The Night Library Page 2

  “Oh, Charlie, why don’t you go? It sounds like fun!” Grace shouted to Charlie. Charlie looked up from his waterside reverie, and started to shake his head, when Sanders put a hand on his shoulder.

  “Come on, Charlie, you get to be the one of the first ones out on the water.” Sanders manually turned Charlie toward the dock and walked him up to the motor boat where a small fat man stood at the controls. A handful of kids stuffed in life jackets waited inside, grinning.

  “Children, this is Charlie. He’s a little shy,” Sanders announced. “Here, why don’t you sit here, beside Rachael? She’s about your age. Rachael is quite the reader, aren’t you Rachael?” Sanders steered Charlie to the seat beside the plump bespectacled girl Charlie had noticed before. “Rachael here is the church champion at bible verses.” Rachael ducked her reddened face and twisted her pudgy digits in the front of her calico dress. She’s not semi-retarded, Charlie noted, but she’s definitely on the autism spectrum. Ramona had told Charlie that he might make a fine psychologist someday.

  The short greasy man started the engine and the children cheered as they drove away from the dock and onto the reservoir. Charlie looked back in dismay as the crowd of picnic-goers began to shrink to the size of action figures on the shore. As the boat turned, Charlie tried to keep his line of vision on the shore, but it fell upon the face of Rachael. She stared at him and licked her lips. Charlie looked away.

  The short man throttled the engine and the boat lifted a bit from the water. The younger children screamed with delight. Charlie gripped the side rail of the boat and tried to keep himself from shifting against the girl beside him. They passed a couple of islands to their left, turned sharply to the right and headed out to a great expanse of open water. Rachael fell against Charlie with all of her weight. Her grapefruit-sized breast pushed against his shoulder. Charlie twisted and stood up.

  “He stood up! Dad, he stood up!” a kid screamed.

  “Sit down, son!” Sanders shouted. “That’s not safe.” Charlie sat back down hard. His foot came down on Rachael’s toes. She yelped and moved away.

  The short man drew the boat closer to the dam side of the reservoir, banked it and sent out a wide spray of water. The children screamed, and then screamed again, as the man maneuvered the boat into its own wake. The boat leapt and water splashed down on them. For a terrifying moment Charlie was sure that the boat would crash and spill them out into the dark water.

  The short man slowed the boat to a drift.

  “Now look at that, children,” Sanders said. “Look at how beautiful God’s creation is.” He gestured wide, a can of root beer in his hand.

  Charlie noted with dismay that the sun would soon set behind the western hills. The thought of its eventual descent took away his appreciation for the beauty around him. Off to the north, a teenager put up a great spray of water on Sander’s Jet Ski. Charlie shivered with the thought of the boy’s bare feet so close to the dark waters. He said a silent thanks that Sanders had dubbed him too young for such a thrill.

  He leaned over and looked down into that great amber abyss below them. He wished fervently for the hundredth time that day that he could live full time with his dad and Ramona, not just see them on the weekends. He wished he could be anywhere but on this boat, on this reservoir. His reflection on the rippling water showed him a pale face framed by the wavy ginger hair he had inherited from his mother’s side.

  Suddenly, movement from deeper in the water drew his eye. He followed the movement down to the edge of where the slanted beams of the day’s dying light penetrated the deep. Something moved down there, sliding languidly beneath them.

  For a second Charlie felt a sense of panicked vertigo and pulled himself back from the edge of the boat. He blinked, righted himself and peered over the edge once more.

  He saw it, or was it them? A string of bony, pale bodies, all in a row, swam fluidly beneath them. The effect was like looking at a long segmented worm, or snake. The serpentine length of bodies twisted. Charlie made out bald pallid heads between these bodies, which bite down against the next body, all one.

  “There’s somebody down there! There are people down there!” Charlie screamed and pointed at the things that darted whip like in and out of his vision.

  Rachael screamed beside him, got up and fell against some smaller children on the opposite side of the boat. They all screamed with pain and terror as the large girl flailed against them. Sanders jumped between the driver seats and grabbed Rachael from off them.

  “That’s enough,” he said to the hysterical girl. “Settle down.”

  “He said there are people down there!” Rachael keened.

  “Nonsense; the only things down there are some delicious bass and steel trout. That’s what he saw.” Sanders put the girl back in her seat, and turned a wary eye on Charlie. He pointed a finger, and Charlie was sure that he was going to get an earful. “Bet you wish you brought your pole and tackle, now, Charlie, huh?” He laughed and went back to his seat. He emptied his root beer and tossed it into a bin.

  Charlie turned to look back into the deep. He saw nothing, but the beer-colored water descending into darkness. Could he have imagined it? No, he thought. Those things were not fish! He looked to shore where the ant like specks of people talked avidly to one another.

  About fifty feet from the boat, toward the picnic, something broke the surface of the water. The thing he had seen before crested up out of the water so quickly and fluidly, it was like catching a glimpse of a water snake or eel. He saw the flash of knobby vertebrae, poking up from the pallid semblance of a human back. This was followed immediately by the shining pate of a bald head, which descended into another knobby back. Then it was gone.

