He did it in the Library With a Knife

He did it in the Library With a Knife

Stacker emerges from the recessed niche he appropriated from a student of literature who leaped to his death from the northwest window of the Rare Book Collection. Murder?

Stacker discovered the hidden room only half a year ago. Located on the attic floor of the campus’s Main Library, which houses The Rare Book Collection. Stacker feels the hidden room has chosen him to continue the lineage of those who rescued books and built this monument from the doomed and discarded. Builders whose linage goes well beyond the student who jumped. It’s a meticulous work, mostly of books stamped in red, ‘discard’ destined for the shredder. The portal into the bowels of forgotten lore, urban legends, and imagination. He imagines getting published. There’s only one thing in his way that he may never be able to do.

Yawning, he notes the doldrums and the fact that he overslept during his break. He arcs his back, stretches his arms, and pulls at the dried glue defoliating from his fingertips. Burnt out, he calls it a night. Setting the alarm and locking the door, he steps away, imagining a steamy bath and candles.

Too old for dorm life, he lives in an attic. A one-room studio that pinches out early and is roomy only in the narrow apex that functioned largely to let in cold drifts of winter or drafts of summer swelter. In the apartment below lives an old widow who often forgets to turn off her bath water, leaving Stacker a cold drip of copperish water. Still, he shares his boiled eggs and idle conversations. That often revolves around her pets, especially where they are buried. She tells and retells him, ‘This was the old carriage house where the master, the playwright, got axed by a stalker.’ She pantomimes a hatchet swung over Stacker’s head. He cowers, ‘Don’t dodge my ax, it’s only me miserable hand.’

“Guess my imagination and your drama had its way with me.”

“Sure honey, just remember, I’m a played out old woman. Bitter about not being womanly no more and incapable of lust or jealousy.”

“That’s good news.”

“But mostly can’t weld and ax like I use too. Barly able to bury the dead.” She points to painted rocks and plastic flowers.” Guess I’ll wait for the resurrection to be a woman again.”

“One of the 70 virgins?”

“You wish. But actually, be getting my 70 gigolos.”

“You wish.”

“Don’t we both.”

He smiles, thinking the widow has features that would be attractive to a young woman. He pushes the outdoor wicker chair back with the back of his legs. “oh,” he says, “you better take care of that.”

“What?

“Your bath, I hear it running.”

“Dang,” she says, “glad I have you around.”

They both chuckle. She mimics axing. He blows her a kiss. She touches her cheek where it landed.

“Don’t forget.”

“What?”

“Tomorrow night.”

“What?”

“Keep the noise down.”

“Oh, you wise guy.”

“Oh really.”

“What?”

“The waters running. If you weren’t my most’est darling…” He ascends the stairs. The ‘wise guy’ resounds in his mind. He unlocks his triple locks, double locked. Hears the pipe rattle as the bath faucet clamps tight. Once inside, he doesn’t miss the all-night crams and human density of dorms, just the hot water.

A month later. It’s approaching midnight. He’s alone. The Library has grown darker since his last round. Towering clouds: pale ghostly juggernauts. Go between the midnight moon and its mother. There passage dims the faint beam. Sinister. The gloom. Blanketing gargoyles, colonized by lemon-green lichens, that have etched into the crevices of these effigies, highlighting there stoney smirks. Talons clenched, coveys of them randomly perch in cubby holes or upon scaffolds of sandstone ledges detailing gothic architecture. Endlessly watching and listening to not what’s in the quad, shrubs… and beaten paths; but what’s prowling between rows of musty tombs, unopened and unread, cataloged and shelved against mortar and brick. Adjacent to two-sided -racks, racked with antiquity. Principality of the Rare Book Collection.

Stacker, licks his finger and pats down the cackle that’s risen upon the nape of his neck . hairs stiffened by wailing echoes, exhaled through the aperture of a cocked window docked above the chambered door. He approaches the echo. In a dope decay, they fade away. But walking away a new wailing returns like a child’s yoyo, on a string; one once cottony white, but now the color of a scream compressed to the outer darkness of wicked dreams. ‘Twas the silhouette of an inspired thought, I ought not have thought, one a fever has wraught.’ He wipes sweat from his brow; it mixes with the dust of idleness. ‘There back.’ he concludes. He hears a pecking. Glancing back, his pace quickening, ‘it’s the-magpie with a thoughtful crick torquing its neck  and pecking on the security window, thickly laminated with an internal membrane, typing out in code ‘kill’.’

Spooked, still he glances back and sees A foursome slipping between shadows cast by iffy light. Stacker rubs his eyes. “Who’s there?” ‘No one?’ Betrayed by a fiefdom of murder, spoofing, and futility. It vanishes into thin literature. He’s shivering. Lips purple with fright, clap praying for the quick end to his night of dust and drudgery. He double checks the triple locks of special collections. He mumbles under his breath; “I’ve chapters to read, calculations to solve and verse to write before morning light ‘’ he looks at his watch, the plutonium glow: 10 o’clock. ‘Two more hours to shifts end, before I hit the books.’

At 1:00, he’s held tight. He can’t move his feet. But hears the one wearing the King mask say, “kill them, kill them all.” The killers begin to wail.”

Stacker lets the detectives in, “this way. It’s horrible, he kept saying kill them all, and the wailing, I covered my ears. I hid in my safe room until the wailing stopped.

Safe room

Hidden room in the library attic.”

Dispatch said you said ‘it happened in Special Collection’.”

“Yes, rare book collection.”

“It’s locked.”

'” Triple locked. Special lock from the inside. Need Regent to unlock it now.”

Polaki kicks it in.

“Lots of damage. They were surgically removed. Measured. Cut out with X-acto knives.

“No blood, no bodies. Just masks and stacks of rare books with there hearts and souls cut out of them.”

What’s it mean, Stacker?”

Stacker cocooned in a drape torn from the window casement where the student leaped to his death. He looks side to side. Mumm.

“Lots of expensive damage done here. What did the King mask says kill them, kill all of them. You tried to tell me who them was, you can tell me now. Why were the masked writers wailing?”

“He told them to kill their darlings.”

“He’s spoofing us. We found books he’s made that look like ransom notes. All cutouts from books and pasted. The Futility of the Naked and Dead, Literary Murder on the Orient Express, Psycho-Writer. Books pasted from cutouts of other books. A Syfy comic: Futuristic ionized plastic of Robots Past:f a cockeyed Robot.

He sits alone, inspecting his nails. They think I’m soft and won’t hurt that fly. That I can’t be like Hitchcock and kill my darling…early. It’s time to kill off my darlings. I’ll snatch that fly and pull off its wings. Then they ‘ll know I can do it.”

“What you got to say Stacker?”

“There’s an old woman lived in a carriage house below me. Think you better check on her.”

“Where she at?”

“In the carriage house.”

“Thought you said lived—she move?”

“Misspoke, you’ll find her there.”

Polaki and his partner head out to check the widow. Fearing Stacker has progressed from paper mâché to flesh and bone. They leave the campus police in charge of the scene and Stacker.k

They knock. Hear that?”

“Yeah, water running.”

“Yes.”

“We’re police officers. There’s some trouble at the Library

Is that fine boy okay? He’s such a loner. I hear dancing,” she points  Heaven ward, “he plays “ ain't got no more cigarettes” alone. Be sure to tell him I saved some hot water for him. He’s such a darling.”