The Legend of James Grey

by Jennifer Moorman

  “We’re not here permanently. We’re not able to come and go as we want whenever we want. There’s a process, and it’s a temporary one.”

  Her chest felt as though it were being pressed beneath a pile of reference books. Stretching her willingness to believe, she asked, “How long are you here for?”

  “Two weeks. But I’ve already been here eleven days.”

  Almost two weeks already. Words rose over his shoulders and drifted down his arms. Hold on. Enjoy the moment. Be here with me. Emma looked away and fiddled with the mug’s handle. “And then what happens? Poof? Turn to ashes in sunlight?”

  James laughed quietly. “We’re not vampires, Emma. But I don’t know what happens exactly when my time is up. For me it feels like being filled with sunlight and warmth and air, like every part of my body becomes wind and light. I’ve never asked Morty what it looks like to him.”

  Emma clenched her jaw. She wasn’t sure what made her feel angrier—that this gorgeous man who looked like a representation of her childhood knight would be gone in days or that he was probably concocting an elaborate lie while acting like he was a good guy.

  Emma stood and shook her head. “I’m sorry. I’m sure you’re a decent guy, but this idea is completely ridiculous, and I think I’ve been nice enough to entertain your story, but there’s no reason for you to keep lying to me, and yet you still are. I think you should get out of here. I can’t believe I was stupid enough to leave you here in the library overnight. I don’t even know you.” She wiggled her fingers in the air. “Go on and turn into your wind.” Emma started to walk away.

  “You and Bobby used to come here every Saturday,” James said. “And Morty acted like he didn’t know that you two were the ones building forts out of books and paper towels taken from the restroom.”

  Emma stopped moving, and her back went as rigid as a bookshelf. Her jaw clenched tighter, and she fisted her hands at her sides before turning to look at James.

  He pointed toward the east wing of the library. “In the poetry section because you thought no one ever used those books, beneath the table nearest the supply closet.”

  “How could you possibly know that?” she asked. “Did Morty tell you that?”

  “I know Bobby liked to pretend he was a knight with a sword made from cardboard that he painted with your fingernail polish. You humored him and pretended that you needed to be rescued at least every other time,” James continued. “When Bobby brought his first girlfriend to the library to show her around, you felt left out and sulked in the fairy tale section until Morty brought you a Dilly bar and his favorite book.

  “I know Morty made scavenger hunts for you two after school and on the weekends while your father worked two jobs, in order to keep your minds busy and to look out for you. I know that after your father died, Morty was always especially worried about you and your tendency to disappear into yourself. He liked having you around for multiple reasons, but he wanted to keep you close because he didn’t want to lose you to your sorrow.”

  Emma’s throat squeezed closed, shutting off her air for a few moments. She could hear the echoes of Bobby’s laughter in the foyer, around the shelves, and drifting down from the second floor. She imagined their tennis shoes slapping against the tiles as they raced for the staircase in search of the next scavenger hunt clue. She thought of all the books she’d read in an attempt to disappear into those worlds when living in her own became too challenging, too dark.

  “Stop,” she said. “I don’t know how you know these things—”

  James stood and held open his hands, palms facing her. “Because I’ve watched you grow up here, Emma. Once a year, Morty would bring me here for two weeks, and you and Bobby were some of the only two people I saw year after year, and then I looked forward to seeing you as soon as I arrived. And now…now you’re all grown up and sadder than I’ve ever seen you.”

  Emma inhaled sharply. “You don’t know anything about me.”

  “I know two weeks’ worth of you for every year since you were five. It’s not much and probably not nearly enough to act as though I know you,” he put one hand against his heart, “but I feel like I do. Twenty years, Emma. It’s not much, but it’s something, and while I’m here this time, I want to know why you seem so full of hurt and distrust. You used to be bursting with life and hopefulness. It was contagious.” He stepped toward her. “Morty had plans to tell you about me and about all of this one day, but he kept putting it off. Now he can’t.”