  “There it is! There it is! Did you see it? People or-” Charlie screamed again. Beside him Rachael covered her head with her meaty arms and let out a great keening wail. As if in litany the other children shrieked in unison.

  “That is enough!” Sanders said and rose now in anger. He jumped from his seat and the boat rocked precariously. For a moment Charlie worried that the boat would capsize, then he saw Sanders looming over him. “You’ll shut your mouth, boy, if you know what’s good for you! Look how you’re scaring these children.” Sanders grabbed Charlie’s shoulder and squeezed, hard. “What is wrong with you?”

  “There’s something in the water…I swear!”

  “Shut it!” The grip on his shoulder tightened painfully. Sander’s finger trembled near the bridge of Charlie’s nose. Charlie looked away from the bared, baleful eyes of the adult. Sanders held him like that for a long moment, then pushed against Charlie to stand and make his way back to his seat.

  “Man a-live! Really!” Sanders oathed.

  “Is that kid…? Is he…?” the fat guy stage whispered.

  “He’s troubled, that’s for sure,” Sanders said and then lowered his voice. “But that’s what comes from how he was raised. Michael tells me his biological father is living with a pagan.” The short fat guy’s eyes widened. He turned to give Charlie a circumspect look of pity and horror. Charlie bit his lip and turned to scan the water for the thing which he had spied.

  “Let’s get some grub, Arnie, before it’s all gone,” Sanders suggested.

  Arnie throttled the engine, and they took off for the shore.

  When they came toward the dock, Arnie killed the engine. As they drifted in Charlie scanned the scene and located his mother to be sure that she was safe. Then his eyes fell back in the boat. All of the children were looking at him with open suspicion.

  “I don’t think you know Jesus,” a little girl declared from across the boat.

  Charlie’s first instinct was to head to the car, sit, sulk and deal with the consequences later. As he stood, safely on ground, the smell of the hickory and sizzling meat made him pause. He could always eat, and then complain about a sick stomach with the hopes of a speedy departure. The thought was a hopeful one, as he wandered toward the picnic tables. The shadows had grown ac
ross most of the clearing; the sun now filtered through the high trees on the hills behind.

  Rob Caldwell had always warned his boy to stay away from the Kool-Aid when his mom had dragged him to these picnics in the past. Charlie wasn’t sure what he had meant, but he would stick with the cold water just to be sure.

  A kid screamed from the water, where a group of eight to ten year olds were swimming and sliding around on the slippery rocks. All heads turned to the water and a woman dropped her potato salad and ran to the water’s edge. The child, a chubby girl with pig tails, wailed as two boys helped her limp to the water’s edge.

  The girl buried herself against her mother’s front.

  “I think something bit her,” the smaller of the boys declared, pointing to the girl’s heel which was red with blood. All of a sudden the children still near or in the water squealed and thrashed their way toward the shore. Some fell on the rocks, and more wailing joined the girl’s.

  “She probably cut it on a broken bottle,” Michael shouted over the din and wiped his hands on his shorts as he came by Charlie. Michael Beck would often try to regale Charlie and his mother with stories of his past life as a lifeguard and volunteer EMT. He went to the mother who struggled with the child, and led them to a large lawn chair so that the mother could hold the child as Michael inspected the wound. Charlie, curious, drew closer, as Michael held up the foot between two strong fingers.

  “This is a jagged wound. I’m going to need some antiseptic. You’ll find some in the back of the Explorer, Grace. Charlie, fetch some of the drinking water,” he said. Charlie turned and grasped the cooler from the table and teetered in place for a minute until he found his balance.

  When Charlie turned around he saw a very strange thing. The mother held the child in her arms and whispered soothing things in her child’s ear. Then, all of a sudden, the girl started shaking all over.

  “She’s going into shock, Mike!” Sanders shouted. When Mike looked up, the girl lurched upward, pulling her foot from his grasp. She made a loud hissing sound and then struck the mother’s head with her own. Charlie winced, the water cooler forgotten in his hands. The mother’s eyes closed from the pain. The daughter’s head bounced against the mother’s shoulder and rolled against the skin at the base of her neck.

  Then the mother’s screamed, her eyes opening wide. It was difficult to ascertain as to what had just transpired. Then it became horrifically clear.

  The girl was biting into the meat just above her mother’s collar bone. Blood was flowing down over the woman’s flower printed blouse.

  “Help me here, someone!” Michael cried. He got to his feet and tried to pull the girl from her mother. Sanders ran past Charlie and brushed him aside. The water cooler slipped from his hands and crashed down on Charlie’s sandaled feet. Charlie jumped back from the pain and stumbled against a picnic table. His hand hit the edge of a bowl of potato salad and it flipped over and covered his arm with the mayonnaise rich concoction.

