Over by the wall, the unplugged Holographic Scanner began to glow red under its glass pane, a hot and frightening red, like the fires of Andrew Carnegie's hell. Then, from deep within, a cloud of wispy white lines rose up and swirled beneath the glass. The lines formed, disintegrated, and then formed again, casting ghostly shadows on the ceiling and walls of the secret room.

  19. A Guided Tour through an Old Scrapbook

  After school on Friday, Kate pulled out a set of six photographs and spread them across her bed. They were photos of Charley Peters, her absent father. She examined each one meticulously, asking herself: What brand of shoes is he wearing? What shirt logo is that? What type of sunglasses is he wearing in that sports car? She answered herself aloud, "The best. The absolute best"

  Kate looked down at the floorboards, as if she had X-ray vision. She looked for June, her invalid mother, rummaging around somewhere for her lost keys. She pronounced her, "The worst. The absolute worst." She scooped up the photos of the dapper Charley Peters and whispered to him, "I don't blame you for leaving. I'd have left her, too."

  Kate stacked the photos into a shoe box, slid it under her bed, and went downstairs. She waited silently in the vestibule until June emerged, wearing a faded housedress, with the long-lost keys now clutched in her hand.

  June then drove Kate to Molly's for dinner. On the way, Kate halfheartedly asked, "Tell me why I can't sleep over again."

  "You need to be at home, Kate, every night. I need to know that you are safe."

  "I'll be safe at Molly's. Her grandmother is there."

  "But I won't be there, so it's no."

  "So this is all about you?"

  "Yes, I suppose it is," June admitted.

  Kate gave up quicker than usual. She wasn't really interested in making June feel bad tonight. She was much more interested in speaking to Mrs. Brennan.

  Molly let Kate in and started upstairs, as if they would hole up in her room as usual. But Kate told her right away, "No. I need to talk to your grandmother tonight about the Whittaker Library. Is that okay with you?"

  "Will it be creepy?"

  "Very creepy."

  "Cool. She's in the kitchen, making dinner."

  Upon seeing Kate, Mrs. Brennan set down her stirring spoon and gave her a hug.

  Molly said, "Kate actually wants to talk to you tonight, Grandmom."

  Mrs. Brennan laughed. "Oh? I'm flattered. Come sit at the table, both of you, while I finish this sauce."

  Kate got right to the subject. "Mrs. Brennan, what did you do at the Whittaker Library?"

  Mrs. Brennan handed a short stack of plates to Molly. She answered with a tinge of surprise, as if Kate should have known. "I was the director of Library Services for King's County, my dear, for many years."

  "And, if I may ask, what do you do now?"

  "Of course you may ask. I don't think that's being nosy." Mrs. Brennan shot a withering glance at Molly. "I am the curator of the King's County Historical Society."

  "Is that like your old library job?"

  "No, dear. Not at all. It's a much smaller job. It's a nonprofit organization. I'm the only paid employee."

  Kate bit her Up. "Well, then, if your library job was bigger and you were the boss and everything, why did you leave?"

  "That's a long story."

  "I would like to hear it. I would like to hear anything that you would like to say about the Whittaker Library."

  Mrs. Brennan grew quiet, so Kate did, too.

  Once they were seated at the table and eating, though, Mrs. Brennan started talking. "I assume you have met Mrs. Hodges."

  Kate gagged involuntarily.

  "I see that you have. Well, when I was there, I suspected she was using a razor to cut pages out of the children's books."

  Molly laughed. "Why would she do that? Was she, like, into vandalism or something?"

  "No, quite the opposite. She believed she was protecting the children from demonic influences."

  This sent a shudder down Kate's spine. "Wow. And is there a Mr. Hodges?"

  "There was one. He died. Right there in the library."

  Kate and Molly both leaned forward. "How?"

  Mrs. Brennan leaned forward, too. "No one knows for sure. The coroner claimed that he electrocuted himself."

  "But you have doubts?" Kate said.

  "Everyone but the coroner had doubts."

  "Was this Mr. Hodges a librarian?"