  Emma fiddled with a pearlescent button on her blouse. “If you’ve been coming here for twenty years, why haven’t I seen you?”

  James shrugged. “It’s all part of the way this plays out. We aren’t seen unless we want or need to be seen.”

  Emma snorted. “Well, that’s a convenient explanation, isn’t it? So a bunch of invisible characters have been wandering around the library for twenty years?”

  James shook his head. “This has been going on much longer than twenty years.”

  Emma rested her hands against her hips. “If I were to pretend for a moment that I believed in the extraordinary, how is this possible?”

  James jerked his head toward the side. “Come with me? I’ll show you.”

  Emma followed James to the circulation desk, keeping far enough away from him so she could study him without being obvious. She traced the outline of his body with her eyes, appreciating his toned, healthy physique. He walked with confidence but without swagger. She wondered what it would be like to slide her fingers through his dark hair, down the back of his head, and rest them on his neck—or slip them just below his collar to his warm skin.

  Stop it right there! Emma’s shoulders straightened. What are you thinking?

  James opened the bottom left drawer on the circulation desk and shook Emma’s attention away from her daydream. From the drawer, James pulled out a wooden box with swirling patterns engraved on the top. He flipped open the lid and removed a date stamp and an inkpad that didn’t look any different from the identical ones that were already on the counter.

  James placed both the new stamp and the inkpad on the counter and said, “This is what makes it possible.”

  He lifted the hinged lid on the inkpad and revealed the blue ink that twinkled as though the ink had been mixed with glitter. Emma stepped forward and then leaned over to get a closer look.

  “It looks sparkly,” she said, standing upright again. “This feels like a joke.”

  “Touch it,” James said.

  Emma gave him an expression of mockery, but she poked her index finger into the ink. A jolt of electricity shot up her arm and exploded inside her chest, making her temples throb. Emma yanked back her hand. She looked at her finger in just enough time to see the ink absorb into her skin, sending tiny sparks of fire into her hand, up her arm, and pulsing in her chest.

  “What was that?” she whispered, feeling a prick of terror that caused her voice to tremble.

  James reached over and rubbed his hand against her arm. “It’s more than sparkly. This is what brings us here. Morty stamps the chosen books with this stamp and ink.” He removed his hand and returned the stamp and inkpad to the box. Then he slid the box back into its spot in the bottom drawer.

  “How could a stamp and freaky ink possibly do that?” Emma asked.

  James shook his head. “I don’t know how. I just know that it works. That’s the magic of it.”

  Emma rubbed her fingers back and forth across her chest as her heartbeat struggled to return to normal. “There has to be a logical reason for all of this.” But even as she said the words, her intuition told her there wouldn’t be anything rational about what was happening.

  James locked his gaze with hers. “How would you explain falling in love to someone? Or feeling drawn to someone you barely know? Are those happenings logical? How do they work? Some parts of our existence aren’t based on logic. They’re based solely on emotion, and you can’t take them apart and analyze their inner workings. They m
ust be accepted as a whole because otherwise the magic is lost. For some parts of life, there are no logical explanations. The magic is bound to a belief in the extraordinary.”

  “So you keep saying,” Emma said quietly, glancing down at her fingertip. “Why wouldn’t Morty have told me? Of all the people in the world who would have believed this insane possibility, shouldn’t I have been the one person he could have told?”

  James crossed his arms over his chest. “Yet you’re having trouble believing this from me. What would make him telling you any different, any more believable?”

  Emma shrugged. “Because I know him. I trust him. Or I did.” She rubbed the back of her neck and shook her head. “I can’t believe he didn’t think he could tell me years ago. I would have believed him. I would have wanted him to show me, of course, but I would have given him the opportunity. And, instead, he lies to me for years. Twenty years of lying. And he lied to Bobby. He could have told both of us. We would have had the best time with this.” Emma looked at James. “Bobby would have been stoked out of his mind to hang out with you.”

