Ex Libris

by Paula Guran

  So I stood up, and quickly. The rolling chair shot out behind me as if launched from a cannon, banging into the Reserves shelves. But that didn’t matter, because I didn’t move an inch. Instead, I just stood there, my feet suddenly buried in cement, frozen in place by a man standing on the staircase landing on the other side of the lobby. He wore a top hat, and (from a distance) his face seemed as narrow as it was pale. The rest of him was black—frock coat with a strange twice-buckled collar, riding boots, trousers, leather gloves.

  That the man had not been there on the landing a moment before was a certainty . . . I was sure of that. But he was here now, and that was just as certain. Only five stairs separated the landing from the main floor. The man glided down them the way a marionette does, as if he were an apparition pretending to descend a staircase to create an expected impression.

  Soon he was halfway across the lobby. As he came closer to the desk, into the light, the pale face beneath his black top hat came clearly into view. Only it wasn’t a face. It was a translucent mask, imprinted with a slight smile that didn’t seem like a smile at all. And the voice that came from behind it betrayed nothing more than did the expression—it was neutral, and little more than a whisper, with just the slightest hint of a British accent.

  The man said, “I’d like to place an item on Reserve.”

  “You’re a faculty member?”

  “No, but I am a teacher, and I do have pupils. And I would like to—”

  “If you’re not a faculty member at this institution, I can’t help you.”

  “Oh, but I’m certain that you can. You might say I have specific knowledge of an item housed in Special Collections here, and that knowledge is accompanied by certain privileges. I wish to share those privileges . . . with you, to begin.”

  “Well, I’m not a student, so I don’t quite understand your request. What’s the item, anyway?”

  “As I said, it’s housed in Special Collections. It’s an autopsy kit from the Victorian era, an item of some particular import. I’d like to make it available for your inspection . . . and use.”

  Now I laughed. The idea of an autopsy kit in the library was completely ridiculous. “We don’t have anything like that here.”

  “You most certainly do have. If you doubt me, look on the prep shelf behind you.”

  I did, and there it was, on the shelf with the other items waiting to be added to the Reserves Collection—a long case with leather straps, similar to ones I’d seen in medical histories of the Victorian era.

  “Who are you?” It was the only question I could ask, but the man in the top hat didn’t reply. He simply stood there, not moving at all . . . as if waiting. And then, he did move. Or at least his lips did. Not the pair on that mask, but the lips barely visible beneath that translucent plastic seemed to writhe, and curve, and—

  Quite suddenly, the man reached up with one black-gloved hand and removed the mask from his face. Beneath, there wasn’t a face at all. Just a mass of wriggling grave worms—pink, and gray, and blood red—balanced in a large horrible knot atop the twice-buckled collar of his heavy coat. The mass bulged and wobbled, and for a moment I was afraid it would topple and spill those horrid creatures across the desk. But it didn’t topple at all. Instead it seemed to grow tighter, like a clenched fist. And then several bloated specimens twisted across the space where a mouth should have been, approximating lips . . . approximating a smile.

  “You really want to know who I am?” the thing asked, its voice holding a horrible tenor of amusement.

  I managed a nod.

  “You’re certain?”

  “Yes . . . I am.”

  My words seemed to hang in the air. Those worms writhed and twisted, as if trying to snare them. The thing’s smile became larger, the lips becoming a thick woven hole that widened over a patch of blackness. Soon enough, other words came from within that hole.

  “Then you must do as I say—slip your fingers into my mouth like a good lad, and I’ll tell you my name.”

  If I’d had any control, it was gone now. I closed my eyes and reached out as if hypnotized. My fingers slid inside that hole rimmed with worms, and the thing’s mouth closed around them. Suddenly everything around me, and everything I heard, was a whisper. I was inside it, in a very small space no larger than the himtsu-bako box I’d built for Dr. Nakamura.

  And, then, for a moment, I was nowhere at all.

  The next thing I knew, I woke up in my apartment.

  Screaming.

