Ghost Image...2

It took four hours. At six thirty in the morning, though, right on the dot, when the last chime was ringing, Booker looked over to the book that lay on the floor where Holt had dropped it. The book was opened, lying with the covers pulled apart as though it were trying to seduce someone into touching it. Like a beautiful woman with her legs spread invitingly, beckoning.

Booker had to look away for a moment, just enough to collect himself. He knew the dangers. He knew he couldn’t touch that book. It didn’t stop him from feeling the tingle in his fingers, though. He was no book mage. Then the most peculiar thing began to happen. The pages began to smoke, the fumes rising off of them, out from the blackened letters on the pages’ surface. The cloud of smoke began to congeal above the book, in the air, taking a form, changing into something almost recognizable as a sort of quasi-human construction. It was—something.

“What...” Booker wondered out loud, to himself.

The smoke figure jerked, and Booker realized he’d been looking at it from the back. From the front, it was less human-seeming, more like an actual figurine built of mythological creatures pieced together.

The smoke figurine grew bigger, and bigger, until it was a little longer than Booker’s forearm. It stared at him, making no sound, but the heaving in the library’s guts was enough to tell Booker this was not a friendly creation.

Founder’s library knew when it was in trouble, or when one of the staff that were bound to it was in trouble. Booker wasn’t sure if that was comforting or not, to know that the library recognized when he was going to have work cut out for him.

The smoke figurine bared its teeth. It had morphed almost completely from a humanoid creation into something like a snake with extra limbs, floppy and flippant, squeezing around itself and folding its body into contorted positions that should not by law exist. Of course, it was smoke, or something eerily similar, and therefore hardly had to obey any laws of physics and gravity. Lighter than air.

Booker felt the need to ask the smoke figurine what it was, exactly, though he couldn’t’ explain why. None of the malignant creations he’d ever come across had spoken a language he understood. There was that one time, when a cursed book had set the shelves to muttering, but the diseased language that appeared had emanated not from the book itself but from torture applied to other books to make them scream the sounds it wanted. Kind of like a random computer program.

That had been a bad month to work in Founder’s. Now , though.

“What are you?” Booker asked the figurine. He wasn’t expecting an answer, and wasn’t too surprised when his response was silent hissing.

“You’re not supposed to be in here, you know,” Booker continued. It felt good to hear the sound of his own voice. It was like he was protecting himself by speaking. “I don’t know if you realize what damage you’ve caused so far. If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t have had to kill Holt.”

Holt’s body was still in the chair, leaned back over the back, arms draped across the arms. He looked like he could have been passed out drunk, except for the blood staining the front of his white shirt. It had been a bad idea to wear white Booker thought. Just because you didn’t know you were going to have to be stabbed a few months after you picked a book out of the library didn’t mean that...

It was just a good idea on principal to wear dark colors when working in Founders. That was all.

“I don’t think you realize just how much trouble you’re causing, just by being here,” Booker continued, sitting himself down a comfortable distance away from the smoke figurine. “I mean, I would be on duty anyway, but Holt wouldn’t have had to be here. He’d have been home, or something. Maybe even with friends or family, or something.”

Booker looked at Holt. Holt was silent.

Booker looked back at the smoke figurine.

“You should be ashamed.”

The smoke figurine hissed. Its miniature mouth opened and it shifted, changed from a compilation of impossibilities into a snake, twined around a jar, fangs hanging out of its mouth. It was terrifying but also an adorable sort of beauty. Booker shook his head. He needed sleep if he was thinking like this.

“So,” Booker said, trying to think of something else to say to the smoke figurine. “You shouldn’t be here.”

“You said that already,” the figurine said.

Booker almost fell over. “W-what?”

“You said that already,” the figurine said again. Its voice was tiny, but strong. Not decidedly male or female—a raspy timbre that flirted with the possibility of either sex. The hissing mouth closed and opened, like the snake was flexing its jaw.

“You can talk?”

“No.”

