Another picture book slid from its place, this time in the corner by the window. Judy paused from planning tomorrow’s craft for storytime. She rose and poked her head down the aisles. Sure enough, Go, Dog, Go! by P. D. Eastman lay on the blue carpet. She furrowed her brow, returning it to the shelf.
She sat back at her desk and searched the library catalog for books about apples, the theme for tomorrow. She wrote notes on scratch paper before heading back to the stacks. Judy scanned a back shelf for Lisa Wheeler’s Ugly Pie.
Thud.
She turned. Yet another book had fallen. After grabbing what she was looking for, Judy walked to the book on the floor. The cover displayed a puppy staring at his reflection in the water. She pushed the book back into place and went on to the next titles on her list.
Twenty minutes later, Hakeem rolled by with the cart of the day’s returns.
“Judy, are these yours?”
Judy trotted to her coworker, where a neat stack of four books lay at his feet. She shook her head, and Hakeem picked them up. Each bore colorful illustrations of dogs or wolves.
“Some of the books have been sliding off the shelves today,” Judy said.
She led Hakeem to the previous trouble areas. The two of them checked for loose screws and pushed the cases to see if they were no longer bolted to the floor. Everything was in order.
“That’s strange.” Judy scratched her neck.
“Weird things are bound to happen in public places.” Hakeem shrugged, his thick mustache extending over his lips as he spoke. “Let’s just clean up and move on.”
Judy smiled politely. Hakeem had worked at this branch of the county library for twenty years, so Judy figured he knew it was not worth worrying over books that move for no reason. Judy was still the new girl even though she had worked in circulation while she was getting her master’s degree in library science. When Elizabeth, the dinosaur who previously ran the children’s section, retired last year, Judy jumped at the opportunity.
“Did Patty talk to you yet?” Hakeem asked as he pulled the cart to the next aisle.
“No.”
“We are organizing a fall social for the employees at all the branches in the county.” He handed her a small flyer from his sweater pocket.
“A social.” Judy’s heart pounded as she scanned the paper. “This Friday. I’ll think about it.”
Judy inspected the chairs, the shelves, and the tables, making sure nothing was out of place before she ended her shift. When she returned to her desk to grab her backpack, she noticed the lightbulb in her lamp was faltering. She retrieved a new bulb from the supply closet and exchanged it, but this one flickered too, just more quickly and brightly. Judy sighed, unplugged the lamp, and carried it on her walk home.
When she opened her apartment door, the smell of bacon greeted her. Kate, Judy’s younger sister and roommate, was cooking a quiche for dinner.
As Judy slipped off her ballet flats, she noticed a pair of men’s running shoes, clean but very worn, with a large hole in one of the sides—AJ was here. She set her backpack on the bench in the hallway and considered eating out. It wasn’t that she didn’t like him. He was a stable guy with a good sense of humor who treated Kate well. But Kate was Kate: a twenty-four-year-old who happened to be so hopelessly in love with AJ that sometimes it made Judy want to hide in the closet among her coats.
She brought the lamp into the kitchen and greeted the couple, who were chopping greens. AJ asked about the lamp, and Judy explained that it might have faulty wiring and maybe she could fix it with a little help. But when she plugged the cord into the outlet, the bulb shone brightly. Embarrassed, Judy put the lamp next to the front door and then set the table.
They ate, and Judy remarked that it was the best quiche she had in a long time. AJ stood and bowed with a flourish.
Kate wiped her mouth with her napkin and cleared her throat.
“Judy,” she said, “I want to ask you about something.”
“We want to ask you.” AJ corrected.
Judy held her breath.
“We’ve been thinking about you.” Kate continued. “I can’t recall the last time you hung out with anyone but us. And you haven’t gone on a date in ages.”
“I have a friend I think you would like to meet,” AJ said.
Judy raised her eyebrows.
“Thanks, but no thanks,” she said, clearing her plate and glass from the table.
“I’m just worried.” Kate blurted.
“So don’t.”
“What?”
