-—————–
Travis didn’t bother me the next day at school. He got bored with his food pretty quickly it seemed and was always looking for a new shiny toy to play with. He didn’t even look at me as he passed me in the hallway. The only one in Travis’ group to acknowledge me was a large boy named Francis. He was actually kind of a sweet kid, or at least he use to be. We had been friendly when we were younger, but as Francis got older and bigger, he started to change. And when it was discovered he could hit a fast ball better than anyone at Dutchville Middle School, it wasn’t long until he joined the baseball team and Travis’ clique.
“Thanks for leading us on that merry chase ass-wipe,” Francis said bumping me into a locker. He was trying to sound tough, but the nervousness in his voice was loud and clear. As was the fear. “It took us forever for us to find our way back. My mom chewed me out so badly when I got home.”
“Oh, sorry,” was all I could say. I couldn’t believe I was apologizing. They had been the ones chasing me.
“Well, whatever,” Francis said and then lowered his voice. When he did he sounded more like the kid I had been friends with growing up. “What was that place anyways? I’ve never been there before. The whole street seemed weird. It was kind of, well, it was sort of…”
“Scary?”
Francis nodded.
Before I could say anything else another one of Travis’ friends called out to Francis, who then proceeded to brush right past me as if we had not been talking.
“Was just telling this ass-wipe to mind his Ps and Qs,” Francis said to his friends, who proceeded to let out a roar of laughter. Francis turned back to look at me and smiled a wolfish smile. One that seemed to say “haha, sorry but I have to go back to being mean to you now.” Then he faded down the hallway with his friends.
That was the last time I would see that wolfish smile. And I wouldn’t speak directly to Francis again for another 20 years.
I did return to Sunny Creek, but not alone. I met up with Eddie after school and we made the pilgrimage together. This became routine for me over the next several months. Together, Eddie and I would go to Sunny Creek after school and hang out. Eddie would practice his guitar, and I would read. I read books at Sunny Creek the way a man dying of thirst dunks his head into the first bed of water he finds. The selection at Sunny Creek really was too good to give up and the feel of discovering an awesome story everyday was truly addicting. In fact I never read anything at Sunny Creek that disappointed me. Reading at Sunny Creek invigorated my love for reading more than I thought possible.
Anytime we stepped too far into Sunny Creek, we only needed to call for Mr. Spinner and he would appear without fail to lead us back. This remained surreal to me the first couple of times it happened, but eventually it became normalized. Mr. Spinner appearing and leading Eddie and I out of the endless void of Sunny Creek became no different than taking the bus to school every morning. The gray people were always there, but as Eddie had said, I stopped noticing them. They started to fade to the very extreme of my periphery. I would read and Eddie would play, so on and so forth. The laughter and sobbing of the gray people became like white noise to me.
When I wasn’t reading, I would chat with Mr. Spinner. He seemed to possess an infinite knowledge on books. When he spoke about authors who had born hundreds of years ago, he spoke as if knew them.
“Mary Shelly was an extraordinary woman,” I recall Mr. Spinner saying once in that soft paper thin voice of his. “Ahead of her time to be sure, but never condescending to anyone. She was so kind. So very very kind. Do you like Frankenstein?”
I nodded.
“My favorite part of Frankenstein,” Mr. Spinner continued. “There’s a scene where the good doctor is being pursued by his creation. He wants to flee, but is frozen to where he stands. Shelley describes it as the way it feels in a nightmare, when you’re being chased by a monster, but you can hardly move. Have you ever had a nightmare like that?”
Again, I nodded.
“Isn’t that interesting? Frankenstein was published almost 200 years ago, in 1810. But even back then people were having the same nightmares we have today. The world changes. Technology changes. But nightmares and dreams remain the same. It goes to show you that the past is never as far away as you might think.”
I never spoke with the other patrons of Sunny Creek and they never seemed interested in speaking with me. They kept their noses in their books. Most seemed to know the rules, as several times I would watch them walk deep into the library, only to return later, being lead out of the endless rows by Mr. Spinner.
Only a handful of times did I notice someone walk into the rows and never walk back out. One of them had been a man who I knew for certain knew the rules, as I had seen him being lead out by Mr. Spinner multiple times before. On this day though, the man seemed upset about something going on in his personal life. He stood at the edge of the rows like a man standing at the edge of bridge, trying to decide if he should jump or not. Then after making up his mind, he simply walked into the rows and never came back out.