  When he focused again on the events on the lawn chair, many more people had gathered around, not knowing what to do. Michael pulled on the child’s mid-section and Sanders was leaning over trying to pry the girl’s lips apart, or pinch her nostrils shut. The mother’s face, seen clearly by Charlie from beyond Sander’s back, contorted in a mask of pain and horror. Her mouth was open in a great orgasmic “O”, as she trailed out a great whooping scream. Then all of a sudden her eyes changed. They darted to the side and the mouth came together in a large, shark’s smile. She bent her neck, darted forward and bit Sanders upon the back. Sanders whole frame shivered with the bite, and he, too, let out a great scream. Now many people shouted and came forward to help their fellow Christians.

  Charlie edged away from the mass of people.

  “Charlie, where’s Michael?” Grace said, coming up beside him. She had her boyfriend’s first-aid kit in her hands. Charlie, speechless with horror, pointed a finger at the shifting and struggling group. Grace ran forward to help.

  “No, Mom!” Charlie screamed, too late. Beyond his mother, he saw Michael reach around and slap ineffectually at the mother’s head, where she had Sanders in a firm and bloody tooth hold. Sanders twisted his head and bit onto Michael’s nose. Then everyone seemed to be there, tugging and pulling. Children scrabbled at the legs and torsos of their parents to help.

  Charlie ran past the girl, Rachael, as she stood and gaped. A half of a cookie dangled from her lips. Charlie ran across the parking lot to Michael’s SUV. His feet throbbed, but he felt only breathless white terror that filled his mind. He scrabbled at the door handle for some time, before his mind registered that it was locked.

  He looked inside the SUV, distantly aware of the growing numbers of screams. Underneath the screams, a second rising sound, a hissing, growling cacophony of throaty ululation arose.

  Charlie’s mother must have locked the SUV out of habit while she hurried to return with the antiseptic. Charlie reached into his pocket, and fished around for his cell phone. Coming up empty, he tried another. Only after slapping his own bottom in his haste, did he remember that Michael had taken his cell phone from him before he arrived.

  Charlie turned around. It took him a moment to register what he was seeing. The knot of struggling people had begun to unwind itself. Most of the participants were making rasping, hungry noises. All were covered in blood. Each man, woman and child was biting onto the back of the person in front of them. They began to move, in perfect unison, unwinding and stretching out, moving toward the people that stood, witless beside the barbecues. Like a centipede it scurried over the ground amazingly quickly, like a zombie conga line from hell in fast forward.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Charlie saw an old man make a heroic stand with a barbecue fork before he was grasped and pulled into the body of this new terrible creature. Charlie’s eyes focused on his mother, where her hair, bobbed and styled just for the occasion, shook back and forth as she maintained her gruesome bite hold on the woman in front of her. Michael Beck had secured himself behind her. Tears sprang up on Charlie’s eyes, and he wiped at them.

  He had to think quickly. He dove behind a nearby car and peered around the side. He watched in helpless horror as the remaining folks, flailing kids and helpless old people, struggling with walkers, were overtaken. At the head of the procession was the silver-haired minister. The ice blue eyes of the old man looked on the world in hunger and malice. Behind him, the church organist was fastened to his back, her shirt torn, her great breasts dangling against the minister’s back.

  The serpentine column of church goers twisted this way and that. The minister sniffed the air. He held his arms outstretched as if calling the flock to worship. He smacked his long fingers against his palms in rhythmic excitement. His arms acted as the antennae for this demonic centipede. He turned the body of the congregation toward the cars.

  “We are one in the spirit, we are one in the lord,” the creature hissed from the mouth of the minister.

  Just at that moment a teenage girl and boy emerged from the trees on the high western side of the clearing. They had probably thought to slip back unnoticed into the picnic after a fumbling dalliance in the bushes. They faltered in their hurried saunter when they saw what approached them. There was nothing in their experience to compare or register the spectacle of their elders and siblings filing toward them in a great rush up the sloping grass.

  The girl screamed just as Charlie looked away. He did not have to watch this. He had to find a way to escape. His eyes darted to the road that wound past the slope upon which the creature had ascended. That way led to death. You could not run from something that moved with such unity, such purpose.

  Charlie looked to the water. There were the boats. It was worth a try.

  He sprinted without thinking out into the open, dodging overturned chairs and walkers as he went. He scrambled onto the boat that he had just left minutes before. He ran to the front and patted down the console like a blind man. He found no key in the i
gnition. Looking up, his eyes spotted the bright yellow Jet Ski which bobbed against its mooring. Then beyond it, he saw something that made him stop stone-cold still. His terror compounded itself into a great white sheet of brilliance, and he fumbled to find something to squeeze with his hands, so afraid he was of disappearing into it.

  The aquatic nightmare he had seen before was sliding effortlessly through the water just on the other side of the dock. The world had turned red in the sun’s dying light. Charlie’s one chance had to be the Jet Ski.

  He pulled himself up on the dock and ran back toward the picnic tables. When he got there, he spared one look, and saw the terrible row of church goers descending the slope toward him. Grabbing a plate of hot dogs, Charlie ran toward the water. He tossed them among the rocks at the water’s edge.

  “Come and get it!” he managed. “Dinner time!” Then he darted back to the safety of the dock. The aquatic nightmare of boney, molted, connected figures flowed up out of the water and slithered out upon the shore. They hissed from buried mouths their own chant to their ancient gods: