-——————
Eddie and I were seated in a small cafe. It was one of the less popular places on campus, so there weren’t a lot of people around. Eddie put his guitar case on the seat next to him and when he saw me eyeing it, another grin broke out across his face.
“She’s nice isn’t she?”
“Sounded nice.”
“Well, for 10 grand she better.” He let out a bitter chuckle and sipped his coffee.
“Jesus, 10 grand?”
“Relax. I’m just renting it out from the University. I didn’t actually pay that much.”
For a while we said nothing . A silence seemed to fill the entire cafe. It hung over everything. Every booth. Every cup. Every packet of sugar. The silence stuck to us like humid air. We just drank our coffee and let the silence envelop us both. On the window sill next to us, I noticed a small black spider. I looked away, trying my best to ignore it, hoping that when I looked back it would be gone. But when I looked again, it was still there, marching silently across the sill.
“You look like you’re doing well,” I eventually said not being able to stand the quiet anymore.
“Thanks. You look, uhh….”
“I look like shit.”
“Well, I wasn’t going to say anything.” We both laughed and for a moment it felt like it had years ago, when we had been friends. When we roamed the endless rows of Sunny Creek together. The spider had made it across the window sill and was now crawling up the wall. Each of it’s legs moving in perfect motion, pulling itself up, step by step. A little well oiled machine.
“Do you ever think about Sunny Creek?” I asked.
“Feels like a dream doesn’t it?” Eddie said. His voice was warm. Nostalgic. “Sometimes, I’m not sure if that place was ever real. We had some good times there, didn’t we? Me, playing my guitar. You obsessing over the books. It was our own private paradise.”
“Do you ever think about that day?”
“Which day?” Now Eddie’s voice was flat. Damn near monotone.
“Come on. You know which one.”
“No, I’m not sure I do.”
“I’m talking about that day. At Sunny Creek. With Travis and Francis. And Mr. Spinner.”
“Ohhhh, that day,” Eddie said and he tilted his head back and rubbed his chin as if trying to recall a memory he just couldn’t grasp. “Travis and Francis. Travis and Francis. Hmmm. No. No that doesn’t ring a bell-“
I slammed my fist on the table. The spider stopped it’s crawling and seemed to regard us, the way a person might stop on the street to watch a ventriloquist show they almost walked right past.
“Just stop Eddie. You know who I’m talking about. And what we did.”
“Ohhhh, now I remember,” Eddie said and now his voice was cold. “Travis and Francis. Yeah sure. I remember now. Those two sociopaths. The ones that got what they fucking deserved.”
“They were just kids.”
“We were kids. They were monsters.”
“They were assholes, but they didn’t deserve….Jesus Eddie we left them in there. They’re still missing. They’re still there.”
“Good riddance.”
“You can’t possible mean that.”
“No? They made our lives a living hell. And not just us, but everyone in Dutchville. There wasn’t a single kid that didn’t feel the ire of Travis and his lackeys in some shape or form. They were little monsters. Actual monsters. Buzzing around like a swarm of flies. Crawling over everything and everyone. And kids like that, they always grow up to become something worse. It starts with shoving kids into lockers. Next they’re breaking guitars. Then it turns into breaking bones, breaking people. We did the world a favor as far as I’m concerned. “
“We were just suppose to scare them. Scaring them might have been enough.”
“It’s never enough.”
“You don’t feel any regret?”
“Regret? God no. My life improved significantly after that day. It was like a dark cloud had been removed from my life. And look at me now. Attending my dream University, studying classical music. My life has never been better. Take a look outside, amigo. The world continues to spin. I’m not going to cry over spilled milk and you shouldn’t either. It’s clearly been affecting you. Well, I say let it go. Move on.”
The spider was no longer on the wall. It had crawled back down and was now making it’s way across the table, as if to get a better view of the show. No, this spider wasn’t one for the cheap seats. It needed front row access. I watched as it crawled over one of the empty sugar packets Eddie had discarded on the table.
“Did you ever visit Sunny Creek again? After that day I mean.”
“No,” Eddie said quietly. There was a nervous tenor to his voice. “There was no reason to. My guitar was broken, so I had nothing to practice with. You weren’t speaking to me and then you moved out of Dutchville. My father and I moved out of Dutchville not long after you and your family did, if you can believe it.”
“Would you ever go back?”
“No.”
“Why?”
Eddie considered this and then another grin broke out across his face. “Oh geez you know what? I forgot I have this appointment. We’ll have to catch up another time.”
