Curse of the Evil Librarian

by Michelle Knudsen

  I swallow hard and swing my arm to follow the direction of my inner compass. It points unwaveringly toward a cell at the farthest end of the chamber.

  The demon inside looks kind of like Jabba the Hutt, if Jabba had a messed up fox head and several long arms resembling tree branches, each of which extended into delicate stick-like fingers. Except not really like branches and sticks, because as I watch they bend with a supple elasticity that makes me think of rubber bands. Except rubber bands that are alive and can grab you and do horrible things to you.

  Ryan steps up beside me. “Is that him?” he whispers.

  “Apparently,” I whisper back.

  I start walking toward the Jabba-fox-tree demon, keeping a careful distance from the other cells. Everyone else follows closely behind me. It’s still eerily silent; all of the demons continue to stand still, watching us. They turn to follow us with whatever passes for their eyes as we go past. And straight ahead the Craftsman waits, what looks like a smile on his misshapen fox-like lips.

  I stop a few feet away from his cell, afraid to go any closer, even though the compass inside me is pulsing impatiently, urging me forward so it can be exactly where its quarry is waiting, just ahead.

  “Are you the Craftsman?” I ask him.

  He is definitely smiling now. His fox head tilts slightly sideways as he considers me.

  “Some have called me by that name,” he says at last. His voice is deep and unpleasant and heavily demon-accented, but at least he speaks words that I can understand.

  “We were sent here by the demon who calls himself John Gabriel. He said — he said you have an object that he requires. The missing piece of the amulet you created.”

  His eyes seem to flare at the mention of the amulet, but his smile never changes.

  “Come closer,” he says after a minute. “Come here to where I can see you properly.”

  “Don’t you dare,” Ryan stage-whispers at me. I feel his hand grip the back of my shirt, bunching the fabric into a tight little ball.

  “I’m not coming any closer,” I tell the demon.

  He shrugs his Jabba-like bulk expansively, but his eyes never leave mine. “Then I suppose you will not get what you came for.”

  Dammit.

  I turn around to face the others, freeing my shirt from Ryan’s hand. “This is ridiculous. We didn’t come all this way only to fail because I won’t walk over there. I’m going to do it.”

  “No!” Ryan, Annie, and Peter say in unison.

  I raise my eyes to look at LB.

  “He will not kill you right away,” LB says slowly. “He will want to keep you here to entertain him as long as possible. It is . . . boring . . . in prison. Usually.”

  “Right,” I say. “Okay.”

  I turn back around and walk over to the cell, ignoring my friends’ unhappy noises behind me.

  “Can you see me now?”

  The fox-head smile stretches impossibly wide. “Yesssss,” he says. With lightning speed, he reaches between the bars with his rubber-band twig-hands. One wraps itself tightly around my wrist, jerking me forward against the cell.

  “Cyn!” Ryan shouts, and I glance back to see Peter restraining him from racing over to me.

  “It’s okay!” I call to him, my voice shaking uncontrollably.

  It’s so not okay. But Ryan coming over to join me would not help matters.

  I look up into the crazy eyes of the Craftsman. He’s even more horrible this close up. There’s something very wrong about his fox parts. Normally I like foxes, I think they’re majestic and pretty, but he’s like . . . he’s like someone’s idea of a fox after hearing the description via a drunken, late-night game of telephone.

  He grins at me for an uncomfortably long time, and I feel like he’s looking right through my skin. For a moment my demon-compass is a hot, frantic engine inside me, burning up in its own ecstasy at reaching its intended goal, and then it’s gone.

  “Ah, yessss,” he says. “I know what you seek.” He turns and seems to dig around in the folds of his own disgusting Jabba-like hide for a few seconds. Then one of his other twig-hands pulls out what looks like a small bloodred stone.

  “John Gabriel wants this. The final piece of my greatest creation.”

  “Yes,” I say, relieved that he seems to understand the situation. “So if you could just hand it over . . .”

  He laughs. He throws his head back and laughs exactly the deep, evil laugh that you would expect from a demon that sort of looks like Jabba the Hutt.

  “Something’s funny?” I ask, trying and failing to wrench my wrist free of his grip.

  “You think I will give this to you. You think you will just ask me and I will give it to you and you will go along on your way.”

  “Not exactly,” I say, trying to sound confident. “I assume you will want something in return.” Hopefully Mr. Gabriel’s suggestion of future favors will be enough; I don’t have anything else to offer.

  He laughs again. “No.”

  “No?”

  “No. I will not give it to you. I see how desperately you want it. You have come here, to where no one comes. You have been injured, you have been in pain. This is very important to you. You have braved so much, come so far. And here it is” — he holds the stone up in front of my face — “here is the thing that you have come so far to find. I have it here, right here. You can almost touch it. And I could give it to you. I could give it to you and you could take it and try to find whatever reward you are thinking you will find.”

  “Yes,” I say, or try to say, but it only comes out as the barest whisper. His fingers are hurting my wrist, but I don’t want to let him know that.

