The click of the lock echoed like a gunshot in the dead air of the archives.
I was sitting in a wooden chair in the center of the aisle, my wrists zip-tied behind my back to the vertical slats. The plastic dug into my skin, biting the ulnar nerve, sending waves of cold numbness down to my fingertips.
Mrs. Gable sat across from me, perched on the edge of the reading table. The revolver—a snub-nosed .38 that looked ancient and well-oiled—rested on her lap, nestled against the floral print of her skirt like a sleeping cat.
She wasn’t looking at me. She was looking at a book in her hands. Peter Pan. A first edition, by the look of the binding.
“You know,” she said, her voice light and airy, the same tone she used for story hour on Tuesday mornings. “Barrie got it right. All children grow up, except one. But he didn’t understand the tragedy of it, Elara. Growing up isn’t an adventure. It’s a decay.”
“Mrs. Gable,” I said, keeping my voice steady, fighting the urge to scream. Screaming wouldn’t help. We were under three feet of concrete. “You don’t have to do this. Elias is dead. The police shot him. It’s over.”
She looked up then. Her eyes behind the thick spectacles were magnified, swimming with a terrifying, lucid clarity.
“Dead?” She tutted softly. “Oh, no, dear. Elias isn’t dead. He’s just… sleeping. He’s waiting for the next story.”
“I saw him fall,” I pressed. “I saw the body.”
“Bodies are just shells,” she dismissed, turning a page. “Elias is an idea. A perfect, preserved idea. And ideas are very hard to kill.”
She closed the book and set it aside. She picked up the gun, weighing it in her hand.
“You were his favorite, you know. Of all the children who came into this library, smelling of mud and secrets, he liked you the best. You had such a darkness in you. A potential.”
“You knew him,” I whispered. “You didn’t just know about him. You knew him.”
“I fed him,” she corrected. “After the flood. When the world washed him away, I found him shivering by the river intake. A little drowned rat. Everyone else saw a monster, a bastard child to be ignored. I saw a blank canvas.”
The horror cold-cocked me. “You kept him. You kept him in the woods.”
“I gave him a sanctuary,” she said, smiling benevolently. “I gave him books. I gave him stories. I taught him that the world above—the world of taxes and infidelity and disappointment—was the real trap. I taught him that to stay a child was the only way to stay pure.”
“You brainwashed him,” I spat. “You told him to kill.”
“I told him to protect the game,” she said, her voice sharpening. “There’s a difference. Elias didn’t want to hurt anyone. He just wanted everyone to play nicely. He wanted to fix the broken dolls.”
She stood up and began to pace, her sensible heels clicking on the concrete.
“My Lily… she understood. She was the first one he brought to me.”
“Your daughter?” I asked, remembering the photo in the yearbook. The girl in the woods. “You said she moved away.”
“She grew up,” Mrs. Gable said, her face twisting with sudden, ugly grief. “She turned sixteen. She started caring about boys. About makeup. She started to… rot. She wanted to leave Oakhaven. She wanted to leave me.”
She stopped pacing and looked at the dark corner of the archives, where the shadows seemed to pool like ink.
“Elias tried to save her. He tried to keep her in the garden. But she wouldn’t stay still. So he had to… make her stay.”
I stopped breathing.
“He killed her?”
“He preserved her,” Mrs. Gable corrected violently. “He stopped the rot! He kept her perfect, before the world could ruin her. She’s in the woods, Elara. Sleeping. Just like the others.”
“The others,” I choked out. “Sarah Miller. Ms. Albright. Becca.”
“Interlopers,” she waved a hand. “Auditions. Elias was lonely. He missed his Princess. He tried to replace you, but none of them had the spark. None of them understood the rules.”
She turned to me, her expression softening into something that chilled me more than her anger.
“That’s why I had to send for you.”
The blue envelope. The Polaroid.
“You sent it,” I said. “You sent the picture of Annabel.”
“I took it myself,” she said proudly. “I went down to the cellar while Elias was sleeping. I arranged the doll. I wrote the caption. Let’s Play. I knew you couldn’t resist a mystery, Elara. You never could. You’re a seeker.”