  "No, dear, he was a minister, from a church that no one had ever heard of. He was hired to investigate some incidents in the library about ten years ago."

  "So the weird things began with him? With Mr. Hodges, about ten years ago?"

  "Oh, heavens no! I believe he was brought in, by Cornell Whittaker Number Two, to deal with weird things that were already happening." Mrs. Brennan's voice grew softer, as if drifting into the past. "No, if you really want to know about the origins of it, we have to go back much farther than that."

  Kate looked at Molly. "We really want to know about it."

  "Then we have to go back to the middle of the nineteenth century, when Cornell Whittaker Number One was a young man. He became very interested in the occult. He became a practicing spiritualist."

  Molly giggled. "You mean, like, séances, Ouija boards? All that stuff?"

  "Yes. All that stuff."

  "He was crazy?"

  "Perhaps. But it wasn't considered crazy back then. Did you know that even President Lincoln and his wife held'séances in the White House, trying to contact their dead son?"

  Kate and Molly shook their heads.

  "Cornell Whittaker Number One was a founding member of the Society for Psychic Research. He raised his son to believe in the society's principles, too. His son took it one step further, though, becoming a bit of a fanatic. Cornell Whittaker Number Two spent a fortune collecting occult books from all over Europe."

  "I saw some of them!" Kate said. "He had a lot of creepy books in a huge bookcase. He also had a really old copy of Mother Goose."

  Mrs. Brennan nodded. "Indeed, he did. By Perrault, the original compiler of the stories. Yes, I remember when Mr. Whittaker brought that book back from London. Good heavens, that must have been thirty years ago. He was quite proud of it."

  "So, you knew this occult, spiritualist guy?"

  "Oh, yes."

  Kate tried to sound casual. "Did he, like, walk around in wizard robes?"

  Mrs. Brennan smiled. "No, dear. He walked around in a business suit." Her smile faded. "And yet, I must say, Cornell Whittaker Number Two was very odd. For one thing, he always smelled like smoke, like fire and brimstone. We knew he smoked up in that office of his, but we could never catch him at it."

  They finished eating dinner. While Molly and Kate cleaned up, Mrs. Brennan said, "I have an old scrapbook from my days at the Whittaker Library."

  Molly whispered, "She has an old scrapbook from her days everywhere."

  "Molly?"

  "Sorry."

  "Would you like to look through it, Kate?"

  Kate nodded so enthusiastically that Mrs. Brennan laughed and hurried off to find it. She returned five minutes later and squeezed into a chair on the girls' side of the table.

  Mrs. Brennan opened the rectangular book and spread it before them.

  She asked Kate, "Have you met Pogo?"

  Kate nodded cautiously, trying to gauge Mrs. Brennan's opinion. "Oh, yes. I've met her. She's very nice."

  "She is. She's a darling. But quiet."

  "Very."

  Mrs. Brennan turned pages until she found a photo. "Here is Miss Pogorzelski as a little girl. She's posing with her father in his workshop."

  Kate studied the picture. It showed a miniature version of Pogo standing next to a very old man. She was holding a book; he was holding a power saw. "What was Pogo like then?" Kate asked.

  "She was, as you
might imagine, a very quiet child. She was keen to read nursery rhymes, as I recall."

  "Did she have any friends?"

  "No. Not that I ever saw. She had Cornelia, but you would never call her a friend."

  "Who's that?" Molly asked.

  Kate answered, "She's Cornell Number Two's daughter."

  Mrs. Brennan turned to a newspaper clipping. "Cornelia managed to get in the newspaper quite often." The clipping showed a color photo of a young Cornelia in front of a display of Heidi books. She was dressed in a white frilly outfit, and she held a staff with purple-and-yellow ribbons, but she looked miserable.

  "Unlike Pogo, Cornelia could never keep her mouth shut. She was not born with a library voice. She used to bellow like a moose whenever she talked. That's what her father called her, in fact: 'the Moose.' It was sad really. I think Mr. Whittaker truly disliked Cornelia. And he truly hated Jimmy Austin. I can tell you that."

  It was Kate's turn to ask, "Who's that?"

  "You would know him now as the eminent Dr. J. Kendall Austin."

