Luke didn’t look surprised. “Why’s that?”
“I have my reasons.” He gave a cryptic answer because he couldn’t explain his motivations, not even to himself. The librarian deserved a chance. If she decided not to stay it should be her own decision. She shouldn’t be forced out.
And if anyone was going to scare her away, when the time came, it would be him.
Chapter 4
No one came into the library. No one. Once Marnie had familiarized herself with the layout and the system, there was nothing much to do. She’d spent a couple of hours in the afternoon reading Clint’s book, just to kill time. She chose the hardback with the claw marks on the cover, which was one of five titles. Less than a quarter of the way in she slammed the book shut and returned it to the shelf.
Disembowelment and splattered brains did not make for pleasant reading. She liked pleasant reading.
At the end of her first day as librarian, Marnie locked the front door as she left, wondering as she did so why she bothered. It wasn’t like she expected after-hours visitors. Was it her or was it the place? Did these people hate books or were they wary of the new librarian?
Standing on the sidewalk outside the library, she got a better look at Mystic Springs than she had on her way in that morning. She’d noticed the buildings themselves, but not so much what was in them. She eyed the pair of eateries directly across the street, a bakery and cafe that looked to be designed to complement one another. One brick storefront was accented in teal, the other in purple. The signs in both windows were perfectly lettered. In teal, Eve’s Cafe. In lavender, Ivy’s Bakery. There were matching awnings.
On either side of Eve’s and Ivy’s were other red-brick fronted shops. Though not so colorfully embellished as the two businesses directly across from the library, they looked welcoming enough. One was a hardware store. The other seemed to be a boutique. Colorful clothing was displayed in the window. And oh, were those shoes?
Those four businesses formed one side of a charming city block.
There were a few people on that side of the street, coming and going, talking to one another at the end of the day, laughing at jokes she could not hear.
Marnie gathered her courage, such as it was. If they wouldn’t come to her, she’d go to them. Maybe if she introduced herself, if she smiled and invited the locals into her library — and yes, it was already hers — they’d make a point of stopping by.
Her stomach growled as she crossed the street. Susan — or someone — had stocked Marnie’s house well. Marnie had eaten oatmeal and a banana for breakfast but she’d skipped lunch, sure that if she ran out for a bite someone would stop by. Someone, anyone…
She glanced at one business and then the other. Did she want cake or a salad? Cake, of course, especially after the day she’d had. Maybe a cupcake like the one painted on the window. She headed for the bakery, and had almost reached her destination when the purple neon OPEN sign went dark. A shade came down over the glass-front door, and there was a decidedly loud click as a deadbolt was slammed into place. Marnie pulled her phone from her pocket and checked the time. Five-eleven couldn’t be the normal closing time. Had the bakery stayed open late or closed early? There were no hours posted on the front window, so it was impossible to tell.
Marnie turned to the cafe, half expecting the same thing to happen. The light would go dark, the door would be locked…
Hours of operation had been painted on the cafe’s glass door: Eleven a.m. to seven p.m. six days a week, closed on Sunday. There were also customers visible through the front window. Marnie opened the door and walked into the cafe, breathing a sigh of relief as the aromas hit her. Oh My God, something smelled good.
It was not a salad.
She ignored the fact that the half dozen patrons stared — make that glared — at her as she walked to a booth and sat. Okay, it was a small town and she was a stranger. Glare all you want, people, she thought as she plucked a menu from its place between the napkin dispenser and a ketchup bottle. I’m hungry and will not be denied.
A redhead came to the edge of the table, order pad in hand. Marnie looked up, half expecting the waitress to be grimacing or scowling. She was relieved to find the attractive woman smiling warmly.
“Hey there, you must be the new librarian.”
Sigh. A normal greeting! “I am. Marnie Somerset.” She offered her hand. She’d stand, but the waitress was too close to the end of the seat. Knocking her down would not be the best way to start.
