The Haunting of Beacon Hill Page 2

  The house was gripped by silence. She couldn't hear either of her companions anymore—could scarcely make out the ongoing rabble of the floors over the crash of her heartbeat in her ears. Still, she kept on, reaching out where she could to grope at her surroundings. She brushed up against crusty growths and became entangled in knots of dusty silk. More than once, she felt something crawl past her fingers, or over the tops of her sandals.

  Her directionless advance eventually proved fruitful, however.

  In the distance, she spied the dull glow of the moon—it was peeking in through a door or window somewhere up ahead. Suddenly reinvigorated, she pursued the light boldly, wiping the tears from her face and running for all she was worth. The closer she got, the more she could make out of the space around her. She'd wandered into some other wing, was traveling down a long hallway, and the light was issuing from one of the open rooms attached to it.

  Panting, Ophelia hooked into the doorway and was delighted to find herself in a small room whose window admitted ample moonlight. The pane was broken, but with some care she'd be able to crawl out into the yard without injuring herself. The tops of overgrown bushes swayed just outside, and the cool breeze toyed with the ivy growing along the sill.

  She'd made it. She'd found a way out.

  Ophelia crossed the room, trying to figure out how best to hoist herself through the open window without risking a cut on the jagged remainder of the pane, but stopped short. Something had moved in her periphery, startled her, and she halted to take stock of her surroundings, arms tensing against her breast.

  The austere chamber was barely the size of her own bedroom, and these four walls—as punished as any hitherto seen—were largely unadorned. Angular stains marred the plaster where pictures might have once been displayed. A pair of holes had been gnawed into the baseboards by persistent rodents. The corners of the room were cluttered with aged leaves and other organic refuse that'd blown in from the outside.

  There was only one other thing to account for in the space—a curious holdover the likes of which she hadn't seen elsewhere in the house. On the wall across from her there hung a tarnished mirror. Its borders shined in the dull moonlight.

  The mirror was partially blackened, and what unblemished sections did remain hardly offered a clear reflection. The glass had been warped by age, and its corrupted display lent subjects a hint of the cartoonish, like a funhouse mirror. Ophelia spent a moment looking herself over in it. The thing took liberties with the length and proportion of her limbs, made her brown eyes look unnaturally large. Leaning forward just enough to study her black hair in the mirror and to pick the leaves and cobwebs from it, she straightened herself and patted the dust from her clothing.

  But before she could turn to the window and climb out, she saw it.

  A second figure was reflected in the mirror. It lurked just behind her—its face looming above her right shoulder and its nebulous body wreathed in inky darkness. At first, she wasn't sure what she was looking at and leaned in closer, confident that it must have been some smudge or defect.

  But then she studied it with closeness.

  It was a face—monstrous, bloated and somehow, despite its distortion, smiling. From the cracks in its ragged borders there peeked well-fed parasites; the things pulsed and writhed energetically beneath the surface of paper-thin flesh.

  Upon taking in the full measure of its loathsomeness, Ophelia's legs went out on her.

  She didn't dare turn to look at the thing with her own eyes. She could feel it behind her, could sense its black gaze on her as she shuddered on the floor, but to turn and glance up at it as it loomed there would have ruined her.

  From above—from some deep recess in that worm-eaten countenance—something fell, striking the back of her trembling hand.

  A maggot.

  2

  The little girl squatted at one of the shelves, her nose nearly pressed to the spines of the books therein. She squinted hard, trying to sound out the titles, and when she did deign to pick one up, she'd give the cover art a careful look before deciding whether or not to check it out. Those volumes that'd passed muster were added to a teetering pile on a nearby table.

  The girl carried on this way for several minutes, but having hit a snag in her search, stood up and approached one of the librarians at the front counter. “Excuse me,” she said, standing on tiptoe so as to peek over the edge of the high desk. “Can you help me?”

