 Hearing that sound in a local library always annoyed me, especially when it came from one of the librarians. I'm always hearing on the news how libraries are struggling. They should be thankful. A group of young people, like my friends and I, chose one as our haunt. I live in a middle-sized town on the west coast. We're not quite LA, but drive a few hours and you're firmly in California. I'm not going to give you any more details than that, because I don't want you to come looking. I'll be honest, I don't think the reason my friendship group is now me, myself, and I is unique to our manifest destiny-era ramshackle wooden local library. I'm holding out hope that it is, though, so I'm going to do everything I can to make sure nobody comes snooping around. This is a warning, not an invitation. We started hanging around and eventually in the library last year. With the protests and lockdowns, traveling into LA or one of the other large cities didn't have the same appeal. It certainly wasn't an enticing prospect for our parents. So either by parental law or not wanting to drive a few hours just to get your windshield smashed. We spent the summer of our sophomore year finding things to do in our sleepy hometown. Since the bowling alleys and cinemas were closed, or members only for the time being, the local library ended up being our port of call. There were five of us, me, Jackson, Henry, Beth, and Laura. For context too, we were your typical nerdy geek bunch. I'm aware that the library isn't the first choice for many folk my age, but we weren't cool enough to go driving around the desert or find somewhere to drink liquor stolen from our parents. What we were cool enough to do is get really interested in any of the niche topics found in the old dusty volumes on the shelves. Week one was Peruvian horticulture, week two, the naval advances of 19th century Holland. We didn't take it too seriously, I understand, and I realize now how dumb it sounds out loud. However, despite how dry these topics might be, I'd give anything to have another Friday night PowerPoint showdown at Laura's or hear Jackson tell me about the raunchy extramarital affairs of an obscure architect only famous for designing some kind of bridge in the 1790s. I miss them. It's only been a week, but I miss them all so much. It was the evening before one of the aforementioned PowerPoint lecture and pizza evenings that everything went wrong. The topic was the history of female satisfaction. Laura had picked the topic for that week, and since she was dating Jackson, this made for a lot of jokes in Uendo and over excited teenage whispers and giggling, shh, the librarian was not happy. Her harsh hisses pierced my eardrums every 20 minutes or so. Genuinely, we did try to keep the noise from our little corner of the maze of shelves to a minimum. There's only so much self-control board teenagers can exert, however. This is your last warning. After a few hours, we all looked up to see the aging librarian. She was stood above us, arms crossed, her raised in face locked in a scowl. Keep the noise down. I won't be. With that, she stomped off back into the labyrinth of spines and pages. What did she mean by that? Laura said, one eyebrow raised. I think she means shut up, Laura. Jackson replied, grinning. She gave him a playful punch on the arm, rolling her eyes. I know that, Einstein, but why did she say I won't be able to tell you again? Does she think we're going to go somewhere? That is a weird way to say it, I shrugged. But she is old, like way old. I think she's been the librarian since my dad was a kid. Jackson stood up, whatever. She should just be happy someone's actually used in this place. I gotta take a leak. He strode off, following the librarian into the dusty gloom. He's going to read all the notes he's been making, I bet. Henry said, grinning and pointing to the book he'd left on female anatomy. Laura went red, and we all howled with laughter. It was loud. Too loud. What the? We heard Jackson, even above our mirth. In an instant, we stopped laughing. Jackson? Laura called out. Her trembling question was answered. As soon as her lips closed, the response came from everywhere, all at once. And it wasn't Jackson. The voice was thin and sharp, somehow faint in my ears, but a deafening roar by the time it reached my brain. It seemed to be coming from nowhere and everywhere at once. A homeless sound ringing from the gaps between covers and unopened pages. A horrible sound, far worse than any reprimand from the librarian. It sounded more mechanical than human, like a thousand typewriters scraping together to make an imitation of speech. Jackson. Beth and Henry both said this time, Laura had stood up, fists clenched. Again, the hiss rolled from under shelves and out of the floorboards. It was louder this time. Longer. It scratched my ears and caused spots of light to crackle at the outermost edges of my field of view. Beth started to cry. Still no response came from Jackson. Jack? Shhh. This time I was the one ushering silence. I raised a finger to my lips. The other held in the air, telling the others to wait. As soon as we stopped, so did the noise. One moment the air was electric with malicious static, and the next, you could have heard a pin drop. We waited for a few moments, not saying a word. I could hear nothing except the occasional sob from Beth and the thudding of my heart and my ears. Then from the shadow maze of shelves, there came a soft thump, like something heavy being dropped to the floor. Or someone. Now, as you can probably guess, my little group of ragtag misfits wasn't what you'd call brave. If we were, we'd have spent our summer somewhere much less tame than the library. However, while not brave by any measure, I was the most adventurous of the group. It's the reason I was the only one out of Jackson, Henry and I that didn't get too much hassle from the athletic kids or stoners. Yes, I may not have gotten into trouble for fights or cigarettes, but in detention they still had respect for the guy that nearly blew up the chemistry lab and hacked the school computers to run Minecraft back in fourth grade. I mentioned this not