“Eve Franklin,” the woman said as she took Marnie’s hand and shook it briefly. “This is my place.” She nodded once. “What can I get you?”
Marnie glanced at the menu. “I should get a salad, I had really planned to get a salad.” Her meal of choice, most days. “But what is that that smells so good?”
“My special of the day, Granny’s meatball stew.”
There would be plenty of salads in days to come. It had been a strange couple of days, and Marnie wanted whatever had created that wonderful aroma. “I’ll have that, and a glass of sweet tea.”
Eve nodded and was off. Some of the other diners still stared, but a couple of them had returned to their meals and private conversations. They’d get used to her, Marnie decided as she waited for her food. She nodded and smiled to one older woman who continued to study Marnie with narrowed eyes and thinned lips. The woman’s head snapped down and she began to eat.
The front door opened, and like everyone else, Marnie looked to see who had arrived.
The woman who walked in gave Marnie a start. She was identical to Eve, who had taken her order and disappeared into the kitchen. Except this woman wore a purple apron with the words Ivy’s Bakery printed across the bosom, and her long red hair was pulled up into a messy bun. Ivy looked good in a messy bun. Marnie had tried that style in the past, when her hair had been longer. Somehow she’d always ended up looking homeless.
Instead of offering a friendly smile, this woman glanced Marnie’s way with thunder in her eyes and disapproving pursed lips.
She might never get a cupcake…
Eve approached with a tray bearing a huge bowl and two glasses of tea. She placed the stew — which smelled even better up close than it had as she’d entered the place — before Marnie. The tea came next. The second glass of tea was placed on the other side of the table. Eve took a seat and lifted that tea to her lips. After a smile and a sigh, she urged Marnie to eat.
And she did. She was so hungry, the stew seemed to be the best thing she’d ever eaten. What was that flavor? It was… flavor.
After a while it hit her. The stew tasted like a weird combination of Nannie’s chicken and dumplings and her Mom’s lasagna — a favorite from childhood, when her parents had still been together — and a pot roast her Aunt Sally had made once, for a rare family reunion.
A flood of memories hit her. Memories of long-ago meals shared with family, of laughter around the dining room table. The emotions connected to those memories were strong, and they flooded through her as strongly as the flavors had. The aromas and flavors of Thanksgivings shared with family. Christmas Eve, with her parents and brother, before everything had fallen apart. Not just the tastes of family traditions, but the emotions. The joy. Tears filled her eyes, but she continued to eat.
“The first time it’s always like this,” Eve said. “Just eat. Next time will be easier.”
Marnie looked up. She had almost forgotten Eve was there! “I’m sorry. I don’t understand.”
Eve waved a dismissive hand, and then spoke to the young waitress who had taken over for her, giving instruction about preparations for closing up in a little more than an hour. The girl nodded, cut a suspicious glance to Marnie, and scurried off.
The woman who had created the masterpiece Marnie was enjoying took a long swig of tea, then said, “I suppose you’ve noticed that Mystic Springs is a little odd.”
Marnie dabbed at her mouth with a napkin before responding. “A little odd? I feel like I’
ve wandered into The Twilight Zone.”
Eve laughed. It was a good laugh, real and deep. Her eyes almost sparkled. “I imagine it does. This is a very small and tight-knit town, and some of the residents are a bit old fashioned. Stuck in their ways, I suppose, and not fans of any kind of change. It takes the people here a while to warm up to strangers. Give us a chance, and if it’s meant to be all will be well.”
“And if it’s not meant to be?”
Eve’s smile faded. “Then all won’t be well.”