  The young librarian stood up at once. “Sure! How can I help you?” Stepping out from behind the desk, she dropped to one knee, putting the two of them eye to eye. The librarian had very pretty eyes; they were the color of the grass outside and were housed beneath two dense black brows like caterpillars. She presented a pearly smile and combed a lock of dark hair behind a small, elf-like ear.

  “I'm looking for some books,” the girl said, pointing back to the children's section from whence she'd just wandered.

  “OK, what kinds of books?”

  With a finger pressed to her chin, the girl replied, “Books about kitties.”

  The librarian gave a knowing nod and stood. “Kitties, huh? Yes, I think I can help you out. Come with me.” Smoothing out her long, navy skirt, she pointed to the left, at a shelf of books labeled Animals. “Some of these may be a bit difficult for your reading level,” she warned, “but most of our books about cats will be in this section here.”

  The girl approached the shelf and inspected its contents with arms akimbo. Her wavy pigtails wagged right and left as she perused the titles. “Actually,” she replied, “I'm in third grade and I'm the best reader in my class.” Waggling her little brows, she confided, “I won my class's weekly reading challenge last week and my teacher gave me a coupon for a free pizza.”

  The librarian held back a chuckle and feigned amazement, placing a hand to her lips. “Goodness, I had no idea. You'll be right at home in this section, then.” Watching as the girl inspected a number of books, she turned back toward the front desk—but first, she motioned at the name tag she wore. “My name is Sadie. If you need help with anything else, just let me know!”

  “OK, Sadie,” said the girl with a nod. “I will.”

  Before Sadie had even returned to the circulation desk however, the girl had come racing back to her. Surprised to see the third-grader again so soon, she asked, “Did you find what you were looking for back there? Need some help checking out your books?”

  The girl shook her head, hands in her pockets. “I need more help, Miss Sadie.”

  Work at the circulation desk was piling up. The book return echoed with the sound of new deposits and the phone was ringing off the hook. Delores, the part-timer, was currently handling the calls, but if Sadie didn't get around to re-shelving the returns she'd be stuck in the library till midnight. “What can I help you find this time?”

  “I'm still looking for books about kitties,” replied the girl. Pointing to the Animal section, she added, “I didn't really like any of those.”

  “I see...” Craning her neck so that she could see across the library, Sadie snapped her fingers. “You know what, I bet you'll like this. We have a magazine section over there, near the big window, and we get all kinds of animal magazines. There must be some featuring cats, too. Would you like to look with me?”

  The girl bobbed her head in agreement and followed the librarian to the magazine displays. “Miss Sadie, do you like being a librarian?” she thought to ask as they walked across the room.

  “I do,” was the librarian's reply. “I love books. This is a perfect job for me, really.”

  Lips pursed, the girl considered this a moment. Then, capitalizing on Sadie's friendliness, she began firing off other questions. “How old are you, Miss Sadie?”

  “Me?” Sadie laughed. “I'm twenty-five. How about you?”

  “Nine-and-a-half.” Even as they arrived at the magazines, the chatty girl kept on. She was much more interested in asking the librarian prying questions than in looking at magazin
es. “Are you married?”

  With an uncomfortable chuckle, Sadie shook her head and started scanning the shelves for anything with a cat on the cover. “Uh, nope.” Kids were like this sometimes. On a typical shift, she'd meet no fewer than a dozen children, and they often asked her the damnedest questions. Sadie considered herself good with kids and always took it in stride, though this child struck her as one of the especially nosy ones.

  “Do you have lots of friends?” was the girl's follow-up.

  Flustered now, Sadie leafed through a National Geographic and then thrust it back onto the display. “Er... Not really, I guess.” She pointed back to the computer section, where one of the other librarians, August, was helping someone use the printer. “Not unless you include that guy.”

  “Oh,” said the girl, a sly smile sneaking across her lips. “So, he's your boyfriend?”

  “N-No,” corrected Sadie, her cheeks reddening. “He's just a friend—a co-worker.”