“Don’t worry.”
Judy thanked them for dinner and locked herself in her room. Even though the sun hadn’t set yet, she unbuttoned her blouse and put on her pajamas as a way of trying to get the morning to come sooner.
“That ended sooner than I expected,” AJ said in the kitchen. “I really do think she would hit it off with Eli.”
The curse of living in a two-bedroom apartment was that Judy could hear everything. She flipped open her laptop for some quiet jazz music. Then she closed the curtains, prayed, and plopped onto the bed.
That night Judy dreamed she was playing with Kate and their younger brother, Joey, on the shore of the reservoir where they used to camp over the summer. They were scooping in the sand and dirt to make castles like they did as children, but everyone was in their adult bodies. The structure they sculpted towered above them, so large that when Joey carved out the front opening, he created a true archway for them to walk through. Kate decorated the exterior with pink conch shells, while Judy dug the moat with a snow shovel. She dug deeper and deeper until she could hardly see the opening of the pit above her head.
On Thursday morning, she arrived at work ten minutes early and, therefore, had to turn on the lights. She lugged the lamp back to its outlet and pushed the switch. It stammered, then shone properly. Judy opened the boxes of toys in the closet, checking to see if they were clean enough for the toddler playtime that afternoon. They were not. When she left for a towel and spray bottle, an oversized book of Mother Goose rhymes lay on the armchair in the corner. It was open to an illustration of a bright orange cat playing the fiddle.
Judy shrugged. Patty, who worked in the evenings, sometimes missed things like that before closing. When Judy came back with the cleaning supplies, the lamp flickered again. She switched it off and glanced at the book again. Now it displayed an ornate shoe.
Judy licked her lips. The furnace had kicked in a few minutes ago; the air circulating in the room probably turned the pages. She sprayed and wiped down the rubber farm animals. Then she took inventory of the craft supplies, noting a need for more glue sticks. When she passed by again, the pages showed a grandfather clock. Judy approached the armchair. The air was still.
After storytime, a young girl asked for a book about boats. Judy led her through the nonfiction section to a case dedicated to vehicles. As they drew closer, the girl shivered.
“It feels like a fridge in here,” she said.
Judy agreed before showing the patron three options. Then she looked at the thermostat. It claimed the temperature was seventy-two degrees, so she stopped by the reference desk, where Hakeem and Alex typed on their keyboards.
“Have either of you noticed some cold spots?”
They shook their heads.
“Is the ceiling vent open?” Alex asked.
Judy thanked her and returned to the children’s nonfiction section with a sturdy chair. The spot was no longer cold. She climbed onto the chair and felt warm air flowing from the vent.
At her computer, she googled possible reasons for cold spots that come and go. There were three or four articles about air ducts and furnaces. But the furnace was replaced last winter after the old one broke down, and since then the climate was much more comfortable.
She scrolled to an article from a real estate agency. Near the end, it mentioned the possibility of a resident spirit. Her eyes widened, and she typed “signs of haunting” in the search bar. She read about electrical issues, items out of place, and cold spots. As she scrolled, she recalled the books that had fallen off the shelves—all with the same topic of dogs. The book on the armchair consumed her thoughts, and she found it difficult to finish the article.
A boy tapped Judy’s arm. She started, took a deep breath, and closed the tab on her browser before handing him September’s scavenger hunt worksheet.
Judy experienced the same dream about the lake, only this time she wasn’t surrounded by her siblings. This dream featured two tall peers from her undergrad. They wore tight bathing suits and smirked as they sculpted in the sand. As before, Judy dug and dug in the moat, but the girls dumped their buckets of water and mud. Wave after wave drenched Judy until she struggled for breath. On Friday morning, she awoke more exhausted than when she had gone to bed.
After the toddler playtime scheduled for that day, the library was quiet, and rain clouds darkened the windows. Judy spent the afternoon brainstorming possible fall activities for the following month, but her mind was in a fuzz. Thirty minutes before ending her shift, her eyelids fell.
