A/N: Lol, sorry about Daryl's name. I'm obsessed with Kill Bill. Must. See. Volume. 2. Soon … I'm glad none of you noticed how much that scene with Daryl and Matt resembled the scene with Laura and James at Brookhaven ("You snotty little brat, open up!"). Btw, I've named the library after John Carpenter, who directed this great Silent Hill-ish movie called "In the Mouth of Madness". Anyway, I shall stop rambling now. -E.P.O.
Chapter 5: Four Tales and Two Kids
"Shit."
Matt had searched every square foot of the parking lot outside the cafeteria several times now, but he couldn't find the axe that had been flung out through the window earlier. "And if I stay out here any longer, I'll freeze to death and penguins will …"
Suddenly, the radio began playing static again. It was rather quiet, so the monster(s) detected by the little machine were probably far away. Matt was only armed with the metal table leg, so he didn't want to get into another fight. He gave up his quest for the missing axe and got back into the library's cafeteria through the broken window. The white noise trailed off.
After removing Daryl's makeshift bolt, Matt opened the door, squeezed the shotgun into his backpack and exited the cafeteria. He was back in the entrance hall.
The doors at the top of the stairway were now open.
Smiling and clutching the table leg, Matt ran up the stairs and entered the second floor. The smile vanished from his face after he had tried four of the five phones up here and discovered that they were broken. Now there was only one phone left – a black one, seated on a large desk that was cluttered up with newspapers and brochures. He walked up to the desk and picked up the receiver.
No dial tone.
"How surprising," he muttered, hung up and sighed. What was he supposed to do now?
Then, as he ran his eyes over the desk, he noticed two bottles and what looked like a first aid kit. He opened the white box. It was indeed a first aid kit, containing bandages, disinfectant, morphine, penicillin and adhesive plaster. Since he wasn't badly wounded at the moment, he decided to save the first aid kit for later. After cramming the kit into his backpack, he examined the two bottles. They contained a brown liquid that smelled like shit, but - as he discovered when he drank from one of the bottles - tasted like orange juice and seemed to replenish his health. He drank all the liquid and then left the empty bottles on the desk.
Matt spent the next 60 seconds wandering around in the department for adults. This library really had everything – collections of poems, fantasy, horror, whodunits, romance novels … Of course he didn't feel like reading any of it right now.
He was walking down an aisle in the department with classical literature when he saw the girl. Her age was probably 8-10 years. She had black hair and wore blue jeans, a yellow unbuttoned raincoat and a white t-shirt. She was standing in the middle of the aisle, reading a bulky book. When she heard Matt's footsteps, she closed the book and turned around to look at him.
"Hi," Matt said and stopped walking, four metres away from the kid. "What's your name?"
The girl just stood there, staring at him. "Maybe she's mute," Matt thought.
Then she gave him an answer: "My name's Amanda and I'm not mute."
"What the …"
"Er … what's that book you've got?" Matt asked, frowning.
Amanda glanced at the book she was holding in her right hand. "It's called "Faust". Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote it." She tossed it towards Matt. The book flew through the air for a few seconds, before it landed and slid across the floor until it stopped at Matt's feet. He picked it up and scanned the cover. He remembered reading this story when he was 20. It was a classical tale about a scientist named Faust, who …
"I think it's kinda difficult to understand," Amanda said.
"Well, it's not a children's book … Anyway, what are you doing here?"
"Trying to find a good book. This is a public library, right?"
"Yeah," Matt said and walked closer to the kid, "but why aren't you … hey, where are you going?"
Amanda had suddenly run off down the aisle. Matt tore along after her. "Amanda, wait!"
While rushing away, the girl suddenly reached out, snatched a book from the shelf and pitched it back at Matt, aiming for his head. "Amanda, where are … argh!" The book collided with his shin and he fell to the ground. By the time he had scrambled to his feet, Amanda was gone. He cursed, took breath and picked up the book that had hit his shin. It was "The Tempest" by William Shakespeare.
Matt didn't know why, but he felt like he had to take the two books with him. He managed to stuff "Faust" into the backpack, but then there wasn't room for "The Tempest". After throwing the discman, CD's and sunglasses away, he placed the Shakespeare play in the backpack and continued roaming the library.
The round lamps hanging from the ceiling lit up the shelves as he strolled by. All the computers he found were broken. The second floor was completely silent except for the sound of his footsteps. He was glad there weren't any monsters around, but it was still pretty creepy, being all alone in a place like this, a place where anything could happen …
At a wall in the children's department, between the shelves filled with fairy tales and comics, Matt found something that looked like a strange silver door. There were four vertical slits arranged in one vertical row in the middle of the door. He tried pushing and pulling the door, but it wouldn't budge.
Then he noticed the scrap of paper that had been attached to the wall above the door with drawing pins. He gingerly detached the paper and studied it. Someone or something had written a cryptic poem on it.
4 tales, 4 slits, in a door
In a door made of silver;
But where does each book belong?
