A
Jen (the Goth Librarian) and Emma (her ghost sidekick) Library Story
Jen locked the library door and
walked back through the dark building to her office. The rumbling of the
elevator and grumbling of the furnace, no longer bothered her as she walked
through the old building.
She didn’t even jump when Emma, the
Ghost of Librarians Past, materialized beside her. “Do you have tomorrow’s
story time planned, dear?”
Jen gritted her teeth. The ghostly
librarian might use endearments when she spoke, but there was nothing sweet
about the way she nagged and commented on everything Jen did. Only last week,
she’d appeared after a very successful teen lock-in to sniff her nose and say,
“we’d never have teens running around the library in the dark in my day.”
A teen would never have dared breath in
the library in Emma’s day!
Jen sat down at her desk and picked up
the book for tomorrow’s story time; Bats
at the Library by Brian Lies. She loved the cute furry flying mice the
pictures depicted. They wanted nothing but to fly in to the library and read
stories all night. A clunk up in the attic brought her back to reality.
Obviously, the real bats who lived in the attic weren’t cute story lovers.
The clunk was followed by a few more.
Jen got up and walked out into the dark library. She stood listening to the
thump, thump, thump coming from the attic. If that was bats, they’d grown feet
and were walking around up there!
She made her way to the stairs. She
placed her right foot on the first step and cursed the architects who’d put the
light switch up in the attic, rather than at the bottom of the stairs. “Emma,”
she whispered.
“Here, dear,” a disembodied voice said
beside her.
Great! The ghost didn’t even want to
materialize. Whatever was up there, even Emma didn’t want to see it.
The third stair tread creaked. She
paused and then shook her head. It was a just a squirrel. A squirrel with big
feet. She paused on the top step, her hand resting on the knob. From the other
side of the door, she didn’t hear anything.
Either whatever had been there was gone. Or it was waiting right inside
the door.
She threw the door open and lunged into
the room. A tall man stood in the middle of the attic, moonlight cascading in
the window and gleaming off his pale skin. He turned slowly to face her, the
light sparkling off his fangs. Vampire bat in the attic!
Jen wiped her sweaty hands on her
sweater. Along with garlic and a stake, she’d left the Librarian’s Guide to Fighting the Paranormal in her office.
The vampire smiled, looking past her.
“Good evening,” he said in deep sonorous tones. He sounded like James Earl
Jones.
Okay, not just a vampire, but a clichéd
vampire inhabited her attic. She followed his gaze. He was smiling at Emma, who
had not only materialized, but was smiling back at him.
Emma patted her hair. The old ghost was
actually primping for a vampire. When she stepped toward him, she walked with
her hands behind her back.
The vampire reached out his hand to her.
“It’s been a long time, Emma.”
Emma, her skirts swishing behind her,
reached out her right hand to the vampire. “It has been Dmitri.”
He bent to kiss her hand. As he
straightened up, she leaned forward to whisper in her ear. “And I told you, to
stay away from my town,” she said, as her left had flashed out. She drove her
number 2 pencil into the vampire’s chest.
He stood perfectly still, his mouth a
red round “o”, his eyes wide. And then he slowly turned to sand, dropping into
a little pile on the floor. A breeze lifted through the window and blew the
vampire out into the night.
Emma walked back to the door. “Close
your mouth, dear,” she said, as she walked by Jen. As Jen hurried after her,
the ghost added, “I keep telling you, all the iPads in the world will never
replace a good no. 2 pencil.”
