Without that book, there couldn’t possibly be a European history section anymore. She threw the maps out as obvious forgeries. Realizing she wouldn’t know what to do with them even if they were needed, she tossed the pile of supplies and makeshift weapons as well.
She would have to go off memory and instinct. Mothers of teenagers are good in libraries. They are wise and attentive from their years of experience, and they are unrelenting and fearless because of their focus on a good education for their kids.
Before getting in her car, Diane stopped by Josh’s room. That day he was a desk lamp.
“Josh, I love you. I just wanted to tell you.”
“What? Where is that coming from?” He was a vase full of sunflowers now.
“Nothing. Just saying that I love you.”
“I love you too,” he said, his petals cocked to the side in wary confusion.
“Everything’ll be fine,” she added, not knowing at all if everything would be fine.
Chapter 27
Jackie pulled the supplies from her car. The parking lot of the library was otherwise empty, as it usually was.
The entrance to the public library was through an unassuming pair of glass doors that said PUSH. Above that a blue plastic sign said NIGHT VALE PUBLIC LIBRARY. That was all. The dramatics of its reputation were not echoed in its architecture.
She took a breath, and then another. Each one was a moment in which she was still breathing and not inside the library.
The building itself was squat with tall windows that looked onto an empty checkout area and a tiled area with drinking fountains and a bathroom. Everything was quiet and still. There was no sign that anything had ever lived there. It had the feeling of a tomb or a shopping mall that had run out of money before the first store opened.
She pushed through the doors. Inside the air was cool and dry. She listened carefully. Nothing. The doors led to a long entrance hallway ending in another pair of double glass doors. Off the hallway were various reading rooms, for reading, and community rooms, for communing, and bloodletting rooms, for a different kind of communing. Those were also empty and quiet.
Jackie traversed the entrance hall in silence. The only sign of her movement was her shadow through the bands of sunlight on the floor.
She passed a bulletin board advertising community events:
PUMPKIN PICKING COMPETITION. THREE OBJECTS.
DO YOU KNOW WHICH ONE IS A PUMPKIN??
GARAGE SALE. EVERYTHING’S FREE. MOSTLY NOT DANGEROUS. SOME DANGEROUS. YOU’LL FIND OUT WHICH.
I’M HIDING SOMEWHERE. CAN YOU FIND ME? NO, NOT THERE. OH WELL. YOU’LL FIND ME SOON. I PROMISE.
Stuff like that, with tabs where the phone numbers could be taken and reported to local government agencies or the Sheriff’s Secret Police. The flyers all looked to be at least ten years old. They were brittle and warped and barely hanging off rusted thumbtacks.
No movement ahead of her. No movement behind her.
She put her hand on the push bar of one of the inner doors, but paused when she heard footsteps behind her. What person would brave this sterile tomb? Besides her, of course?
Jackie turned and found herself inches away from Diane, who was looking down at her phone.
“Aah!” Jackie shouted.
Diane looked up, her eyes wide.
“Aah!” Diane shouted as well.
Her fingers were scarred, and her phone had traces of blood on it. She must have tried to contact a forbidden number.
“Hello, Jackie.”
“Did you follow me here?”
“Of course not.”
“Then why are you everywhere I am at the same time as me?”
Diane thought about that. It was a fair question, although the problem with fair questions is that they are asked about an unfair world.
“I suspect,” Jackie said, “that we are looking for the same sorts of things about the same sorts of people. Which is why we would keep crossing each other’s paths. Also, Night Vale isn’t a very big town, is it?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never thought about it.”
They both thought about it. Then, as is safest in Night Vale, they stopped thinking about it.
“All right. Well, cool seeing you,” said Jackie, hand on the door, her body blocking Diane’s entry.
“Jackie, as little as I like spending time with you, and I want you to know that even though I am trying to be the adult of the two of us here, because I am the adult of the two of us, I do not like spending time with you much at all, but as little as I like this, the library is a dangerous place, we both know it. And since we both apparently need to go into it, we should do the right thing and go together.”
Or words to that effect. Jackie had lost interest around “I am the adult.” No, not interest, patience.
Jackie wanted Diane to go home. She did not need another parent any more than Diane needed another child.
Diane knew the girl needed help. Diane lowered her face, keeping eye contact and giving a slight grin, something that usually worked when Josh was acting sullen or distant.
Jackie turned her head and looked through the doors into the empty checkout area. A fake velvet rope marking where the line would go if there were any people alive in there, and beyond that the shelves of dangerous books. Jackie did not feel fear, but she was aware of herself. She knew that it wasn’t healthy, what she was doing.
“Okay fine,” Jackie said.
“Okay fine what?”
“Okay. You can come.”
“So, just to be clear. We’re in this together?”
“Yeah, man. Fine. Whatever. Come on,” Jackie said without looking back.
Diane went in first, Jackie holding the door. By the door was the return slot for books or for anything else a person might want to return to the library. Jackie, being who she was, lifted up the metal lid for a moment, just to see. Inside it was dark and damp and there was an intermittent crackling or crunching sound. Diane shuddered and, putting her hand over Jackie’s, gently closed the lid. Jackie pulled her hand away from Diane’s and kept walking.
The checkout area had printers and computers that looked to be twenty or more years out of date. Nothing like the cutting-edge machines regularly released into local computer stores and immediately outlawed by City Council. There were stains of indeterminate origin all over the counter. Jackie touched one; it was still sticky.
The stain ran in a sloppy streak across the counter and up a pencil holder. Jackie rose up on tiptoes and peered into the cup, which at first appeared empty, but the longer she stared into the small darkness, the more she could make out a pattern—or texture—at the bottom. She could not be certain, but there seemed to be a small lump of wet hair in the bottom of the pencil holder. She lowered herself back onto her heels.
“What are you here for?” Jackie asked.
“Public records. You?”
“Newspaper archives.”
“Good. Should be right next to each other.”
“Sure. I guess.”
According to Diane’s most trustworthy map, the archives were about halfway back into the library.
“Well, good thing is we don’t have to go all the way to the back,” she said. Jackie didn’t reply.
They kept moving past the racks of the Night Vale Daily Journal by the windows. Due to spiraling printing costs and the necessary layoff of nearly its entire staff, the Journal had long ago moved to an imagination-based format. The racks were empty except for a small note reminding you that if you imagined what a hypothetical Night Vale newspaper might look like, then you needed to send a check for $19.95 to the Daily Journal to cover your monthly Imagination Subscription.