The Fiction Room Read online

  She pulled open the lid and rummaged around inside. She didn’t dare hope for a cell phone, but maybe… her hands brushed against a box of matches, candles, what felt like gauze, and… yes! Her fingers curled around the rough base of a flashlight. Further digging revealed a second.

  She flicked one on, wincing as light hit her eyes. She pointed it away, towards the door, and handed the other to Randall.

  “Is it still out there?”

  “Not sure.”

  Shannon peered out into the darkness, seeing nothing. Besides the windows, the only light came from the battery-powered EXIT sign over the double doors.

  A shape moved in the darkness—Shannon couldn’t believe that something so large could move so fast—and hit the door of the office, causing the wall to shake. The tiger snarled as its attack was denied. Shannon said a prayer of thanks for the door’s sturdy 19th-century construction before the sound of shredding wood filled the room. After two more strikes, the inside of the door began to splinter.

  “I don’t think we can wait it out,” Shannon said. Even if they could call 911 right that second, they’d be ribbons by the time help arrived.

  Randall glanced back at the exterior window. “We could try climbing down.”

  “Are you crazy?” Shannon said. “We’re three stories up!”

  Tiger claws appeared through the cracks in the door. “I’m open to suggestions,” Randall said. “I’m sort of caught between a tiger and falling to my death.”

  Shannon ignored the poorly timed—not to mention just plain bad—joke. She looked at the flashlight in her hand. “I have an idea,” she said. “But we have to get it away from the door. Can you distract it?”

  “I’ll try.” His voice was scared, but resolute. He went to the window and banged on it. “Hey! Kitty kitty kitty! Over here, you overgrown fur ball!”

  The hole in the door was now large enough to admit one of the tiger’s paws; it stretched an arm through, flexing the pads of its toes out into a star shape. Its eyes flashed iridescent green as the flashlight’s beam passed over them.

  “It’s not working.”

  Randall breathed out. “Are you sure this plan of yours is going to work?”

  She nodded even though she wasn’t.

  “You’d better be,” Randall said, and he yanked open the glass window and thrust his hand out into the open air. “Hey, cat! Psst! Here!”

  Faster than she could see, the tiger ceased its progress on the door and launched itself at Randall’s arm. It seemed to happen in slow motion, and Shannon thought that there was no way Randall would be able to pull his arm back in time. But he slammed the window shut on the tiger at the last possible second. Enraged, the tiger roared and hissed.

  “Whew! Yeah!” Randall whooped. “In your face! Literally!”

  Shannon did not have time to worry about the cracking noises coming from the window frame. She quickly unbolted what remained of the shredded door, and hurled the flashlight into the darkness of the fiction room. To her amazement, it worked—the growling beast launched itself after the light, which landed with a clank two shelves in, the beam spinning in a circle.

  “Run!” she whispered at Randall, and they flung themselves out toward the double doors. They had made it past the last shelf of books when Shannon stopped in her tracks. Randall collided with her a second later.

  “Now is not the time for stopping,” he said, but then he too fell silent.

  The east wall of the fiction room was gone, open to a humid darkness that made the powerless office look practically fluorescent. A gust of hot air hit Shannon’s face; it wasn’t the dry warmth of the heating system, but moist, like breath. She looked at a window on the other side of the room, still being battered by snow. She turned back to the missing wall, detecting the rhythmic chirp of crickets. Randall trained his flashlight into the darkness, revealing vine-wrapped tree trunks and masses of leaves swaying in a light breeze.

  “No way,” Shannon said. It seemed to go on… and on and on, right through the east wall. On the third floor.

  Randall grabbed her arm. “We need to go.”

  She followed his gaze. The tiger had moved between them and the double-doors, a figure of darkness outlined by the red light from the EXIT sign. It swiped the air with its paw and let out a half-roar.

  “Where do we go?” She yelled.

  “The restroom!” He pulled her towards the men’s room; it felt like the air had become gelatinous, slowing them down. Then he was closing the door behind her. It was plywood, flimsier than the one on her office. How long would it hold?