to brag, but because I don't want you to think I abandoned Laura, Beth and Henry. One of us had to go and find Jackson after hearing that thump. I was the only one it was ever going to be. They couldn't have moved even if they'd wanted to. I gave Laura a nod and put my fingers to my lips again, hoping the message was clear. I slowly crept forward towards the shelves. A firm grasping at my ankle had me whipping around ready to run for my life. But it was only Beth sobbing and shaking her head at me slowly. I didn't want to show her I was as scared as she looked. So I shot her a grin and a thumbs up. Laura took her hand and I continued onwards. I tiptoed between shelves for what felt like hours. I read once that adrenaline can distort your sense of time. Even factoring in the fact that my fighter flight response was an overdrive. I was still walking much, much longer than I should have been. The longer I walked, the stranger and more unfamiliar around me the shelves appeared. The gray steel modular shelves gradually gave way to warped wooden units. The books they contained had odd titles. By authors I either didn't recognize or knew by their infamy outside of literature. The expendability of man by H. Himmler, trends in upholstery and leatherwork by E. Geen and lust and lucrativity. My story by H. Weinstein. The fonts on the spines were jagged and odd. And after a while the titles paid no attention to punctuation or capital letters. Some didn't even have an author. Burn them by a guy. Ha ha ha, the children are bleeding. And more. The weirder the books and shelves got, the more the light changed. The library wasn't well lit to begin with. Maybe shutters and decades of dust did a good job of keeping the West Coast sunlight out and the strip lights overhead hadn't been replaced since the 1970s at least. Well the lights that were overhead I should say. I looked up when I realized that the ceiling above me and the yellow flickering lights that hung from it had gone in their place. There was nothing above me stretched a void and emptiness that faded to inky blackness barely a few inches above the shelves. A cloud of impenetrable shadow rolling above this unfamiliar section of the library. However, I was not in darkness. If anything, the place I was in now was better lit than the library I knew. I glanced down at my hand holding it above my arm frowning. I looked down and turned around on the spot heart rate rising with each shuffling step. I had no shadow neither did the shelves even underneath them was lit as if someone was shining an industrial strength flashlight in every spot at once. It was a harsh white light with no source one that made things look sharper and more in focus than they should. As I said, I was adventurous and I had a rebellious streak, but I was never brave. Beth Henry Laura. I called out breaking my cardinal rule. My voice trembled and cracked. I could feel my bottom lip start to wobble. I'm not ashamed to admit that Jackson I stammered. There was no response. Not even from the presence that had hounded us just after Jackson vanished. Not that I was complaining. There was nothing but silence. Librarian lady. I hazarded. Still nothing. The silence seemed to press down on me stifling my words before they could echo farther than a shelf or two. I couldn't even hear a ringing anymore. I could hear my heart pumping in my chest. But I realized there was no rhythmic rushing of blood against my eardrums. I was about to turn and run as fast as I could back to the group when this place where no human should tread decided to respond. I heard it a few shelves over an unmistakable wet squelch of something large and organic falling from very high up. Jackson. I'm proud of myself for the fact that in that moment concern for my friend safety superseded my growing terror. I skidded nearly to a crash after hurling myself towards the intersection between rows. I turned in the direction of the thud ears both straining for further sounds and trying to ignore the fact my shoes were silent on the threadbare carpet. I stumbled into the shelving crossroads just in time to catch a glimpse of something or someone striding purposefully away down another alley of oddly titled books. An alley that was in the exact direction the sound had come from. I didn't have time to take in too many details as I followed despite my limbs better judgment. I just saw a thin leg in dark gray suit trousers and overly polished black boot and the swish of a dusty dark velvet coat tail. I was relieved and still am to have found the bookshelf aisle where the squelch had come from was empty. Now that I know what I just chased, I count my blessings that the others must have picked that moment to start making noise. That's the only reason I can come up with for for why it wasn't waiting for me when I came around the corner. As it was, I was still alone, at least I could see where the sound had come from. There was a book laying face down and open on the floor. I'd never seen a book so large or thick in my life. The cover was moist and reflections from an unseen light danced across its slick surface as I edged closer. I could see that the pages were wet too. They were dripping. A dark puddle was forming. If I didn't know better, I could have sworn it moved every so often. No, not moved. Breathed. It was almost imperceptible, but at regular intervals the spine rose and fell a fraction of a fraction of an inch. I dismissed the observation at the time, but, well, let's just say the 2020 vision hindsight brings isn't always a welcome thing. Once I was a few steps away, I could see the leather bound volume was indeed leaking. Just enough to give it a coat of foul smelling grease that pulled around it. I didn't have too long to inspect this though. Only a moment passed between my reading the title and me running back towards the others, tears streaming down my eyes and the loudest scream I've ever mustered tearing my throat apart. The skin bound book was called The Sanctity of Silence by Jackson Bridger. I only knew one Jackson Bridger and his voice sounded far too much like the shrieks that followed me as I charged down the impossibly