Eddie grabbed his guitar case and got up to leave, but I grabbed his arm in a firm grip.
“Tell me why you won’t go back, Eddie.”
“I said I have to go.”
“I bet I know why.”
“Let go of my arm.”
“You know what we did was wrong. You know that Sunny Creek was all wrong. Is all wrong.”
“Seriously, let go-“
“You talk a big talk, but you know what’s waiting there. And I bet it fucking terrifies you. I see it in your eyes Eddie. It’s the same thing I see in my eyes when I look in the mirror. Do you also get the nightmares Eddie, do you see the spiders-“
“LET GO!”
Eddie pulled his arm away in a big sweeping motion, knocking our coffee cups over. His eyes were as hot as the day Travis and Francis had broken Delilah. After a moment he looked away.
“It was your idea in the first place,” he said bitterly.
He walked out of the cafe and that was the last time I saw Eddie Burnsfield. I looked down at the table, picking up the cups that Eddie had knocked over. The black spider was gone.
Shows over, I thought.
-———
I continued my studies at the University through out the years, and after I graduated I got a job at an environmental research company, thanks to a recommendation from Mr. Clarke. My life was good, better than good actually. Yet all while Sunny Creek loomed over me like a dark cloud. I knew that if I ever truly wanted to be happy, to be free of the spiders I saw in the corners of my nightmares, I would have to return home. There was a debt to pay.
I returned to Dutchville, Wisconsin last summer. When I left Dutchville I was 12, and now I was 32. It was strange returning to the town I had not lived in for almost 20 years. Dutchville had changed quite a bit. It had expanded, adding a multitude of apartments and gas stations and the like. There was a large shopping district, which I visited. I bought several supplies there which I put into the large duffel bag I carried around with me. There had only been one movie theater in Dutchville when I lived there, but now there were two. There newer one apparently had a screen that played IMAX films.
I walked through my old home town like a ghost - or really, like a transparent person. It was as if people could see right through me, as if light itself passed through me. My footsteps didn’t seem to make any noise and I felt as light as a leaf that could be blown away at any moment. It wasn’t purely nostalgia, rather it was like a wave of unreality was washing over me, every second I spent in Dutchville.
I started walking past a park, with a baseball diamond. There was a group of kids playing there. I heard the sound of a bat cracking and when I looked up I saw the ball flying clear over the pitcher. It rolled right towards me.
“Hey mister,” one of the kids called. “A little help?”
I picked up the ball and threw it back. As I did I was reminded of throwing the rocks at Travis and Francis. I winced as the ball released from my hand because for a split second it really did look like a rock. It wasn’t of course. It was just a ball. It rolled gently to the kid, who picked it up hurriedly.
“Thanks,” the kid called back.
“Hey kid,” I said before he could go.
“Yeah?”
“How many libraries are there in town?”
“Uhh, two I think. Why?”
“Just wondering.”
The kid shrugged and ran back to his friends.
Eventually I walked by my old school. I had spent the entire day in Dutchville walking around like a man in a dream, but once I reached this point I started walking with real determination. It’s surreal how quickly you can fall back into things. After all this time, I still remembered exactly how to get back to Sunny Creek.
The nameless street was still deserted of any cars or people, just as it had been all those years ago. On my walk I had thought or really I should say, I had hoped, that Sunny Creek wouldn’t be there. That it would have been destroyed in a fire or a flood. But those thoughts were too good to be true. The yellow building was still there. So was the sign outside the front steps that read: Sunny Creek Library.
I didn’t hesitate outside the front steps. I walked up them as if I had been coming to the library every day for the past 20 years. When I walked through the front doors, I wasn’t surprised to see that no one was at the front desk. In fact, there were no other patrons in the library. The only sound was the sound of the front door quietly shutting behind me. I walked along the edges of the rows peering down them. To my surprise, it wasn’t terror that I felt. Not at first. It was nostalgia. Warm nostalgia. The library itself looked exactly as it had the last time I had seen it. I grabbed a book from a shelf near the front section of the library. Felt the weight of it in my hand. It felt good. Perhaps that was the most terrifying thing. It felt really good to be back in Sunny Creek.
I set my duffel bag down and grabbed several more books. I began to read at a table near the front entrance. It felt good to read for pleasure again. Not just read, but to read in a library. To be back in that holy cathedral. It had been so long, and like an addict that relapses, I went on what could only be described as a reading bender. Not really even taking in the words, simply flipping open book after book and drowning myself in prose. I felt like a man who had been dying of thirst that just discovered a stream of the coldest and most pure water.