  Randall swung his flashlight at the bathroom mirror. It collided with a brittle smashing sound, leaving a web of cracks behind in the glass.

  “What are you doing?”

  “We need weapons,” he said. “It’s only a matter of time before it gets in.” He pulled the bandanna from around his neck, using it to protect his fingers as he wrenched the largest shard away from the mirror.

  As it pulled free, the beam from the flashlight in Randall’s hand jerked back, falling on an object back in the corner. Shannon went and picked it up—it was a leather-bound book, obviously from the Werner collection.

  “Shine that light over here,” she whispered. “Is this what you were reading?”

  Randall was tying the bandana around the base of the shard, forming a makeshift handle. He didn’t look up. “Now may not be the best time to critique my choice of reading material,” he said, slicing the air experimentally.

  She ignored him. “The Jungle Book, by Rudyard Kipling,” she read out loud, then repeated Mae’s words from her single day of training. “‘Never leave the books open overnight.’”

  Randall met her gaze, and his face morphed into a look of understanding. “Now it’s you who’s crazy.”

  “Don’t you think it’s a little coincidental that the book you’re reading is called The Jungle Book, and suddenly there’s a jungle out in the library?”

  “I guess I was more concerned with the thousand-pound killing machine.” He pressed his ear to the door, listening.

  Shannon stared at the book in her hands. She felt like she was moving slowly through a fog. It can’t be, she thought. She closed the book.

  Randall moved back away from the door. “The cricket sound is gone,” he said, and pressed his ear back against the door. Even Shannon could detect the difference—the air felt empty, the ambient noises that she hadn’t noticed before now gone.

  She opened the book, and the noise returned. She closed it, and it was gone. “Do you think the tiger’s gone, too?” she asked.

  “Only one way to find out.” Randall cracked open the door, and looked out. “The jungle’s gone,” he said. Shannon moved to peer over his shoulder. He was right; the east wall was back, as though it had never left.

  “Then the tiger should be gone, too, right?” she asked. As soon as the words left her lips, the figure of the tiger slinked into the moonlight on the opposite end of the room. Randall shut the door quickly, careful to not make noise.

  “Did it see us?” Shannon asked. They listened, expecting the thin bathroom door to suddenly burst into shreds, but there was only silence.

  “Note to self,” Randall said, “When closing jungle portals in future, make sure the tiger is in them first.”

  “Shut up,” Shannon said. She ran her fingers over the book. She had read it before, when she was young, but was more familiar with the animated version. Were all the details the same?

  “I have an idea,” she said.

  “Another one?”

  “Yes. Do you think you can distract him again?”

  Randall’s jaw hardened, and his eyes bugged out of his head slightly. “You’re demanding, you know that?” He ran his fingers over his head. “How long you need?”

  She calculated in her head. “Ten seconds. Just long enough to get into my office. As soon as I get there, you run back in here and close t
he door. I’ll take care of the rest.”

  He nodded, placing his hand on the door knob. “One… two… THREE!”

  They both burst out of the restroom. Shannon ran full blast toward her office. Behind her, Randall yelled and screamed; she could hear what sounded like books being thrown around. The blur of the tiger ran toward the commotion with a growl. She threw herself into her office and shut the door behind her as quietly as possible. She looked out the window just in time to see the beam of Randall’s flashlight disappear behind the bathroom door across the library. The tiger inspected the still-fluttering pages of the books Randall had thrown on the ground, and roared.

  Shannon ran to her desk, feeling for the emergency kit. Her hands were shaking and numb as she searched through it; finally, her fingers closed on the box of matches.

  “Yes!” she cried, too loudly. A moment later, the room seemed to shake as the tiger thrust its front paws through the hole in the door.

  “Ahh!” She yelled and yelled, not caring how loud she was. It was too late; her plan wouldn’t work with the tiger blocking her exit. The beast tore at the hole in the door until it was almost big enough for it to stick its head and arm through. She closed her eyes, not wanting to see the claws and teeth that would soon sink into her flesh.