It was near the end of the school year when Eddie Burnsfield’s luck ran out. I remember it being a particularly humid day. The kind of day where the air just sticks to you, and you want to do nothing more than stay at home with five fans pointed in your direction. I went to the usual spot where we meet up, but Eddie didn’t show. I started looking around the school, and I noticed several other kids who were leaving looking back over their shoulders, as if they had just witnessed something, but were too afraid to say what. I found Eddie back by one of the school’s exits.
The first thing I noticed was Eddie’s black guitar case. It was laying open and it was empty. Some of the fabric in the case had been torn out and was now hanging out of the case like a lolling black tongue. The second thing I noticed was Eddie himself. He was kneeling down, picking things off the ground. But I couldn’t tell what it was at first. Sticks? Pieces of wood? Tears were streaking down Eddie’s face. Then I noticed a third thing. It was Delilah, Eddie’s classical guitar. She was broken into a million pieces, strewn all around Eddie.
“Eddie, what the hell happened?”
Eddie didn’t look up at me. He simply continued to pick up the pieces of his guitar, the way a man stranded on an island might gather firewood. There was no saving Delilah, that much was obvious. The guitar had been broken beyond repair, and resembled an unsolvable jigsaw puzzle more than a musical instrument now.
“Eddie…”
Eddie Burnsfield looked up at me with eyes so hot I almost flinched back as if not to get burned.
“Travis,” Eddie hissed through gritted teeth. “It was fucking Travis.”
Then his eyes softened. He let go of the wood that use to be the most precious thing in the world to him. The jagged pieces of instrument crumpled to the floor and then Eddie crumpled with them, crying.
A thought began to crystalize in my head. A thought I would come to regret for the rest of my life. Another thought that crawled out like a black spider. I bent down and grabbed Eddie by the shoulders.
“I know how we can make them pay.”
-———
I let out a sigh of relief when I noticed Travis and Francis were the only two at the baseball field. With only two of them there our plan was still possible. Had there been more, we might not pull it off. The two bullies were joking around with each other, and based on Travis’ air guitar, which he then proceeded to air smash into the ground, it was easy to guess what the joke was about.
“Bastards,” Eddie said. He was clenching his fists so hard I wouldn’t have been shocked to see blood drip out of them.
“Remember, just like we planned, okay?”
Eddie adjusted his glasses and nodded. We crept closer until we reached an area just outside the baseball diamond that was covered with several rocks. We both grabbed a few and then stood up.
“Hey assholes!” I shouted. Travis and Francis turned towards me like vultures who had just been caught scavenging a corpse. What ever private glee they were sharing eroded from their faces. “Eat this!”
Eddie and I threw the rocks with all our might. Most of the ones I threw missed, or barely scratched the two, but there was a reason Eddie’s dad wanted him to play baseball. He could have been an ace pitcher in another life. Eddie struck Travis directly in the shoulder and Francis right on the side of his face. They both let out pained screams.
“You pieces of shit!” Travis yelled after regaining his composure. “You’re fucking dead.”
Eddie and I dropped the rocks we were still holding and ran. Travis and Francis followed. On that fateful day Travis and his lackeys first chased after me, I felt like a gazelle being run down by a pack of lions. This wasn’t the same thing. For one, Eddie and I knew exactly where we were going. Where we were leading them. I didn’t feel like a helpless gazelle at all.
I felt like a spider. A spider leading two flies to it’s web.
When Sunny Creek came into view, I turned around, fearful that we might have lost the two, but then they came rushing behind us. Travis’ face was full of rage and determination. Francis on the other hand seemed more fearful, and was reluctant at first to step onto the nameless street.
“What are you standing there for?” Travis yelled at Francis. “Come on!”
Francis slunk his shoulders and followed. Just before Eddie and I stepped into Sunny Creek, I felt droplets of water hit my face. It was starting to rain.
Once inside the first thing I noticed was that Mr. Spinner was not at the front desk. In fact, the entire library seemed deserted. I turned around to see the two bullies bounding towards the building.
The outside world was for kids, the inside world was for adults. Travis had not broken that unspoken rule the first day he chased me to Sunny Creek; had refused to even step inside with his cronies. What ever fear I had about Travis upholding that unspoken rule washed away as Travis effortlessly bounded up the front steps of the library, with Francis sheepishly following behind him.
