The Night Library Read online

  “Phnglui mglw nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah nagl fhtagn!”

  The one procession met the other near the shore of the Pattenville reservoir. The minister at the head of the first reared up and hissed at the creature which, too, reared its molted head and offered up a spitting threat.

  Charlie dropped himself over the edge of the dock and onto the Jet Ski. He quickly set to unclipping the lead that held the Jet Ski moored. He found the ignition and then turned back once more.

  The two creatures met with a great fury. The creature at the head of the aquatic procession clawed part of the minister’s face off his head. In response the churchgoers twisted sideways, to better assail their attacker with many arms.

  Charlie turned the ignition and lurched forward. He eased off on the ignition and he bumped an elbow hard against the side of the dock. Then he turned slightly and accelerated slowly out into the reservoir.

  Charlie applied more pressure to the throttle, anxious to get across the reservoir. What he would do on the other side, he did not know. He would probably dash madly through miles of dark woodland; but he knew Lancaster, Groveton, or Dalton had to be on the other side of those woods, he was never sure which. All he knew was that he wanted to get as far away from the reservoir and those terrible things as fast as he could.

  Then he made a terrible mistake. He looked back over his shoulder. A novice at operating any aquatic recreational vehicle, Charlie did not know that he should not do this, as his entire body shifted and his arms turned as he did so. The Jet Ski lurched, banked a great explosion of wet spray, and fell into the drink.

  Charlie was submerged a good few moments before he realized that he was still gripping those handlebars. At first his hands would not obey; but finally they relented, and Charlie kicked his way to the surface.

  Charlie panicked and gripped at the front of the Jet Ski as it bobbed useless in the water. He wasn’t going to get that thing righted in the water himself and get it going again. He spun around, every moment fearing the great chasm of space below him. He expected to be snatched from where he bobbed hapless on the dark water.

  For a moment Charlie tried to pointlessly heave himself onto the Jet Ski. Finally, he stopped and looked up. He managed to locate the closest land in the twilight. Without waiting another second he began to swim.

  Charlie had taken swimming lessons at the local public pool for the past six years. In his terror, all he managed was an awkward lurching flail in the water. Then turning on his back, he breathed more deeply and stared up into the darkening sky.

  Swim! he told himself. You are the turtle! You are the Turtle! He turned over and started the breast stroke toward the looming shadowy mass of trees that looked so impossibly far away.

  Everything became a desperate lunging push toward that shadow which he hoped would be safety. His muscles strained and ached as he heaved himself forward against the dark cold water that seemed to be sapping the very will from him.

  In the last gloom of the twilight, Charlie pulled himself up on a bank of wet sand. He dragged himself across some small rocks and headlong into some high grass that grew there. Turning over he looked up into the shadowy branches of trees with eyes that pulsed with the frantic labor of his heart.

  Catching his breath, he let out one plaintive whine of exhausted sorrow.

  Movement registered in the periphery of Charlie’s senses. He flipped over onto his knees and peered into the darkness. A great shape detached itself from the side of a huge sloping rock and moved toward the water. It was easily as long as Charlie himself, but with more mass, more gravity, in the space that they shared.

  It was only after the creature had slipped into the water and disappeared, that Charlie understood what he had just frightened away.

  It was a great big snapping turtle, an old one, a survivor.

  “I am the turtle,” Charlie reminded himself. “I am the turtle.”

  Charlie rose up and walked into the bushes and up over a hillock and came back down through some brush onto a shore. He looked across at a great expanse of blackness that stretched out before him. He was on one of the islands on the reservoir. He was trapped.

  He moved quickly back into the bushes and tried to spy through the darkness, the way he had come. He saw nothing, but heard the hissing commotion of the creatures quarrelling on the far shore. He hoped they killed each other.

  But he could not count on that happening. Nor could he manage the rest of the swim to the New Hampshire shore, not in the darkness. He did not have the strength in him left; he knew it.

  So he scaled his way quietly into the sturdiest looking tree and perched there. He strained to listen for the continued conflict on the shores on the other side. As the night wore further into darkness, Charlie began to fantasize that he would last the night, hiding there in the tree. When morning came, so would a couple in a canoe. They would be a little older, maybe professors on vacation, with binoculars: birdwatchers. They would see him waving to them and would come over and take him away from this. They would have warm dry voices. They were Canadians, Charlie decided.

  With every tiny sound Charlie would jolt on his branch and he would be filled with doubt for his fantasy ever coming true. He knew when the morning came, if he was still there on that branch, he would have to come down, stretch and attempt the swim across to the other side. His mind could not linger on the thought of that terrible swim. He put it out of mind.

  As the night wore on and Charlie shivered, huddled on his branch, he thought of his father. He hoped the thought of seeing him again would be enough to carry him through whatever happened next. After infinite darkness a touch of light began to filter into his consciousness.

  Charlie reached out with his mind for his father, making him his single thought. He hoped that, with enough will, his father would hear him, somehow. He prayed that he would come and take him from this awful place.