  “OVER HERE!”

  She opened her eyes. Randall was outside, waving the flashlight around and throwing books.

  “Come at me, you mangy animal! Leave her alone!”

  The tiger pulled out of the hole, pausing only a moment before running at Randall. Shannon’s heart skipped a beat; there was no time for him to get to safety. Then he pushed on one of the shelves and it toppled over, missing the tiger, but impeding its progress long enough for him to run back into the restroom. The tiger hissed in anger, and began swiping at the bathroom door.

  Now or never, Shannon thought, and burst out into the fiction room. She ran over to the far wall, setting down the book on the table closest to it. Please, please, please, she thought, and opened the book.

  The wall disintegrated as though being dissolved by acid, revealing the jungle darkness. A warm gust blew over her face, carrying the earthy smell of leaves and decaying vegetation, and the buzz of insects filled the air. An owl hooted nearby.

  She pulled an armful of books off the nearest shelf, and threw them down onto the table. She looked up—the chirping of the crickets had stopped, as had the sound of the tiger shredding the bathroom door. A growl came from the other side of the table, and she caught sight of Sher Khan’s glowing eyes. They lowered toward the ground as he crouched.

  Matches exploded out of the box as she opened it, her hands were shaking so much. She gripped one, striking it several times, but it did not light. She threw it to the ground, trying not to notice how the two glowing orbs grew bigger.

  She took another match. Please, she thought again, and then struck it against the strip on the side of the box. It crackled into radiance. Yes!

  She picked up a paperback and held the match to it. “I am so fired,” she said out loud as the flame spread to the edge of the book. At the same moment, Sher Khan leapt like a taut spring being released. In the light of the flame, Shannon saw the tiger register the fire—later she would swear she had seen a tiny flame reflected in each of his eyes. He landed on the table, all feline grace gone as he scrambled backward away from the flame, his ears pressed against his skull and his mouth pulled back into a hiss. He turned to run away.

  “Oh, no you don’t,” Shannon said, and threw the flaming book in his path. The tiger sprang back towards her, but she had already ignited another paperback. Her fingers no longer trembled as she lit paperback after paperback, boxing the moaning ball of fur off from the fiction room until he faced a barrier of burning, smoking books. The air was thick with the acrid scent of melting glue.

  Sher Khan hissed and swiped at the smoke, backing away towards the jungle. Shannon lit the last book, and held the flaming tome in her hand as she approached the tiger.

  “Bad kitty!” She waved the book in the air to make the flames larger. “Bad!”

  With one last hiss, he turned and disappeared into the jungle. Shannon closed The Jungle Book before stomping out the smoldering masses on the floor.

  • • •

  Shannon didn’t know what to expect when she went into work the next day. With Randall’s help, she spent hours reassembling the shelves and cleaning the place up the best she could, but there was nothing they could do about the shredded doors and scorch marks on the carpet. She had been expecting a phone call all morning demanding an explanation, but none had come.

  No one acknowledged her as she walked through the lower levels, but as soon as she entered the fiction room, she caught sight of Fran, the daytime librarian. Her eyes shifted into a disapproving look as they fell on Shannon. Here it comes, Shannon thought. How could she explain?

  “Miss Polinsky,” Fran said angrily, and Shannon steeled herself. “Please remember to enforce the rule about drinks requiring lids. I’m not sure the janitorial staff will ever get the stain out.”

  “Stain?”

  “The big blotch of punch or whatever near the east wall,” she said, pointing. Sure enough, there was a large, red stain covering the area where the books had scorched the carpet the previous evening. “Really, I don’t even know how they managed to spill that much. It’s like they were trying.”

  “Sorry,” Shannon said. “I’ll be more watchful next time.”

  Fran mistook Shannon’s confusion for fear. Her face softened. “Oh, it’s all right. We all made mistakes when we were starting out. Maybe now the city will approve our requests for new carpet.”

