Being Henry David - By Cal Armistead Page 0,36

laughs, apparently having forgotten all about me. “Sometimes I swear they’re here, especially late at night, trying to communicate with me.”

“You would think that.”

The library goes dark, and I hear the door click shut, locked from the outside, and then all is silent. More silent even than the high school, if that’s possible. Silent as a tomb.

I wait a long time, to make sure they’re really gone. When I start to get a cramp in my leg, I crawl out from under the piano. I don’t need to go far. The couch is right there, inviting me to lie down and sleep. It’s too short for my lanky body, but I don’t care. I collapse into it, feet trailing over the edge. Just need a good night’s rest, and tomorrow will be better. Tomorrow, I’ll figure out what to do, how to find my sister. It’ll all be better after I sleep.

Just as I start to drift off, there’s this strange shushing sound, like the sizzle of the surf. But it gets louder and I recognize what it is. Someone is in this room with me, whispering. What the hell? I open my eyes to see who’s here, except that nobody is. I’m alone. Well, almost.

It’s the statues. Their lips aren’t moving in their frozen marble faces, but I can hear their voices. And after a moment, I can even make out what they’re saying.

That guy Ephraim Bull is whispering something like, “Look at me, I’m the Father of the Concord Grape,” and Louisa May Alcott is saying, “I wrote Little Women, a book beloved by girls all over the world.” It reminds me of a boring museum exhibit, or a maybe a video about prominent citizens of nineteenth century Concord, Massachusetts, they’d show kids in middle school. The statues are stiff and without emotion, as if the people they represent were statues too, who never laughed or cried, never got hungry or cold or sick.

“I am Bronson Alcott,” whispers the statue with huge eyebrows that look like fuzzy white caterpillars. He mumbles something about this place called Fruitlands he started, which sounds to me kind of like a 1960s commune that didn’t work out so well.

Some distant corner of my brain knows this is nothing but a crazy dream, inspired by the book Thomas gave me and brought on by the fever deep-frying my brain cells. But some other part of me is trying to convince me this is real, that the statues really do whisper to themselves in the Concord library at night after everybody goes home.

Ebenezer Hoar’s voice grows slightly louder as he states his reason for being memorialized in marble. “I was a judge and a congressman,” he says in a bland voice. Big deal. “And if you had appeared in my court, young man, I would have thrown you in prison for the rest of your natural life.”

Startled, I glance up at the statue. He is looking straight at me with those spooky white marble eyes without pupils. “And I wager no one would miss you.”

The others hiss in agreement, whispers that become threats and I realize there is nothing of the real Alcotts, Judge Hoar, Ephraim Bull, or Ralph Waldo Emerson in these statues at all. And somehow, they seem to know all the dark things about me that I can’t remember.

The floor under me starts to shake, and I don’t know if the eruption started inside the foundation of the building or someplace deep inside me. The whole library shudders with it, and the statues are silenced as their marble bodies tremble, then quiver toward the edge of their pedestals. Edging closer, closer, then with terrible silent screams, the statues fall one at a time and crash onto the library floor. Not solid marble at all, but with thin exteriors like eggshells that crack open and spew their true contents. Rotting meat crawling with maggots. Fat night-crawlers and green garter snakes and horned lizards. Broken shards of glass and twisted metal. Razor blades and knives and meat cleavers and spikes. The snakes slither toward me and I can smell rancid flesh.

Henry’s statue sits frozen on its pedestal, still intact, watching me with a detached kind of sympathy.

I try to say, do something, Henry, but can’t make any sound.

Bad spirits rise from the ruins of the statues then, curl toward me and lean over to stare into my face like they can extract information from me or maybe tap into my life force, jealous