[if you enjoy this story, please come back and vote on chapter after June 14th! That's when the contest starts! :) editing will take place tomorrow ]

When I got there, there were about fifteen people ahead of me. Twenty minutes later, I was finally standing at the edge of the rope, folding and unfolding my class syllabus. While my peers buried themselves in cell phones and ipod screens I'd been leaning forward across the red velvet, trying to hear what the other people were asking so I'd know how conduct myself.

Great students used our library's resources to its fullest extent. Good students went there when their printer ran out of ink and their professor was a stickler for having tangible copies. And then there was me, the freshman ecology major who had never in my life checked out a book. In elementary school we had a 'library' (a classroom with a some book shelves and the cleanest carpet around).We'd sign our name on little white cards taped to the inside cover and go on our merry way.  I thought I'd see a real library in high school. I heard we had one.

As a proud Bulldog alumni, the most I could do was probably point you in the right direction.

It wasn't that I was a bad student, I just never needed it. There wasn't anything in there that I couldn't find on the internet. And since I lived and breathed softball outside of the classroom, I rarely had time to go.

"Next," wheezed an older woman at the help counter. I glanced at her- a grey-haired with a hunched back and a plaid outfit from a seventies' wardrobe. She needed a step stool to see over the counter (I knew because I'd been here for twenty minutes, watching her sloth her way off and on the thing). Her hair was short and curly. A birthmark shaped like my home state of Louisiana darkened the wrinkles around her frown. A brass name tag pinned to her saggy suit coat read 'Marge.'

I'd been hoping to land the cute guy working at the computer over, but such was my luck.

"Next," she repeated, flat green eyes staring me down.

Taking a deep breath, I strolled up to the polished marble and laid my elbow on the smooth edge casually. "Hi. I'm kind of new to this whole thing and-"

"You're new or you're old," she snapped. "What can I help you with?"

I glanced longingly towards Marge's cute co-worker. He flashed a bright smile and chatted with the lucky girl behind me. "I was looking to check out a copy of this book. I'm not sure how all this works so I thought I'd mosey on over to the help desk." I slid the syllabus across to her. On the back I'd scrawled the name of a title my English professor had suggested to me during office hours. It'd help with my paper, he'd promised. 

She slid the document right back. "Can't read chicken scratch. What's it say?"

"Disciplina Clericalis," I mumbled. Latin wasn't exactly my strong suit.

"Talk louder, girl." More than one head turned at her booming voice. The first two floors and computer room allowed for mellow conversation and tutoring, but I still cringed a little.

"How about I spell it?" I asked. "Or give you the author's name? Petrus Alphonsi?"

She shrugged, fingers hovering across a keyboard. A few minutes of slow and careful spelling later had her leaning back. "Ah, yes. We have an English translation of that text. Very old. Can't be taken out of the library."

"Do you have a digital copy on file? I've got a game tonight in Scranton so I was hoping to take something with me on the bus."

"We do, but there's been a problem with retrieval since this morning. I can put in a request for a copy from Cornell."

"How long will that take?"

She raised a white eyebrow. "How many hours before your paper is due?"

"I have the weekend," I insisted, frowning. "Could I just take a look at the hard copy then?" The book wasn't the main point of the paper; I just needed to pull a story from it as evidence.

"We don't keep it in circulation. You'll have to head up to archives and talk to someone there. I believe it's being sent out to the University of Cinncinati in a few days' time."

"Okay, great, thank you." She nodded, and waved on the guy next in line.  I paused, cutting back between them with a blundered apology. "Where exactly are the archives?"

For the better part of the semester I'd managed to skate by without needing the library for anything more than a quick internet search or a meetup where Nicole and I could work on our chemistry homework together. The good students buzzed around the computers, waited in line to pay ten cents -ten!- to print per page. The great students knew the librarians by name, whisked through the labyrinth of titles and volumes and endless rows of literature with a confidence I could only dream about. I just knew the main hall, the computer lab, and where the bathrooms were located.

Marge's shoulders moved in a long sigh. "Let me give them a call." She barked at her co-worker to take the guy I'd disrupted, made the phone call, and then we were headed for the winding staircase.

The Dornroschen library was an elegant building, clean and marbled on the interior, with high ceilings and plenty of ambient light for its art exhibits. This month's show was a series of textiles and paintings from medieval France. Among glorious tapestries rested a plain spinning wheel. The main hall housed a wide fountain display that masked the peaceful murmur of its patrons. Long tables and comfortable sofas littered the first floor, while the upper levels consisted of the more typical compressed textual universe that was thousands upon thousands of books.