A chill walked down Marnie’s spine. Was that a threat? From this seemingly lovely and friendly woman? It sure felt like a threat. Maybe moving in with her dad until she found another job wasn’t such a bad idea after all. Claudia, her newest stepmother, would baby her for a while, until she got tired of having her husband’s grown daughter underfoot. Her dad would try to get her to go back to school for a degree in something other than library science, which was always annoying, but still…
“A few words of advice,” Eve said. The smile was back, and it seemed genuine enough. “You can drive out of town for groceries and such, but people notice these things. You could also order online, but to be honest only about half the packages arrive. The UPS man is always getting lost. Once we found a stack of packages tossed to the side of the road.” She shook her head at the memory. “If you want to stay here, if you plan to become a part of the community, you need to shop local. There’s a small grocery store two blocks down. They don’t have much, but they do have the basics and they can order in anything you want. Same with clothes. There’s the boutique next door, and a different kind of shop just down from the grocery store. Between the two, they’ll have or can get anything you want.”
“That makes sense,” Marnie said. Nothing Eve had said could be considered a threat. It had just been a couple of very long days. That was the only explanation for the fleeting feeling that there was any kind of warning in the woman’s words. She paused the conversation to take another bite of the weirdly delicious stew.
The woman from the bakery had taken a seat at the counter. It was impossible not to notice how she glared.
Marnie didn’t look in that direction as she asked, “The woman from the bakery, is she your sister?” Sister or angry clone? Had to be one or the other.
“Ivy’s my twin. She’s not much of a fan of outsiders, as you might have noticed. She’ll come around. Maybe.”
That maybe was telling. Yeah, no cupcakes for her, not in the near future, anyway.
“One other thing,” Eve began, a new hint of something uncertain in her voice. She paused. She chewed her bottom lip.
“Just say it,” Marnie said. “At this point nothing would surprise me.”
The slight lift of Eve’s eyebrows hinted otherwise. After a short pause she said, “Don’t go out after dark.”
Marnie walked slowly down the sidewalk, away from the cafe and a woman she might, one day, be able to call a friend. It was too early to be sure.
Walking not toward home but away, she glanced in windows and crossed side streets, taking a moment here and there to look at the houses down those streets. Quite a few appeared to be empty, but in some cases it was hard to tell. She did see an occasional “For Sale” sign here and there. Some of them had been in place so long they were faded. Others leaned ominously to one side, much as the Welcome to Mystic Springs sign had.
Now and then she saw people up ahead, but by the time she reached that point they were gone. Coincidence, or were they actively avoiding her? She crossed Main Street in front of the Mystic Springs Police Station, and walked back the way she’d come, studying the businesses that were on the same side of the street as the library. An ice cream parlor and a beauty salon, side by side. The grocery store, which looked, with a glance through the wide glass windows, to be very well stocked for one so small. An antique store that seemed to be bursting at the seams. The other shop that sold clothing, which was closed at this time of day. That was the store that kept a large plant by the door, one so large Marnie had to adjust her path to skirt around it.
She reached the library and continued on a short distance. At the end of the street, the dead end of Main Street, the trees were thick. It was odd that the main thoroughfare simply ended, without warning, without even a narrow side street in one direction or another.
Marnie didn’t like the look of those woods. They were too dense, too dark. It was a relief to make the turn down her own Magnolia Road.
It was almost dark. Not quite, but the skies were gray, and the woods at the far end of the street were getting there. She could see nothing beyond the entrance to the woods. Maybe she’d find a pathway there, if she were to look for one. Surely there was. She should be able to walk down to the river, check out what might lie on the other side of those woods, but that kind of exploring was best done in broad daylight.
Eve’s advice about staying in after dark remained with her. That warning had all but frozen Marnie. Why hadn’t she asked more questions? She was filled with them. Were there wild dogs? Likely. That’s what she’d seen and heard last night. A huge wild dog. That walked on two legs. She’d seen trained dogs do that, but they were usually small. And none of them had looked at her…
Marnie grabbed her keys and unlocked her front door with more urgency than was necessary. When she was inside, she locked the door behind her and sighed in relief.