  For a smart lady, Rebecca did some really stupid things. Like most people, she was a creature of habit. That was lucky for me. It was also lucky that the conference where she was presenting her paper took place on Memorial Day Weekend, just far enough north so it’d be a tough drive to make in a single day. Which (of course) meant I’d have to do just that, kill Dr. Nakamura, then make it back home in time to set up a solid alibi.

  So pedal to the metal all the way up Highway 5 and across the Oregon border, cutting over to the coast and hitting the little resort town just as twilight fell. A long spike of beach jutted into the Pacific just south of the place, and I didn’t park anywhere near it. No. I parked a mile away at a rocky beach unpopular with tourists, and I grabbed the backpack that contained my murder kit and humped it double-time down a state park trail that connected the two.

  You wouldn’t have recognized me. I was wearing an army-surplus jacket and had greased my hair so it looked a lot darker than it was. If you didn’t look twice—and why would you?—you’d take me for a grad student who’d just finished finals and was hitting the Pacific Northwest trail for a summer adventure. And that was the story (exactly) I would have told had I run into a park ranger.

  But I didn’t run into a ranger. I didn’t encounter anyone at all, except the person I was looking for. The one who liked to go for a run every night after dinner, no matter where she happened to be.

  “Hi Rebecca,” I said as I stepped out of the trees.

  Rebecca’s Nikes were new and expensive—electric blue with coral stripes, probably fresh out of the box. Her back was to me, but her little Nike stutter-step told me she recognized my voice. Just that fast her toes dug firmly into the sand, and she stopped cold.

  “Don’t turn around,” I said. “It’ll be easier that way.”

  Even as I spoke, I knew Rebecca wouldn’t heed my warning. Her sharp inhalation cut the silence, and then a big wave broke across the beach and slapped the sound away. The sea wind caught Rebecca’s blond hair, masking her face as she turned. She just couldn’t help herself—I’m certain she already had a few persuasive paragraphs worked up to lob my way.

  “I warned you,” I said, and I fired the Taser before she could say a single word.

  That was that. Dr. Nakamura hit the sand face-first. I dragged her into the forest. An hour later I was back on the road. Several hours beyond that, I was home. Rebecca’s corpse was tucked away in one of my storage units, wrapped up nice and neat in a GE freezer. I’d finish with her later. After all, I had a date with Daphne the next day at noon, and it was already long past midnight.

  I needed to get my rest.

  If I shared it, you’d recognize the name of the cemetery where Daphne and I had our first date. It’s famous. But I think I’ll keep that information to myself. I suppose I’m a little sensitive about the place after the way things turned out. You’ll have a better understanding of why later.

  Anyway, as prominent as the place was, I’ll bet no one had ever picnicked there. That’s exactly what Daphne and I did on an afternoon that was as still as it was sunny—May light filtering through the trees, chill patches of shadow not quite ready to warm despite the change of seasons, the scent of pine and cut grass, the cool appraisal in Daphne’s guarded glances.

  Daphne (of course) had done her research. She said that cemeteries had been akin to city parks in Victorian times, when families would spread tablecloths on the grass and share memories of their dear departed along with roast squab and
pickled eggs on sunny Sunday afternoons.

  I can’t speak for Daphne, but I certainly had no one to mourn with that level of sincerity. What I did have was Daphne’s company and the picnic lunch she prepared. A pleasant Pinot gris, nicely chilled. Fried chicken, a loaf of sourdough with wedges of Irish butter, and an apple and grape salad with sour cream dressing. Cherries and chocolate cake.

  Unfortunately, the conversation didn’t match the food. The words that passed between us were simple chit-chat, with none of the electricity of our phone call. Just some mundane gossip about classmates and instructors, with a few conversational detours concerning the cemetery’s more infamous residents. All that was entertaining enough as far as it went, but it wasn’t the kind of conversation I’d hoped for . . . and I’m sure Daphne felt the same way.

  All that changed as soon as we emptied the bottle of wine and packed the picnic basket.

  “Ready to check out the library, Mr. Burke?”

