Page 54 of The Library at Hellebore

“Jesus Christ, shut the hell up.”

The Librarian’s head lolled back in our direction, its expression no longer as put-upon. It had regained its pyrexic excitement. It licked the circumference of its mouth with a gorily red tongue, and blinked its many eyes in an undulating wave that shimmered up into the darkness of the ceiling.

“Just him,” it said. “All others can walk free. Cursed-song, dark-born,murderer.” Its attention was for me alone.

I would have stiffened at the title if I wasn’t already skewered in place by Gracelynn’s command. “What did you call me?”

“I seeee you. I see what you are. I see it clear. Like the sun in the last hour on the last day of the universe. I see what you are. I will name you as they’ve named us: murderer, butcher, monster,” trilled the Librarian.

Its devout gibbering seemed to have a secondary effect; as it prattled gigglingly on, the Librarian’s movements were regaining their sleekness, and if before it had seemed like the creature was fighting unseen but very constrictive fetters to even twitch a look one way and the other, it now appeared like its bondage was beginning to loosen.

“Hey, Gracelynn,” I said. “Whatever you’re doing, you might want to consider doing more of it. Or something different. Because it’s starting not to work.”

“Don’t you think I know?”

The leering visage of the thing Hellebore had named Librarian lurched a foot closer to Rowan and me. It had so many teeth: rows upon rows of molars tunneling into the back of its mouth, stubbling its tongue. From a distance, that excess had been invisible. The surplus dentition was the color of its gums, its tongue. But they were definitely there, a textural horror that made me abruptly glad Hellebore, with its endless murders, had killed any nascent trypophobia I might have had.

Gracelynn sang out then: a single mercury-bright note that shone through my bones like a flame held to paper, and I burned in its light. I was dying; I was euphoric in my dying. My vision mottled with silver, dripping rivers of it, diffusing every detail.And then slowly, that argent began to gray as everything in me shut down: heart, lungs, the factory of my digestive system; blood slowed, went sluggish, began to still; it was like falling asleep almost, a pleasing cottony nothing lulling me to unconsciousness. I felt Rowan slacken too, his weight becoming an anchor, pulling me down into the dark. We slumped into a pile of inert limbs; still Gracelynn sang. They’d have sung me into death’s arms if not for the Librarian’s surprised laughter unfurling through the air.

“If only, cursed-song. If only, siren-sired. If only, sings-to-the-nothing.”

Gracelynn faltered. It was a mistake on their part. A desperate, understandable mistake. A mistake anyone in their rarified position might have committed. I’d find out later that what Gracelynn had wasn’t a gift for compulsion; they didn’t have siren ancestry. What they carried was the echo of the words that calved the universe from nothingness and would one day put the cosmos back where it belonged. But some laws, it seemed, were older than creation.

“If only the song would take me. I wish so much to be sung into the dust and the dirt and the deep nothing. I want so badly to die.”

The Librarian reared up, blotting the pressed-tin ceiling and what light there was with the spiral of its bulk. I could only see its smile, luminous somehow despite the rest of its face being in silhouette.

“And now I will.”

It lunged. This time however I was prepared. Despite the headache I had accrued from being collateral to Gracelynn’s attempt at unmaking the Librarian, a vertiginous sensation half like food poisoning and half like the worst migraine ever, I was on my feet and running before the creature’s exultantdeclaration was finished. Rowan pelted after me, admittedly at an awkward stumble as he had about a foot of height on me and I had my fingers twisted at his collar, and was pulling hard.

“Run!” I snarled, not looking back, barreling for the exit.

Only to have the way blocked by a crash of coils, the Librarian barricading the exit with its own shimmering flesh. Letting go of Rowan, I reversed, slamming into Gracelynn, who went down in a spray of tulle. I didn’t stop; I grabbed them by the elbow, dragging them forward.

“Inside!”

“Are you kidding?” wheezed Gracelynn, skidding to a halt. “That’s the actual library. We’re not—”

I dared a glance behind us as something came down with awhumph: it was more of the Librarian, more of its apparently infinitely extending frame, its arms everywhere, reaching for us, a nightmare forest of grasping hands. Given its size, the Librarian could have ended this long ago, but I had a feeling it either liked its games or we were being punished for cockblocking its plans for euthanasia. Either way, like it or not, we were being herded.

“We’re out of options.” When that didn’t move our newfriend,I said, “And your spouse is probably in there somewhere.”

That did it. With a terse nod, Gracelynn gathered their skirts in both hands and sprinted past me with cartoonish speed; I could have almost laughed if not for the shrieking monstrosity thrashing after us, howling.

We fucking ran.

We tore into the library without even the barest grasp of its floor plan, pelting wild-eyed down its shadowed aisles, theLibrarian surging behind us like the ocean. It waslaughing.Like a little kid. Like this was a child’s game and we were all its pubescent friends being brought together for play in summer: nothing to see here, nope, nothing dire at all, no threat of being consumed by a monstrosity aching to die anywhere to be seen. In retrospect, from its perspective, this probably wasjustplay, a moment of levity to be chased by light refreshments before it noped out of the mortal coil at long last: a perfect program for a perfect day.

“I could be a decoy, I guess,” said Rowan without much enthusiasm as we zigzagged deeper into the library. “It’ll be better than dying of lung failure. I bet she’d make it quick.” The years of precocious lung damage were taking its toll on him. Despite his longer stride, Rowan lagged about two steps behind me and four behind Gracelynn, who proved an admirable sprinter despite their wedding cake of a dress. Rowan was wheezing so hard he’d begun to whistle with every breath.

“We’re notsacrificingyou,” Gracelynn shouted over a shoulder.

“Where the hell did you last see your spouse, anyway?” I howled.

If we were being forced through the building, we could at least procure the catalysis of our predicament. Behind us, laughing, the Librarian brought a shelf brimming with leather-bound gold-inscribed texts crashing onto the carpeted floor.

“Oopsies.” It giggled.

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