endless rows of books. I must have been running impossibly fast because I found myself back at our corner in only a few minutes. If I wasn't already sobbing, I would have started then. All three had gone. There was, however, another damp, seeping book on the ground. This one was smaller than Jackson's and the words scarred into the cover read volume control for dummies by L. Eastley. I don't need to spell it out for you. I'm sure I knew an L. Eastley Laura. I don't know what compelled me to bend down and open the front cover. Probably some twisted counterpart of the same curiosity that led to the bully proofing chemistry lab incident. The wetness on the leather felt greasy, a substance that reminded me of both oil and phlegm. That wasn't what immediately grabbed my attention, though. The first thing I noticed was how warm the material was. I know warmth is usually calming, but at that moment it was exactly the last thing I wanted. From a book whose cover reminded me of human skin. When the cover fell open and the first page revealed itself, I nearly vomited. It was Laura's face. Well, a picture of her face, I hope at least. Her once attractive features were twisted and crushed as though she'd had her head violently forced against a photocopier. Eyes closed, nose bent and clearly broken, lips pressed so hard that teeth poked through bloody wounds around her nose and chin. The picture, it looks so real, realer than a photograph. I don't know how to explain it, but it looked clearer and more realistic than if she'd stood in front of me. Shaking, my shameless curiosity moved my fingertips across the image of my missing friend. What color remained in my own face drained. The page was bumpy, rough, although barely. If I wasn't touching it, I'd have had no idea it wasn't flat. It also didn't feel like paper. Paper isn't that soft. That warm doesn't have fine hairs only detectable by the lightest touch. I nearly screamed when I felt the light tickle of an eyelash. I didn't have time to, though. The picture of Laura opened its eyes. The next few moments are a blur. I must have dropped Laura. No, I can't think like that. The book that looked like Laura, because the next thing I knew, I was in the entrance way to the library, the normal entrance to the normal library. I was on my backside, covered in tears and the oily phlegm from that book. But I was in the real world. I was on my ass because I just bumped into the librarian. The old woman glared down at me, shh, she hissed. I was about to wail in protest to tell her something horrible that happened to my friends that she needed to run when my words caught in my throat. Something dripped on my exposed ankle, something thick, greasy, and warm. I felt my gaze slowly pulled upwards to the ancient woman above me, drawn with horror to what she clutched between her frail arms. She was carrying two books. Which was bound in a thick leather cover that heaved in and out in her grasp. The faint folds and stretches around her hands, wriggling and twitching too clearly to ignore. What made me scream, though, were the titles? I never found out what Henry's volume was called. Seeing the words, I never told him I loved him. The life in quiet times of Beth Stanford was enough. I've never been so glad to see sunlight. I threw myself out of the double doors before the librarian or the thing she was working for had a chance to punish me for my loud transgressions. As you can guess, it didn't take long for the police, not to mention Jackson, Henry, Beth, and Laura's parents to start asking questions. I haven't been able to answer them. I haven't been able to say a word for a week now. The only reason I'm not a suspect in their disappearance is the state the local sheriff found me in. By his reckoning, no guilty person would turn up at a police station coughing up their own blood and terrified. They haven't found any bodies or the books. I haven't written down what happened until now. Nobody in my town would believe me anyway. I wouldn't have. What I have been doing since then is research. This is why I'm begging you to stay away, not just from my library, but any of them. You're probably wondering whose leg I saw before I found the book about Jackson. I was wondering the same thing, despite the trauma my curiosity had to know. It was when I found an article in the archives of a local paper from the early 1900s that I got my answer. It was a piece from 1902 titled Local Library Brings Literacy to Ex Prospector Town. There was a photograph in the article, a photograph of a building I recognized instantly as the same library my friends and I made the grave mistake of going to. Something in one of the windows caught my eye. After mucking around with a contrast and brightness in Photoshop for a bit, I saw what it was. Instantly I knew I was looking at the thing responsible for my friends never leaving that library. It was a person, although it was impossible to tell if they were male or female, broad shoulders and wide hips framed an impossibly narrow waist. It was wearing a dark gray suit and velvet overcoat, vintage by today's standards, but decades ahead of where fashion was in the 1910s. In its spindly arms, it held the stack of thick volumes bound in a material I recognized instantly. But the thing's face, it made me snap my laptop shut. It didn't have a face. It didn't even have a head. Its neck extended almost twice as far as any human neck I'd seen. It ended not in a head, but in a massive face sized ear, an ear that was facing something in the room, but turned towards the screen in the few split seconds before my laptop ended up smashed below me. I've not done any digging since then. I don't know, and I don't want to know. I'm currently in the process of starting trauma counseling and speech therapy. There'll also be funerals to attend once they finally give up searching. As I said, this is supposed to be a warning. Day away from libraries. Because in every old photograph of one I looked at in my first therapy session, I could clearly see the silhouette of the librarian of the other library, waiting in the shadows for anyone that disturbs their books and their silence.