Mr Wicker Read online

  After taking a theft report on top of the assault report and testimony to the shooting, the police cajoled a cab driver to pick up Dr. Farron, as none would come to that part of town. Dr. Farron soon found himself striding toward his front door, the cab pulling away with a wad of cash for the long drive.

  How grateful he was to be home. Home. Where memories had a way of walking around like they owned the place.

  LSD. Droppers. Ash... The ash! Could it have worked like a drug, affecting his memories and perceptions?

  A fresh round of rain drenched him as he strode to the door. He was not in a hurry. The rain felt like a natural baptism of sorts. Something fresh and icy to wash away the bad night. He had yanked off his tie in the cab, unbuttoned the top of his shirt, and rolled up the sleeves. Now he was wet, flesh and fabric.

  He slammed the door behind him, his face throbbing, and all he wanted was to take some Advil and fall into bed. But then, as he entered the dark hallway to the bedroom—a faded, plastic Big Gulp cup of water in hand—something glimmered from the hall’s end. Dr. Farron stopped dead when the memory jumped up in front of him. He knew that a portrait of him, his dead wife, and the rest of her family hung at the end of that hall. Some light from the kitchen maybe, or from one of the room windows, must be hitting it.

  Another glint. As if very far away and moving closer.

  Run toward the light. It will receive you.

  No way, he thought. It couldn’t be...

  He pictured Dan the Gas Man, blood brimming his lips. Brah, you just gotta go get ’er okay?

  Fear knuckled his insides as everything she meant to him shouted in his ears. She meant more than anything or anyone had in a very long time. He dearly hoped that whatever had started between them would last far beyond this current nightmare. Deep down, however, he did not believe in letting fairy tales force his actions—not even the nasty, life-stealing one that was now ruining his life. It was too much to ask after what he had been through tonight.

  He took another sip of water and stepped forward.

  She’ll die if you don’t come.

  The words rolled before him and retreated like a riptide into the darkness. His will got caught in the undertow and he could not resist the plea.

  Dr. Farron put down the water cup and sized up the hallway, the portrait glimmering. Forget sanity. Eat me. Drink me. Vomit me. Scorch me. Love me. Remember me...

  He ran.

  Chapter 41

  An arm thrown up over his head, he hurtled forward, sounds from another world seeping through the walls as the light exploded and he tumbled into incandescent chaos.

  Baa, baa, black sheep, have you any wool? Five for silver, six for gold, seven for a secret never to be told.

  The cold blasted him as soon as his feet hit the gravel and he stumbled from the shock. The tiny lights swarmed around his head, further confusing him. I’m here. Dear God, I’m here! But where? It was not a library, that was for certain.

  Giggling and bouncing, the tiny orbs flashed at him playfully and continued dancing down the tunnel. Monkeys made of gingerbread, and sugar horses bleeding red. He examined his feet: gravel, metal and boards. Train tracks.

  The ground shook.

  The howling pumped terror into his skull. A pinprick of light in the distance was coming at him faster than he could calculate, the tunnel winds drubbing him as he stood mesmerized. Just as Alicia had described.

  He clenched his fists and closed his eyes. I will not die, he told himself. I will not die.

  Shrieking, moaning, shaking, the sharp glare of eternity collided with his body. The impact swallowed him, pricking his skin with fiery pins. He fell to his knees, holding his head as the screams sliced and diced his cortex. Just as every square inch of his flesh was ablaze, the heat dissipated. A cool stillness held him. After a moment, he convinced himself to open his eyes.

  Edward Anthony Brust.

  Dr. Farron had no idea who that was, but the name was inked in black on the spine of a book on a dusty bookshelf before him, amongst many, many names and threading book spines. Some were in languages he did not know, so he could not be certain they were even names, but he suspected they were. The book in question was wedged between others in the middle of a row. The shelves had wooden backings so he could not see to the next row behind it like he would in a normal library. An endless number of rows stacked atop one another to what he could barely make out as a raftered ceiling. A rustle of feathers. Something darker than the shadows flapped over the stacks.

  The Library.

