Ghost Stories of a Librarian: Canon Alberic's Scrap-Book

Here is my take on my Grampa Monty's yarn, "Canon Alberic's Scrapbook." 

Illustration by James McBryde

“…at first you saw only a mass of coarse, matted black hair; presently it was seen that this covered a body of fearful thinness, almost a skeleton, but with the muscles standing out like wires. The hands were of a dusky pallor, covered, like the body, with long coarse hairs, and hideously taloned. The eyes, touched in with a burning yellow, had intensely black pupils…Imagine one of the awful bird-catching spiders of South America translated into human form, and endowed with intelligence just less than human, and you will have some faint conception of the terror inspired by this appalling effigy. One remark is universally made by those to whom I have shown the picture: “It was drawn from the life.”

Emma like magazines and Emma liked clothes, so she liked to clip out pictures of celebrity fashion as well as advertisements for high-end shoes and clothing and paste them into a scrapbook for future reference. 

All this was to an educational purpose: Emma was going to study fashion design, as soon as she was done with high school and able to escape the little town she lived in all her life. And yes, there now were computer programs like Pinterest for collecting and filing pictures, but when it was right there and all you needed was a pair of scissors…

Unfortunately, some of the magazines Emma liked to clip from didn’t belong to her; specifically, they were library property.

Oh, she tried to be discreet about it and not clip out too many pictures, certainly no more than 5 or 6 per issue; besides, she wasn’t the only one doing it and they were only magazines…but she got caught and that old fart librarian who had been there for years, James or whatever his name was, made a big deal out of it and now she couldn’t use her card until she paid the library.

As if…stupid librarian.

Well, if he wouldn’t let her sign out any more magazines, the solution was simple; borrow them without the bother of checking them out. Just take them. No overdue fines, since you never have to take them back.

So, one busy Wednesday, when the library was busy and there were line ups at the checkout desk (not to mention an entire symphony of little brats wailing away in the children’s area), Emma walked quietly over to the magazine shelving and quickly gathered up the latest issues of (COSMO, GLAMOUR, IN TOUCH,NATIONAL ENQUIRER, PEOPLE,SELF, US, VANITY FAIR ) taking them to a table in the rear, which was partially shielded from the view of the library staff by a bay of paperback shelving.

When the old ladies at the desk were distracted by both patrons and squalling kids, Emma slipped the brand new magazines into her back pack, double-checking, when she had done, that she had remained unobserved. She had had the foresight to have brought a number of older issues with her and for the next 15 minutes she looked through them, making note of any interesting pictures or ads, before standing up, gathering up her back pack and leaving; to anyone looking she would simply have been a teenager who had stopped to browse some magazines before heading for home and homework.

Just another library patron browsing some magazines – certainly no thief.

In fact, Emma was glad to leave. Maybe no one else knew what she was up to, but she felt like she had a red neon sign on her forehead which kept flashing Thief! Thief! She kept her eyes down, afraid to make contact or speak with any of the library staff, in case her words or tone of voice gave her away and they asked to examine her back pack (could they ask such a thing? What legal powers did they have?)

Besides, it was noisy; not only was there the racket caused by the screaming brats, but Emma thought she heard what sounded like the echo of harsh, maniacal laughter, coming from somewhere far away. The building had high ceilings, and in the general cacophony she couldn’t be sure her ears weren’t deceiving her -- but it still creeped her out.

She was glad to get outside, into the cold night air, away from the noise and the eyes of the librarians.

It was already dark outside, the thick layer of clouds overhead contributing to a general atmosphere of depression and gloom. Emma’s house lay three blocks south of the library and she didn’t waste any time cutting across the back parking lot on her way home

.

Not a soul in sight. Normally, it wouldn’t have bothered Emma to be on her own, even at night, but this evening…she felt distinctly nervous. Twice she looked behind her, to see if there was anyone there, anyone following her and, even as she strode quickly across the parking lot towards the shortcut, she had to fight the urge to turn around and look again.

“I must have a guilty conscience,” she said to herself.  “Good thing those old bags hadn’t spoken to me…Well ,maybe I’ll bring all the magazines back, without clipping anything…I’ll just look at them; we’ll see.”