“Come on!” I yelled and pulled Eddie with me. Travis and Francis came bursting into the library like a hurricane, and did not seem to pay any mind to where they were. Outside, I heard thunder roar.
We stood at the edge of the rows just long enough for Travis and Francis to see us when they came in.
Then we ran into the rows.
At first we made sure to stay visible to Travis and Francis, to lure them deeper and deeper into the library, but always in sight of us. Then when we entered that area where the books seem so old they might fall apart just from a single touch, we hid from them. Eddie and I pulled ourselves into a narrow row and listened as the two bullies walked right by us.
“Where the fuck are they?” I heard Travis say.
“Hey Trav, can we head back?” Francis said and his voice was unmistakably terrified. “I don’t like it here. Have you noticed-“
“They’re here. I know they’re here. We have to find them.”
The two of them continued deeper into the rows. All the while Eddie and I stalked the rows around them, like two predators circling prey in long grass. Staying out of their sight, but never too far from them. Eddie and I had spent so much time in Sunny Creek that even though it was immense and seemingly endless, we knew how to traverse it, the way a Shepard knows the Mountain.
Eventually Travis and Francis began to walk faster.
Not long after, they started to scream.
They found the gray people. Their shouts soon turned into hysterics.
“How do we get out?! How big is this place?”
“Who are these people, Trav? Hey can you help us!”
“It doesn’t end.”
“Please help us!”
“Oh god where are we.”
“Why won’t they help us?”
“HELP!”
“PLEASE HELP!”
“WE’RE LOST!”
“SOMEBODY HELP!”
I let out a bitter laugh. I looked up at Eddie to see he wasn’t laughing at all. His face was cold. The plan had been to lead Travis and Francis into the library, to give them a real scare, but then come out and rescue them. We would call for Mr. Spinner and walk out together, with Travis and Francis having learned a valuable lesson. Or at least they’d be so scared shitless they’d never bother us again.
Only when I moved to go greet the two hapless bullies, Eddie grabbed me.
“Just wait,” Eddie whispered. His voice was paper thin.
“Wait for what?”
Eddie held up a “shhh” finger to his mouth. The sounds of Travis and Francis were beginning to fade. They were heading further away from us. Heading deeper into the library.
“Eddie we’ve got to get them now. If we lose them…”
Eddie didn’t say anything. He simply looked at me with cold eyes. I could hardly hear Travis and Francis now. They sounded as if they were at the very end of a very long tunnel.
“It’s easy to get lost in here,” Eddie said with a cruel finality. And now he really did sound like Mr. Spinner. To my horror, I couldn’t hear Travis and Francis anymore. I rushed past Eddie, heading towards the row where I last heard the two, screaming their names. No one responded. I moved down a little and called for them again. No response. Travis and Francis had completely faded away.
I felt Eddie come up behind me. Quietly, in that paper thin voice, he said, “Mr. Spinner we’re lost.”
Thomas Spinner stepped out from one of the narrow rows. As if he had been there the whole time.
“Hi. Need some help getting back?”
“You bet,” Eddie said in a now cheerful voice. It was the same tone he used when we normally called for Mr. Spinner’s help.
“No, you’ve got to help us!” I said grabbing the slender man by the arm. “Two of our classmates are in here with us! We lost them, but you’ve got to bring them out too!”
Thomas Spinner looked around the rows nonchalantly, then back at me.
“I don’t see anyone else here,” he said lightly. “Come. I’ll lead you back.”
“NO!” I shouted. “They’re here! They were just here! Tell him Eddie!”
Thomas Spinner gave Edward a sideways glance. “Was anyone else here with you, Edward?”
“Nope,” Eddie said flatly. “It was just us two.”
“Eddie, how can you say that? We were just suppose to scare them, that’s all. We just wanted to scare them.”
Thomas Spinner knelt down so we were at eye level. Vaguely I thought of the day he crushed the spider in his hand. They had been at eye level as well.
“I can you leave you here,” Thomas Spinner said. There was ice underneath every word. “If you’d like to look for them. I’ll take Edward back and you can stay. You can look for them as long as you like. Would you like that?”
I turned to look down the rows, where Travis and Francis had gone. I saw several gray people peeking out from behind the shelves. For the first time in months, I truly noticed them again. They stared at me with unblinking eyes. Eyes that seemed to say, “Stay here with us. Stay here as long as you’d like.”