  He crouched between two book stacks. At the end to his right was a stone wall, a gargoyle holding an oil lamp at about his shoulder’s height. Why was it so dim? And it smelled of smoke. The stacks opened to his left, revealing a narrow slice of the greater Library. A large table was piled high with books. A candelabra sitting on a stack cast a thin sheet of light as far as the gargoyle on the wall.

  No sign of the Librarian.

  Stepping into the Library center, he looked around. The wall of clocks clicked and clacked at him. A raven perched just above him on one of the stacks and cawed. A palpable presence lurked in a darkened alcove. Dr. Farron couldn’t look away from it, sensing Someone was within. All five candles leapt aflame on the candelabra. Startled at first, he plucked it from the table and proceeded to explore the Library. The lavender window churned with a heavy smoke. It caught Dr. Farron’s breath as he realized something—someone—lived beyond that window. A very big Something or Someone. Maybe multiple Ones. Strange energy, to say the least. As soon as he noticed the big black phone on the desk beneath it, he was struck with both dire curiosity to pick up the phone and utter dread of what lay beyond the windowpane.

  “Where is she, Drunos?” he called out, sweeping the candelabra in front of him as he scanned the tables. “What did you do with her?”

  Silence.

  Dr. Farron surveyed the limits of the Library and a profound sadness struck him. The Librarian was a prisoner. While the good doctor was surrounded by sickness and despair in the hospital, he was also around beauty, healing, and life. Here wasted the mysterious ex-druid in his ugliness and isolation. He had no one but a handful of screeching birds, his steady flow of damaged children, and the parade of dissipated souls who came to retrieve their books. In fact, his only hope of company was that these people came back. This was the other side of the world: where Dr. Farron worked in the light, Mr. Wicker worked in darkness. But the difference was, Mr. Wicker had no choice.

  Or did he?

  “You must be lonely here,” Dr. Farron said. “Maybe if the children talked to me and others like me, you might be free from this place. I bet if you refused to do it they would have no choice but to let you live. And you can live, you know. There are great things out there: basketball and sunrise and pizza and sitcoms, and...man! I can’t catalogue the world for you. It’s too big and great. Maybe you should put down your pen and try it.”

  Silence, except for a tremendous rustling in the alcove. Dr. Farron could not bring himself to enter it.

  “It’s not right, you know! She has a life to live and things to do yet! You shouldn’t keep her here and tell her lies!”

  “She is not here.”

  The voice rolled from the alcove like a boulder. It was the voice on the 9-1-1 dispatch sound file. If he did not believe before, Dr. Farron did now. “Then where is she?”

  “She took her book,” the voice said, plaintive. “She is in very great danger.”

  Feeling a bit braver, Dr. Farron took a few steps closer to the alcove. “But people remember things,” he said. “They can deal with bad memories and heal themselves. Surely this has happened before. You’ve lost books, right?” He held the candelabra before him like a crucifix to a vampire, hoping to catch a glimpse of the Librarian.

  “Not these memories,” the voice replied. “These are the ones they are never meant to remember. She is not meant to remember what happened. It will destroy her.”

  No wonde
r they had been hitting walls with the hypnosis. But Alicia did report some kind of repeating dream about a withering ring of roses. She must remember something about it. Then he wondered who else he knew had books here. His parents? His sisters? His colleagues?

  Did he?

  “Why didn’t you stop her?”

  “I tried. I truly did.”

  Dr. Farron sighed. He could hear the love in Drunos’ voice. “I’m sure you did,” he said at last, knowing too well how stubborn Alicia was. “On second thought, it’s best that you didn’t. It’s best that you stop trying to protect people and let them deal with life.” Hey, black kettle? Pot calling. He spoke as much to himself as to Mr. Wicker.

  Another moment of silence.

  “You must help her, Litu—” the voice said.

  Litu? Confused, Dr. Farron edged closer, the light of his candelabra stretching into the alcove. Mr. Wicker’s cat’s eyes flashed like broken glass as they caught the candlelight.

  “—NOW!”