She heard a sharp sigh behind her. Judy jolted to her feet and turned around, but she saw no one. She slipped into her sweater and rubbed her arms before flipping the switch on her lamp. The bulb flashed. She turned it off and on again, but the light would not stay constant.
Judy’s hands trembled as she recounted the signs she had read about. She opened her web browser, now reading about ways to repel spirits. Burning sage was on the top of the list, but Judy feared that would trigger the smoke alarm. Salt was another.
Judy walked home in the rain instead of waiting at the bus stop for a ride to the fall social. Her apartment was empty when she arrived. Kate had left on a weekend camping trip with AJ and some friends. Judy shed her dripping jacket and boots. She immediately took a shower to warm herself from her walk in the storm. Since AJ wasn’t around, she didn’t bother to change but simply threw on her bathrobe and walked to the kitchen. She searched through the cans in the pantry while the rain pelted outside. As Judy cranked the knob on the can opener, her neighbor’s headlights glared through the windows as he backed the car into a parking spot.
The light briefly cast an odd shadow from the living room. Judy’s heart raced. She took a chef’s knife from the top drawer and tiptoed to the wall separating the kitchen and living room. She brought her fist up to her shoulder and counted to three.
Judy rushed into the room, flinging her arm at a silhouette of a man. But when the knife hit its target, Judy heard the pop of plastic. She rushed to the light switch. The “man” was a skeleton, one of Kate’s Halloween decorations that she had affectionately named Mr. Bones.
Judy set the knife on the coffee table and caught her breath. She fumbled with the decoration, smashing each limb back into the box. She crouched, revealing her thighs, as she hid Mr. Bones in the back corner of the supply closet. She stared at her pale, vulnerable skin and couldn’t bear feeling exposed any longer. She rushed to her bedroom dresser and yanked out underwear and warm sweatpants. She held an old shirt but shoved it back into the drawer because the sleeves only reached her elbows. She searched the piles until she found a top that would cover her naked arms.
After attending Sunday’s church services, Judy scoured her pantry for salt. All she could find was half a can of Morton’s. She stuffed it in her backpack and headed to the library, which was closed.
She unlocked the doors and sprinkled the salt near all the exterior walls. She poured sparingly in the most well-traveled areas but heavily in the cracks between the brick wall and the metal frames of the bookcases. By the time she got to the study rooms, the salt ran out.
For the next few weekdays, there were no strange noises and no rebellious books. Occasionally the lamp stammered, and Judy would scan the area, fearing she was being watched. But in comparison with last week, the events were ordinary. Judy rested well enough to curl her hair in the mornings, and she wondered if she had simply let her imagination run too far.
Then the janitor did his rounds on Thursday night, and he vacuumed thoroughly. On Friday morning, the cold spot returned, now on a bench against the wall, and every time Judy turned on her lamp, it faltered. For the first time since graduating from college, Judy counted the minutes until the weekend.
After Judy cleared away the toy bins from playtime, a family lingered. It was the Hubbards, a mother with three boys who came by at least once a week. Mrs. Hubbard held the baby at her hip and approached Judy’s desk with the oldest son.
“Tristan needs a good chapter book. Have any recommendations?”
The middle boy, Caleb, tugged at his mother’s free hand and pleaded for her to find a book about ninjas. Mrs. Hubbard told him to wait, but Caleb went to look for one himself.
Judy pulled up the library catalog on the computer to check for what was available. Then she led Tristan, Mrs. Hubbard, and the baby to the novels.
“How about—”
“Mommy!” Caleb interrupted, running to the group. “I found it! Can you reach it for me?”
“In a moment.”
Caleb slumped back to the easy reads. Judy handed Tristan a worn copy of The Hobbit and the first book in the Michael Vey series—it was a miracle those books weren’t on hold. She looked for The BFG as an easier option, but before she made it to the “D” shelf, Caleb returned with a stack of books.
“How did you solve your problem?” Mrs. Hubbard asked.
“Oh, the other lady helped me.”