  In the End, We are like our fathers

  “The only good zombie is a dead zombie,” my father would always say. Of course, he had been twenty-five when the first outbreak occurred in ‘68. He had reasons, too: he lost his cousin, Marjorie, and his best friend, Pete, at that time. I always figured he held the general opinion of his generation. I never thought I’d think like him until just a few weeks ago.

  We were proctoring first block study hall in the cafeteria, or what we called ‘the holding tank’. There were sixty-five teenagers in there. Within the first week we had given up doing anything but take attendance and make sure no one was starting any fires. Phil Anderson, my co-proctor, approached me eating a sausage muffin sandwich. Phil was a great guy, always smiling in that sweet Scandinavian way of his like a big golden retriever. He had put in two years at Bearfield High, and I guess he looked up to me as a grizzled veteran in the teaching field. I had clocked in thirteen.

  “Eddie, have we heard anything about the contracts, yet?” Phil asked. The school board had fought the union tooth-and-nail in this era of budget cuts and lay offs. In our second week of school we were working off provisionary contracts based on last cycle.

  “No. I’m going to have to get those lifts in my shoes if we strike. It isn’t enough that they’ve decided to mainstream the vitality-impaired, but they have to continue to threaten our health package. My kid is sick, my wife just got laid off, and on top of that I’ve got three of the damned shufflers in my fourth block Junior English. Do they think I’m going to teach them the satiric flair of Twain?” Phil shook his head in commiseration.

  “Well, on the bright side,” Phil always looked at the bright side; it’s what made him so damned lovable. “I popped Angela the question on Saturday night.”

  “Yeah? Way to go, kiddo! And…”

  “She said yes! She’s already looking for houses up here. Can you believe it?”

  “Congratulations, dude, that’s awesome.”

  “Yeah.” That’s when it happened. I should have been paying more attention and noticed the damned thing wasn’t muzzled. On
e of the worm-food rejects spotted Phil’s sandwich, momentarily forgotten in his hand at his side. The zombie shuffled up behind Phil and pretty much fell on him.

  Phil half pivoted and started to fall. To avoid falling on me, the poor guy twisted and came face to face with the drooling zombie teen. The zombie lurched for the sandwich and managed to get a tooth hold on the heel of Phil’s right hand.

  “Hungagah!” the zombie said around his bite. Phil cried out: “Jesus!”

  I held my lap top. Previously, I had tried strategically maneuvering myself to get uninterrupted service to check my school e-mail. Now, instinctively, I closed the screen, stepped around Phil and swung the lap top down with all my might. It was too little, too late. I heard the laptop break as it connected to the patchy scalp of the vitality-impaired student. The thing fell to the ground, but managed to tear a good chunk of Phil’s palm with it.

  “Oh, Jesus Christ!” Phil screamed, high and breathless.

  “Oh my God! I’m so sorry!” a fat, female para-educator said. “Johnny put up such a fuss about the muzzle this morning. I should have- Oh, my God, I’m sorry. We had a late start, ‘cause I just got off the graveyard shift at the Cumberland Farms, and- Oh, I’m sorry…” Phil and I both stared at Phil’s upheld hand. Phil’s eyes went to mine. I saw more terror, regret and panic then I have ever wanted to see.

  Phil broke and ran before I could even speak. I found out later he went straight to the career center and frantically asked the forestry management teacher to cut off his arm with a chainsaw. Confused, and not wanting to scar his students irreparably, the teacher refused. It was really too late, by that point, anyway. Within minutes, Phil had that sunken eyed, grayed-over look. He stopped making any sense as he started shouting out about ‘the ring’, like a well-dressed version of Gollum. A containment van was called, and they tranquilized Phil and took him away.

  On my way home, a week later, I pulled over by the river to smoke. I really can’t afford it, but I’ve been sneaking them for a year now. Across the river, in the old Purina lot, I saw a busload of zombies hauling rocks. It is part of Obama’s Both Sides of Life Initiative, whatever that’s supposed to mean. My eyes fell on my old friend Phil, as he staggered under the weight of a huge stone. An overseer directed him with a cattle prod.

  I was shocked at how quick the conditioning process was these days. I was surprised that I didn’t cry. I watched my old friend, smoked, and thought about the wedding that I would never attend. As I turned away and went back to the car, it was an older man who did so.

  The union caved to the school board and told us that they had no choice due to the economic realities of the country. I really don’t care. It’s all nuts, the whole thing. We can spend billions on the military, but we can’t even pay for sick children or safe working environments. The Muslim fanatics claim the zombies are Allah’s curse on the West. They don’t realize the same military industrialist machine that’s screwing them is also screwing us.

  That’s okay. That’s fine. I’m going to have my own war. As I drive into the faculty parking lot, I see two girls talking on a bench before school. A muzzled brain-eater is stumbling toward them as its para chases after it.

  I pull up the 30.06 and smile. My dad had it right all along.