Maybe she’d call her dad tonight, see if he’d mind moving his exercise equipment out of her old bedroom for a while. She couldn’t, wouldn’t, call her mother. Not only was she too far away, her husband didn’t care for kids. Not even fully-grown ones. Marnie hadn’t had a close relationship with her mother for so long she barely remembered what it had been like. The occasional phone call or email, birthday and Christmas cards. That was it. There would be no help there.
That odd feeling of being home washed over Marnie. No. She wouldn’t call her dad. Not yet. She had one maybe-friend in Eve, and surely there were others who wouldn’t entirely reject an outsider.
What was this, a 17th century village where the people were isolated from the outside world? Where strangers were distrusted? Where anyone different was called a witch and burned at the stake and…
Nonsense. After four years in Birmingham, she just wasn’t accustomed to small-town life.
In the safety of her home, she relaxed. Then, because she couldn’t be sure who had lived here before and who might have a key, she locked the front door and jammed one of the wooden kitchen chairs under the doorknob. Just in case.
She went to the screened-in back porch and looked out over her back yard, admiring her very own beautiful flower garden. Night fell slowly across the well-tended yard, as well as the wooded and overgrown landscape on the other side of the fence. All of it, the tamed and the wild, was beautiful and enchanting. If she was at all artistic, she would be inspired to paint the scene. Maybe she’d take a bunch of pictures with her phone. She wasn’t a great photographer, but if she took enough pictures surely some of them would turn out. It would be nice to have something to remember this place by, after she fled like the devil was on her tail. Which she likely would, sooner or later.
Movement in the brush beyond her yard caught her eye. Deer, maybe. Wild dogs. A bear.
It stepped out from behind a tree, tall and hairy, standing on two feet, and looking directly at her. One long and hairy arm lifted slowly, then lowered again, almost as if it was waving to her. The thing seemed to shuffle its feet, though it did not move closer, or away. A bushy head cocked to one side as the animal — beast, monster, impossible being — studied her.
Marnie held her breath. This was not possible. That thing couldn’t exist. She wanted to reach for her phone and try to take a picture, but night was falling fast and besides, the creature would be gone before she could grab her cell, she knew it.
So she held her breath and stared, afraid even to blink. This time there was no mistake, no hallucination. What she was looking at was real. It was und
eniable.
She’d found Bigfoot.
There had been a time when Springer meetings had been held in the library. Tonight, they gathered in Susan Tisdale’s house, a big, rambling mini-mansion that was likely the oldest building in town. Her parents had lived here, and so had her grandparents and great-grandparents, who had built this house more than a hundred years ago. Susan’s front parlor was the largest downstairs room, and that was where the Springers met.
The meeting was already in chaos when Clint walked into the room. That’s what he got for being twenty minutes late. Susan was in the middle of it, under attack by a dozen or so — the hardliners — for bringing in an outsider for a job as crucial as running the library. She tried to reason with them, but was having no luck.
A dozen or so stood, while a handful of others had claimed ancient seats around the parlor. Those chairs and sofas were as old as the house.
Clint put two fingers to his lips and let out a whistle that silenced them all, and had a few covering their ears. When he had everyone’s attention, he spoke.
“Susan’s right. We need new blood. Let’s face it, too many of us are related, in some way or another. There aren’t enough kids in town to justify keeping the school open, and have you seen how many homes are for sale?” Some who died or moved on left their houses to the city, knowing they’d never sell. “In a few years we’ll all be in the old folks’ home, and…”
“The Alabama Home for the Exceptionally Gifted not an old folks’ home, it’s a retirement community!” A resident of said home called out indignantly, from his perch on a pale green fainting couch. The sign in front of the three-story building read Mystic Springs Retirement Village, but no one called it that. The residents called it The Alabama Home for the Exceptionally Gifted. Everyone else called it The Egg.
“We need new blood,” Clint said again.
“You planning to eat her?” Donnie Milhouse, the middle of Harry’s five boys, called out with a cackle.
Bigfoot and the Librarian Page 4