  A small smile lifted James’ cheeks. “The feeling is mutual. Some of the best times I’ve had here were spent with you two, following you around the library and listening to your stories.” He pushed away from the desk and stepped toward her. “You shouldn’t be so hard on Morty. This isn’t the kind of secret you can just drop into someone’s lap. It’s an exceptionally difficult one to tell just anyone.”

  Emma frowned. “Since when have I been ‘just anyone’ to Morty?”

  Her cell phone rang, and she dug it out of her purse so she could answer the call. The head nurse told Emma that Morty was awake and still in stable condition. He had been asking for her, and she was welcome to stop by for a visit. The nurse added that any visitors needed to understand that Morty did not need added drama; so only peaceful, low-key visits would be tolerated. Emma promised she would not disrupt Morty’s calm or recovery. Sure, Morty would need to rest so that his body could heal, but before that happened, Emma would demand that he tell her the truth about everything.

  Emma glanced down at the bottom drawer where the special inkpad was hidden. An idea sparked in her mind, and within seconds, it was burning as hot as blue flames. She headed for the children’s fiction section of the library.

  “Where are you going?” James asked.

  “To test a hypothesis.”

  In the children’s section, Emma scanned the titles until she found Peter Pan. She hugged the book against her chest and returned to the circulation desk where James stood waiting as though he knew she’d come back soon. A copy of Robinson Crusoe had been returned the day before and not put back on its shelf, so Emma slid it toward Peter Pan.

  Then she opened the bottom drawer and pulled out the box that contained the inkpad and stamp. She removed the items from the box and placed them on the counter beside the books.

  “How does this work?” she asked.

  James walked around the desk and stood behind her. “What are you doing?”

  She flipped open the inkpad and picked up the stamp. She rotated the dials on the bottom of the rubber stamp so that the date read two weeks from today’s date, and then she looked at James. “Tell me how this works.”

  James reached for the stamp, but Emma moved her hand as far away from him as she could.

  “This isn’t a joke, Emma,” he said.

  A line creased between his brows, and she felt an urge to rub it away with her thumb. She gripped the stamp tighter in her hand.

  “It feels like a joke,” she said. Emma quickly flipped Peter Pan to the last page where the library card was snuggled down into the pocket. She slipped out the card and stamped the inkpad before James could stop her. Then she stamped the book. “Now what?”

  James squared his shoulders and reached out his hand. “Emma, give me the stamp. You have no idea what you’re doing.”

  “I asked you for your help, but you’re not being very forthcoming. What do you do now? Say something like, I wish Captain Hook were here—”

  “Stop!” James demanded.

  James’ voice echoed through the foyer, rushing back to them and fluttering papers on the desk. The back of Emma’s neck tingled like an electrical storm brewed above her head. She stared at the date stamped in blue ink. The blue ink sparkled in the lights for a few seconds before it darkened to a bold, black ink. She waited and held her breath, but nothing happened.

  Even though an uncomfortable feeling skirted beneath her skin, she grabbed the other book, propped it open, and slipped out the library card.

  James took a step back, shaking his head, and crossed his arms over his chest. “I should stop you, but I guess some lessons you have learned the hard way.”

  Emma made a scoffing noise. “Cause you know me so well.”

  “Better than you’re ready to admit.” James leaned his hip against the desk. “Go ahead and invite another friend. You’re going to have quite the mess to wrangle at the end of the day. I may or may not assist you.”

  Emma stamped Robinson Crusoe’s library card and said, “I’ve been doing just fine all these years without your assistance. And based on your reaction, I’m assuming that saying characters’ names is the way to do this. Robinson Crusoe.”

  This time the hairs lifted from the back of her neck and on her scalp, but many seconds later, still nothing in the library—other than her heartbeat—had changed. She turned in a full circle and saw no fictional characters wandering around, no mysterious people lurking near the bookshelves.

  A small part of her had wanted to believe in James’ crazy story, but now she knew he must be lying to her, regardless of the way her stomach tightened. She slammed the inkpad shut and shoved the library cards back into the books.

