3. Emily
3
EMILY
T he scream ripped from my throat, and I struggled forward, trying to escape the person who’d grabbed hold of me. I tripped over my feet, my ankle twisting painfully, and fell forward, clamping my arms around the book.
“Emily! Emily. It’s me. It’s Michael!” Strong hands grabbed hold of me before I could fall down the stairs, and I was pulled back to my feet.
Michael, my next-door neighbor, frowned at me, holding me out, his hands firm on my shoulders. “Are you okay? What’s going on?”
My insides had shriveled in fear. I’d been sure that he was the guy who’d chased me out of the library, come to finish the job, whatever that job may be.
“Emily?”
“T-There was a—” I glanced back up at the library doors. They were shut tight. Was the guy still in there? Locked in the rare books division. I cleared my throat, hugging the book tight to my chest. “I was calling 911.”
“What? Why? What happened?” Michael looked pained at the thought of me in danger. Blonde, stocky, but muscular, he’d been a good neighbor to me and had become a fast friend.
“Can I borrow your phone?” I asked, looking down at the remnants of mine. “I think my phone is …”
“Let me get it.” Michael bent and picked it up. “The screen is cracked. Shit, I’m sorry, Em, but you were calling 911?”
Hastily, I explained what had happened.
Michael’s expression went from shocked to confused. “Wait, what?”
“What?” I asked, hugging the book tighter. I slipped it into my tote bag then held out my hand for my phone. “I need to call 911.”
“Hold on a sec, Em, are you sure about that?”
I frowned. “Michael? Did you not just hear what I said? About the guy and the?—”
“I heard you say that some guy dropped from the ceiling of the rare books division, wearing a hood and a cloak, with glowing eyes,” Michael said. “You know that’s not possible, right?”
“What are you saying?” I asked.
“Come on, Em, you’re jumpy. You’re tired. You’ve been working late nights, working on your book all day,” Michael said. “How much sleep did you get last night? If you got more than three hours, I’ll be surprised. I heard you making coffee this morning, at like, four.”
Darn the paper thin walls in my apartment. “I—What does that matter? Are you saying that I made this up?” I railed at the thought.
But a small part of me agreed with him. I was tired, and I’d been reading a super spooky ancient tome before it had happened. And the lights had flickered and cut out on their own with no one near the light switch. Was it possible that I’d imagined it?
“I think you had like … a fatigue hallucination,” Michael said. “I think that’s a thing. I’ve read about it. You get hypnagogic hallucinations or something. You were probably nodding off but then that stuff happened.”
I still wanted to call 911. The feeling I’d had, the sheer horror, was unforgettable .
“Like a waking nightmare,” Michael said, and then he slung one brawny arm around my shoulders and drew me into a sidelong hug. “Don’t worry, you’re fine. You’re with me now. I’ll protect you.” He laughed and jostled me against his side. “No big, bad, hooded dudes are going to get ya.”
“Funny,” I said, glancing back up the steps, reluctantly. “I’ve never had a waking nightmare before. Maybe I should call 911, just in case.”
“No, Em. You’ll just waste their time if you call them back here. And you don’t want to get in trouble for that. If they go in there and find the place empty—” He cut off and shrugged. “Come on. Let’s get you home.”
I walked down the stairs with him, thinking hard about what had happened.
It was so vivid. How could it possibly have been my imagination? I’d talked to my therapist about trauma responses before, but this was different. This had felt real.
At the bottom of the grand stone steps, I stopped. “What are you even doing here, Mike?” I asked.
“I came to get you,” he said. “I know you keep working late, and I was worried.” He tapped me lightly on the shoulder with his fist. “We’re best buds, remember?”
“Thanks,” I said, a little of my anxiety easing.
“Let’s get a cab.” Michael hailed one, and we got inside.
I barely paid attention as we took the long ride over to our apartment block in Kingsbridge. The building was brick and tall, but rundown with a crack running up the glass of the front door.
Michael buzzed us both in the building, and we took the long walk up the stairs to the fifth floor. The elevator was still on the fritz, and I did not feel like getting stuck in a hot, sweaty metal compartment today.
Michael stopped in front of the door to his apartment, and his pet dog, Reginald Tailwag the Third, barked and whined, scratching to be let out. “You want to come in?” he asked. “I’ve got a bag of microwave popcorn with your name on it. We can stay up late and watch movies.”
“Nah, I’m beat. I think I’m just going to hit the sack.” Really, I wanted to get my book out and page through it. And have a cup of lavender tea to get rid of the residual fear after my “nightmare” in the library.
“Suit yourself.” Michael gave me a quick hug goodnight then opened the door and foisted his Labrador backward. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m home. You’d swear I was gone a year. Night, Em.”
“Night.” I let myself into my apartment and shut the door, scraping the chain into place.
“What’s with the Fort Knox routine?” Morgan, my night-owl of a roommate, asked from our beat-up sofa in the tiny living room. She wore a pink onesie covered in unicorns and bopped her head in time to the beat from the headphones around her neck.
“Hi, Morgan,” I said, dumping my bag on the kitchen counter. “How are you?”
