The Librarian

In a small village a Librarian creeps. Return your books on time or she'll come out to play.

Unscented candles burned at each summit of the five-pointed star.

The warming flame and musty books are the only comfort for what I must pronounce as the sixth sacrament I have witnessed by this woman. She calls to me. For it is my job; to guide those near to the path of death through their doorway.

And there will be death. There is always, Death.

Doorways are the only thing that varies from person to person; always changing, according to their shade, shape and size. I have yet to come across a repeated threshold from two souls, both alike in their nature and nurture. The pentagram was drawn close to the centre of the children’s section, hidden by the rows and rows of desolate books.

A girl lay unconscious.

Laid close to the edge of an oak desk was a carving knife, the blade itself several inches over the edge, a sort of a balancing act. The wood furnishings, a darkening oak, matched the lacklustre lighting in the room. Its weathering layers of varnish, scratched away in places, a contrast to where the black depths polished the antiquity of a table. On top stood three black candles, each one standing as proud the others. They stand, sharing the disfigurement of previous use, melting their selves into the desk, a permanent fixture on the table. A steaming mug of coffee and a pile of hardbound books, stacked according to length, author and colour were scattered around the other side of the table. In the centred a single book lay open, propped up by an intricately carved stand. An inlay of gold leaf in the intricate carvings beginning to peel and crack; diming the dancing flames. The corner of the page was creased and torn, pages yellow from age and use. Printed were instructions and scrawled in the Librarian’s handwriting: How to: make a successful Sacrifice.

A plastic children’s table and chair set had been brought over. Yellow, purple and blue, the only colour left, dulled by the splinters of light coming through the blinds. There the Librarian sits. Her hums play a disruption against the gentle calm of breath. She doesn’t know I am here. Shadowed, I stand in the farthest stretch where the light cannot touch me, cannot cause me any harm; I am guarded by the shadows. The floor: carpeted, rough from a mix of her previous attempts to and the naive mothers and children that frequent on the weekends. Yellowing wax, trodden Play-Doh, dried blood from both the children and the Librarian, stain both books and floor.

I have seen the way she thinks. A belief: I am the creation of no God, but of fallen angels; for the collection of the damnable souls of the Earth. Her duty is to help and support her belief.

She is wrong.

“Wake-y, wake-y. Ri-ise and shine, my yo-oung and sleepy head.” A sing"song tune matching what she was humming, broke me from my reverie. Moving from the table, she jabs at the Girl’s feet with her own ones.

Eyes mad with her own excitement kept flickering back and forth between the clock on the wall and the girl lying on the floor. The Girl stirred. But not enough.

“Come on. I want this done before the end of lunch.” A heartbeat pause. “Wake up.”

Her eyes shot wide open, confusion clear, with no knowledge of where she was. She made no sound. No effort to move.

“I’d have thought you’d be a little more... spirited.” She took her place at the head of the children’s table and chairs. “I’d ask you to come and take a seat, but I sort of need you over there.”

The Girl looked to be a mere fourteen years old. The Librarian chooses well; no mother would be worried.

Yet.

The woman rose and dashed to the other side of the room, flames flickering as her auburn hair distilled the air, the tweed blurring into the shadows. The small bird’s movements stilled as she landed at the oak desk and let her fingers waltz from item to item. Beginning to gather her wits, the girl stood. Her arms wrapped themselves around her waist as the room began to cool. She looked straight towards me.

“What’s wrong, young one?” The Librarian turned her head as she began to play with the flames, casting wicked shadows on her pencil drawn face, taunting her round lined features. “Cat got your tongue?”

“No.” Her voice was groggy from the lack of use.

“Ah, so she speaks.” Her hands went back to playing with the flames. “This will be more fun if you speak?”

“Fun?” The Girl let go of her waist and let her hands swing to her sides.

“Yes. Fun.”

The Librarian left the desk and began to flit around the shelves in the young adult section. Feminine fingers brushing each title as she stepped past one at a time.

“Green. You don’t belong there.” She removed the copy of The Fault in Ours Stars blindly to its spot on the shelf, as she turned her attention back to the Girl. “Seriously, you would think some more young adults would have a bit more respect for books.”

“Hmm...”

“What was that?”

“My agreement.”

“Your agreement? You don’t know what you’ve agreed to yet.”

A further twenty minutes of silence coiled itself around the room. Only the brief interruptions broke the suffocation as the muffled steps of the Librarian’s feet took her back to her desk. She extended the knife.

“There’s not much to agree to, not really.” She started to pick her the dirt under her fingernails. A large piece of hardened wax edges on the blade. “You may try scream... or you may try to run. You won’t. But you’ll try.”

