Chapter 5: Library Research

Jonathan slipped his laptop into his messenger bag, along with the books he had checked out. He was going to return those at the library and take a fresh look at some of the stories he’d originally been interested in.

He unlocked the door, wheeled his bike out, and locked it behind himself. It was a nice day out, the clouds from the previous night gone. He squinted a bit as his eyes adjusted to the sunlight, and, once down the stairs, swung his leg over the bike and started pedaling.

Johnathan’s flat wasn’t far from the library, but he liked to think the bike was better exercise than walking.

The San Luis library was a two-storied, plain-looking building. A couple of faux columns by the entrance served for all its decoration, otherwise presenting a blank, windowed face to the street.

Inside, it was about as plain. Well-kept, clean, and clearly dear to the heart of one of the librarians, but you could see where they ran up to the edge of a small town’s budget.

He dropped off his books through a slot in the wall near the door and made his way to one of the computers. Jonathan navigated to the library’s inventory system and looked up a couple of titles to see if they were still there.

Checked out… checked out… and checked out.

He slumped slightly. Finally, he brought up the energy and motivation to dive into his thesis again, and he immediately hit a wall.

Jonathan rubbed his face with one hand, thinking. Well, maybe he could ask at the desk if the books would be coming back soon. It wasn’t likely they could say anything about it, but it was worth a shot.

The library was mostly empty, so there was no line when Jonathan approached the central desk. At the desk today was Mrs. Gladys, who had been working at the library the longest and, at this point, had half a foot in retirement.

In other words, the perfect person to ask about how soon a book might come back. Jonathan was glad it was her. A summer of being in and out of the library whenever he could came in handy sometimes. Ben, the newest addition to the staff and a little older than Jonathan, refused to comment on anything other than what was in the library and where it could be found. Catherine would be sure to have something to say about who was checking out what, but probably didn’t actually know anything about how soon a book would come back.

Mrs. Gladys, on the other hand, had been around long enough to know two things. First, she was practically untouchable and could say whatever she wanted to library guests to a certain point. Second, she was quite familiar with the reading habits of most of the regulars at the library. If anyone would know when the books would be back and be willing to relay that to Jonathan, it was her.

He smiled warmly to Mrs. Gladys, and she smiled and winked at him. “Good morning, Mrs. Gladys, how are you today?” he began.

“I am well, thank you. How can I help today?” she responded.

“Well, I had hoped to check out a couple of books today, but I noticed they were all checked out already by someone else. I wanted to ask if, maybe you knew when they might be coming back?” Jonathan rattled off the titles of the books he wanted, slow enough for her to look them up on the loudly whirring desktop computer at the desk.

“Hmmm…” she pondered her screen for a moment. “We-llll, it shouldn’t be soon, unfortunately.” Jonathan’s shoulders sagged. “They were checked out only yesterday, and by someone new to our system. I haven’t a clue when they’d be back, but it was a fair few titles he checked out.”

Jonathan sighed. “Oh well. Thank you, Mrs. Gladys.” He began to turn away when she said “If you like, we did recently receive a new book from one of the authors you were asking about. James Gunther?”

He paused, and responded “What’s it about?

She cleared her throat quietly, and squinted at her screen before saying “’Un-sag-bare Ge-sich-ten’”, she said carefully, “is about old horror stories from the German countryside. The author connects a string of previously unrelated stories that were going around in the 1700s. He suggests, even, that there may be some truth buried in what were considered fictitious accounts.” She looked back at Jonathan. “You’ll find it in the Adult non-Fiction section, under ‘U’. That’s, U-n-s-a-”, she spelled out the title for him as he scribbled it on a library card.

“Thanks, Mrs. Gladys, I’ll go have a look.” Jonathan said, and smiled at her before heading to the shelves to find the book.

It wasn’t what he came for, but he reminded himself that he wanted to take a fresh look at everything. No assumptions, take all comers. And besides, connecting fictional stories to real events was sort of what he was trying to do, right?

It was smaller than he expected when he found it, it was about as thick as his thumb with a black, hardcover binding. He pulled it off the shelf and opened to a random early page.

“… and all who saw the creature were left confused and dumbfounded, unable to speak about what they saw. They swore they saw something in every shadowy corner, but none could describe what had happened to scare them so.”

Jonathan felt the hair on the back of his neck raise, and closed the book quickly, holding it to his chest. He blinked at this reaction but realized that even that short phrase had reminded him of how he had felt last night.

He considered putting the book back. He considered going back home, opening his laptop, and playing video games for the weekend, trying to put everything behind himself as much as he could.

But instead, he opened it again, to the beginning this time.

“In 1812, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm published a collection of German folktales which have endured for two centuries now as some of the most well-known children’s stories and fairy tales However, in 1815, they received letters from a man living across the German Confederation, in a small town east of Brunn.

The man claimed that his town was terrorized by a creature in the shape of a man, but capable of horrifying things. The town’s crops failed the previous season, and their livestock died of a mysterious illness. Many of the animals, without any other symptoms, simply stopped feeding and would die in their pens, starved. Eventually, A woman was driven to a paranoid fit, claiming to have seen a pale man with dark hair who was following her. She was eventually restrained and confined after striking out at others in desperation.

She was found dead the following morning, cold and almost entirely drained of blood.”

A library cart’s wheels squeaked, startling Jonathan into closing the book. He turned and saw Ben pushing the cart slowly down the aisles, headphones in.

The library was cool, and he was standing near one of the ceiling vents, but sweat beaded his forehead. He looked down at the book in his hands, its plain black cover staring back at him.

This was a fictional account. James Gunther must have had it wrong, it couldn’t have been a real story. Because if it was real… A pale man, stalking a victim through the night and causing serious paranoia to its victim sounded all too much like what had happened to Jonathan. And it would be ridiculous to connect his life with that horror story… surely.

But he pictured for a moment the man under the streetlamp, staring directly into his window, and remembered how he had barricaded himself into his room, crying. He imagined that woman, trapped in a room and left to be killed by that monster…

He let out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding and made his way to the desk to check out the book. Jonathan needed to know, to know what really happened so that he could put the previous night behind him.