Marge moved in such small steps I was tempted to grab her elbow and her walk like I did my own grandma. Slinging my bag over my shoulder, I took one step every couple seconds as we edged closer and closer to the winding staircase. We spent so long walking I'd practically memorized the little plaques below each of the hanging tapestries.

"The elevator's-" I began, not sure if I was allowed to pull her that way or not.

"Stairs are good for my heart," she hissed, and we wound our way up the spiral staircase, all the way to the top floor. I tried several times to smile and nicely tell her that I didn't need her help and I'd be fine, but she was just as much if not more stubborn than a cat. Marge did what she wanted, when she wanted, and I was too chicken to try and hurry her.

When we arrived in the archives there weren't any students, just a middle-aged brunette with a bright smile. The room itself functioned as an office that seemed to be added as an afterthought, with a low paneled ceiling, a basic desk and a couple sitting chairs. On the woman's desk sat a few old texts, some paperwork, and a droopy rose in a glass vase. The brunette plucked a petal from the red rose and dropped it into the trash.

"You're the girl who wants to see the Disciplina Clericali?" Latin rolled off her tongue like pearls across velvet. "May I see your student ID?"

Fumbling with my bag, I passed it to her. "Thank you, Bryn," she said. Her eyes fell on my name. "You're a Hayward? Any relation to the  fashion designer?"

"My mother," I said.

The brunette nodded. "Yes, I can see it. Same hawkish eyes, and that auburn hair! How I wish I had enough to make a braid like yours!"

I pulled at my hair, feeling something between proud and embarrassed. "I don't think it's so nice when the wind's whipping through it on the ballfield. The tangles afterward are a nightmare."

Her smile broadened. "I hope you aren't offended. I don't ask every Hayward, of course, but you certainly look like her. Well, a younger version. I do admire her evening gowns. Such elegant attire. If I had the money, I'd buy one of hers."

"So this book."

"Have a seat." Shrugging off my bag, I relaxed into a leather swivel chair across from her. She laced her fingers together. "Now I can't let you handle it, but if you tell me what you're looking for, I can open it to the pages you need."

"Thanks. It's for a paper I'm writing on the origins of counting sheep. Professor Perrault recommended this."

"Hold tight," she said. She slipped through a door behind her- presumably to the rest of the archives. Marge's hand dropped on my shoulder. I must've jumped a foot; I hadn't realized she was still standing there.

"Things are rather old up here," she hissed. "Watch out for the moth."

"Okay," I said. Slowly, very slowly her shadow rounded the staircase and down she went, leaving me alone in the quiet room wondering why they didn't just leave out some mothballs.

I spun around in the chair, looking at paintings of the colonial northeast. There were only a few books in the room, all of them on the back wall and all locked behind glass cases. And there was a titanium white door opposite the one the woman had disappeared through. It wouldn't have held my attention any longer than that, except the gleaming paint seemed to have been finished recently.  Whomever had painted it didn't bother to sand or fill deep gashes near the burnished knob.

"You guys have a dog up here?" I called to Marge, guessing she couldn't be more than twenty steps down.

Her voice was a cold rattle- that or the air conditioning was going. "A moth."

"I'm pretty sure a moth didn't do that," I muttered, spinning back around, my head thrown back, inspecting shadowy corners and crevices where the winged critter might be hiding. As the chair rotated and the desk came into view, the entire rose -not just the petals, not just the stem- browned and withered.

Something small and silver hit my shoulder and pinged across the tile. I bent toward it. A second one clattered and bounced past my stretching fingers.

Screws.

Chalky dust hissed trough the seams of the air vent. The remaining screws wobbled in place, loosening one twist at a time, until gravity won the fight and brought them -and the metal vent- crashing down.

I flung myself onto the desk to escape, smashing the rose vase, scattering husks of petals as I tumbled. For a moment there was only the clank of a broken air conditioner, or something metallic caught in the vents. No, claws. The scrabble of claws, like a rat or a squirrel, coming closer, moving past my head, over the desk, and toward the gaping hole.

From the darkness fell a curtain of thick black curls that billowed and twisted like living roots. An ashen face soon followed. Gaunt, angular, small as a child's head and yet somehow mature. Sunken, pupil-less eyes met mine. Thin lips pulled back, revealing razor-edged shark's teeth. That eerie grin stayed in place as it wriggled and forced furry, dimly iridescent shoulders through what I was beginning to suspect was not an actual vent.