“Run from what?”

“Me. The knife....” Realization hardened the Girl’s features; if she didn’t know then she knew now. “The Library; the books wouldn’t like that very much.”

She belonged to me.

“You’re a frightened little girl who wants to be the brave heroine. Like the stories you’ve read. Like a... Katniss Everdeen.” The knife was placed back on the table, with enough precision for it to be placed exactly as it once lay.

A bag- redeemed from nowhere- found its way to the Librarian hands. Small and pale, the ink doodles long bled into the fabric, the multitude of colours mortals use to recreate the colour of death, visible. Unsteady hands opened it; easing each clasp out of its holding before pulling out the contents one by one: an English book, a scattering of pens, a packet of tissues, nail varnish, three loose one penny coins, headphones, a MP3 player and a book.

“Found it!” She proclaimed.

Several pages of the book fell onto the floor.

“Found what?”

“The book. It was two months overdue.”

“You’re going to kill me- because of an overdue book?”

“Yes... we-ell, I’d call it a sacrifice...” She smiled. “But you say to-may-to, I say to-mar-to.”

The Librarian held up a copy of The Hunger Games. “Think of this as a retelling of The Hunger Games. Only, there will be two people... and no fight to the death.” Her smile grew wilder, untameable.

Confident, the Librarian left to return to the front desk. She scanned the book and put it on the trolley. The Girl, reassured the Librarian couldn’t see, ran to the back entrance and tugged at the handle.

Once.

Twice.

It wouldn’t give.

Fire and smoke lunged at the young Girl’s bob cut. Flames flickering, the brown hair turned black.

The Girl screamed.

The Librarian lost her nerve.

Movements abandoned their sophistication as she charged towards the pentagram. Knocking the pile of books in her wake; the sound of fragile binding breaking, gone unnoticed. The knife lay a foot from the Girl’s hands; the hand pinned by knees clad in a-hundred-and-twenty denier tights, tweed hiked up to her thighs. Grunts of pain and strain distilled the ever coiling silence. Spit landed in the Librarian’s eyes.

“You...” Her steel grip weakened “b***h.”

She made for the knife.

A disruption- jerky movements, a haze of legs and arms. An echo lay on the floor, black and burning: the anger and rage of the Librarian. The knife found its way into her hand; blood welled. She didn’t flinch. A fist of brown hair caught in her hand, yanking it back. A pale stretch of skin lay vulnerable. Her eyes grew. No noise came. She swallowed. The muscles: fluttering small butterflies all in sync.

She drew her last breath.

In that moment the Librarian became ‘The Artist’. The knife became her crafting tool, drawing a red smile from ear to ear.

The Girl collapsed; her neck weeping.

The Librarian marks this as her eleventh sacrifice. Her eleventh successful act of: cold blooded murder. The Librarian sits and waits. She assumes I will come, for I come to the rooms of the dying and the dead.

Only she rectifies the truth. And eventually I will come.

***

An hour has passed before the Librarian’s breathing slows to deep even breaths. The cuckoo’s chimes struck unheard in commotion. The Girl’s soul sits. Huddled and small, a contrasting will of her defiance, a foot away from her once mortal body. She looks over to the depths of shadows. Her eyes fixed onto mine.

Behind her a door held, fixed to the wall. The door matched the Girl’s bag in colour, one of the many shades of unnecessary whites on a paint strip. An unnecessary help guide for mortal’s on what colour to paint their hallways. No decoration, only a metal handle on the left side. An orange paw was trying to find its way through the bottom of the door. A mewl as its ongoing attempt failed him. He had to reach the Girl.

“Ginger?” She severed eye contact to turn her head to the sound of mewling.

It was time.

I embarked on the journey of weaving through the shelves of stale books; handled by many sticky hands. That stickiness bound the air, the stench of clotting blood, burning pages and already rotting flesh grew more concentrated the closer I got to the Girl. I held out my hand of muscle and flesh. She took it. Leading her to her door, she looked up to me.

“I thought you would never come.”

“Of course I did.” We stood at the white washed door. “I am always there. I am always lurking in the shadows.”

She opened the door. Another set of mewls erupted from the open door.

“GINGER!” She leapt to pick him up. She turned back to me. “Thank you.”

The door closed; a vanishing trick- caused by the closure of the gateway. The worlds of the dead and the living must always remain on the opposing sides.

***

I come to the rooms of the dying and the dead.

The Librarian will never know the Master of Death answers to her calls.

As I come and visit you all.