  “Definitely, Ms. Hare.”

  “I should warn you—it’s a library with spirits.”

  “As in: distilled?”

  The exchange passed so quickly it seemed we had rehearsed it, as chipper and quippy as dialogue in an old William Powell/Myrna Loy movie that was about to get much more twisted than Warner Brothers would have ever allowed. But neither of us laughed when it was over. For the truth was that we had simply progressed to the next point on the agenda, as in: I followed Daphne down a path that led to the edge of the cemetery grounds.

  A cathedral stood at the end of the path . . . or at least a building I took for a cathedral. Inside was something else entirely. Instead of a large room with a vaulted ceiling, the building was a tangle of twisting corridors and oddly shaped rooms. The walls of each were lined with golden books that weren’t books at all, but instead boxes bearing the cremains of the deceased with their names etched on the spines. The correct term for the place (I knew) was columbarium, but indeed it was a library, and it felt like one. For just as books do, each of these boxes held a particular story.

  Of course, I never would have believed those stories could be shared. Daphne, I soon discovered, thought otherwise. Even her walk through the place was a lesson in that, for she brought with her the percussion of coffin nails. Her heels clicked along the empty corridor, each step a seeming precursor for a small ending, and as she walked she ran one black-nailed finger along those golden spines, as if searching for the beginning of a tale that struck her particular fancy.

  I followed her down the corridor, listening to the scrape of that nail. Without turning to face me, Daphne asked: “So . . . do you believe in spooky stuff?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know—001.64.”

  “We’re talking paranormal phenomenon?”

  “You can close down the parameters a little: spectral manifestations . . . shades and revenants . . . your basic things that go bump in the night.”

  “Well, I suppose I’m the kind of person who believes what he can see.”

  “You mean, you’re a proof is in the pudding kind of guy?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Then let’s see what we can see, Stagger Lee . . . or maybe what we can feel.”

  Daphne turned and smiled at me, and that same finger she’d run across a hundred etched spines brushed my lips and crossed my chin. Only for a moment. Then she turned away, advancing down a narrow hallway. Her hips swayed beneath her skirt, and her fingers arched into claws, a fistful of nails scrapping over spines now.

  The briefest moment later her fingers stopped, very quickly, index finger poised on one particular spine. “Ohhhh,” she said, and it was the kind of sound I’d never heard from Daphne before. It echoed through the columbarium hallway like a sound from a cave.

  “They say some people are mediums,” Daphne said. “They stir shadows, raise the past and the dead, hold them in their grasp. For a while, for a time . . . and then that time is gone. In that regard they’re like imperfect vessels, I suppose. But they’re something more, too.”

  “People say all kinds of things.”

  “So—no verdict on that particular form of perception?”

  “Uh-uh.”

  “Let’s conduct a little experiment then. For example, it’s my perception that this particular box is filled with firecrackers, psychically speaking. I’d like you to touch it and see what happens.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “C’mon. Take a chance.” Daphne smiled. “Do it and I’ll guarantee a reward . . . later.”

  “Not my thing, really.”

  “Well there’s a surprise.”

  “Uh.” I stammered. “Well . . . maybe it is. Sometimes.”

  “Okay. You’re the boss, applesauce . . . but just one other thing—our date’s over.”

  Daphne turned away. From me. From the columbarium book. She started walking and didn’t look back, heels clicking down the hallway, those little nail-driving steps marking percussion to my thoughts. Quite literally, she was disappearing into the shadows, and before my very eyes.

  My hand reached out before I even knew it, fingers touching that yellow spine. But it wasn’t a spine at all . . . at least not one you’d find on a book, or a box. No, it was too cold and slick, its ridges mimicking movement like those grave-worms knotted across that horrible face in my dreams. And then there were words, and they weren’t Daphne’s. “You see, my friend. We meet again.”