  Shannon nodded, but her mind was elsewhere. She glanced over Fran’s shoulder at the men’s bathroom, expecting a splintered mess, but it looked as it had pre-tiger. What was going on? Had Randall returned after she left and fixed all these things, somehow? The bathroom door was nondescript and easy enough to replace, but there was no way the ornately carved office door had been replaced overnight. She looked over at her office to find it missing.

  “Err, where’s my office door?” she asked, still not sure whether Fran knew that something had happened the previous evening.

  She sighed. “The early-morning maintenance staff left a note, something about the hinges needing to be cleaned. They said the door will be back in a day or two.” She turned to head back to the reference desk, then glanced over her shoulder. “By the way, Andre’s been fired. Looks like he’s been cutting hours again.”

  Shannon went back to her desk, wishing she had a door to close. She opened the desk drawer and pulled out A Country Romance. She had been unable to sleep the night before, concocting a theory about the numbers written on the paper. 11, 1, 225. She opened the book to page 225. Sure enough, it was chapter eleven—page one of chapter eleven. A tinge of excitement ran up her spine as she felt how easily the book turned to it, as if of its own accord, splaying open as though the position were familiar to it, comfortable.

  She closed the book; having it open now wouldn’t make any difference. Anyway, she should wait for Randall.

  At 8:30, there came a knock on the doorframe. She looked up to see him watching her quizzically.

  “Cutting it close,” she said.

  “I had trouble getting a ride,” he said. “I stayed with some friends last night.” Shannon nodded; she’d dropped him off. He’d said that the shelter was full—that’s why he tried to spend the night in the library. “But I had to come back. I…”

  “Needed to know?” She asked.

  “Yeah.”

  She nodded. “Me too. But I think I might have a clue.” She showed him A Country Romance and Mae’s note, and explained her theory. “The entire page is only describing the setting—no action or characters.”

  “And no tigers, right?” Randall asked, dubious.

  She shook her head. “All I know is that someone—probably Mae—opened this book
to this page a lot.”

  • • •

  Sans Andre, Shannon helped Becky check the library before locking the doors. She made sure to double-check the restrooms. She walked Becky to her car, then claimed she had left something in her office, waving off Becky’s offer to wait.

  Shannon and Randall stood shoulder-to-shoulder facing the east wall. Shannon watched as the clock above the double-doors switched from 8:59 to 9:00. She breathed out, and opened the book.

  The wall dissolved into a calm English countryside, with fields of heather rippling in the breeze as far as she could see. A small cottage stood nearby; it looked lived-in, but there wasn’t a person in sight.

  “Are you sure about this?” Randall asked.

  She nodded. “You stay here with the book, just in case,” she said. She took one of the flashlights from the previous night; if the words “in the cellar” were any indication, she would need it.

  Steeling herself, she walked into the field. As she took the first step, she was gripped with a sudden fear that it was all an illusion, that she was about to plummet three stories down onto the icy pavement of the library parking lot. But the spongy earth of the field held her weight, and she breathed a sigh of relief.

  Randall watched her with wide eyes. “How does it feel?” He asked.

  She thought for a moment. “Warm. Normal.” She shrugged, and turned to the cottage. “I’ll be back in a few moments—do not shut that book.”

  The air inside the cottage still smelled of smoke, as though someone recently tamped down a fire. She found the hatch door in the middle of the floor, just where the book said it would be. Thank god for overly-descriptive 19th century novels, she thought as she lifted the lid and climbed down.

  At the bottom of the ladder, she turned the flashlight on. The cellar was lined with shelves filled with hearty vegetables and glass jars. In one corner was a pile of wood, and in the other, a red plastic chest.

  Obvious, much? she thought, and opened the lid. The space inside was mostly filled with books, old books. She opened one, not surprised to find the cracked label: Donated by the family of Frank M. Werner. There were other things, too—swords, clothing, and other knick knacks she couldn’t explain. But the thing that held the most interest for her was the envelope laid on top of the pile. She opened it, and a small metal object fell out—a brass key. She set it aside and pulled out the pages inside.