“You’re starting your new job in a few days,” Mom said. “Look forward to that. Just get through these last few exams and then focus on that. I’ll run your pillow case through the laundry tonight, too.”
“It’s not a job,” I murmured. Gawd, what a teenager-thing to say. Here she was, trying her best to cheer me up, and I had to go and pick her words apart.
She was unfazed. “Books,” she said in her soothing “Mom” voice, “are what you love.”
Chapter 2
One day the servant, who took away the dish, was overcome with such curiosity that he could not help carrying the dish into his room. When he had carefully locked the door, he lifted up the cover, and saw a white snake lying on the dish. But when he saw it he could not deny himself the pleasure of tasting it, so he cut off a little bit and put it into his mouth. No sooner had it touched his tongue than he heard a strange whispering of little voices outside his window.[ii]
Mom was right. The next afternoon after exams, I was inside Franken Library, sitting behind the check-out desk—behind the desk!—with Mary Waters, the head librarian. I only had one exam left and it was the last thing I was thinking about. This was my world now. Right here. Surrounded by books.
“You won’t be horribly entertained,” Mary said to me. That was her first rule of volunteering at the library, apparently. She looked at me over thin glasses with black frames. She was in her fifties, with a round pear-shaped bottom. She wore gray pants and a white blouse with a light brown sweater wrapped around her neck. Cute librarian duds.
“I’m always entertained here,” I said, challenging her.
Mary frowned. “Well, I hope you continue to feel that way.” She touched my arm. “It’s so nice having help. I can’t bend over as well as I used to.” She pursed her lips. “Now that I think of it, I can’t stand straight that well anymore either.”
We both chuckled.
“Do I need to tell you where the books are?” she asked.
“No, ma’am.”
“Oh sweet baby Jesus don’t go calling me ma’am,” she said. “It’s bad enough the janitor calls me Miss Waters.”
“Mary it is,” I said. “It’s just weird … we can never call our teachers by their first names.”
She smiled. Her skin wrinkled up around her lips. Laugh lines, my dad called them. Signs of a life well-lived. I liked that. I liked knowing that Mary had smiled so much. “Why don’t you start with the children’s books? No need to make multiple trips upstairs.”
“OK.”
“So grab the mail bin.”
“Right.” I spun around, walking over to Mary’s little desk and grabbing the empty white mail bin. I walked back to the check-out desk and set it down. We filled it with children’s books and young adult novels.
“I’m so sorry the elevator isn’t working,” Mary said in a barely audible whisper. “Budget cuts. Just not much money left for us.”
“I understand,” I said. “That’s why I’m here.”
Mary nodded solemnly. “I just wish we didn’t need you. Not that you’re not a wonderful addition, dear, but we could really use another librarian. We fall so far behind so quickly when new books need to be purchased. The girls, they come in and they want all these new vampire novels and werewolf novels and I just can’t keep them straight.”
I chuckled. “There are a lot of them.”
“And the covers!” she exclaimed in a low voice. “Lordy, the number of topless men I see on these covers … well, that’s not worth complaining about, I suppose.”
“I’ll do everything I can this summer to help,” I told her. “I promise.”
She smiled, loading up the last few books. I took the bin upstairs, feeling the weight in my legs. Well, I thought, at least I’ll tone my legs this summer. It would be good exercise. I needed it. I needed to get my legs back into the shape they were in while I was still taking gymnastics in middle school. In high school, that type of thing wasn’t “cool” and I’d quit. Not that fencing was “cool,” either. But it was a lot of fun. There was only one student I hadn’t beaten at fencing yet.
Edward.
Re-shelving the books took longer than I expected. And yes, it was a little boring. I found myself scanning the shelves after every book I put away. The habit grew worse when I put away books on the first floor in the early afternoon. I was discovering new books as I went, mentally arranging them in the “to-read” bookshelf in my brain. A book about oceans (why not? Deep sea creatures are weird and cool). A fiction novel by Sandra Cisneros. A collection of short stories by Alice Munro.
