Authors Note: I made sure this was well edited, but if anyone finds any typos please just let me know ^^
This is for you Omen!
You were sneaking around somewhere you weren't supposed to be. It was late and you should have been in your dorm, asleep. Your roommates didn't notice you sneak out, or if they did they never ratted you out. You were a good student, really, your grades showed for it. You just felt it necessary to take certain matters into your own hands. The problem that started all of this began when you couldn't afford special text books for your advanced classes. You had been graciously accepted into the more advanced programs on scholarship thanks to your impeccable grades, but without extra funding you couldn't keep up in class. Simply put you were broke and couldn't afford anything outside of your tight budget, but your wealthy peers certainly could. You were broke, but brilliant so why let the opportunity slip away?
These expensive and private lesson plans were kept under lock and key in the student library. All someone needed to do to access their own paid for books was to show their student identification to the librarian and they would retrieve the lesson plans and text books for you. You would never ask a friend or fellow peer to break the rules and share classified information, that would put an innocent in pretty hot water. You however were not innocent, and was currently walking the dangerous line of lukewarm and boiling hot water.
For your unconventional process all you needed was someone's student ID and library card and you were more than capable of navigating the locked shelves and retrieving what you needed from the case without setting off an alarm.
Creeping silently in a pair of slip-on vans, you made your way swiftly down the massive corridors and into the library. Standing by the entrance, tucked behind a pillar, you waited for the kind of silence that doesn't sound like someone is holding their breath. You waited for the natural silence of the night. Finding the rhythm of the night you slipped into pattern with the hum of the old ventilation and ceiling fans, with the gentle almost non existent buzz of the surrounding floors and rooms. Many windows on the high walls near the ceiling were lit with the bright moonlight, filling the gigantic open vicinity with a calming and hazy blue light. You walked around the edge of the center, staying in the wall of shadows behind the lit up ground, the skylight beaming down on the marble. Sliding perfectly over the locked counter you took your slips off at contact of the carpet. You landed in a crouch and tied the laces together and through your belt loop.
In your socks you treaded neatly along the crook of the shadows that cut triangles across the aisles. You reached the correct shelf and began to climb. You could not rely on the ladders as that would make entirely too much sound, and you had to leave your socks on because toe prints would be too risky. You had bought a new pack of nylon socks and mittens with rubber pads on the fingers, a new pair for each night because you have to burn them at the end of each little mission. Grappling swiftly and slowly through the shadows you eventually reached the upper deck level that wraps around the expansive library ceiling. Hoisting yourself dangerously over the ledge of the railing, you eased yourself onto the metal grate toes first. Shelves laid out like clock hands from every direction, but you only y needed to move forward. You weren't sure what lies in the other sections, and you never had time to snoop it all out. The first two nights you tried this were spent memorizing your path so you didn't bother wasting time on any extra expeditions.
Watching the number as you glide on the old wood floors, never update like the rugs or marble downstairs so you could only assume it was all original. You silently thanked the old part of the building for being settled and never creaking under your weight. You finally found the locked case you had come all this way for. You made quick work of the wide archaic locks, only needing plain two hair pins. You took the desired textbook and crawled as small as possible into a corner and used a glow in the dark bookmark you kept in your back pocket to illuminate each line, and read as fast as possible while focussing on the greater points. You became entranced in the topic and lost the feel for the rhythm of the building, and a presence had made itself known. Freezing, everything in your body stopped while your heart speed up. You listened to the movement of this, no these, several bodies made their ways through the space below you. You tried to breath as shallowly as possible, your heart was too loud to gauge the sound of your breathes so you held it.
The bodies passed through the circle or moon lit space in the center far below below you, and you could see what it was now. It was some creature, some kind of mangled monster with too many limbs lumbering across the floor. It went to the locked counter and leaned it's lopsided head to the side you had passed over. It kept nodding its head and sweeping it back and forth, and you finally realized it was tracking your scent. You waited for it to slip over the counter and out of sight before slowly getting up to put the book back and not bothering to lock it incase of sound. Standing for a second trying to decided if you should run or hide and you heard the slide and scrape of a ladder signaling you were out of time to run, so you ducked back into the shadows. You walked all the way to the end of the aisle and sat at a crevice between a shelf and the ground in the pitch dark and tried to be as small as possible. Tried to be as cold as possible. Your heart had not slowed down and your chest felt like it was being electrocuted.
