The Library: Rewrite
	Part Part 3: Basement by Roberta J. Cabot So. Here I was. Alone in the library with my sexy, French-speaking ghost. I wanted to get out of there, but I wanted to find out what this was all about, too. I wanted to know. I NEEDED to know. Even if I had to ask the ghost. My name is Mark. And this is the continuation of my Halloween story.

*** Mark ***

I looked at the girl. She was looking at me as well. I shivered uncontrollably. Lightning cracked again, and I heard the rain start to fall.

I never felt so scared in my life. Well, that's not exactly correct. There was last night.

But the rain was falling down gently, so, though the silence in the library was preserved save for the gentle murmur of the raindrops, it changed the foreboding nature of the silence into a cozier kind of silence like the kind I remember from my childhood - of cool, gentle, rainy spring afternoons spent on the living room couch, with mom next to me, and both of us reading - hers some women's magazine, perhaps Vogue or Cosmopolitan, me with a book by Daniel Pinkwater or something, and Olivia puttering around, usually dusting furniture, while we waited for dad.

I wanted to run away, to run home, but I guess I had that patented Bowman persistence running in me. Although Olivia might call it orneriness instead. Each step towards the girl was something I had to consciously think of (I wasn't ready to admit that it was Marianne Archer yet). When I was at the foot of the table, I stopped.

"Hey," I said. I couldn't look her in the face. I looked everywhere but her face.

"Bonjour á nouveau, mon amour. Merci de revenir. Mais je savais que tu reviendrais."

I couldn't understand it much, but I read a few books with some french-speaking characters so I could puzzle it out a bit. "Yeah, I'm back. I didn't really want to come back, though."

"Naturellement. Mais je suis encore heureux que vous soyez venus."

"Stop that!" I said. "I don't speak French."

She huffed, and stood up. "Vous n'avez pas? C'est ce que vous pensez."

She was mad. "D'accord. Être comme ça." But her chair didn't push back like you would have expected it to, maybe to even actually fall back - she seemed pretty mad and stood very fast. It's like she was made of smoke. I snuck a look down and saw the lower part of her thighs sticking through the chair's seat.

She glared at me, and I shivered again. Imagine being stared down by a ghost.

"Why are you here?" I asked. "What are you doing to me?"

"Moi? Non, it is not me. I am here to help you."

"Help me? You're helping me?"

"Bien sûr... Of course..."

"But what about everything that's happened? I don't understand."

"Mère a tout commencé."

"Huh? Who started everything? My mother? Or your mother?"

"Ma mère, votre mère... she is the same."

"She is the same? You mean..."

"Oui. We are sisters, my love. We are sisters..."

I noticed that the lights in the library had gone down. They didn't click off like from a regular light switch, but like from a dimmer switch. After a few moments, all that was left was the light over our table. We were inside our own little cone of light, with everything else hidden in darkness. And the comforting sound of gentle rain was replaced by the harsh sound of wind and hale.

"Marianne," I said. Seems I had accepted that she was Marianne Archer... "Marianne, what's happening?"

"I am sorry, ma soeur. They know you are here now. I cannot hold them back much longer."

I could feel, just beyond our cone of light, were the zombies outside the library. Whatever it was that was stopping them from coming in was gone now. And they were inside now. I could almost see their outlines. They were just standing there. I could hear their breathing, but no one was speaking. From time to time, one of them would be jostled by the others and would inadvertently stumble forward a bit and would break through the cone of light. The zombie would make a small, sharp intake of breath, like how you would when hot water hits your hand, and would jerk himself backward out of the light and back into the gloom. There must be a lot of them for some of them to be jostled forward like that.

I desperately wanted to close my eyes but I thought it would be dangerous if I did.

"We must hurry," Marianne. said in her ghostly but clear voice. "I must show you. Follow me."

I wanted to ask where but she had started moving aready. Though she was going through the motions of walking, her gait wasn't that of a normal person walking. She was gliding. She didn't care what was in her way, and she'd just glide through tables and chairs.

As soon as she started gliding, the light over the table where she was going would click on. As soon as it did, the zombies that were illuminated hissed, and jumped out of the light. That quick glimpse showed me that we were surrounded. The library must be almost jam-packed with zombified kids.

As soon as the newly-illuminated area was clear, I shuffled to the new area. As I did, the light over the table behind me slowly faded out, and I could just glimpse it being occupied by the zombies.

So that's how the ghost and I made our way to the doorway to the stacks. It was a bit hairy in a few spots where the tables were farther apart than the others - they were so far apart that the "corridor" of light between the fluorescent pools was so narrow, I had to shuffle sideways so I wouldn't touch the zombies. "Please, oh, please, oh, please..." I mumbled as I shuffled between the silent students.

Eventually, we were at the doors going to the stacks. The doors were like swinging saloon doors, but though they weren't locked, they weren't swung open either. But Marianne had already glided through. Knowing that the light would start fading out almost immediately after Marianne had gone, I yelled a rebel yell and ran to the doors.

I hit the doors with the heels of my hands, making them swing open. As I passed the threshold, I had to skid to a stop.

Instead of the stacks, there was a stairway going down. "What?..."

I looked around and Marianne wasn't around. I peered down the stairway and still couldn't find her. "Marianne!" I cried. "Where are you!?"

I looked back - the doors were swung open permanently so the light shone through. They haven't faded away. Yet.

By that light, I walked down the stairs. I walked down gingerly. The wooden stairs creaked spookily as I stepped on each board, but I held the panic away and walked down carefully. When I stepped off the stairs, I looked around. Instead of a basement, it was just a big empty space. It felt like a big, empty underground parking lot.

I looked back up the stairs, and Marianne was there, standing silhouetted in the light from the hallway.

What now, I thought...

Author’s Postscript: I thought I'd knock together a chapter of the story, just in time for Halloween.

- Bobbie

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