I worked through lunch, hoping to get out early enough to catch a few rays of sun. But by the afternoon there were more books that needed to be put away. I went through the process again, starting with the children’s books and moving down to the first floor.
When I was done the second time, Mary had an entirely new job. “Fairy tales,” she said. “Always a favorite.” She held the book out and I touched it cautiously. It looked old. It looked as if it belonged on one of the bookshelves in Edward’s house.
“Where does this go?” I asked, running my fingers across the golden type. The cover was brown, ripped, torn, flaking away, but the words were still readable. Grimm’s Fairy Tales.
“Basement,” Mary said. “Shelved by section, then author. Shelve it under Grimm.”
“It seems like a crime to let this sit in the basement,” I said. “I want to read it.”
Mary smiled. “You can check it out any time you want. But a book like this can’t stay on the shelves up here anymore. It’s just reached that point in a book’s life where greasy little fingers are causing too much damage.”
“OK,” I said. “So I’ll just put it away …”
“And then you can go,” Mary said with a wink.
I took the book and walked over to the door leading to the basement. I hadn’t touched this door in half a decade. I don’t think many people had. When I turned the knob, it clicked once before opening. I flipped the light switch and a single light bulb turned on halfway down the wooden staircase.
OK, I thought—here we go. Nothing to be afraid of. My feet padded cautiously on each creaky step. I tried not imagine something grabbing at my ankles between each step, fighting the urge to run back upstairs.
“No spiders,” I announced to the shadows below. “I’m not tasty. I’m not fun to crawl on, either. Keep away.”
At the bottom, I could see the basement was much larger than I expected. And more well-lit, too. There were ten rows of metal shelves that almost touched the ceiling and a single long horizontal light fixture for each aisle that made it tough for spiders to hide. I walked between the dusty old collections, inhaling through my nose so I could enjoy the old book smell. Why had I been scared? This place was amazing!
I found the G’s in the fiction section and ran my finger along the spines of dusty brown books whose lettering had faded so that their titles were unrecognizable. It would have to be a guess where “Grimm” should go, but I could make out enough letters on the neighboring books to get close. I was surprised none of the books were covered in plastic—budget cuts again, I figured.
“Still a shame,” I said to the pathetic old book in my hands. I ran my fingers along the title again. Well. What was the harm in just a little look?
And before long she opened her eyes, lifted up the lid of the coffin, sat up, and was once more alive. “Oh, heavens, where am I?” she cried. The King’s son, full of joy, said, “You are with me,” and told her what had happened, and said, “I love you more than everything in the world; come with me to my father’s palace, you shall be my wife.”
And Snow-white was willing, and went with him, and their wedding was held with great show and splendour.
“You poor fool,” I murmured to Snow White, closing the book. “Should have just chewed a little better.”
I slid my fingers between two books, feeling them crack apart as if they’d been glued together for an etern
ity. I was about to slip the Grimm’s Fairy Tales book in when something cut me underneath my nail.
“Ouch!” I said, pulling back. I pulled apart the two books and noticed a slip of paper—old, faded brown—and something silver sitting behind the books. I pulled out the slip of paper first, as carefully as I could, then reached back and grabbed the silver object.
Immediately, I felt something surge through my body. It was warm and for a moment, my eyes seemed on the verge of crying. I held the silver object in my hand and stared at it.
A pen. I pulled off the cap. It was a fountain pen. A beautiful arrow-shaped nib with curving capillary channels that brought the ink to the tip. It looked old. The silver had tarnished a bit and the nib itself seemed to have been added on; it looked centuries old!
I put the cap back on and carefully flipped over the crusty aged note, wondering if the pen had been left for someone.
It had.
Alice,
Go to the far wall. Use this pen to draw a door. Don’t forget the doorknob!
I think I read it ten times, at least. Alice. Alice? Me? Really? Was this some kind of joke? Was this some kind of weird initiation that librarians use on volunteers? A scavenger hunt? What kind of sick person was Mary, anyway?