First, above the other 3:
Tale about an alchemist,
Who meets the Devil himself.
Just below that magic tale:
A man loses everything;
Tale of suffering and faith.
Below 2 and above 1:
Tale that begins with a storm,
Ends on enchanted island.
In the very lowest slit:
A most dangerous voyage;
Classical Greek adventure.
Truth may seem, but cannot be;
Beauty brag, but 't is not she;
Truth and beauty buried be.
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Matt murmured and frowned. Then he got an idea. What if the author of the poem was telling him which books to place in which slits? "That would actually make this weird poem kinda useful … that is, if the door can indeed be opened when the right books are placed in the right slits." But Matt didn't really doubt whether the door would open when he had placed the books correctly; in a place like this, a combination of books unlocking a door didn't seem very strange. "But I've only got two books … I'm probably gonna need four."
Then he noticed the two books lying nearby, in the corner of a pool table. "A pool table, here? … Well, this is the kids' department, so I guess that's not strange at all."
One of the books was simply called "The Book of Job". Matt picked it up and examined its back. It said "The story about Job is one of the principal works of world literature. Philosophers, artists and theologians have all been inspired and affected by this magnificent piece of …" and so on.
The other book was called "The Odyssey". Matt picked it up, not doubting whether this was really Homer's classical work or not, and carried the two books back to the silver door.
"Okay, let's see … In the very lowest slit … Classical Greek adventure – that's got to be The Odyssey," Matt said and placed that particular book in the lowest slit. "Now, in the next highest slit, "A man loses everything; Tale of suffering and faith". I guess that's Job," he muttered and placed the "Book of Job" in the second highest slit.
Then he produced the two last books from his backpack and squeezed "The Tempest" into the next lowest slit and "Faust" into the very highest one.
The thick silver door swung back and disappeared from his range of vision, revealing a small room. Matt smiled and stepped through the doorway, into the somewhat dark area beyond it.
This room was partially illuminated by a single round, modern lamp, hanging from the middle of the ceiling. The walls were white and smooth. There were no windows or doors, except for the one Matt had opened by solving the book puzzle. There wasn't any furniture either, except for an ordinary easy chair in the middle of the room, right under the lamp.
And there, sitting in the armchair, was another child.
The boy had, like Amanda, black hair and his face also reminded Matt of the girl. Perhaps the two kids were in the same family? He wore a Bart Simpson t-shirt and black trousers.
"Were you the one who pushed me in that bathroom, back in the flower shop?" Matt asked.
"Yeah," the boy answered, "that was fun."
"That was FUN? You think that was FUN?!" Matt thought. He wanted to do a Homer Simpson imitation and throttle the life out of the stupid brat while yelling "Why, you little …" But instead, he merely said: "Really? You've got one fucked-up sense of humour."
The boy chuckled.
"What's your name, anyway?" Matt asked.
"Tommy."
"Right. Er … do you know a girl named Amanda?"
"Yeah, she's my sister."
Suddenly, Matt heard the faint sound of …
"A siren? What the … Hey, Tommy, do you know why the sirens are sounding?" Matt said.
But Tommy didn't reply. There was now something about the kid that made Matt a little uneasy.
Abruptly and with an eerie facial expression, Tommy got out of the easy chair and ran out of the room. "Oh crap. Not again," Matt mumbled and ran after the boy. As he followed Tommy through the library, the sirens got louder and louder …
Until Matt saw the woman.
She was a lean, blonde woman with green eyes and pale skin. Tommy ran up to her and, after giving her a brief hug, turned around to look at Matt. Both Tommy and the woman smiled. The woman's right hand ruffled the kid's hair and then rested on his head.
"Oh my God, that's the woman I saw in the flower shop, but she was dead, nailed onto the wall," Matt thought. Although this woman looked like the one from the shower, there were small differences. The woman in the shower had been wearing blood-stained clothes, this woman wore ordinary, clean clothes. The woman in the shower had been hanging above the floor, this woman had her feet on the ground.
And while the woman in the shower had been dead, this woman was alive and uninjured.
Suddenly, dirty brown skin seemed to grow out of Tommy's scalp. The skin gracefully slid down across the boy's body, covering his face, then his neck, then his chest … The filthy skin also crawled up the woman's right hand, relentlessly wrapping around her wrist, then her arm, then her right shoulder … The skin was actually creeping across their bodies like a twining plant growing on two statues. They just smiled, stared at Matt and stood still while their bodies were slowly being wrapped up in skin.
"Oh my fucking God, oh my fucking God, oh my fucking God …" Matt droned as he staggered backwards.
Everything began to bleed now. The ceiling bled, the floor bled, the walls, the shelves, the books – it all bled. Stains of blood crawled around on the ceiling like spiders, streaks of blood twisted themselves on the floor like snakes. The sirens were deafening.
In the middle of this madness, he remembered the blonde woman's name …
"Sophie …"
… and then everything became black as Matt lost consciousness.