  Mrs. Brennan pointed to a photo of herself standing next to a short, skinny teenager with long hair and big square teeth. "Jimmy Austin was a kid from the community college. He used to shelve books, like Pogo; he used to work the checkout desk, like Walter Barnes. He was always scooting around the stacks. And he was always writing term papers for some mail-order college that nobody had heard of. Mr. Whittaker used to call him 'the Mouse.'"

  Next was a black-and-white newspaper clipping with a large wedding photo. It showed a young Dr. Austin, now with short hair and a dark beard, standing next to Cornelia. She was seated, wearing a flowing, expensive-looking white gown, but she still looked miserable. Mrs. Brennan commented dryly, "So the little mouse married the big moose."

  Mrs. Brennan closed the book. Her tone turned cold. "Jimmy was always ambitious. He got his master's degree by mail; then he got his doctorate online. He chased after whoever could forward his ambitions, like those Technon people. The day he married Cornelia, Mr. Whittaker got him appointed deputy director of Library Services.

  "Soon after, don't ask me why, strange things began to happen in the library. Otherwise well-behaved children would act like wild creatures. People assumed that the children were just acting out. Then it happened to an adult, and that was another matter.

  "Rumors started flying. People said the library was haunted by a ghost or a demon of some sort. The Reverend Mr. Hodges arrived on the scene, claiming expertise in all things demonic. He announced that there was indeed an evil presence in the Whittaker Library Building. And that evil presence was ... me."

  Kate and Molly gasped together. "I had always opposed the partnership with Technon," Mrs. Brennan explained. "And I had always seen through little Jimmy and the scheming moose.

  "Jimmy found an old photo of me doing a Story Time, dressed like a funny witch for The Little Witch's Halloween Book. He went before the County Commission and denounced me as a corrupter of youth. The commission was then, as it is now, composed mostly of Technon people. They were eager to pin the blame on someone. They forced me to resign from my job."

  "Why didn't you tell them to go to hell?" Molly asked indignantly.

  "Don't talk like that, Molly."

  "Sorry."

  "The reason I spoke no such vulgarity was that they threatened to go public with the photo and to fill the newspapers with lies about me and my family. I knew they were capable of doing just that, so I left. I don't know. Looking back on it, perhaps I should have had a stronger backbone."

  Mrs. Brennan shuddered and closed her eyes. Then she stood up. "Anyway, I'm sure you girls have more important things to talk about than the Whittaker Library. Good night to you both." She went upstairs, leaving Kate and Molly sitting in front of the scrapbook.

  Molly held up one finger. "Okay, here it is. You just need to do something to get kicked out of that place. Come down with some weird sociopathic disease or something."

  "Please!" Kate waved the idea off. "They'd love to lack me out. Tomorrow morning. It's Uncle George they want. But as long as we live at the same address, Whittaker is my school district."

  "Okay, then. George needs to get kicked out."

  "How? He's their model student."

  "He needs to come down with a bad case of the stupids."

  "No. When George tries to act stupid, he's still smarter than most people." Kate shook her head. "Whittaker is George's place to shine. Before this, I'd always been the star and he'd always been the one behind the scenes. Now it's reversed."

  Molly looked away, unable to think of anything else to say. The doorbell rang five seconds later. Molly opened the door to George. "June's in the driveway for Kate," he announced. "She asked me to come up and get her."

  Kate called over to him, "Yeah. Come in. I'm almost ready."

  George waited while Kate poked her head up the stairway and called a final "Good night" to Mrs. Brennan, who called back the same.

  Molly hugged Kate good-bye for several seconds. "You'll get back to Lincoln soon," she told her. "I just know it."

  Kate did not reply.

  "And you'll get the part of Peter Pan. You just have to wish for it with all your might. If you do that, your wish will come true. Right, George?"

  George thought for a moment and then answered, "No, I don't think wishing has anything to do with it. I think events tend to follow in a logical progression."

  Molly rolled her eyes. "Whatever. Good night, Kate."

  George spoke past Molly to Kate, "You wish to be Peter Pan, don't you?"