  Unsatisfied, the precocious girl continued her barrage of personal questions. “Well, if you don't have any friends, then what do you do for fun? Just work all the time?”

  The question, though innocently posed, had struck Sadie as brutal. She pretended not to hear it the first time, but when the girl repeated it—and dismissed a number of animal magazines out of hand—Sadie answered begrudgingly. “Well, I like to read...” She searched for something else to say—for some other hobby of hers that would impress the girl—but fell short.

  “That sounds boring. And lonely. I hope I'm married by the time I'm your age.”

  Sadie put on a tight smile. Gee, thanks, she thought.

  The girl sighed, leaning against one of the shelves. “You don't have the kind of kitty book I'm looking for, do you?”

  Already frustrated with the girl, Sadie did a slow scan of the room and shrugged. “We looked at the animal section, the magazines... I don't know if there's anywhere else in the library where we might find books about cats. The science section might have something, but...” She combed a hand through her hair. “What do you want to know about cats anyway, sweetheart? That might help us narrow it down.”

  The girl meditated on this earnestly, then replied, “I need a book that will tell me how to fix them.”

  “How to... fix them?” Sadie shook her head. “Sorry, I don't follow. What do you mean?”

  “There's this stray cat in my neighborhood,” began the girl. “It's really cute. It has white and black fur. I want to let it inside, but my dad said I can't have a cat unless it's fixed.” She rolled her little eyes. “I told him the cat wasn't broken but he just laughed at me.”

  Sadie pressed a hand to her brow and forced back a grin. “Oh, is that it?” She pointed out August who was still idling around the printer. “You should have told me sooner; Mr August over there knows all about that. You should talk to him.”

  With that, the girl trotted off to bother the other librarian.

  Sadie rushed back to the front desk and hid in the staff office—lest the girl think of another rude question to ask.

  Delores finished up a phone call and swiveled in her chair to peek into the office. “Sadie, what're you up to?”

  “Me?” Sadie stationed herself before the coffee maker and prepped a fresh cup. “Just getting ready to check the book drop and questioning my life's choices.”

  Sadie Young had become a librarian for one reason and one reason only: So that she might be surrounded by books for eight to twelve hours a day.

  The smell of books, the heft of good paper between her fingers, the pristine matte finish of a new paperback or the shine of a new dust jacket brought her greater joy than most anything else in the world. The awkward customer service interactions were a small price to pay to walk amidst the shelves all day, submerged in the pleasant business of sorting, selecting and sometimes even reading books.

  The desire to become a librarian had been with her since childhood, and the libraries of her fantasies had been grandiose indeed. She'd often pictured herself working in immense buildings filled with spiral staircases and bookshelves that stretched high up into vaulted ceilings. She would have been at home at the Library of Congress, with its millions of books for companions. In quieter moments when her imagination got the better of her, she'd picture herself wandering the shadowed passages of the Great Library of Alexandria, perusing stacks of papyrus scrolls.

  By comparison, the Montpelier Public Library was a shoe closet, but the one-story building—boasting a collection of some few thousand books—did possess a certain coziness. There was a spacious seating area at the library's center, replete with a gurgling fountain. Computer workstations sat to the right of this space, and except for the circulation desk and bathrooms that were positioned near the entrance, shoulder-high shelves of books filled out the remainder of the floor plan, seeming to close in on one. In the daylight hours a pleasant glow issued from the skylights overhead, and in the evening carefully-placed spotlights rendered the stacks in a golden glow.

  To the rear of the circulation desk was the staff office. It was a small room, usually packed with carts of reserved books to the point of being unnavigable. Here, the librarians ate their lunches and sorted volumes for re-shelving. It was there, too, that the office coffee maker had been set up—a donation from a wealthy benefactor—and this fixture was one that Sadie had taken to using with frequency. With a fresh tea or coffee in hand and a book tucked under her arm, she felt at peace.

