Chapter 2 #2
I dive for it. Yank it from the holder so hard the plastic case shatters. The red canister is heavier than I expect, cold against my palms, and the pin’s stuck. I wrench it free with my teeth like an action hero who’s also deeply, deeply done with this evening.
The monster twitches.
I squeeze the handle.
A cloud of icy white bursts out, hissing like a furious cat. I aim it straight for the thing’s chest, sweeping the foam up into its shriveled, melting face.
The result is instant.
The creature rears back with a wet shriek that rips through the walls. Its skin bubbles and cracks under the freezing blast. The two heads scream in unison, one high and chittering, the other guttural and growling like it's gargling molten tar. It claws at the foam like it’s acid.
“Yeah! You don’t like cold? How about this, you Dollar Store Freddy Krueger?!”
I unload the entire can.
The thing doesn’t even fight back. It just flees—skittering up the side of the wall like a spider on speed, crashing through one of the library’s upper windows in a rain of glass and metal.
Gone.
I stand there for a beat, arm trembling, lips numb.
The silence that follows is almost worse than the screaming.
Broken glass rains down in soft pings. The extinguisher hisses out its last breath. And my body finally catches up to itself.
I drop the can, hands shaking, and reach for the front desk phone.
“911, what’s your emergency?”
“I—Hi, I… I was attacked.”
“Can you give me your name and location, ma’am?”
“Yes. Olivia Wilkins. I’m at the Walnut Falls Public Library. I just—there was a break-in. Something came out of the men's bathroom.”
“Ma’am, are you injured?”
“No, but it—Listen, this isn’t normal. It wasn’t a person. It looked like—God, I don’t know, like it had two faces. And claws. It was rotting. And it made this… this noise. Like—”
“Ma’am, please slow down. You said someone attacked you?”
“Yes. No. Not someone. It wasn’t human.”
There’s a pause on the other end. Static hums in the silence.
“Could it have been an animal? Maybe a bear?”
“A bear with two faces and a hatred for cleaning supplies? Are you kidding me?”
“I understand you’re upset—”
“No, you don’t. I saw it. I sprayed it. It screamed and ran. This wasn’t just some mangy raccoon with rabies. This thing wanted to tear me apart.”
Another pause.
“…We’re dispatching an officer to your location. Stay on the line.”
The squad car rolls up with all the urgency of a pizza delivery, blue lights flashing lazily over the shattered library window like it’s just another Friday night in sleepy Walnut Falls.
I’m still sitting behind the circulation desk when the two officers stroll in.
One’s a big, paunchy guy with a handlebar mustache straight out of an ‘80s action movie—Deputy Stan, I think. The other’s a younger woman with tight blonde curls and the permanent look of someone who regrets every career decision that led to this exact moment.
Stan stops halfway through the door, scans the scene—broken wood, fire extinguisher foam still puddled on the floor, my visibly shaking hands—and says, “Y’all got bears in here now?”
“It wasn’t a bear,” I snap, voice raw. “I already told dispatch—something came out of the men’s bathroom. It—”
“Right, right,” he says, pulling a tiny notepad from his pocket like this is just another fender bender. “You said it had two heads?”
“Two faces. It wasn’t like—” I wave my hand, frustrated, trying to make sense out of something my brain still refuses to fully accept. “It was one head. But it had another face growing out of its jaw. Like something built wrong. Like some nightmare... built from parts.”
The woman, Officer Kelsey, her nametag reads—arches a brow at Stan, then turns back to me with forced calm. “And you’re sure it wasn’t, say… a man? On something? PCP can do strange things. So can meth. Fentanyl—”
“Do drug addicts usually have claws that could slice a person like deli meat?!”
She doesn’t answer that.
Stan clears his throat. “Look, ma’am, we’ve had folks report strange things before.
It’s dark, your adrenaline’s up, and sometimes the brain.
.. embellishes. Bears with mange, for example, can look pretty weird if you catch ‘em at the wrong angle. Hell, saw one once had no fur and a bum leg—looked like something from The X-Files.”
“This wasn’t a bear,” I say again. “And it wasn’t on drugs. It was wrong. It didn’t move right, it didn’t sound right—”
“Alright, alright.” Stan scribbles something down, probably “woman hysterical—library bear attack.” “We’ll do a sweep of the area. You say it left through the upper window?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Like a cockroach with rabies. It hated the fire extinguisher. That’s what drove it off.”
Kelsey’s lips twitch. “You sprayed it with a fire extinguisher?”
“Yes! What, you think I keep silver bullets in the staff fridge?!”
Stan coughs into his hand, trying and failing not to laugh.
Kelsey doesn’t bother trying. “Ma’am, we’ll file a report. But unless there’s blood, prints, or something other than broken wood and scared-librarian adrenaline, I don’t think we’re gonna find much tonight.”
I want to throw something. Or cry. Or both.
Instead, I nod. Tight. “Right. Sure. Whatever. Thanks.”