A narrow passageway led from the parking lot to the next street; it ran between two houses, with weathered wooden fencing along both sides.

It was pitch black.

Emma made her way along the darkened pavement, her sneakers crunching through the dead leaves covering the cement and all the time she was fighting the urge to turn around, turn around, look behind you, fighting it until she could stand it no longer, until she stopped and turned around…

 

There was a black shape, a shadow, as insubstantial as a wisp of smoke, against the lighter darkness at the top of the passageway but it was gone before she could focus on it.

“It’s just my imagination,” Emma said, to convince herself there had been nothing there – but she didn’t really succeed. She had seen a flash of yellow in the midst of the blackness, but couldn’t register at first exactly what it represented.

And then she knew: two yellow eyes

.

Emma fought the urge to run, just as she had tried not to look. She continued down the passage, shoes scuffling through the dried leaves, filling the narrow space with scratching, crinkly sound, until, without quite realizing that she had been listening intently, she suddenly stopped dead.

The scuffling, crunching sounds behind her continued for a moment…and then also stopped dead.

Someone was behind her but Emma didn’t want to look, didn’t dare to look. Instead, she forced herself to move forward, actually kicking aside the leaves with the toe of her shoe to make as much noise as possible in order to drown out the scuffling, crunching sounds behind her.

But then she stopped dead, again; she didn’t want to, hadn’t intended to, but couldn’t help herself. She had to know.

Silence.

But then she heard it, behind her: the faint echo of harsh, maniacal laughter, as if from somewhere far away. 

And Emma began to run.

She exploded out of the mouth of the passageway and into the connecting street, only to find it dark, deserted, the street lights faint and far away. Emma couldn’t hear if anyone was running after her, couldn’t hear anything at all with the blood pounding in her ears.  She reached in her pocket for her phone, but knew there wouldn’t be time for that, knew he, or it, would be upon her, and knew her only hope was to keep running.

A car turned onto the street, headlights raking the fronts of the ill-lit houses.

Emma ran down the street towards the car and, as she was coming up towards the driver’s side door, finally threw a fearful glance over her shoulder, to see what was behind her.

But there was no one – nothing – there

.

Emma was stunned and, instinctively, took a step back from the passing car; she could see the driver, a middle-aged blond woman with glasses looking at her apprehensively and she was glad the motorist wasn’t one of her parents friends – who would have stopped and asked her if she was okay and how would she ever have explained what had just happened to her.

What had just happened? A hallucination? Or was it really a guilty, guilty conscience?

Whatever it was, the damn magazines didn’t seem to be really worth it.

Emma made it home without further incident – although some faraway sounds did resemble the strange metallic laughter she thought she had heard earlier in the evening. But Emma did not linger and didn’t really feel safe until the familiar back door off the kitchen was closed behind her.

Safe – but not really relaxed. Emma slunk up to her room and sat down on the bed, forcing herself to calm down. She left the magazines alone, not going near her backpack, as if the simple act of touching it might lead to another peal of the outré mirth. Instead, Emma just sat on the side of her bed, rocking gently back and forth and fighting an overwhelming and compelling urge to look out her bedroom window.

It was a relief to be finally called to supper.

But Emma still felt uncomfortable, only now she was plagued by the sensation of being watched by someone right behind her; it was similar to the urge she had experienced walking home and she fought it, finally giving in to a brief over the shoulder glance.

Nothing. She knew there would be nothing there.

She forced herself to look at her plate, to eat and realized with a start she hadn’t even registered what they were having for dinner. Her parents had been droning all the while, but she had no idea what they were talking about.

And then it finally registered; they weren’t talking.

“Emma,” her mother whined, “your father was speaking to you.”

“Sorry,” she mumbled, trying to sound apologetic. “I must have been day-dreaming.”

“Did anything happen at school today?” he asked anxiously.

“No,” Emma said, “I guess I’m just tired,” managing to throw in a yawn for effect.

“You should get a good night’s sleep, honey” he added and Emma felt a little pang of remorse for both lying and for causing him unnecessary worry; Dad always meant so well.

“I’ll do that,” she said quickly, to reassure him, but then Mom had to spoil it with “And be sure you go to bed and not sit there texting until after midnight!” Emma knew better than to reply and stuffed her mouth with food; soon the parental conversation drifted into other channels.