Booker frowned. “Then what—”

“Do you not understand sarcasm? Irony? Humor?” the figurine asked. Its body twined closer around the smoke jar. “You are a strange thing indeed to not understand.”

“You’re a strange thing,” Booker muttered. “You’re not supposed to be able to talk.”

“Not supposed to,” the smoke figurine asked, “or just not expected?”

“Both,” Booker said. “Either. I don’t know.”

“Which is why you are a stupid man.”

“I’m not,” Booker said, indignant.

“You are stupid,” the figurine said.

Booker nodded. “Yes,” he said, “I may be stupid, but I’m not a man.”

The figurine’s head cocked to the side.

Booker didn’t answer the implicit question. Instead, he decided to turn the line of questions the other way. “So, since you can talk—”

“What are you then?” the figurine asked.

“—why don’t you tell me how you ended up in here and why you made me kill Holt.”

“What are you then?” the figurine asked.

“That’s not an answer,” Booker said.

“Neither was that,” the figurine replied.

Booker frowned. “You’re not supposed to be able to talk,” he said.

“We have been over that,” the figurine said. “Now why are you not a man.”

It sounded like a statement—couldn’t have been a question the way it was asked. Demanded. There was no room for argument in the figurine’s miniature voice.

“What are you.”

“I, uh...” Booker looked at the rest of the Founder’s library. The carpet stretched along to the far walls, like an ocean of deep red, faintly patterned. The bookshelves were humming, though if it was warning or interest, he couldn’t tell. The ceiling seemed higher than usual, as though the vaulting had taken it into its own head to suddenly expand upwards. Everything felt in much sharper focus.

Booker looked back to the figurine. “I’m not a man,” he said. “I don’t know what I am, exactly, but I’m not a man.”

“Liar,” the figurine said. “You know what you are.”

Booker blinked. He wasn’t used to being called on his own lies.

“Uh, um...” He shook his head to try to clear it. “I don’t know what I am,” he tried again, with more conviction this time, a hint of sadness and longing, the wish for actually knowing, implicit in his voice—

“Tell me,” the figurine said. “Stop lying. It is disturbing.”

Disturbing? Booker shook his head. “You’re impossible,” he said.

“I am possible,” the figurine said. “Now tell me.”

Damn but it was persistent. It was just waiting for an answer.

Booker closed his eyes for a moment, let them sink shut and felt the pressure between lids. Let himself relax, and tried to imagine somewhere else, someplace else.

“I’m someone else,” Booker said, his voice low. It was like the whole of the library was listening though. Booker hadn’t told any of the books that he wasn’t human. He could feel their curiosity. He could feel the floor and its certainty—he never walked as heavily as the others, he thought the floor might say. And the shelves—there was no surprise linked t here, just the temperament of smug “we knew already” hanging about.

Booker shook his head. “I can’t tell you,” he said.

He couldn’t put a word to the reason why he suddenly wanted to keep what he was to himself. It was just...easier.

“I’m human for your purposes.

“No,” the figurine said. “You are not, and that is not to my purpose.”

“do you want me to be?” Booker asked.

The figurine smiled, a hissing sound paired with a diabolical grin that set the fangs to hanging loose once again.

“Just tell me,” the figurine said. “Do not make me coerce it out of you.”

Coercion...

Booker stood up and backed away, out of the circle he’d laid the diagram down on.

“Tell me,” the figurine said. It was growing, like smoke was flowing into it, building it bigger. “Tell me.” The words felt like they filled the Founder’s library, soaking into the very air, tingeing it with a tangy substance of regret and failure, a fear that extended well beyond the known into the unknown.

“What are you doing?” Booker asked, pulling away.

“Finding out what you are!”

“What? No, don’t!” he screamed.

The library swallowed the sound of his voice, and suddenly there was complete silence, pressing in on the ears like being above ground in an airplane, or really deep underwater. It was completely... Terrifying.

“You can’t stop me,” the figurine said.

Booker gaped as it kept growing.