tell whether I’d been through a particular path before. If I could just... turn some books, make kind of a code, like a half-turn so it stuck out an inch would mean I’d passed it and a full-turn, like two inches, would mean I’d passed it and come back around as well...
It was deathly silent, nothing but my shuffling footsteps. I couldn’t even hear Johnny, who had gone in the opposite direction. Worse, the deeper I went, the darker it got. I wished I had asked for a flashlight or one of those glass lanterns. But realistically you’d never want to take a flame into a place like this, even enclosed. You’d burn to death in moments, long before you ever found the way out. I ignored the fear creeping up my throat and forced myself to keep walking. The light of the single bulb was long gone and everything was lit by its reflected radiance, so that I moved through pools of completely black shadow interspersed with the various greys and browns of exposed paper.
I hoped Johnny would find the book first, but I also—slightly less—hoped that I would. Be first, for once in my goddamn life. The stench was a solid wall now, and my hand did nothing; I pulled the hem of my shirt up to make a half-mask. Gawd! It was like something had died in here. Bigger than a mouse.
I stopped the moment I thought that, heart pounding. It did smell as if something had died. Died, and was rotting slowly in the cold. Not a mouse. Not a dozen mice. Nothing so small.
The ground was changing under my battered runners, going from the hard, smooth clay of the walls upstairs to something more raw, crumbly and uneven—gravel and stones, then sand. I stopped and stared at it. Definitely sand. Fine, black sand. They hadn’t said I couldn’t touch that, so I did, scooping up a handful and letting it run through my fingers. It was even, dry, and so cold that my hand went numb.
I teetered on the edge of the gravel, wondering if I should turn back. There were a dozen or more of the tiny book paths that I hadn’t followed, in other directions, some heading back towards the light. The book could be there. Or maybe Johnny had already found it and had dragged it back to the desk, silencing its screams for help with the black-marker gears on her hands until she could subdue and open it, not wanting to waste our precious time looking for me. Maybe she was just waiting for me to come back.
No. Come on. Fucking coward. At least go look.
I headed into the darkness. All around me I could still feel the barely-visible pressure of the books, like a crowd of people that had shuffled just close enough that I could sense their presence but not feel their breath. The sand hissed softly under my shoes.
I ran out of light so gradually that at first I didn’t realize what had happened, only that the looming mass of the books was gone because I could no longer see them. Just the barest grey light still somehow reached me, bounced off the edges of a billion pages. I turned, and stopped dead.
Because the rest of the library was gone. There was nothing but sand dunes, lit faintly by the impossible light of a few dull stars.
I STOOD THERE with my mouth hanging open for what felt like far too long. The smell of mould was powerful here, fresher, harsher, mixed with a dozen other unfamiliar stenches. Nothing I could identify. The closest I’d come had been a dead deer in the woods by the Creek. Decaying flesh was not something a city boy would have much experience with; the occasional chicken breast gone green and blue in the fridge, that’s all.
I took a few tentative steps back the way I’d come, my footprints clearly marked, but when they ran out into clean sand, I felt panic rise over my head and threaten to pull me under. The books were gone. Everything was gone. In the silence, my gasping breath whistled through my nose. Too fast. Might faint. Okay. Calm down.
“Johnny?” I called. “John!”
Nothing. The dark stars ate my voice.
I called for several minutes, not even hearing echoes off the dunes. How was this possible? I had to still be in the library, there must just be some... some spell that made me think... that I wasn’t, that