It was a relief to get back to her room. Emma determined to look over the magazines which had already caused her so much grief. But she also made a promise to herself not to cut out any pictures or advertisements – at least not more than one or two.

Emma unzipped the top of her backpack and spilled the magazines atop her bed sheets – and blinked.

The magazines were all…different. Changed.  There was some weird thing called the FORTEAN TIMES, with articles about ghost impersonators, S&M space aliens and carnivorous pigs. Other weird titles included THEM, NECROSIS, ABSALOM, JANUS, UNSEEN, LOST, DAMNED, CHARNEL, and CHORASIN, ATROCITY, GENENOCIDAL, DIABOL. The cover illustration of one of the magazines, IMPIOUS, showed a group of what looked like Roman soldiers standing around a skeletal figure with thick, dark wiry hair and two intense…glowing yellow eyes.  Emma was completely bewildered; she hadn’t taken any of these, she wouldn’t have touched any of them and she didn’t want them in her room now.\

Why did they let such things into the public library in the first place?

Emma had taken an involuntary step back from the bed and from the offending periodicals and, as she did, she glanced involuntarily at the window – and had to thrust her knuckles into her mouth to keep from screaming.

Outside, in the darkness, were two pinpricks of light; two pinpricks of flaming, yellowish light, equal distant apart.

Two eyes – two baleful yellow eyes staring in at her.

Emma’s hand flicked at the light switch, plunging her bedroom into darkness, hoping she might get a better look at whatever was outside, staring in.

But there was nothing there, nothing but the cold darkness of early winter.

“I’ve got to get these damned things back to the library, NOW,” Emma said to herself. “Everything’s been weird since I stol…since I borrowed them.”

Emma forced herself to reach over and grab the magazines, which seemed strangely warm to the touch, and shoved them into her backpack. She took a quick look out her window, and, seeing nothing – and no one – outside, grabbed her coat and headed downstairs.

She was almost to the back door when her mother’s voice caught up with her: “Are you going somewhere?”

“I have to return something to the library.”

“Can’t you do it tomorrow?” Mother didn’t like her going out once she was home for the evening.

“No! I’ll be right back,” she called over her shoulder, stepping quickly outside before she could be asked if she had any homework and if it was done.

Emma took the long way to the library, as it kept her to busy, lighted streets, avoiding dark places like the haunted passageway. But, tonight, maybe because she was so nervous, the passing cars seemed few and far between and she could not break the sensation of being watched.

The last part of the journey took her across the mall parking lot; again, it seemed like there were fewer parked cars than there should be on a busy, shopping night. But, at least it was well illuminated by a series of overhead lamps, which bathed the asphalt with pools of warm, sepia light. But she still couldn’t resist the temptation to keep looking behind her and…

What was that?

Emma thought she had seen a dark shape, a moving smudge, which seemed to flow between two of the parked cars. She willed herself to calm down and looking more intently saw there was nothing there…well, perhaps a shadow on the ground under the two vehicles, but it was probably thrown naturally by the overhead lighting.

Emma turned around and trudged resolutely in the direction of the library; she did not look back.

The chute for the overnight book return was at the side of the building, furthest away from the parking lot, indeed from any source of light. It was always dark there in the evening and tonight especially so. Not a soul was around.

Emma dropped her back pack onto the cold ground below the book chute and reached in to seize the offending magazines, but, with a strangled “Oow!” quickly pulled her hand away; the magazines were now actually hot to the touch, as if they were about to catch fire. Emma seized her backpack with one hand and grabbed the handle of the book chute, with the idea of pouring the materials into the mouth of the book drop.

And then a furry, matted hand, with fingernails like dark, jagged, claws, reached out the book drop and took hold of the front of her coat and, pulling her off her feet, dragged Emma bodily into the open chute, which seemed to expand to absorb her entirety -- and slam shut behind her.

Emma’s parents went looking for her when she wasn’t home by 10 o’clock; her backpack and one running shoe was found on the sidewalk in front of the book drop, but neither Emma – or the magazines – were ever seen again in this world.

The moral of the story? Never steal or deface library materials.