None of this made sense. I set the note on the shelf, then set down the pen. Immediately, I felt something leave my body. The warmth had disappeared. The strange electrical sensation I’d felt behind my eyes was gone. I grabbed the pen again. The feelings returned.
This is the moment where some people just go ahead and make their way right back upstairs. And yes, I was thinking about doing just that. But I had a curious itch now—how, exactly, was this ancient fountain pen going to write on solid concrete? Why, exactly, was this old note telling me—me!—to draw a door?
You better believe I was going to do it. That isn’t to say I wasn’t a little nervous—I was!—but as I walked slowly to the other end of the basement with the pen in my hand, I had the strangest feeling that this was the right thing to do. I trusted my gut instinct. It was the same instinct that told me not to sleep with Edward. It was the same instinct that told me to volunteer at this very library. It was pretty darned good, overall.
At the far end of the basement, the light fixtures abruptly cut off. No-man’s land. The shelves stopped, too. There was just an open space between the concrete wall and the edge of the shelves, just wide enough to fit a small kitchen table. I tried not to let my imagination run away. Yes, it was a spooky scary corner of an old library. Yes, that note could have been written by some raving psycho who stalked me and knew I was going to volunteer here … but weird enough, that seemed like the least likely possibility.
I stopped at the wall. OK, I told myself, just do it. What are the odds the pen will work at all? It’s probably a practical joke. Librarians crack jokes sometimes, right? I mean, they can’t always be serious.
I took the cap off the pen, stuffing it in my pants pocket. OK. A door. A simple door, and don’t forget the knob. I bent down and pressed the tip of the nib against the concrete. I slowly drew up it upward, surprised to see not just a black line but something else as well. It was as if the ink was reflecting a very subtle fiery light source.
It was glowing.
I stopped. The ink slowly disappeared, leaving only the blank concrete wall as if I’d never drawn on it. I blinked a few times, not believing.
“OK,” I said, pressing the pen to the concrete again. This time I kept going, standing on my tiptoes to draw the very top of my close approximation of a door. I drew the pen down, stepping back when I reached the floor. There it was: a glowing black outline of a door.
“The knob, you doofus,” I muttered, stepping up again and drawing a circle where the doorknob would be. I stepped back again, blinking a few times, expecting the darn thing to up and disappear. It was disappearing. Very, very slowly, the glowing golden black ink was beginning to fade.
I don’t know what came over me right then. Maybe it was just morbid curiosity, like how far down does this rabbit hole go? Whatever it was, I watched my hand slowly reach out for the doorknob I’d drawn. It felt like a doorknob. I turned it. It turned!
And when I pulled, the door opened.
I stepped back. The door, such as it was, led into a small room with a single unlit candle and what looked like a silver covered dish. An old faded brown note sat in front of it. I stepped inside, keeping one hand on the door that just moments ago hadn’t been a door at all, and grabbed the note. I scurried back to the edge of the bookshelves so I could read the note under the light. The basement was quiet and I could hear my hurried breath.
Alice,
Congratulations. I knew you could do it. Now, draw a match on the wall. Take it. Strike it. Light the candle. Then uncover the dish.
I read the note twice. What the hell is going on? I thought. I had to laugh. It all seemed so fantastic. Of course I went back to the concrete wall and drew a little match. I even darkened in the head and gave the little splinter of wood three dimensions. It was the best match I could draw.
Then I grabbed it. Literally, I reached out, touched it, and pulled it from the concrete wall and there it was in my hands: a real match with a real wooden base. I crouched next to the candle and struck the match on the black floor. The head ignited. I pressed it against the wick of the candle. The black walls of the room were illuminated enough that it was clear something was written on them. I picked up the candle. The flame danced left and right. I brought it closer to the far wall to make out the writing:
KILL THE SNAKE KILL THE SNAKE KILL THE SNAKE.
