by Joseph Fink
27
Jackie pulled the supplies from her car. The parking lot of the library was otherwise empty, as it usually was.
The entrance to the public library was through an unassuming pair of glass doors that said PUSH. Above that a blue plastic sign said NIGHT VALE PUBLIC LIBRARY. That was all. The dramatics of its reputation were not echoed in its architecture.
She took a breath, and then another. Each one was a moment in which she was still breathing and not inside the library.
The building itself was squat with tall windows that looked onto an empty checkout area and a tiled area with drinking fountains and a bathroom. Everything was quiet and still. There was no sign that anything had ever lived there. It had the feeling of a tomb or a shopping mall that had run out of money before the first store opened.
She pushed through the doors. Inside the air was cool and dry. She listened carefully. Nothing. The doors led to a long entrance hallway ending in another pair of double glass doors. Off the hallway were various reading rooms, for reading, and community rooms, for communing, and bloodletting rooms, for a different kind of communing. Those were also empty and quiet.
Jackie traversed the entrance hall in silence. The only sign of her movement was her shadow through the bands of sunlight on the floor.
She passed a bulletin board advertising community events:
PUMPKIN PICKING COMPETITION. THREE OBJECTS.
DO YOU KNOW WHICH ONE IS A PUMPKIN??
GARAGE SALE. EVERYTHING’S FREE. MOSTLY NOT DANGEROUS. SOME DANGEROUS. YOU’LL FIND OUT WHICH.
I’M HIDING SOMEWHERE. CAN YOU FIND ME? NO, NOT THERE. OH WELL. YOU’LL FIND ME SOON. I PROMISE.
Stuff like that, with tabs where the phone numbers could be taken and reported to local government agencies or the Sheriff’s Secret Police. The flyers all looked to be at least ten years old. They were brittle and warped and barely hanging off rusted thumbtacks.
No movement ahead of her. No movement behind her.
She put her hand on the push bar of one of the inner doors, but paused when she heard footsteps behind her. What person would brave this sterile tomb? Besides her, of course?
Jackie turned and found herself inches away from Diane, who was looking down at her phone.
“Aah!” Jackie shouted.
Diane looked up, her eyes wide.
“Aah!” Diane shouted as well.
Her fingers were scarred, and her phone had traces of blood on it. She must have tried to contact a forbidden number.
“Hello, Jackie.”
“Did you follow me here?”
“Of course not.”
“Then why are you everywhere I am at the same time as me?”
Diane thought about that. It was a fair question, although the problem with fair questions is that they are asked about an unfair world.
“I suspect,” Jackie said, “that we are looking for the same sorts of things about the same sorts of people. Which is why we would keep crossing each other’s paths. Also, Night Vale isn’t a very big town, is it?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never thought about it.”
They both thought about it. Then, as is safest in Night Vale, they stopped thinking about it.
“All right. Well, cool seeing you,” said Jackie, hand on the door, her body blocking Diane’s entry.
“Jackie, as little as I like spending time with you, and I want you to know that even though I am trying to be the adult of the two of us here, because I am the adult of the two of us, I do not like spending time with you much at all, but as little as I like this, the library is a dangerous place, we both know it. And since we both apparently need to go into it, we should do the right thing and go together.”
Or words to that effect. Jackie had lost interest around “I am the adult.” No, not interest, patience.
Jackie wanted Diane to go home. She did not need another parent any more than Diane needed another child.
Diane knew the girl needed help. Diane lowered her face, keeping eye contact and giving a slight grin, something that usually worked when Josh was acting sullen or distant.
Jackie turned her head and looked through the doors into the empty checkout area. A fake velvet rope marking where the line would go if there were any people alive in there, and beyond that the shelves of dangerous books. Jackie did not feel fear, but she was aware of herself. She knew that it wasn’t healthy, what she was doing.
“Okay fine,” Jackie said.
“Okay fine what?”
“Okay. You can come.”
“So, just to be clear. We’re in this together?”
“Yeah, man. Fine. Whatever. Come on,” Jackie said without looking back.
Diane went in first, Jackie holding the door. By the door was the return slot for books or for anything else a person might want to return to the library. Jackie, being who she was, lifted up the metal lid for a moment, just to see. Inside it was dark and damp and there was an intermittent crackling or crunching sound. Diane shuddered and, putting her hand over Jackie’s, gently closed the lid. Jackie pulled her hand away from Diane’s and kept walking.
The checkout area had printers and computers that looked to be twenty or more years out of date. Nothing like the cutting-edge machines regularly released into local computer stores and immediately outlawed by City Council. There were stains of indeterminate origin all over the counter. Jackie touched one; it was still sticky.
The stain ran in a sloppy streak across the counter and up a pencil holder. Jackie rose up on tiptoes and peered into the cup, which at first appeared empty, but the longer she stared into the small darkness, the more she could make out a pattern—or texture—at the bottom. She could not be certain, but there seemed to be a small lump of wet hair in the bottom of the pencil holder. She lowered herself back onto her heels.
“What are you here for?” Jackie asked.
“Public records. You?”
“Newspaper archives.”