The monster was close enough that you could hear the small sound of it stepping on the floorboards. You hid your face behind your arms and tried not to count the steps but you had already figured out there was something wrong with how many times it had taken a step in a short distance. The beast crawled closer to your aisle and stopped at the end of it. You went completely stone still and tried to press your very being into the wall at your back, shrinking until your were invisible. The beast took a step and a half, before walking down the rest of the deck and away from your location. You tried to silently shudder a breath in and open your eyes. You waited for what felt like forever and you could no longer tell if the silence of the gigantic room was natural or a held breath, because you were holding yours. Standing up, desperate to get out and back to your dorm, you were trying to suppress shaking down your entire body.
You cautiously hugged the bookcases and slinked your way to the opening of the shelves and back onto the iron deck. You twisted and lowered yourself over the side, latched onto the dusty shelves and began your long and precarious descent down. Only halfway down, still a well over hundred feet off the ground you heard something move, it was a jump and a roll, a series of thuds and stops before you could almost FEEL it's attention from above on you. Your toe slid ever so slightly under the frozen weight and the nylon created the faintest scratching, but that was it needed to finally pinpoint you. You heard it making it's way very quickly down the walking deck above, working the ladders to catch you at the next deck level and you tried to scramble down as fast as you could, too terrified and exhausted to trick it again, and it's shambling heavy steps got faster and you could hear it halfway around the room to you. You thought it was your heart beating hard in your ears before you realized there were boot steps below echoing on the marble floor and you realized a teacher must have finally caught you and this monster you did not understand was getting louder and closer and suddenly the deck right above you shook with it's frantic lumbering and it's heavy interrupted breathing and you slipped, your entire heart plummeted into your gut as you tilted backwards away from the shelf, and you could finally see it in the partial light as it lunged at you.
It had no eyes, it was covered in seams and it smelt like formaldehyde. In horror you made the connection to a famous book about a similar monster. Tilting backwards and falling away from the shelf its lunge for you stretched it's body impossibly long and barely missed you, it's extra arms keeping it tight to the railing. It was much too big to follow you down this direction. You had just about forgotten about the person below when you heard the shuffling of cloth and a familiar deep voice. The monster receded from your vision backwards into the shadows above and you braced for the ground or to crush this person, when several seconds before you should have reached the floor an arm wrapped around your waist and your vision was obstructed.
Suddenly being set on the ground your knees fell weak and buckled on you, socks sliding you off balance and the grip on your waist tightened to keep you upright. Through the rushing blood your could hear the voice of your famous principle and director of exorcist cram school. He was saying your name. Your vision was white and dizzy so you shut your eyes tight and tried to swallow you heart back down. His free hand laid backside to your chest to feel your rapid-fire pulse. His hand left your drumming chest and intertwined with the edge if his cape. He pulled the expansive fabric over your smaller form and closed it from both sides.
Floating. Still in his arms, but you felt like you had begun drift backwards, though not like the horrific falling sensation just a moment ago. It almost feel like if air could move like water, it felt nice and slow. You could hear your breath again and realized you must have been hyperventilating, breathing out the tight stress and panic, and breathing in the scent of roses and sweets. It smelt like lavender and scotch. It smelt like white tea and an old study room. It smelt relaxing and strong. The more you breathed in the scents the more your body felt like it was drifting apart and your heart finally felt like it was in the right place in your chest. Your cheeks felt cold and a soft gloved hand rubbed them gently, wiping tears off you hadn't been aware of. You almost felt like falling asleep, and didn't dare open your eyes lest you be pulled from this dark and warm embrace like a sudden awakening. Your legs were picked up with the arm not holding your waist and the cape somehow still covered your form. From the outside it made you look smaller as though there was unseen space behind it. Inside though, there was more than enough room between the arms and the chest carrying you. You felt so safe and lulled that your chest finally loosened up, the electric strikes across it melting away. A thumb absently rubbed across your brow and eyelids, coaxing you closer towards the embrace of sleep. The rhythm of the walk gently swaying you. Thoughts slowed and slurred in the gentle space around you, no longer aware of your surroundings or capable of comprehending, you let the sleep take you. The soft sensation all over embraced you.
You woke the next day with blurry images in the back of your mind of the night before and felt better rested than you've been the past several months. The smell of sweets and lavender lingered in your hair and hands, slowly filling your gut with a warm, comfortable sensation. You were vaguely aware of who it was that caught and carried you, but you didn't know what to make of the whole ordeal. Why did he calm show up to save you and calm the panic attack, when you should have been immediately faced with punishment for trespassing.
You throw your blankets through the dryer before sleeping sometimes, as an attempt to emulate that perfect soothing warmth. Sometimes when you wake up that sweet rose and lavender smell wafts through air ducts and windows like you had summoned it to you in your sleep. Perhaps it was left from what you were really trying to summon, or rather, who.