  A thousand black wings and needle-sharp claws erupted from the alcove. Dr. Farron dropped the candelabra. He ran for his life toward a humming light that bloomed between the book stacks. The murder of ravens howled at his back, ripping his clothes and tearing his hair as they chased him. Before he lunged into the incandescence, he dared a glance back to see a terrible sight.

  Mr. Wicker picked up another book and lit it on fire.

  Chapter 42

  Brooders weep and brooders keep their misery at hand.

  She awoke, her face half-buried in the pillow, his brambly voice caroling in her head. Her bedroom window rattled from the blustering winds, the open drapes revealing high morning storm clouds. She exhaled heavily with relief. She must have survived the darkness by choosing bed over blade. Or had she? Given that she was in bed, it must have been a dream. A very sad dream.

  She sighed again, pushed herself up from the bed, and then stopped: black soot smudged her white cotton pillowcase. Her hand wiped her chin, both smeared with black ash. It was no dream! Delirious with joy, she clambered out of bed, still wearing her soiled, unbuttoned peach dress, and discovered that everywhere his hands had touched her (everywhere) that delicate black char smeared her. The light must have carried her exhausted body straight to bed. She touched her fingers to her tongue and tasted him in the char. Her eyes rolled up into her head as the memory of him burned her mouth.

  The book! Where was it?

  She tore apart the bed sheets and found nothing. Alicia even looked under the bed. Still nothing. Her eyes next scanned the shelf that ran along the ceiling where Eric kept his god-awful business administration books and Westerns. She pulled down every book, but couldn’t find it. The house was huge. If it was here at all, it could be anywhere. If only it answered to its name...

  With the excitement and wit of a child, she got an idea brimming with magic. She cleared her throat and stood on tip-toe, her voice carrying out of the room. “Marco.”

  Then, faintly, a reply: “Polo.”

  It was her voice. Her little girl voice.

  Thrilled and spooked, she tried again. “Marco...”

  “...Polo.”

  She followed the voice down the hallway. “Marco...”

  “...Polo.”

  It rang from the bathroom. She approached the dark room uneasily, and then whispered inside. “Marco...”

  “Pooloooo...” Mocking and singsong, the voice echoed against the porcelain. The book rested on the cold, bloodstained tile.

  Alicia picked it up carefully and retreated into the hallway. The tome was as long as her forearm, a foot wide, and three fingers thick. Some gothic calligrapher had written her name, Alicia Baum, in gold on the black, cloth-bound cover. With the exhilaration she’d felt in the tunnel, yet with that same fear she’d felt in the dark foyer, she returned to the bedroom and climbed over the dirty sheets with her treasure. She placed it on the bed, hands shaking, and opened it.

  A beautiful drawing in sepia inks filled the inside cover: A cross-section of a fairy woods revealed myriad tree roots sinking into the magical soil. In gold ink, words wove among the roots. “In my father’s house, there are many libraries. W-”

  Alicia drew the comforter around her. The twisted biblical quote worried her.

  The cover page was blank and yellowed with age. She turned the page.

  Nothing. She turned the next.

  Nothing again. Irritated, she turned blank page after blank page, marking each with black fingerprints.

  She shuffled through the pages so rapidly that she almost missed it: a crude treasure map sketched by a child with a thick-leaded pencil. Below the map, her eight-year-old self had scribbled a description of how to get to the prize. The map outlined her grandparents’ backyard, including a significant landmark she did not remember: a large circle drawn in the upper right-hand corner of the page, surrounded by pencil swirls depicting flowers. Roses. Within the circle at its edge the pencil marked a deeply etched “X.”

  Alicia felt sick. It was the only written page in the book.

  She took the envelope of cash from the cupboard and stuffed it in her purse. After a shower, she walked to the elementary school down the hill to make the toll-free call at the payphone.

  “Can I get a cab to Oakland Airport?”

  Ring around the rosie, pocket full of posies. Ashes, ashes, we all...fall.

  Dr. Farron emerged from his deep sleep. He did not open his eyes. He had been dreaming after all, which was both reassuring and alarming.