  Emerging from just that room with a mug of earl grey, Sadie took a seat behind the circulation desk, chanced a sip—then thought better of it when the steam nipped at her nose—and waited for the clock to wind down. The hour was a stone's throw from 9pm; closing time.

  The few remaining idlers made their way to the book checkouts and scanned their items. A few last-minute deposits into the book drop echoed from the outside and the last manned computer station was abandoned by the glassy-eyed student who'd hunched over it for half the day. When she'd gathered up the handful of items in the book drop and scanned them back into the system, Sadie peeked at her watch. 9:01pm.

  “Oh, damn!” she blurted, shooting up from her seat.

  The race was on.

  She fished out the small ring of keys from her pocket and then bolted for the front door. Fiddling through them, she struck upon the entrance key—a knobby gold one—and jammed it into the slot. She pressed her tiny frame against the glass and tried to give the key a turn, but it wouldn't go.

  It'd already been locked.

  Which meant someone—he—had gotten to it first.

  From behind her there came the mocking jangle of keys on a ring. She turned and found August seated at the edge of the fountain with a toothy grin. “You've lost your edge, Sadie,” he said, giving the keys another jingle. “I got to it first. You know what that means.”

  Sadie frowned, stuffing the keys back into her pocket. “I don't know why I agree to your dumb bets.” She pointedly avoided eye contact with him as she returned to the desk.

  August crossed his legs and dipped his finger into the fountain. He'd rolled up the sleeves of his white dress shirt and had taken off his bowtie. He always wore a bowtie to work—insisted it made him look more professional. Today's had been red with white polka dots, and the ends of the thing dangled from his pocket as he rose from the fountain's edge with a grunt. “Hey, a deal is a deal!”

  Sadie approached the mug of tea, tested it with her tongue. Still too hot. Rolling her eyes, she swiveled in her chair and hoisted up a stack of recent returns. “Lunch is on me next time. Got it. But this is the last time. I'm calling off this bet moving forward. You're going to bankrupt me.”

  He leaned over the edge of the desk and sniffed at her tea. Then, patting his non-existent gut, he smirked. “Come on, I'm a growing boy. Don't cut me off!” August was actually approaching thirty, but except for the carefully-shaped beard and mustache he wore, he did, in fact, look like a growing boy. Very thin—thinner even than the slight
Sadie—and barely matching her five feet and seven inches, August appeared something like a perennial high schooler. His voice was smooth and pleasant enough, but it lacked depth, and in very warm or very cold weather—both of which were not unknown in Montpelier—his cheeks always radiated a cherubic warmth.

  August's attitude matched his boyish frame, too. Though a hard worker and favorite of the library patrons, he often grew bored at work, which left him to devise interesting scenarios with the intention of spicing up his shifts. His most recent plot, which he'd managed to rope Sadie into, was a simple betting scheme—the winner of which could demand a free lunch from the loser. The challenge was simple: The first one to lock the front door on nights where the two of them were assigned to close the library was the winner. After a few weeks of intermittent competition however, Sadie had only managed to win once.

  Sadie gathered up a load of books and held them out to him. “Here, get these put away. I just scanned them in.”

  “Yes, ma'am,” replied August, his arms buckling feebly beneath their weight. Shuffling away from the counter, he dropped them onto a cart with a crash and then cruised into the network of shelves. As he began putting away the books, wandering further through the stacks, only the top of his head was visible. A shock of wispy reddish hair poked out from the uppermost edge of the shelving units like a rooster's comb.

  Finally free of him, Sadie reclined in her chair and took a swig of tea. When working this shift, she liked to take her time at the end. After all the books had been put away and the next day's requests had been set out for patrons, she often enjoyed a leisurely walk through the place herself. An hour of reading by the fountain with a fresh cup of tea wasn't uncommon either, and when that was done she'd put out the lights and exit through the side door. Tonight, though, she didn't have the luxury of lingering. Her car—an old beater—had recently breathed its last and she'd taken to carpooling with August. And unlike her, he much preferred to get out of there as quickly as possible.