“You brought me back here to be murdered.”
“I brought you back here to come home!” she shouted, her voice echoing off the metal shelves. “Elias was falling apart without you. He was getting sloppy. He needed his Queen. He needed someone to share the kingdom with.”
She walked over to me, leaning down until her face was inches from mine. I could smell the peppermint of her breath, masking the rot of her soul.
“He didn’t want to kill you, Elara. He wanted to marry you. He wanted to keep you in the dark where the light couldn’t burn you. He wanted you to be an eternal child, just like him.”
“He’s dead,” I said again, desperate to break her delusion. “Julian shot him. He’s gone.”
“Julian,” she sneered, straightening up. “The Bad Prince. He was always the problem. Trying to drag everyone into the light. Trying to make everyone grow up.”
She walked back to the desk and opened the drawer. She pulled out a roll of heavy, silver duct tape.
“But we can fix that,” she said. “We can fix everything. Elias might be… indisposed… right now. But the work continues. The story isn’t over until I say ‘The End.’”
She ripped a strip of tape off the roll. The sound was loud, tearing through the silence.
Riiiip.
“What are you doing?” I asked, pulling against the zip ties. The plastic bit deep, drawing blood.
“I’m going to finish the game,” she said calmly. “I’m going to put you to sleep, Elara. And then I’m going to put you in the garden next to Lily. And you’ll be safe. You’ll never have to pay a bill, or lose a love, or get old and gray and useless like me.”
She moved toward me with the tape.
“You’re insane,” I said.
“I’m a mother,” she replied. “And a mother protects her children.”
“I’m not your child!” I screamed.
“You are now.”
She slapped the tape over my mouth.
The taste of adhesive filled my throat. I gagged, thrashing in the chair. The chair legs scraped against the floor, but they didn’t tip. She had bolted them down? No, she was holding the back of the chair, her grip surprisingly strong.
She smoothed the tape over my lips with a gentle, terrifying tenderness.
“Shhh,” she whispered. “Quiet time now. No talking in the library.”
She walked back to the desk and picked up the gun. She checked the cylinder.
“I have to go upstairs and lock the front doors,” she said. “I have to make sure we’re not disturbed. You stay here. Count sheep. Or…” She smiled. “Count the ghosts.”
She turned and walked toward the stairs.
I watched her go, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird.
She was going to kill me. She was going to come back down here and put a bullet in my head and bury me in the woods, and she would think she was doing me a favor.
I looked around the archives. The rows of boxes. The stacks of paper.
Dry paper.
Old film.
Chemicals.
The room was a tinderbox.
Mrs. Gable reached the top of the stairs. I heard the heavy door open, then close. The lock clicked.
I was alone.
I looked at the desk. The green banker’s lamp was still on.
And next to it, forgotten in her monologue, was a box of matches. She used them to light the scented candles she kept to mask the smell of the mildew.
I looked at my hands. Tied.
I looked at my feet. Free.
I couldn’t reach the matches.
But I could reach the wall.
On the wall behind the desk, about four feet up, was a small red box.
Fire Alarm.
It was old. A pull-handle model.
If I could tip the chair… if I could crawl…
But the sprinklers.
If I pulled the alarm, the halon system wouldn’t trigger in an old building like this. It would be water. Water would ruin the archives. Water would ruin her life’s work.
It would ruin the story.
But more importantly, it would bring the fire department. It would bring noise. It would bring witnesses.
I rocked the chair.
Forward. Back. Forward. Back.
momentum.
I threw my weight to the side.
The chair tipped.
I crashed to the concrete floor. My shoulder took the brunt of the impact, pain exploding down my arm. The breath was knocked out of me.
I lay there for a second, staring at the dust bunnies under the bottom shelf.
Get up, Elara.
I couldn’t get up. But I could scuttle.
I dug my heels into the floor and pushed. The chair scraped along the concrete.
Scritch.
Just like the sound in the wall.
I pushed again. Inch by inch. Toward the wall. Toward the little red box.
Gable thought she was the author. She thought she was writing the ending.
But I was a journalist. I didn’t write fiction. I exposed the truth.
And the truth was about to get very, very loud.