I can’t say how long I read, the light never seemed to change outside, but it felt like a long time. Eventually I regained my composure and put the books away. I looked down the rows, into the deeper part of the library. I took a deep breath, like a man about to plunge himself into a cold lake.
I walked into the rows.
I can’t say for certain how long I walked. Time was always a hard thing to place when you were deep into Sunny Creek. At a certain point the rows began to narrow and twist into unnatural shapes. The books started to look old and the webs appeared. So did the spiders. They were crawling everywhere, and there were more than I had ever seen in Sunny Creek before. Hundreds of them. Despite my years of studying insects and arachnids, the spiders in Sunny Creek were completely unidentifiable.
I didn’t see the gray people at first. Only heard them. Their laughter. Their sobbing. But eventually they revealed themselves to me. Peeking out from behind the shelves. Running around corners just out of sight.
The Gray People. Those people that got lost in Sunny Creek and never made it out. The flies in it’s web.
Deeper and deeper I walked into the library, passing several gray people but never seeing the ones I was looking for. At one point I passed that table that Eddie would always practice at, and in my head I could almost hear the sound of Delilah. I continued on, walking deeper into Sunny Creek than I ever had before. Determined to find the two I was looking for. And then I saw him. Peeking at me from the other side of a shelf. His skin was gray and damp, but his hair had not lost that yellow luster. Piss yellow, I use to think as a kid. He had not aged a day since I last saw him. He was still wearing the same Dutchvile Middle School t-shirt.
“Travis,” I said softly, like a man trying not to scare off a wounded animal. Travis regarded me flatly, but for a brief moment there was something that passed over his eyes. Something that looked like recognition. It left as soon as it came. I moved closer to him, but he ran off, the way the gray people always did when you got too close.
As I chased after Travis, a thought occurred to me. It did not feel like Travis was trying to get away. Rather, it felt as if he was leading me somewhere. He stayed ahead of me, but never truly out of sight. This thought proved true, when after some time, we turned the corner into another row.
There was another boy there. Like Travis, his skin was damp and gray. He was larger than Travis though. He was kneeling on the ground, sobbing profusely in that mad way the gray people did.
“Francis,” I said to the boy. Francis looked up at me. Unlike Travis, there didn’t appear to be any recognition in his face. Travis watched us, peeking around the corner. A demented, yet somehow pitiful smile on his face. When I knelt down, Francis did not run. He simply looked up at me with bloodshot eyes.
“I want to go home. I want go home. I want go home.”
He continued to mutter those words over and over until it turned back into violent sobbing. Travis began to laugh an insane laugh, hitting his forehead against the bookshelf.
“I want to go home. I want to go home. I want to go home.”
“I’m sorry,” I said weakly. “This is all my fault. I’m sorry I left you.”
“I want to go home. I want to go home. I want to go home.”
“I’m going to help you. I promise.”
“I want to go home. I want to go home. I want to go home.”
I took a deep breath and said the words I had been dreading to say.
“Thomas Spinner, I’m lost. Please help me.”
Both Travis and Francis went silent. Something stepped out of the shadows. I felt a cold shiver crawl up my spine. I didn’t turn around right away, but I knew he was standing right behind me. Slowly I turned, until I was standing face to face with Thomas Spinner. He looked no different than the last time I saw him. Although that wasn’t entirely true. His bright blue eyes seemed dull now. Less vibrant than they had been before. Looking at him, I felt the way you might feel when you go back and read a book that you loved as a kid. A book you had not read in years. And your horrified when you read it and you realize that book wasn’t very good. How could you have ever loved such a thing?
“I’d be happy to help. You said your lost?” Thomas Spinner’s voice was just as soft and paper thin as the last time I had heard it. He spoke in that casual elegant manner. Just another day, helping a poor patron out of the endless library. If he recognized me after all these years, he didn’t show it.
“Yes,” I said. “We’re all lost.” I gestured towards Travis and Francis, who hung back, not even daring to look up at Spinner. The librarian regarded the two gray boys the way one might regard a pair of old socks.
“I can’t help them,” Spinner said, wrinkling his nose.
“Please, it’s all my fault. Just let me take them back with us.”
“They don’t get to come back. They’ve been lost for too long.”
“Can’t you make an exception? Just this once.”
“There are no exceptions at Sunny Creek,” the horrible librarian said, smiling a gentle smile. “We do everything here…by the book. Which reminds me, you really should take better care of this.”
Thomas Spinner reached into his fine golden-brown coat and brought out something small, handing it to me.
It was a library card.