“Better than you? What’s popping, honey bunny? You look like you saw a ghost.”
“What’s popping? What year is it anyway?” I asked.
Morgan stuck out her tongue. “Whatever. Just because I’m keeping up with the slang of the young uns’ doesn’t make me cringe.”
I pulled a face. “You sound like Steve Buschemi from 30 Rock . ‘What is up, fellow kids.’”
“Hey.” Morgan pointed a finger at me. “Most people would kill to be Steve Buschemi. The man is a chameleon, I tell you. A true actor.” And that was Morgan’s calling—being an actress.
I placed my hand on top of my tote, biting down on my bottom lip. The outline of the book was a visceral reminder of what had happened at the library. What Michael said hadn’t happened.
“Seriously,” Morgan said. “What’s up? You’re acting weird. Did Michael bother you in the hall again?”
“Micheal doesn’t bother me, Morg. He’s our friend, remember? ”
“Your friend,” Morgan replied. “And quit calling me Morg. It makes me sound like I’m a literal morgue.”
“That’s … super dark,” I said. “But okay, fine. I thought it was cute.”
“Do you think Michael’s cute?” Morgan asked.
“I—I don’t know, I’ve never really thought of him like that. And this isn’t about Michael anyway,” I replied.
“Then what is it about?”
I removed the book from the tote, simply because I wanted to feel its weight in my hands, and Morgan frowned at it. “A book?”
“No, not the book.” And then I told her everything that had happened since Jenna had left me alone at work.
“You were attacked? Did you call the cops?” Morgan asked. “Because that is—that’s terrifying. What about the guy in there? The, uh, the janitor or whatever.”
“That’s the thing,” I said. “Michael kind of convinced me not to call them.”
Morgan gave me a look laden with suspicion. “Michael was there?”
“Yeah. He found me on the steps of the library. He came to check on me because I wasn’t home yet.”
“And you don’t find that creepy, like, at all? That he’s basically stalking you?”
“He’s not stalking me, Morgan, for God’s sake. He’s just being a friend. We hang out plenty. We watch movies together, go to lunch, sometimes I pop by when he’s working to check on him too. He’s a bro. It’s not anything weird.”
“Sureeee, buddy,” Morgan said, pulling her legs toward herself as she sat cross-legged on the sofa. “I can get past the whole ‘showing up at work’ to save you thing. But what about the fact that he said not to call 911. Is he out of his mind? You were attacked.”
“By a guy who dropped out of the sky. Like from the roof.”
“You neglected to mention that part.”
“Either it was like a mental break because I’m stressed or there was someone there.” I picked up the book and carried it with me to the armchair across from the coffee table we’d gotten at an auction.
Morgan clicked her tongue. “I dunno. Sounds weird to me. The whole thing is weird.”
I nodded.
“Here I was thinking I’d have the exciting life as the actress, and you’re out there being chased by ceiling men.”
“Ceiling men?”
“Well, I don’t know, what would you call it?”
I shrugged and hugged the book to my chest. It was the weirdest thing, but I didn’t want to let go of it, even though it shouldn’t have been with me in the first place.
“What’s that?” Morgan tilted her head, locks of blonde hair swishing past her shoulder.
“It’s a book from the rare books division. I shouldn’t have brought it home, but I was studying it when everything went down. I’ll take it back tomorrow,” I said, but it tasted like a lie on my lips.
“What’s it about?”
“It’s a blood-stained journal written by a crazy person from France,” I said. “About vampires.”
“No. Friggin. Way. That is awesome,” Morgan said. “That’s like … this must be like a wet dream to you, right now. A book about vampires? When you’re writing a paranormal romance story?”
“I know, but it doesn’t matter, I’m taking it back tomorrow, cataloging it, and putting it on the shelf.”
Morgan arched an eyebrow.
“What?”
“You’re not taking that book back, and we both know it.”
“I have to,” I said. “Those are the rules. I’ve already bent them by stealing the book in the first place.”
“You didn’t steal it. You panic-borrowed it. Totally different concepts,” Morgan said, her eyes alight like this was the coolest thing to ever happen.
“Still have to take it back. ”
“Don’t be such a goodie-goodie.” Morgan got up and stretched. “This is the first time you’ve ever got your hands on something this cool, right?”
“Right.”
“So, be bad for once and keep it. Maybe it will help you write your story,” Morgan said. “Live a little, Em.”
“I’ll consider it.”
Morgan laughed. “I’m going to make a cup of coffee. Do you want some?”
“It’s past ten.”
“Exactly. You’re going to need it if you’re going to stay up all night studying your creepy vampire journal.”
I rolled my eyes heavenward, but the thought had already taken hold of my mind. What if I did keep it? Nobody knew I’d taken it. Sure, there were cameras in the library, but it wasn’t like they would be looking for the book. It hadn’t even been cataloged yet.
I could surely keep it for a couple of days, just until I’d done some research. And then I’d take it back.
My fingers traced the rough spine, the edges of the leather that encased those words. Secrets waiting for me to uncover them. It’s just the ravings of a madman. It doesn’t make any of this real.
But the longer I held the book, the more I didn’t want to let it go.