  “But what pleasure would that give me? No. No, this is pleasure. To see how badly you want this. To see how you are even now thinking of what you can offer me, whether it would be better to beg, or to demand, or to bargain. You will have time to try all of those things. We will stay here, you and I, just like this. For so many hours. For days. For years, maybe. We will see how many different ways you can try to get it from me. And I will still say no. Always. Just because I can.”

  “But . . . but Mr. Gabriel said when he is king, he could set you free —”

  “When. If. A time that may never come. But this time, this moment, is happening now. And I like this time, this now. I like it very much. I will not trade it for an uncertain future. I will keep it. For as long as I desire.”

  He seems to have forgotten everyone else. I have almost forgotten them myself, lost in the malicious madness of those not-quite-fox-like eyes. He’s right; it’s torture to see the glinting stone right there, inches away from me, and know I can’t have it. It begins to glow, as if it, too, is taunting me. He’s holding Ryan’s life right there in his hand. He’s holding all of our lives, really. He’s holding everything, every tiny lingering thread of possibility we still have. I feel the tightness of his grip around my wrist, feel how the bark-like edges of his fingers are even now tearing at my skin, and I see how he will never get tired of this, never — that he really could keep me here forever, baiting me, wanting to keep me begging for as long as any tiny sliver of hope remains inside my weary heart, and it’s all I can do not to slide into despair right now.

  “Yessss,” he says, looking deep into my eyes. “You understand. You see how it will be. You will resist, but eventually you will begin to beg me. You will think that maybe, someday, I will relent. But I will not. I will —”

  And then he jerks suddenly backward, crying out and staring wildly around as Annie darts away from the cage with the glowing stone tucked firmly into her hand.

  The shriek of pure rage that the Craftsman lets out is the scariest thing I have ever heard in my entire life.

  He expands, roaring, filling the confines of his cell and pressing his brown-gray flesh against the bars until I am afraid they may burst apart. The other demons begin to scream along with him, whether in sympathy or derision or just for the joy of screaming I have no way
to know.

  The one upside of this terrifying development is that, in his fury, he has loosened his grip on my wrist.

  I yank myself away and race toward where the others are standing, wide-eyed and frantic. “Run!” I scream at them, and they do, thank God, except LB, who waits for me to reach him first.

  I tear past him, catching up with the others, and he falls into line behind me. The other demons snatch at us as we pass their cages, but Peter — who has ended up in front — manages to lead us through the widest places, keeping us just out of reach.

  “No!” the Craftsman thunders from behind us. “You will not! You —” His words dissolve, unraveling into a fresh burst of screaming accompanied by a horrible wet crackling sound. I can’t help it; I glance behind me.

  The demon has stretched some of his tree-like arms through the bars. At first I think he is just reaching toward us in his madness and frustration, but then I see that his long, stick-fingered hands are breaking apart from the rest of him. They fly forward, racing toward us on what are now flexible twig-like legs. As they run, eyes blink open in their centers, in what is left of the flesh that binds the legs together. The eyes are dark and senseless. They are followed very quickly by gashes of red wounds that open into mouths.

  “He’s coming!” I scream. “He’s coming!”

  Peter turns to see what I can possibly mean and nearly stumbles into the arms of a demon reaching out from one of the nearest cells.

  “The ejection trap!” I shout at Peter. “We have to go back to the trap!”

  He nods and takes off again, urging the others to greater speed alongside him.

  I don’t dare look back to see if those things are gaining on us. I just run, with everything that I have. I watch Ryan ahead of me, reaching out to Annie and trying to help her forward. Ryan could have outrun all of us by now if he were really going full speed. Part of me wants to tell him to leave us and go, save himself, but of course he’d never. And besides, if the rest of us died here, he wouldn’t have a way to get the amulet stone back to Mr. Gabriel, and so he’d die anyway.

  We follow Peter down passage after passage, trusting him to lead us back, trusting that we’ll avoid the dangerous marks on the ground, trusting that there’s even a tiny chance we might get away. LB is still behind me, still running, which has to mean that the hand-things haven’t quite caught up yet. I have a stitch in my side like a knife and I can’t breathe but I can’t stop, none of us can stop, and so I keep going. I try to remember how much worse the pain was in Peter’s tunnel, how much worse it will be if those things catch up to us. What would happen if they caught us and dragged us back to the Craftsman, all rage and madness waiting to be unleashed.

  Suddenly Peter stumbles to a halt and stretches his arms out to stop us as well.

  “Together!” he shouts. “We all have to go in together. To be sure.”

  “Wait!” I’ve just thought of something terrible. “Will it take LB? He didn’t come with us last time —”

  Peter hesitates for the tiniest second. “Yes! Just — we just have to all hold on to each other!”

  Everyone grabs someone else. I reach back for LB’s leg without hesitation and pull him forward, closer to me. And then I feel him jerk behind me, and I turn to see that one of the hand-things has launched itself at his back. He swipes it off with one of his free legs, knocking it into the others coming up fast behind it.

  “Now, Peter! Now!”

  He doesn’t bother to count to three this time. We throw ourselves into the chamber with the markings, racing toward the one that sent us back before. I have a single moment to worry that it won’t work a second time, that we’ll be stuck here and the things will get us, all of us, drag us away screaming to a fate I can’t even imagine, but then the familiar glowing light opens in the wall, and I have never been so happy to see a demon portal in all of my life.