I stepped back in horror and the heel of my shoe bumped into the dish cover. The sound of the metal bouncing on the concrete floor was deafening and sent my heart beating into overdrive. I spun, nearly blowing out the candle in the process. The flame danced. I fell back, stifling a scream.
There, sitting on the plate, was a white snake. It was coiled up, its diamond-shaped head pointed at me, its pitch-black eyes staring right up at me.
“This isn’t real,” I said. My sweaty hands wrapped tightly around the fountain pen.
As if in response, a long red tongue darted out of the snake’s mouth. It uncoiled, raising its head up to get a better look at yours truly. I held out the candle in hopes the flame would keep it at bay. It stared at me for a moment, then turned and slithered out into the basement, disappearing between two bookshelves.
“Ew!” I shouted. “Ew ew ew ew ew!”
I kept the candle in front of me, staring out from inside the little room. The little room that hadn’t been there just minutes ago. The little room I’d drawn.
“Hello?” I called out. “Is this a practical joke or what? Mary? Are you just a crazy old lady with a sick sense of humor? Mary?”
No answer. Then, I heard it: the soft slithering of a scaly belly on hard concrete. I stepped out of the little room, looking right and then left. The snake was still here. Just the very thought of it slithering across my flats, its belly touching the tops of my feet, made my skin crawl. What an awful day to wear flats.
Worse, what if it was poisonous?
“Are you poisonous, you creepy snake?” I called out. “Hello? Is anyone here? Is this some weird librarian initiation?”
No answer. And there would be no answer, either. The door leading to the basement was a foot thick if it was an inch. The only way out was to get to the staircase. And that meant passing between the bookshelves.
I took a deep breath, fighting the urge to run. If this snake was like any of the ones I’d seen the last time the family went out west on vacation, it was probably just as scared and weirded out as I was. The last thing I wanted to do was weird it out even more by accidentally running at it.
I stepped slowly, keeping the candle low. Wax dripped onto the concrete floor. With the overhead lights and the candle’s flame, I could see a little underneath the bottom shelf of the bookshelves, enough to keep my nerves from completely overtaking me.
Steady now. Slow. Move smooth. If you see it, Alice, just step back and take a different aisle.
I made it halfway. That’s pretty good, right? But the moment I heard the slithering again—off to my left—my feet picked up their pace. I could see the staircase. I could see the little light bulb hanging above, illuminating the old wooden stairs.
And then I saw the snake. I froze in my tracks. It slithered out from the end of the shelves, right in front of the staircase. It looked at me and its tongue darted out again. Tasting my fear.
The snake … had grown.
“That’s impossible,” I said. Impossible, maybe, but that didn’t make the damn thing disappear. Nor did it shrink. It looked five times bigger now, at least—not just longer but bigger. Its diamond-shaped head was nearly the size of a textbook.
It raised its head, then slowly lowered it to the ground and began to slither toward me. I held the candle out for protection. The flame danced. The snake hissed, forcing its way underneath the bottom shelf and quickly disappearing underneath.
“Gawd, you smell like a snake,” I said, backing up. My feet moved me back to the other side of the basement where this whole mess had started. The flame darted left and right. Hot wax ran down my fingers, causing me to drop the candle. It landed on the floor but the flame stayed lit. I bent over, grabbed it, and screamed.
The next two seconds seemed to move in slow-motion. The snake was already closing the distance between us when I lifted the candle, its mouth already in the process of opening, revealing two very long white curved fangs. It had grown even larger and the open mouth seemed to be the only thing in my entire line of vision. My other hand came up and the tip of the fountain pen plunged into the soft flesh underneath the snake’s jaw. I fell backward to avoid the cavernous mouth and the massive creature continued forward, landing on the floor with the fountain pen still sticking out of its shiny white skin.
For a moment, nothing happened. No movement. No blood. Then, slowly, the area around the pen brightened a fiery orange. The color spread across the snake’s body, like burning paper. There was no smoke, no smell. And when it was done, there was nothing but a small snake-shaped strip of ashes lying on the floor.
The Grimm Chronicles, Vol. 1 Page 3