  Not only did his nose throb but his hand hurt. It was tightly clenched, a pronounced cramp stinging his fingers and palm. He shifted uncomfortably. Neck pain ran from his shoulder to his temple. The bar fight must have busted more than he thought. His head rested on his arm, he on his side. As his head tried to find a better, softer place on the pillow, he realized that he was not lying on a pillow at all. The length of his body was curled tightly into a fetal position on an unforgiving surface.

  Dr. Farron’s eyes snapped open. The carpet of his office stretched inches from his nose.

  His office in the hospital, that is.

  The shock of lying in his office was worse than finding himself in the tunnel after flinging himself at a wall. He was stretched out on the carpet, his hand twisted into a grotesque grip, his fingers smeared with something red. He would have stayed there a few more moments, just processing, but the pain in his hand was too awful. Breathing deeply, he opened his hand a finger at a time, begging each to relax. A red crayon stub rolled from his palm onto the carpet. The paper had been peeled away, the end rubbed to almost nothing. His palm and fingers were stained red.

  As Dr. Farron propped himself up, his eyes panned the walls. He staggered to his feet.

  On the office walls surrounding him were drawn red roses. The continuous mural formed a circle of withered blooms bobbing, swaying, and mocking him. It was clearly his style and shading, yet he had absolutely no recollection of committing the Crayola vandalism. And in his handwriting with a thick black line were scrawled the words “HELP ME.”

  His clothes were tattered and barely scabbed gouges covered his arms where he’d rolled up his sleeves in the cab. Talon slashes.

  He checked the clock. It was 1:51p.m. He had no idea when Alicia had returned to this world. But he did know one thing:

  She wasn’t long for it.

  Chapter 43

  Mr. Wicker huddled in the miserable chaos of the birds and books. He had never told anyone in the Library about his past. And even with Alicia, he’d kept the final chapter of his history a secret—that which transformed him into the creature he was. He had not thought about it for some time. He wanted so badly to forget. But now he could do nothing but remember.

  After Caesar pronounced the genocide of his kin, Drunos became sick, as if a black hand gripped his heart. Quintus came to check on him. He stood in the folds of darkness by the door, his arm still pressing that ridiculous wad of cloth against his body. After a while, he m
oved to the chair and sat for a long time. A slave brought him wine, of which he drank an entire amphora as he watched the druid.

  Drunos opened his eyes but did not look at the Roman. “Quintus?”

  “Yes?” the Roman answered, suddenly roused. He slouched forward, inebriated, and rubbed his eyes.

  “Would you bring me something?”

  “Anything.”

  Drunos burrowed his fingers into the skins. “A calamus,” he said. “An amphora of ink. And parchment.”

  For the next two weeks, Drunos dipped the reed into the tiny amphora and drew letters he knew so well from his reading.

  And he wrote. Chants. Songs. Laws. Rituals. Stories. Everything he could remember from the Isle but had hidden in alcoves of memory. He knew the Romani would not stop until they had slaughtered or conquered every Gaul from the Isle to Acquitaine. Every drop of Gaulish blood would feed the ground and stain the feet of Caesar’s soldiers.

  He envisioned the souls of his people indwelling the next generation of Romani. Perhaps that was the plan of the gods, but it offered no solace to Drunos. Who would pass on the stories of his people? How would the gods be remembered so that the people could repent and rejoin them? The arrogance of his tribe, of his entire race. By keeping the sacred traditions in memory to enlighten the elite, they had made themselves vulnerable to obliteration. As the ink bruised his fingers, he understood how the old laws were those of man and the new laws must come like desperate oar strokes driving a sinking boat toward land.

  Quintus secretly supplied Drunos with as much parchment and ink as he desired, at great personal expense. Parchment was preserved for literary undertakings, while the wax tablets were used for general correspondence and legal contracts. One morning, Quintus slipped into the druid’s room as Drunos rested, head in his arms at the table. Quintus held his breath when he realized that Drunos had filled over five hundred sheaves with the laws, theology, and rituals of Gaul. Not only had he written everything down in a legible hand, but he had also catalogued the parchment sheaves using some cryptic system the Roman could not decipher.