The officers wander off, talking softly into their radios and poking around like they’re looking for a raccoon and not a two-faced walking corpse.
Then the news van arrives.
Trish Sanchez from WF Local 7 steps out like she’s about to win a damn Emmy for “local woman sees Satan in toilet.” Her heels click against the pavement as she swans up to me with a microphone and a practiced look of concerned empathy pasted on her face.
“Oh my gosh, Olivia? I’m so sorry to hear what happened,” she says in a voice soaked with fake syrup. “Can you tell us, in your own words, what you saw?”
I blink at the camera behind her. The lens stares back like an eye that doesn’t blink, doesn’t care. Just feeds.
“I… yeah. I was closing the library. I heard something in the men’s bathroom. When I opened the door, it burst out. It had two faces. Claws. It looked… rotted. And it was fast.”
Trish nods solemnly. “Two faces. That must’ve been terrifying.”
“Yes.”
“So just to clarify, you’re saying it wasn’t a person, or an animal?”
“No. It wasn’t. It was something else.”
Trish turns slightly toward the camera. “Viewers, this account comes from Walnut Falls librarian Olivia Wilkins, who claims a… mysterious creature… burst out of the restroom and fled into the night after being sprayed with a fire extinguisher. Authorities have not confirmed any sightings, but the window damage and physical evidence do point to a break-in.”
She turns back to me, smile tight. “And, Olivia, how certain are you that what you saw wasn’t, say, a hallucination? Or maybe a particularly aggressive transient?”
“I know what I saw,” I snap.
Trish turns slightly toward the camera. “Viewers, this account comes from Walnut Falls librarian Olivia Wilkins, who claims a… mysterious creature… burst out of the restroom and fled into the night after being sprayed with a fire extinguisher. Authorities have not confirmed any sightings, but the window damage and physical evidence do point to a break-in.”
She turns back to me, smile still tight and polite. “And, Olivia, how certain are you that what you saw wasn’t, say, a hallucination? Or maybe a particularly aggressive transient?”
“I know what I saw,” I snap. “It wasn’t a man. It wasn’t a bear. It was something else entirely.”
Trish nods sagely, drawing it out like she’s hosting a true crime podcast. “And just to clarify, you said it had… two faces?”
“Yeah. One stacked on top of the other, fused like melted wax. The top one had no eyes, the bottom one just… whispered.”
“To you?”
“What?”
“Did it say anything to you personally?” she asks, leaning in like she’s about to uncover the Roswell incident. “Sometimes, in traumatic events, victims report… messages. Voices.”
“No,” I say. “Nothing that made sense. Just… gibbering. It felt like it was inside my head, like it wanted to break my brain open and crawl inside.”
“Fascinating,” Trish says, glancing at the camera again. “And when you say it was ‘rotting,’ could that have been… an effect of the light? Or fear?”
I grit my teeth. “Its skin was falling off in ribbons. There were maggots, Trish.”
She doesn’t flinch. “Could that have been your mind trying to process trauma through symbolic imagery?”
“Lady, I’ve read Carl Jung. I know what projection is. That thing wasn’t a symbol. It was a monster.”
Trish softens her tone, just a hair. “It’s just important we explore all angles. You know how things like this can take on a life of their own. And we want to be fair.”
“Fair?” I scoff. “Is that why your cameraman’s zooming in every time I blink too hard? You’re not here for the truth. You’re here for the clip.”
Trish’s smile tightens into something colder. “You reached out to the station, Olivia.”
“No. I called the police. You showed up with a spotlight and a smirk.”
A long pause.
“Are you sure you want to keep this interview going?” she asks, still smiling. Still rolling.
I yank the mic off and shove it into her hands. “No. We’re done.”
I hear the words come out and instantly want to suck them back in. Because of course that’s what the crazy lady says. That’s the soundbite they’ll use. Overlay it with eerie music and stock footage of shadows moving behind trees.
I yank off the clip mic and shove it into Trish’s hands. “We’re done.”
I don’t wait for a reply. I head to my truck, heart pounding, skin buzzing with the echo of that… thing’s sounds. The way it had looked at me. Like it knew me. Like it had picked me for something.
The drive home is a blur. Trees flash past in my headlights like ghost arms reaching out to grab me. I check the rearview mirror three times. At one point, I swear I hear the chittering again—but it’s just my seatbelt buckle rattling against the door.
I pull up to the cabin, slam the truck into park, and nearly trip getting out. I run to the door with my keys already in hand, heart galloping, every shadow stretching longer than it should.
Inside, it’s still.
I lock every bolt, drop the blinds, and grab the flashlight and that same damn fire extinguisher from the library. I check under the bed. In the closets. Behind the shower curtain.
There’s nothing.
Just me.
And the memory of its face.
I sit on the couch, legs pulled up, flashlight pointed at the front door.
I don’t sleep.
I can’t.
Because it’s out there. Somewhere. And now it knows me. It knows what I look like. Smell like.
And if it hated cold, I wonder what it feels about revenge.