Staring down those rows, I suddenly realized how naive I had been. How could I come into a place like this? And for months? This wasn’t a library. It was a spider’s web.
“No, I’ll go back with you,” I said, tears forming at the edge of my eyes. I felt my head begin to swim. The guilt and shame hit me almost immediately, I thought I might faint, but a hand steadied me. It was Eddie. The cold steel was gone from his face, and he looked at me with warmer eyes.
“Let’s go,” Eddie said.
As Thomas Spinner lead us through the labyrinth of bookshelves, I felt something fall out of my pocket. I looked down. It was my Sunny Creek Library card.
I didn’t stop to pick it up.
-————————
Two deputy sheriffs showed up at school. Both Travis and Francis’ parents had reported them missing and now the deputies wanted to know if anyone at school knew anything. The deputy I spoke to was a portly man, with a thick mustache, who seemed annoyed at having to even come to the school. He loudly slurped his coffee the entire time I spoke with him. I did not tell him everything about Sunny Creek, because I knew he wouldn’t believe me. I didn’t tell him about throwing the rocks either. I simply told him that I had seen Travis and Francis going into Sunny Creek the other day.
“Son, is this investigation some kind of joke to you?” The Deputy asked after I told my story. He folded his arms over his large chest and leaned back in his chair. It made a horrible creaking noise.
“No sir,” I said confused.
“You realize two of your classmates are missing, right? That funny to you?”
“I told you where they are. Why aren’t you listening?”
“Son, there are only two libraries in Dutchville. Been that way my whole life. And none of them are called Sunny Creek.”
“I can show you where it is!”
“Just stop,” the deputy sheriff said, putting up a large silencing hand. “You kids are something else. Making up stories about your classmates. Hell the kid that came in before you swears he saw the two boys get abducted by a UFO. Another boy says they might have fallen down a really big well. And now you’re talking about this third library, that don’t exist. I’ve had about enough. Just get out.”
I got up to leave. The deputy took one more swig of his coffee and then said, “Oh and son, you try this again, I will put you in cuffs and your mama can come pick you up from the county tank. How’s that sound?”
I slammed the door behind me.
-———
Eddie never spoke with the deputies as far as I know and I hadn’t spoken with Eddie since we left Sunny Creek that day. In fact I didn’t speak with him for the rest of the school year and then during that summer, my dad had gotten a job in Milwaukee and we moved away. The next time I saw Eddie Burnsfield was 8 years later, when I was attending the University of Wisconsin.
By the time I had started attending college, Sunny Creek had started to feel like a bad dream. Not that it was completely inescapable. There were the countless times I would wake up screaming in the night. There was the guilt and shame that still hung over me, and that made it difficult to connect with others. Sometimes I would even see spiders in the corners of my room, but any time I’d flash a light, there would be nothing there. Of course there was nothing there. Worst of all, since that day in Sunny Creek, I lost my love for reading.
I avoided libraries as much as I could. Whenever I would enter one for school I would almost always get hit by what I can only describe as some kind of terrifying vertigo. My head would begin to swim and when I would look at the rows of books they would appear to stretch on to infinity. You can imagine how avoiding libraries made school a difficult time. There were numerous moments through out my school life where I was in danger of flunking out. They fact that I even made it into college was a huge shock to me.
When I was a kid I always imagined I would grow up to become a novelist, or an English teacher. I had dreamt of studying classic literature at a prestigious university like Oxford. But when I finally made it to college, I chose a different major to study in: Entomology - The Study of Insects.
My favorite professor in college was a man named Randolph Clarke. He was incredibly passionate about insects and was an endearing nerdy middle aged man. He was the kind of guy that would do everything he could to drop some kind of DnD reference in his lectures. On the first day of class, he brought out a large tank and sitting inside the tank was tarantula. The tarantula was named - get this - Delilah. When I heard Professor Clarke call the tarantula by that name, I felt a wave of unreality wash over me. Delilah. The same name Eddie had given his classical guitar. Of course. Of course that would be the tarantula’s name. I felt as if time itself was folding itself over like a piece of paper. Delilah turned out to be a pretty gentle and sweet animal all things considered, and became kind of like the mascot for the class.
