I’m determined to keep the door to this room locked at all times.
And I have no reason to think this, but I know this room is still uninfected.
I don’t even really know what I mean. Only… that La Baume is somehow sick. Like it caught a nasty bug, and the library is the last defense of its immune system.
I came here looking for… the past. Some feeling of how things used to be. When Cath, Nori, and I would sit here for hours, reading or talking or playing. When Cath stroked my hair and told me everything would be all right, when she cuddled Nori close, like she was her own daughter. If I could catch even a breath of that, I would feel okay.
I wander up and down the rows of books, some of which sit neatly in the bookcases, others stacked in haphazard, leaning towers. While I walk, I sing: “Nobody likes me, everybody hates me, I think I’ll go eat worms…”
I touch the books as I pass, reading the spines.
“Big ones, little ones, fat ones, juicy ones, itsy-bitsy, fuzzy wuzzy worms…”
Some of the titles are the most peculiar things I have ever seen. I’m not sure if they unnerve or delight me.
“Bite their heads off, mmm, they’re juicy, throw the tails away…”
I pick up one and stare at the spine; the title is half-erased by the passage of long years. Bulgarian Thimbles: A History.
“Nobody knows how big I’ll grow eating worms three times a day.”
I decide to make a mental note of my favorites.
A Gentleman’s Guide to Coffin-Making
An Argument Against Tea Cozies (eight hundred pages) Bulgarian Thimbles: A History
A Typology of Bed Fleas
Weaving with Dog Hair
A Practical Guide to Embalming
Despite myself, I grin. But I’m looking for something specific. I touch many of the tomes, hoping that somehow I will know which one to open. Which to explore. There has to be an answer in here. A history of La Baume, maybe. Or of the town. Something that will suggest what could be happening in this manor.
If nothing else, this is a distraction from the roots in the earth and the trees creeping toward us.
A distraction from the fact that I am almost convinced I’m being haunted. From the fact that Cath is mad, in the attic, pacing up and down, that the garden is dying, that we’re running out of food, and that something is terribly, terribly wrong here.
Circling the loom, Silla darling. You’re circling the loom.
4
too stupid to see
Mash it up and add some spice
put it in, keep it down
rumbling is a childish vice
hunger is the dark’s device.
BROKEN BOOK ENTRY
These are my dreams. Someone will walk from the trees, and the sky will be bleak above him. And then he smiles, waves. He is gray-faced. He begins to jog across the green toward me, smiling, and my heart swells into the universe, which cracks open, revealing an infinity. It’s almost like a memory, but of course it is just the night visions. Nightmares. There are too many of them these days. I have them almost every night. Most people have nightmares about their past, but not me. I have them about my present. He reaches me. He takes hold of me and pulls me closer. His head on my shoulder. He wants me. He pulls back to look at me but his face is gone. In its place an eyeless thing watches; I scream…
And I wake.
Light flickers and flashes through the skyline of the library. The trees are dancing in the storm out there. They creeeeeeak and moan through the night. Or is that Cath pace-pace-pacing in the attic? Nori was asleep in her bed when it got bad, so I left her there, but now I regret it.
It’s just so… quiet… in the library. So still. There is no thunder. I’ve riffled through so many books that my eyes are itching from the dust. There are no answers here.
hopeless.
Such a pretty word.
The floorboards complain in the hallway beyond the door and I freeze, waiting. Too heavy for Nori. Cath wouldn’t leave the attic, surely?
“Silla?”
“Gowan?”
“Yeah, it’s me. Open up, would you? It’s bloody freezing out here.”
I crack the door open a little and see his face pressed to the gap. “Let me in,” he says, his breath fogging.
I step back, more out of surprise than anything else, and a waft of freezing air follows him. I slam the door shut and lock it compulsively.
“What are you doing here?” I whisper. “It’s the middle of the night!”
He heads for the fireplace and sits down on the sheepskin rug, shivering. “It’s freezing in this house. I forgot that.”
“Gowan!”
“What?”
“What are you doing here? How did you even get inside?”
“I fancied a visit,” he says. “I used to live here, you know. It’s kind of a memory. I could still get into this house if you locked every door.”
“Yeah, but in the middle of the night?” Part of me wants to call him stupid, idiotic, pathetic—pervert. I swallow my anger, unsure where it is coming from, and allow myself to feel the relief that is flooding through me. Someone is here. I’m not alone.