  “Wow. Look at me,” Emma said. “Am I the dumbest person alive? For a second, I nearly believed your story about the hocus pocus inkpad.”

  She opened the bottom drawer and tossed the inkpad and stamp inside without returning them to their box. James sighed, leaned down, and properly stored them in their places.

  He stood and straightened his jacket. “Just wait, Emma. You’ll see what you’ve done. And Morty won’t be here to help you.”

  Emma held open her arms and motioned to the library around her. “Looks like I’ve done a lot. There’s so much chaos in here right now.”

  “Your sarcasm is not amusing,” James said. “You’ll be eating crow before you know it.”

  The back door of the library opened as Vicki walked in. Her unruly, curly hair hung in ringlets around her round, cherub face. The summer heat reddened her cheeks, but her eyes were bright and alert. She headed toward Emma and said good morning as she crossed the foyer. She asked for an update on Morty, which Emma gave her, but Vicki completely ignored James. She dropped her purse and cell phone on the circulation desk and then carried her lunch to the kitchenette. Emma watched her disappear around the corner.

  “What kind of girl ignores a good-looking man standing in the library before it opens? She’s not usually that non-observant.”

  James stepped away from the desk and into the foyer. He shoved his hands in his pockets, looking in the direction where Vicki had gone. “The kind of girl who can’t see me.”

  Emma smoothed her hands down her skirt and shuffled her sandals across words that rose up from between the floor tiles. Attraction. Hope. Anticipation. “Am I supposed to believe that you’re invisible to her but not to me?”

  James nodded once as he turned to face Emma. His half-grin caused her pulse to beat thick and hot inside her body, briefly overpowering her disappointment and annoyance.

  “Yes,” he said, “but the more important question is, you think I’m good looking?”

  7

  Emma knocked lightly on the hospital door as she pressed the cold, flat, silver handle against her palm and the door clicked open. Sunlight slanted through the partially open blinds and striped the tile floor. The room smelled like soap and
blooming lilies, but Emma still caught the faint, lingering scent of astringent cleaners—an odor that knocked loose unpleasant memories of long days sitting in the hospital.

  Vases of flowers had colorful ribbons tied around them, attaching Get Well Soon and Thinking of You balloons to their shiny glass. The gifts weighed down both the small, square end table beside his bed and the round dining table near the windows. An attractive news reporter with styled hair and professional makeup, looking more like a pageant contestant than a journalist, beamed from the TV screen mounted high on the wall opposite the bed.

  Morty’s gaze found hers, and he lifted the TV remote and pressed the mute button. Using his hands, he pushed himself into a more seated position, straightening his back and adjusting the nasal cannula in his nose. She dropped her purse in a chair that looked like it had been in style in 1960. There was a butt depression in the burnt orange, bottom cushion, which made Emma think it had likely been in the room since 1960 as well.

  “Easy now, tiger,” she said as she walked toward him.

  He patted the edge of his bed and smiled. “Are you a sight for sore eyes or what? I’ve been pestering the nurses to call you for hours.”

  Emma had picked up breakfast muffins from the coffee shop on her way to the hospital. She dropped the brown paper sack onto the table in the last available space. Nan Tucker, the owner of the coffee shop, made healthy blueberry muffins out of what Emma thought of as bark and twigs and hippie love. Nan even used her own homegrown wild blueberries in the batter. The muffins were delicious, but Emma wasn’t comfortable admitting she enjoyed eating healthy food, so she ate the muffins in secret, not daring to leave an uneaten crumb behind. Morty liked muffins, and Emma knew hospital pastries were loaded with sugar and probably poisonous preservatives, so she thought Nan’s were the best option for a recovering patient.

  She crossed the small room and sat on the bed, careful not to tangle herself in the tubes and wires coming from the machines surrounding his bed. “I had to get the library settled before I could leave Vicki alone. You know how nervous she gets if there isn’t an organized plan in place. She needs direction. Not a lot of spontaneity happening inside of her. But she said to tell you that she’s thinking about you, and she hopes you’ll be back soon.”