  “LB!” Peter shouts. “Grab all of us and take us through together! Right now!”

  LB acts immediately, wrapping spider legs around each of us, even Peter, and hurls us all as one into the shining hole.

  The library reading area materializes once again around us. LB drops us, seeming disoriented. He takes a wobbly step sideways and immediately knocks over an entire shelf of books.

  “What in the world —” Mrs. Davenforth’s alarmed voice reaches us from the other side of the library.

  Peter waves a hand and the school fire alarm suddenly begins pealing out its this-is-not-a-drill pattern, and then we hear the main library doors open and Mrs. Davenforth calmly instructing students to file out to the emergency exits. She’s certain to check for stragglers before leaving herself, however. Soothing her after she gets a glimpse of LB standing in the middle of her library might be more than Peter’s demon abilities are up for.

  “Everyone stand completely still and don’t make a sound,” Peter whispers urgently. He makes another motion, and I see a hint of demon energy flash around us.

  We freeze, waiting. The librarian’s footsteps come toward us, her heels clacking against the floor tiles until they reach the carpet that marks the beginning of the reading area.

  She finds the toppled bookshelf and tsks in annoyance, seeming ready to start picking up the spilled books at once, before she apparently remembers the fire alarm. She straightens as if to leave, but then pauses again, looking around to see what could have caused this to happen.

  “And who moved the damn chairs . . . ?” she mutters to herself. Her eyes pass right over us, several times, as she continues scanning the room for clues about the guilty parties.

  With a final irritated shake of her head, she turns and clacks purposefully to the doors, closing them behind her.

  We wait a few more seconds to be sure she’s not coming back, then everyone seems to exhale at once. Peter waves his hand, and I assume his glamour is undone. While LB still appears distracted, trying to get his bearings, I move closer to Peter and whisper, “Did you know for sure? About LB?”

  He looks at me. “No. I hoped, but I wasn’t sure. Since he wasn’t a prisoner, I didn’t think the prison would care about keeping him in there, but . . .” He waits, probably expecting a reprimand, but I only nod my head wearily. There was no time. He had to make a call. A discussion would probably have left us all dead.

  “Cyn,” Ryan says suddenly, his voice sounding strange. I turn around just as he sinks into one of the reading chairs. His face is . . . gray.

  Oh, no.

  I’m at his side immediately. “What’s wrong? Is it — where’s the line?”

  He doesn’t even try to fight me as I pull up his shirt. I hear Annie gasp behind me. The line has started its journey across his chest. I’m no expert on human anatomy, but I know roughly where the heart is, and the line has clearly almost reached its destination.

  I turn to Peter. “We have to go, now. We have to get that thing to Mr. Gabriel.”

  Which suddenly reminds me of how we even have that thing.

  I whip around to face Annie, who is watching me warily. Part of me wants to murder her for putting herself in danger like that. But it’s a pretty small part. Mostly I am just profoundly grateful. And really, really proud.

  I pull her into a hug and squeeze her tight against me. She relaxes into it, hugging me back.

  “Thank you,” I tell her. “You’re a crazy lunatic and I can’t believe you did that, but — thank you. I think you saved all of our lives back there.”

  “Well, I owed you at least one life-saving,” she says, pulling back. She’s smiling, happy and more than a little proud herself, I think. “It was only fair.”

  “We are going to talk more about this later,” I say. “But right now —”

  “I know. We have to take Ryan back to get the curse removed.”

  I take a deep breath. “Annie, you have to stay here this time.”

  Her smile fades at once, replaced by that hard little line that I hate. “Cyn, after what —”

  “I know. After
what you just did, how I can possibly expect you to stay behind now? Because you have to. Because now we are going directly to Mr. Gabriel. The guy who abducted you and brainwashed you and wants to steal you away for all eternity. We cannot just parade you around in front of him, Annie. Come on.”

  “She’s right, Annie,” Peter says. “You know she is.”

  “I don’t care,” Annie says fiercely. “I am not being left behind. I can stand up to him. I’m not — I’m not going to keep being afraid all the time. I have to face him.”

  “No,” says LB, who has been standing very still in the corner, apparently trying very hard not to knock over anything else. “You must not face him. I know exactly what he plans for you. You must not let him have you. If you go to him . . . you will not be able to fight. Not enough. He is too strong. He will win.” He glances at me, half apologetic, half something else. “I am speaking up about what I know.”

  “Thank you,” I say, meaning it.

  Ryan groans behind me, and we all turn to look at him. One of his hands is resting on his heart.

  “Annie, please,” I say. “We have to go. There’s no time to argue. Please. Give me the stone and let us go.”

  “Okay,” she whispers. Her face is pale again, and the proud confidence that was shining there before has vanished without a trace.

  “You were amazing back there,” I tell her, hating to see her wilting this way. “But this fight . . . this one is not for you.”

  “It’s absolutely for me,” she says back, not meeting my eyes. “I’m the one he wants.”

  “Annie —”