Judy glanced at the reference desk. Alex was deep in conversation with a tall man, and Patty wouldn’t clock in till three.
“Who?” Judy asked.
“You know, the lady who’s always here.”
“Me?”
“No, silly! The grandma one.”
Mrs. Hubbard took the stack of books. “Well, I’m glad she helped you out. Tristan, choose quickly and meet me at the checkout.”
“The grandma one,” Judy whispered. She walked through every aisle in the children’s section. There was no grandma. She looked through the periodicals section, the computer lab, the adult fiction and nonfiction. There was one hunched elderly man, but Caleb would recognize him as a man. She thought about mentioning it to another coworker, but her previous conversation with Hakeem made her keep her mouth shut. After all, none of this had led to danger—yet.
As the wind bit her face on her walk home, Judy thought about relevant literature. In Jane Eyre, the ghost turns out to be Mr. Rochester’s wife, a real-life woman tormented with a mental illness. In Hamlet, the ghost of the king asks Hamlet to seek revenge. The four ghosts from A Christmas Carol convince Scrooge to change his ways. Judy decided to confront the spirit. Perhaps it would have a meaningful purpose to its haunting, like the spirits she had read about.
She came after hours on Saturday. She did not bring more salt. This time she came with a pumpkin spice candle, its warmer, and a small smart speaker. She arranged all three on the desk and turned on an album by Kenny G. She sat in the armchair by the window. The sky was pinkish.
The music crackled for a measure or two. Judy wiped her palms on her skinny jeans.
“Hello. I’m not sure why you’re here lately, but you must like the library,” she said. “We have that in common. I’m Judy Helgesen, the children’s librarian.”
She swallowed, but her throat was dry. She wished she had brought a cough drop.
“I got this job over a year ago. I love reading, and I thought if I helped children love it too, with no pressure or anything, it might make a difference around here.”
Judy paused, her mind searching for what to say.
“I live up the road with my sister, Kate. She’s a decent roommate, except that her boyfriend is glued to her side. They’ve been dating for quite a while.” She caught herself. “Well, it’s been a year, so that’s longer than either of us have dated anyone. My record is a whopping three weeks, and we didn’t even kiss. I’m twenty-nine, and I still haven’t been kissed.”
She chuckled and stared at the ceiling. “Sometimes I wonder if they’ll tie the knot. But then Kate will move out and leave me behind. Maybe I’ll need a dog to keep me company. She’s always trying to ‘get me out of my shell,’ inviting me to tennis at the rec center, hosting dinners with our neighbors, things like that. But she still has a backbone. She doesn’t get it.”
The streetlights turned on. She continued, “Last time I ‘got out of the shell’ was in freshman year. I was on the swim team. Sienna, a senior, nicknamed me The Slug, and that’s what the whole team called me. So I took it as a challenge. I’d become the fastest slug alive. When Coach told us to eat more protein, I bought a large tub of protein powder. When practice was at 7:00, I was warming up by 6:50. On holidays and days without practice, I hit the gym.”
She looked at the chipped blue paint on her fingernails. “None of it changed, though. I broke Eleanor’s record for the fastest two-hundred-yard fly, and then she broke into my locker and stole my shoes. Coach took Sienna out of the five-hundred-yard relay and put me in her place. She didn’t talk to me for weeks, but after our division’s championship meet, she invited me to a party. When I got to her place, they put a bag on my head and started screaming.”
Without warning, Judy wept.
The smart speaker crackled into static noise. She unlocked her phone, but before she checked the Bluetooth, she heard a faint noise. She crept to her desk and lowered her head toward the speaker.
“Excuse me,” whispered a woman’s voice. “Excuse me, but why are you telling me this?”
Judy blinked. “Aren’t you going to tell me something—something important?” All she heard was static. “Why are you at my library?”
“Your library?” The voice replied. “Your library? It is mine too. Please, let me be.”
“Do you know you’re dead?” Judy asked.
Static returned for a moment before the ghost responded.
“Do you know you’re alive?”
