Finally, she turned around with a huff and a sigh. “Your library card?” she said, holding out her hand to him. She waved her fingers impatiently.
“I… don’t have one.”
“Mmm-hmm,” said Mrs. Singh. Eddie almost expected her to tell him that they were not issuing any new cards, but she reached under her desk, pulled out a piece of paper and a pencil, and handed them to him. Without looking at him, she said, “Fill this out.” Eddie wrote down his new address and phone number and handed the paper back to Mrs. Singh.
“You’re new in town?” she said curiously. Eddie merely nodded. As she turned around, she began to chew on her lip.
While he waited for her to process his new card, he flipped through the heavy book. It was filled with all sorts of confusing language-almost as weird as that of The Enigmatic Manuscript. Strange words like cipher, algorithm, scytale, skipjack, and cryptanalysis jumped off the page. There was so much stuff shoved between the covers, he wasn’t even sure if he would be able to understand everything.
“Here you go,” said Mrs. Singh. She handed him a small peach-colored paper card on which was printed Gatesweed Public Library, a place where stories are told.
“Thank you,” he said, as politely as possible. Eddie shoved the book in his bag, hiked it onto his shoulders, and struggled to open the library door.
Once outside, Eddie could not deny that it was a lovely day. Puffy clouds hovered over the hills, and a warm breeze skirted around the corner of the library. When Eddie unlocked his bike, he decided to ride over to the park and flip through his new library book. He crossed Center Street and followed the path through the middle of the town green. Like the rest of the town, the park was strangely deserted. There were several benches planted randomly in the grass. Eddie hopped off his bike and was about to find a place to sit when he heard an odd whispering sound from across the lawn.
The sound came from the direction of a bronze bust perched on top of a rectangular marble pedestal. The gray slab stood in the center of an old granite circle. Dandelions filled wide spaces where the slate had cracked over time. A plaque was attached to the front of the pedestal, but from where he stood, Eddie couldn’t read what it said. He rested his bike on the sidewalk and trampled across the tall grass.
When he got closer, Eddie could see that the face of the bust had been destroyed, as if by a large blunt instrument. The nose had been mashed flat. Where its eyes should have been were two dark holes. Its lips were mangled into a permanent gaping howl. As he got even closer, the whispering sound grew louder.
Whist-whist-whist-whist-whist-whist.
It almost seemed as though the head was trying to speak to him through its distorted mouth. Eddie’s hands went numb. He clutched the straps of his book bag against his shoulders. The pungent smell of bleach filled the air. How strange, he thought. Then, from the edge of the stone circle, he realized he could finally read the plaque: DEXTER AUGUST, 1717-1779.
Sam had mentioned this place. Eddie had actually found one of Olmstead’s inspirations! Nathaniel Olmstead had written about the bust of Dexter August in The Ghost in the Poet’s Mansion. It wasn’t quite how Eddie had pictured it when he’d read the book; in Nathaniel Olmstead’s version, Mr. August’s face had not been vandalized.
The sound of something splashing came from the other side of the statue, startling Eddie. He stumbled off the edge of the granite circle.
A second later, he noticed a face peering at him from around the marble base. Before he could see it clearly, the face disappeared and the whispering sound began again. “Hello?” he said, trying to keep his voice from shaking. Keeping his distance from the bust, Eddie made his way to the other side.
A skinny man dressed in a wrinkly blue uniform knelt in the center of the granite circle. He scrubbed at the marble pedestal with a heavy wood brush. Whist-whist-whist-whist-whist-whist. Beside him sat a squat red metal bucket. After a moment, Eddie realized the man was the same police officer who had abandoned his family on Black Ribbon Road yesterday.
Eddie could hear the man muttering when he noticed what the police officer was scrubbing at. Someone had sprayed black paint in the primitive shape of a face onto the back of the pedestal. Two black squiggles for eyes dripped down the stone where the paint had been sprayed on thick. Below the eyes, one blunt, almost straight line grinned grimly. On the ground, behind where the police officer knelt, Eddie noticed more graffiti, huge words painted directly onto the broken granite. THE WOMAN IS WATCHING.
Eddie hiked his bag higher onto his shoulder. The woman is watching? What woman? Who is she watching? He glanced at the library, where the glass doors stared at him darkly. He wondered if Mrs. Singh was watching him from behind her desk.
Finally, the man looked at him, holding up his hand to block the sun’s glare. He scowled. “It’s not coming off this time.”
This time? Had someone done this before? Eddie wondered. “I’m sorry,” he said, feeling for some reason as if the officer blamed him.
“Oh, it’s you,” said the man, suddenly recognizing him. Eddie expected him to finish with You made it home all right, or Sorry I couldn’t be of more help yesterday, or at the very least, You lived! But the man simply stared at him expectantly, as if he anticipated Eddie to sprout wings and fly away.
The man’s silence made him feel weird. “I, uh… I’ll let you get back to work,” Eddie said, stepping into the grass, heading toward his bike. The police officer continued to stare at him as he walked away. Eventually, the whispering sound began again as the man went back to scrubbing at the black paint. Whist-whist-whist.
Eddie began to run. When he reached the sidewalk where his bike lay, he noticed something painted onto the window of a store on the other side of the park.
BOOKS.
This time, the paint was not graffiti.
Even though he was sort of freaked out, Eddie couldn’t resist. His mother had mentioned a bookstore in Gatesweed. This must be it. A bookstore was always cozier than a library-more comforting-a familiar place in an unfamiliar town. He picked up his bike from the sidewalk. Keeping far away from the weird cop, he walked his bike across the grass and crossed the street.
The bookstore was in the lower portion of a two-story white wooden house, the last in a row of buildings that curved along the park. A green-and-white-striped awning reached out toward Eddie, shading the house’s porch from the sunlight. Glancing over his shoulder toward the park, Eddie noticed the cop staring but decided to ignore him.
He crept up the stairs and pressed his nose to the window of the store, holding up his hands to block out the glare. Dim lights hung from the ceiling, and bookshelves stretched up so high that tall ladders leaned against them in several spots. The store looked empty.
“We’re not open,” said a voice behind him.
Eddie spun around to see a blond-haired boy who’d spent too much of the summer exposed to the sun. The skin on the boy’s nose was peeling. Eddie thought he smelled like insect repellent. Eddie stood there with his mouth open, barely able to breathe. Why was it that he could approach an adult librarian without a problem, but when facing the possibility of conversation with someone his own age, Eddie’s brain shut tight?
“What do you want?” said the boy.
“Nuh,” said Eddie, turning sunburn red. He’d meant to say Nothing, but was only able to spit out the first part of the word.
The boy examined Eddie quizzically before reaching around and opening the door. Cool air breezed out. Eddie was about to ask what time he should come back when the boy brushed past Eddie, closed the door, and locked it.