My library card.
That one that had slipped out of my pocket all those years ago. My hand trembled as I held it.
“It’s expired, but we can always renew it. One should really take better care of their library card. Now, should we get going?”
I turned back and to my horror both Travis and Francis were gone.
“NO!” I shouted. “Where are they? What did you do to them?”
“There’s no one here but you and me.”
“Please, I’m begging you-“
“I’m going to head back to the front entrance. You can follow me if you’d like. Or you can stay here. For as long as you’d like. Your choice.”
Thomas Spinner started walking, and I knew that I had no choice. Had known deep down that saving the two boys was never very likely. The belonged to the Sunny Creek now. Just as all the other gray people did. As we walked, the same guilt and shame I had felt 20 years ago clung to me. I might as well have been 12 years old again. Except I wasn’t. And even though option A failed.
I still had option B.
-—-
We made it back to the front entrance. It was dark outside. It had been a quick walk back, just as it always had been. A long walk in, a quick walk out. Thomas Spinner made his way to the front desk. He stood behind it the way the captain of a pirate ship would stand at the helm, confident and strong. A king in his castle.
“Shall we renew your card?”
I didn’t answer. I walked over to my duffel bag and opened it.
“What’s that?” Thomas Spinner asked, in that soft paper thin voice of his. There was something else in his voice. Something I had never heard before. It sounded like fear. Only a hint of it, but it was there.
“Option B.”
I took out several cans of lighter fluid and quickly began to douse them all over the library. As I worked Thomas Spinner made no attempt to stop me. He simply watched and smiled. That made things easy, but it also frightened me. I wasn’t sure what sort of resistance the Librarian of Sunny Creek would give in response to me attempting to burn down the place. I was not expecting no resistance at all.
When I was finished dousing the front section thoroughly, I sparked a lighter, and tossed it. As it left my hand it almost seemed to spin away in slow motion, and for one horrifying second I thought that the fire wouldn’t catch. That the library would not let the fire catch. Would not allow itself to be burned.
The fire caught almost immediately.
I watched as the flames grew. Watched as they began to consume the library. The fire ate everything. The shelves, the books, the tables. Everything in Sunny Creek seemed to combust quickly. Almost too quickly. As if they had been made of a weaker material, than normal. As if the entire library from top to bottom had been paper-mache the whole time. The fire continued to grow and grow and stretch down the long rows. I threw my Sunny Creek Library card into the flames. Satisfied, I turned toward the front door, catching a glimpse of Thomas Spinner. He was still standing at the front desk, surrounded by flames. But he didn’t move. He simply stood there and smiled.
“Thanks for visiting Sunny Creek Library,” Thomas Spinner said. “Hope to see you again soon.”
As I made my way out of the building, I could feel the heat of the fire lick my back. When I made it to the street I turned back towards the yellow building. It was entirely in flames. It began to creek and moan as it crumbled under the fire. The sound of it’s destruction was loud and hellacious. There was another sound too. Not just the sound of wood folding in on itself and combusting, but something that sounded like screaming. As if a hundred, no a thousand voices were yelling in unison. It could have been in terror, or it could have been in relief. It was hard to say. But they continued to scream as the building was consumed by flames.
No fire trucks appeared. No police cars. No news people. No concerned neighbors. If anyone in Dutchville saw the large black billowing cloud of smoke or heard the screams, they made no mention of it. I watched Sunny Creek Library burn down alone, on that nameless street, until there was nothing left but smoldering wood. By the time the morning light of the sun appeared hours later, Sunny Creek was nothing but rubble and ash. Inside the library had been endless and vast, but it’s remains were that of a small sized building. Maybe even smaller. It was not much of a corpse. A pitiful heap of burnt and blackened wood. It wouldn’t have made a good tree house, let alone a library. It was hard to believe it had even been a building at all.
Of Thomas Spinner there was no sign. Nor was there any sign of the gray people. Or the countless books Sunny Creek had been home to. There was nothing left but wood and ash.
Oh, but there was a spider. A large black one. It crawled out of the rubble, scurrying along, desperate to get away.
I crushed it under my boot.
As I left Dutchville, I felt the dark cloud that had hung over my head disappear. It was as if I had spent the last 20 years at the bottom of a cold lake and had now finally resurfaced. Like I was finally able to breathe.
Another thought did cross my mind. It was the conversation Professor Clarke and I had during my freshman year.
“What happens to a spider if it’s web is destroyed?”
“Oh, well in that case, it simply builds a new one.”
I can only hope that this spider never spins another web.