One day during my freshman year, Professor Clarke called me into his office to have a word. His office was a cluttered mess. There were stacks of books everywhere, as well as various diagrams of insects and other animals. Still there was a certain charm to the office and on beautiful bright days the sun would shine golden light through the windows and it gave the entire room a kind of dreamy pastel look to it. As if you were in the study of some great explorer.
“You’re a bright student,” Professor Clarke said to me when I had settled into the chair across from him. Behind Professor Clarke, Delilah was lounging in her tank. “But your grades are suffering. Why is that?”
“I guess I’m just distracted.”
“Well, I can understand that. College life is full of distractions, but you don’t seem distracted to me. You seem well - excuse me for saying - you seem scared all the time. It’s almost like a shadow is enough to make you jump.”
“Do I really seem that way?” I feigned bemusement.
“Now maybe it’s none of my business, but…well, I kind of pride myself on something here. In all my time teaching here at the University, I’ve never had a student fail my class. Not once. But you’re on the brink. On the very brink. I want to do everything I can to not let that happen. Not just for my stupid pride, but for your sake. You seem to really like entomology, have I got that right?”
I nodded.
“Can I ask, why you chose to major in entomology?”
“Why?”
“Yes. I mean, it’s not a popular major. Not as popular as others at least. Most people find insects off putting. They can’t imagine why anyone who would want to study them for a living. And I’m not ignorant, they are off putting. But that’s part of their charm, in my opinion at least. But why do you want to study them?”
I thought about it and for a while the only sound in the room was the fan in the corner that moved it’s head left to right, right to left. Then I said, “When I was a kid, I saw a spider catch a fly in it’s web. Two flies actually. I guess it fascinated me, only that’s not really the right word.”
“It terrified you.”
I nodded. “I watched as the two flies buzzed around the web, completely oblivious to what was in front of them. I watched as they were eventually ensnared, and no matter how much they struggled, that only seemed to cause them to become more trapped. I watched as the spider slowly descended on them. I’ve thought about that spider and those flies almost every day of my life, if you can believe it. When I joined the university, picking entomology just made sense. I guess, I wanted to know more about that world. About spiders and flies.”
“I see,” Professor Clarke said rubbing his chin. “Spiders are fascinating creatures. They aren’t insects, but that doesn’t stop us entomologists for studying everything about them. Their webs have an intricacy to them that can you leave you floored if you think too much about it. Also most people have the wrong idea about their webs.”
“Wrong idea?”
“They aren’t just traps. They’re lures. They’re specifically designed to attract. Not just trap some bumbling thing that happens to run into the web on accident. No, their webs intentionally attract insects that are curious. That are quizzical. Well, as quizzical as an insect can be that is.”
“I see,” I said looking at Delilah relaxing in her tank. “Professor, I really am sorry about my grades. I’m going to try to do better. Will do better.”
“I’m glad to hear it and I hope you mean it.”
“I do.”
I did mean it and after that day I put everything I could into my studies. For the first time in years, I started to feel like a normal person again. The nightmares lessened and I stopped jumping at the shadows in the corners of my apartment.
Before I left Professor Clarke’s office that day, I turned to ask him one more question.
“What happens to a spider if it’s web is destroyed?”
“Oh, well in that case, it simply builds a new one.”
-—————————–
The University of Wisconsin has a famous hill that sits in the center of the campus. When the weather is nice students will lounge on it’s green grass. At the top of the hill is a statue of Abraham Lincoln. It’s a tradition that when students graduate, they will sit on top of old honest Abe for a photo. Whenever I would see that statue, I would always think of Eddie’s black guitar case, the one that had a sticker of Lincoln on it.
One day during my junior year, I was walking by that statue when I heard a familiar sound. It was the warm sound of someone playing a guitar. They were playing classical music. I followed the sound down the hill and there he was, sitting on the green grass. It was Eddie Burnsfield. Even though I had not seen him for almost 8 years, I recognized him immediately. He was wearing a blue dress shirt with black chinos. He still had glasses, only these ones looked far more - what’s the word? - chique, than the ones he wore during middle school. He was holding a classical guitar, not Delilah of course, she had been broken into a million pieces by Travis. It was an incredibly expensive looking guitar. When Eddie saw me he stopped playing and a wolfish smile broke out across his face. Almost as if he was expecting me.
“Hey, amigo. Long time no see.”
-—————–