  And now that face hung before me, above a buckled collar cinched from dead whore’s nightmares. The thing wore a top hat, and it leered with that knotted-worm smile. One whiff of its breath and a wave of dizziness hit me so hard that for a moment I imagined I was back on that beach with Rebecca, cold Pacific tides pounding me to the ground as she escaped down the beach in her blue-and-coral Nikes. And even in the moment I realized that was only a fantasy, one shorn of every notion of personal power possible. I tried to focus, managed just for a moment to read the name on the spine of the box, and then the letters were lost in a wet, smeared sheen.

  So was everything else. My knees buckled. I was about to pass out.

  I started to fall. Daphne didn’t allow that. Suddenly she was very close, holding me up. “I’ve been coming here for a few years,” she said. “Touching a spine here, a spine there—collecting impressions. I still remember the first time I touched that book, and he told me who he was. I couldn’t believe it, not at first. Later, I couldn’t deny it. And now he’s my special friend, one of a kind, no one like him anywhere. At least, I always thought so . . . until I met you.”

  Daphne’s wine-dark lips drew closer, close to my ear. But her voice was far away, as if deep inside a seashell . . . or a memory boxed away. “Remember that day in class? When you loaned me a pencil? It started then. I got my first little tingle of you. And now there’s nothing I don’t know about you. I’ve been inside your storage units. Those are nice boxes you built for Dr. Nakamura . . . they should be a good fit. I’ve even held your knives. In fact, I borrowed one a few weeks ago, the night we took our final for AARC2. Remember that little dweeb who always sat in the front row? The one who asked the same question three different ways in every class? Well, his questioning days are over.”

  “I need to sit down,” I said. “I think I’m going to pass out.”

  “Don’t get fried, Mr. Hyde,” Daphne said. “Not during our very first dance. He wouldn’t like that.”

  I said something, but I can’t imagine what it was. Moments had passed . . . perhaps minutes. The next thing I knew, Daphne was already moving away. I toppled sideways, leaning against the wall, trying to steady myself. Daphne’s heels clicked over the tile floor. I tried to measure time by her footfalls. I still couldn’t move. I was buried in a dream—her dream or mine, I couldn’t be sure—and those coffin-nail footfalls were driving deeply . . . over and over and over again.

  Daphne was further away now . . . very far. And then she was gone.

  A door swung open, and a breath of wind
washed over my back.

  Outside the door Daphne voice rose over the marble forest ahead, and lingered behind.

  “Come along now,” she said. “After all, I keep my promises.”

  I don’t know how I managed it, but I began to follow.

  The darkness followed behind me.

  No doubt Daphne had made promises to it, as well.

  No one had ever been in my apartment before. Except the landlord, and a plumber when I had to have the toilet replaced. But now that we were there the rooms seemed too small and the things they contained even smaller. And the bed, well . . . it was only a single bed, but Daphne said it wouldn’t matter because our real bed was darkness itself, and without borders. That was fine with me. I welcomed darkness wherever I found it.

  That night, I hoped the shadows would deliver my mind to other places . . . alone. But you can’t be alone with lovers, even in the dark. And so it was with us and the thing from the columbarium. Daphne and I, alive on a hideous canvas, our little hearts pounding, the two of us writhing in the night as worms that twist and couple in a ripe grave. That thing an oozing mess around and under and over and in, free of its buckles and clothes, ripe and corrupt.

  Whether it was climax or prelude was a matter of perspective. As act or ceremony, the grave was the grit of it, and blood was its heart. Still Daphne burrowed in and so did I, like hungry little grave worms seeking the choicest morsel. There was no other choice, but any pleasure found was quickly lost between lips and belly in the manner of a ghoul’s meal.

  Or, to put it more succinctly:

  “A nightmare?” you ask.

  “Of course,” I reply.

  What else could I call it? For in truth or imaginings, nightmares must be endured. And as I drifted off to sleep, I thought it would have been better if we were all past enduring. If (on this night) we’d all worn knives for fingers instead of flesh and shadow. Make that simple adjustment, and the three of us would have slashed the darkness to ribbons and left nothing for the coming dawn but a puddle of gore fit only for the coroner’s pail.