“Good. Should be right next to each other.”
“Sure. I guess.”
According to Diane’s most trustworthy map, the archives were about halfway back into the library.
“Well, good thing is we don’t have to go all the way to the back,” she said. Jackie didn’t reply.
They kept moving past the racks of the Night Vale Daily Journal by the windows. Due to spiraling printing costs and the necessary layoff of nearly its entire staff, the Journal had long ago moved to an imagination-based format. The racks were empty except for a small note reminding you that if you imagined what a hypothetical Night Vale newspaper might look like, then you needed to send a check for $19.95 to the Daily Journal to cover your monthly Imagination Subscription.
The library was shaped like a stubby lowercase b, with the entrance hall and checkout area forming its neck. Ahead was the start of the lower portion, where the bulk of the library was. First was the reference section, with thick books full of dangerous words and binders full of classified information. The shelves of the reference section spanned back into the shadows of the deepest parts of the library, and the two women made an immediate left to avoid it.
Diane kept her eyes forward, following the unwavering trajectory of her steps, but Jackie couldn’t help but stop and look. Deep within the shadows, she thought she could see the echo of movement. Not exactly movement, but the suggestion left in the air after movement is finished. She hurried after Diane. As they passed a section of geological encyclopedias, Jackie saw a scattering of white teeth in the aisle. She stared at them, hoping they would become something less awful, less human-looking, but the teeth remained teeth. After that, she kept her eyes forward, mimicking Diane.
Beyond the reference section was the large central reading area, sloping gently downward to a fountain. The fountain was out of water. Had probably broken years ago and no repairman had survived trying to fix it. It occasionally made a buzzing growling hacking sound, like its pipes were trying to cough something up.
Ar
ound the fountain were oak tables with upholstered chairs. These had never been touched. Crossing an open area like the reading area was guaranteed to draw every librarian in the building, so any hypothetical reader would never get ten steps, let alone all the way to pulling out a chair and sitting down. The reading area was a beautifully crafted trap set by the librarians, but it was too perfect. Even the dumbest book lover—and anyone who would regularly choose to come in contact with books could not be a bright bulb, Jackie thought—wouldn’t fall for this.
Diane and Jackie hugged the edge of the reading area, crouching behind the public internet-access tables, served by the same ancient computers as the checkout area, none of which appeared to be plugged in anyway. They looked at each other, faces pale but focused. Without speaking or breathing, but with the urgent set of their jaws, they communicated that they needed to keep moving. The answers might be available on the old computers, but it would be too dangerous to wait around in one spot, trying to retrieve them. Even leaving aside the usual danger that any computer might develop a spontaneous and malicious sentience, like what had wiped out the entire Computer Science Department at Night Vale Community College.
After the computers was the children’s section. The beanbag chairs were new, as were the realistic lava-stone statues of children. The section had no books at all, but it did have twenty or thirty child statues, with faces contorted in terror and pain. It was the one part of the library everyone in Night Vale could feel good about. “Well, at least we have those statues,” they’d say to each other. “The library might be a threat to the lives of all who use it, but it has a great children’s section. And comfy beanbag chairs. At least there’s that.”
“BRRGGHHHHH,” said the fountain.
Diane paused for a moment to look at the statues. One of them looked a lot like Josh, back when he was younger, and used to be made of stone sometimes. He was rarely ever made of stone anymore. Did she have any pictures of him made of stone? No, she didn’t think she did. She should take more pictures of him. Or try to remember him better. Or remember more of him.
Assuming she would make it out of the library.
“Why are we stopping?” Jackie hissed. She looked around the children’s section for movement or shadows, but it seemed as empty as everywhere else.
Diane shot Jackie a silent look that said, “Shut up.”
“Then let’s go,” Jackie replied with her own silent look.
“Patience. Have some patience. I was simply seeing what the new children’s section was like. I’ve heard a lot of good things about it. Besides, it wasn’t like we weren’t dawdling earlier at the front desk,” Diane argued with just her eyes.
“That was different. It was, it was different. Just . . . dude, keep moving,” Jackie countered wordlessly.
“I’m moving. This is me moving.” Diane moved.
Jackie glared, but Diane didn’t see it happen, so the glare only had an effect on herself.
They were almost to the city archives, but to get there they would have to cross from under the computer desks into the space between the children’s and the architecture and science sections.
Diane held back, taking in the apparent emptiness of the room, preparing for what might happen next, but Jackie was already out and running for the microfiche shelves. Diane gasped, unable to grab Jackie, to protect her from her own bravado.
Jackie, all teenage breathlessness, broke her run on the archive cabinets with a dull slap and whirled around, arms out, eyes wide, ready to take what would come. Nothing. Diane held her breath. No one.
“See? No one.” Jackie’s grin was edging toward smug, but Diane had developed a patience for this kind of thing from years of her son. She scuttled over in a crouched position from her hiding place under the desk, standing only when she made it to the cabinet. They put their backs to the archives and looked at where they had come from. Children’s section, then computers, then reference section, then the turn toward checkout and escape.
If they needed to run, they wouldn’t make it. So they would just have to not be found.
“All right, what are you looking for?” Jackie mouthed, trying to whisper without sound.
“Troy,” Diane mouthed.
Jackie made a face.
“It’s for Josh’s sake,” Diane mouthed.
“What?” Jackie mouthed.
Diane wasn’t sure if Jackie had not understood or was expressing incredulity; either way she waved her off. Finding information on any citizen of Night Vale was as simple as looking under their name and sorting through the comprehensive life details kept on record.
And there he was. “Walsh, Troy,” between “Vos, Natalie” and “Winged Creature, First Name Unknown.” Here was his birth certificate with everything but his name redacted. His death certificate, postdated to the correct time. A cool rock that someone had found and had written “Troy” on with a black permanent marker. Blood samples. Urine samples. Saliva samples. Writing samples. Fingerprints. Photos taken while he was sleeping. A paragraph-length, poetic description of his aura. A video of the same description presented through the language of dance.
Diane shook her head. Nothing unusual or useful.
Jackie placed a hand on her shoulder, patient as she could, and squeezed gently, trying to convey all of “That’s cool. But there’s nothing. Sorry you came all this way and wasted your time. Let’s go.”
Diane poked a finger at her but then reconsidered and lifted the defensive gesture into a plea. “Just one more moment?” her finger asked.
“Whatever.” Jackie crossed her arms and returned her bored stare to the empty room behind them.
Diane searched through the whole file again, flicking quickly, looking for whatever it was she had missed, because surely she had missed something.
A fluorescent light flickered on the high gray ceiling above them. Jackie squinted. She hadn’t seen anything. That had been nothing, she was sure.
BRRGGHHHHH. The fountain. But was that a noise hanging on for just a moment after the fountain’s moan?
Jackie turned and put her hand back on Diane’s shoulder.
“We need to go.”
Diane looked out over the reading area. It looked no different than it had the last time she had looked or, anyway, almost no different.
“Why don’t you just do whatever it is you need to do and let me do this? I’m sure you’ll be just fine on your own.”
She had adopted a mom’s voice, and they both heard her do it. Jackie gave one last look to where the noise had come from, which, as far as she could tell, was the magazine room in the complete opposite corner of the library. The angle was such that she couldn’t see into the room. She might have been able to see the shadow jutting out on the floor from its doorway, but she didn’t want to see that so her brain skimmed past it.
One aisle over, Jackie found the archives of the Daily Journal, back when it had had physical form. She started flipping through the binders of old issues. A microfiche system had been deemed too expensive by city government, and anyway would likely just have been ruined by librarian fluids or the blood of one of their victims.
“King City has to have come up at some point.”
“Mmm,” Diane said.
She wasn’t listening because she had found something she’d missed earlier. Stuck to the back of the aura report was an old photo. She couldn’t tell how old, because it was stuck image-side down. She picked at the edges of it, trying to get it to come off, but the photo was stuck firm.
“Dammit,” Jackie said, not in response to anything but just to have something to say as she searched, tediously, for information that might or might not exist.
Diane yanked at the photo, and it came unstuck with a pop. She turned it faceup. It was a photo from the era where people are stiffly arranged through the long minutes it took to register their image on chemical paper. She considered it as carefully and rationally as she could before coming to the verbal conclusion: “Oh, shit.”
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“Why ‘oh, shit’?” Jackie popped her head up from behind a binder.
Diane held up the photo, and Jackie studied it closely, bringing her face in toward the flat faces looking back from long ago.
“Oh shit,” Jackie said.
“Yeah.”
“Well, my news isn’t great either.”
Jackie held up an index card that said, in neat block letters,
ALL MATERIALS ON KING CITY HAVE BEEN CATALOGUED
UNDER GEOGRAPHY, FORBIDDEN.
And then another sentence that had been blacked out with a scribbled marker, so much so that the black ink leaked through to the other side of the card.
Diane nodded, unsurprised. It had seemed too easy up to that point, and so she had been expecting something like this.
“The forbidden materials shelf is just past the biography section, near fiction.”
She pointed. The area where she pointed was as far from them as the entrance, in the opposite direction. There would be no escape if they were noticed. They both considered this. Jackie sat down on institutionally patterned carpet, her head in her hands, and allowed herself a few seconds of self-pity. Then she stood up, her eyes steady on her destination.
“Listen, Diane,” she said softly, clearly. “It made sense for us to do this together because we both need something. But you can go now. You’ve found . . .” She looked again at the photograph in Diane’s hand and shuddered. “Anyway, you have a son who needs you. You have to go home to him. I can do this.”
Diane thought about Josh, and she wanted to agree. The important thing was to get out of the library to her family, her sullen, solitary, teenage family. And so she felt furious about what she was going to say next.
“No. We came into the library together, we’ll leave it together.”
“Diane, you don’t have—”
“Jackie, if I left you here and you died, I would feel bad about it. I’d probably feel bad about it for the rest of my life. And I don’t like to feel bad. So let’s go.”
Jackie smiled. She didn’t mean much by it, but she meant some by it. Diane smiled back, meaning mostly the same.