  Kate answered seriously, "You know I do."

  "Think about what you did to make that 'wish' come true. You worked hard to make yourself a singer and a dancer. You went to all the rehearsals; you performed small parts for two years.

  "If you get back to Lincoln, Kate, and you audition for Peter Pan, the directors will see that you are clearly the most talented and the most experienced candidate. They will give you the part."

  George paused to look at Molly. "If, the night before they announce the roles, you close your eyes and make a wish, you may spend the rest of your life believing that your wish had come true." He turned back to Kate. "But the fact is, if you had gone to sleep without making that wish, you would have gotten the part anyway."

  June honked the car horn. George said, "We'd better go." He walked ahead of the girls out to the car.

  Molly spoke to Kate in a low voice. "I don't care what he says. I believe that wishes come true. And you should, too."

  "All I know is this," Kate told her brusquely. "I'm not going to Lincoln with you on Monday morning, I'm going to Whittaker. And I'm not going home with my mother and father tonight, I'm going home with just my mother. So I guess I don't believe in wishes coming true, either. If I really want good things to happen, and bad things to stop happening, it'll take more than wishing. I have to act. And I have to act now."

  Week Two

  20. The Technon Industries Science Fair

  Kate's entire family arrived earlier than normal on Monday morning. Ma and Pa Melvil were there to begin their janitorial duties. Kate, George, and June were there to set up George's science fair exhibit in the library lobby. This time, George would attach his pulley system—designed to illustrate maximum lift with minimum resistance—to a second-floor railing instead of to an oak tree.

  Kate carried in the Velcro bodice, while George dragged in the pulleys. June took charge of the long rope, laying it in loose circles outside the library office.

  Pogo bounced around the edges of their group, eager to help in any way she could. She produced several tools from beneath her dress for George to use.

  Kate could not have been less eager. "Why are you doing this?" she asked George. "You know they're going to give it to Whit."

  "Why did you audition for Orchid the Orca? You knew they were going to give it to Heidi, but you tried anyway."

  Kate shrugged.

  George's bespectacled eyes twinkl
ed. "That's why I'm doing it."

  When the flying machine was fully operational, George and Kate left the pieces in place and started their school day.

  Just before third period began, Cornelia entered Kate's reading class and stood in the back. She told Reading 8, "Don't mind me. I'm just here as an observer. I won't be doing anything. I'm kind of like an understudy in a Broadway musical."

  Dr. Austin entered right after, accompanied by another new teacher. Reading 8 understood immediately what was happening. She packed up her few belongings as Dr. Austin approached to make her firing official.

  He walked over to the list of test scores on the bulletin board, studied them, and told her, "You have been given the finest materials, the most expert guidance, and the highest salary in education. Yet you have not been able to raise the reading scores of your lowest student by even one point. In fact, they continue to sink, as if this student, this Kate Peters, were enrolled in some free public school and not paying an additional ten thousand dollars per year for her education. I suggest that you go back to a school where the students pay nothing and get nothing, for that is precisely what they will get from you. You are—"

  Dr. Austin had been so caught up in his own rhetoric, he failed to realize that Reading 8 had already departed. He looked around, perplexed.

  Dr. Austin took a moment to regain his composure. Then he informed Kate's class and its new instructor, "You will not be testing today." He looked back at Kate. "Which must be a relief for some of you. You will instead report to the lobby for the first phase of the annual Technon Industries Science Fair."

  Kate walked out last in the line behind the new Reading 8. After only a few seconds in the lobby, Kate had seen enough. The Technon Industries Science Fair was more pathetic than even she had imagined. There were only two exhibits on display.

  The first invention bore a sign, in George's tiny printing, THE FLYING MACHINE: A SYSTEM OF LOW-RESISTANCE PULLEYS, BY GEORGE MELVIL, GRADE 6.

  The second invention sat on a custom-made concrete block. It was a working model of Ashley-Nicole Singer-Wright's Laser Cannon. But according to its engraved bronze plaque, it had been modified. The plaque read LASER CANNON WITH TRACKER, BY CORNELL WHITTAKER AUSTIN, GRADE 8.