  The China People of Oz

  We tried to tell Ronie that Kansas would not necessarily be the best way to spend her wish from the Grant-A-Wish Foundation, but you try telling an eight-year-old girl with advanced leukemia that she can’t do the one thing on which her heart is set. Betsy and I sure weren’t about to.

  I blame myself, of course, to which Betsy says I’m not allowed. It was I that read her the damned book. Every night, when she was first getting sick, I’d try to get her to settle down, try to get her just rested enough, so she wouldn’t miss so much school. That was in the terrible days of worry, before the horrible days of hoping against knowing began.

  God, how Ronie loved that book. She was just so precious, the way her sweet aqua colored eyes lit up, following every word. She smiled, and giggled at the high jinx of talking mice and winkies and all that nonsense. Soon, Oz was all she could talk about, day and night, to her classmates and teachers, and then, when her sphere got smaller along with her little bone stick arms, her grandparents, and Betsy and I.

  We figured it was her way of dealing. It was probably healthy to keep her mind busy and content, not discouraged by the pains, the awful bruises, then the hair loss, the terribly dry mouth full of sores.

  After the first book, she asked for more. How about a little movie night? We suggested. We had watched her withdraw from her peers, as the terrible unknown weight pressed down upon our little girl. We used every excuse to get her to invite a friend over. She agreed to have Tracy, a fat sullen girl. We had just assumed Ronie hung with her out of kindness; that was just the kind of girl Ronie was. It couldn’t be for the stimulating conversation. Perhaps, Ronie felt relief that not much was required of her.

  We also invited over Petey from down the road. A precocious latch key kid, Petey was always making something unidentifiable out of Popsicle sticks for Ronie. There were plenty of times, Betsy and I talked about kidnapping Petey. We would fill him with cookies, pat his head and tell him what a swell guy he was. Some people don’t know what a good thing they have. Bastards.

  After sitting through the last moment when Judy Garland expresses relieved delight upon being surrounded by her loved ones again, Ronie rose from the couch, walked to my chair, took the Coke from my hand, sipped it and told me she was pretty tired, and should probably get to bed.

  “Didn’t you like it?” I asked her, later, tucking her in bed.

  “Yes, only I don’t see why people have to change it so much. Her slippers were supposed to be silver, not ruby slippers! And they left out so many parts, some of the best parts! No, the book was far better. I want to hear more about Oz, the real Oz. Would you please, pretty please, get the second one? Pretty please with sugar on top?”

  “Sugar before bed, darling?”

  “Kisses, then,” she said and held true to her promise. I held true to mine. We read about Ozma and wheelers and talking hens and all kinds of stuff, on and on and on. I guess Kansas shouldn’t have been such a surprise.

  “Kansas,” Betsy mused and blew smoke up against the porch ceiling, “Kansas.” By that time we had secretly picked up the old habit again and would end the day conspiring on the porch like we had when we were much younger and only concerned with the beginning of things. People warned us that having a sick kid can tear marriages apart, but if anything, it seemed to glue us tighter. Betsy called it bunker mentality, and that was how it felt some days; ‘smoke ‘em if you got ‘em, and let’s hear the news from the front‘.

  “Do you think she thinks she’ll find a way to Oz?” I asked.

  “Of course, that’s what she thinks. The only real question is how do we convince her otherwise. Kansas!” She exclaimed. We thought about it, debated about it. We got really good at leading breakfast conversation toward topics such as Disneyworld, petting dolphins, and hot air balloon rides.

  “Well, the wizard rode on a balloon.” Ronie reminded us. “But, then he wasn’t a real wizard, he was a con-artist,” she said with a flourish, proud of her ever expanding vocabulary. We weren’t conning this girl, so, reluctantly, with bemused but worried smiles, we agreed to arrange a trip to the geographical center of the country.

  The worst place in the world is standing in between a child and their inevitable disappointment. What can you do?

  You go to Kansas. It took about ten minutes on the internet to discover a little museum in the town Liberal, Kansas, which claimed to be the home of Dorothy. That would have to do. I noticed that they had an Oz-fest in October where people dressed up like their favorite characters. They even had pictures of munchkins who had attended in past years. I got excited, and then reality settled in. We had to go this summer, not wait for October. She might not be strong enough in the autumn, I tho
ught optimistically. Still, the place appeared to be the Oz center of the universe. I found Betsy instructing Ronie in light yoga on our bed, and announced my find.

  Ronie jumped up and down on the bed, until we had to get her to stop for fear of her falling and bruising herself again. Betsy and I saw that we were both grinning like idiots, which misted us up a bit, but it was alright; we were Kansas bound.

  We flew into Wichita. The whole while Ronie looked out the window. She had been on a plane once before, but she watched the sky and the ground like an eagle. I knew what she was looking for: tornadoes.

  Upon arrival, we rented a car and drove across the city to a family resort. As we drove across the city in traffic, Ronie crossed her thin arms across her chest.

  “This is Kansas? This is not Kansas.” We assured her it would seem more like Kansas when we got closer to our destination. “We’ll see about that,” she said and gave me that side long swindler look that never failed to make me chuckle.