Amrita

  I know always that I am an outsider; a stranger in this century

  and among those who are still men.

  Amrita caught up with Oliver halfway down the block after the final bell rang. The other kids all walked in clumps as they scattered from their weekday prison, but Oliver walked by himself. He always seemed to be by himself, even when other kids were around.

  “Hey,” she said, giving him a hello push as she reached him. “You couldn’t just wait at the doors?”

  He shoved a blackened tissue into his pocket. “I wasn’t sure you’d want anyone knowing you were meeting me.”

  She scoffed and gestured to the other students shuffling out of the front doors of Arkham High. “You think any of these zombies gives a rat’s ass what I do? You think I’d care if they did?”

  He shrugged, hunching his old backpack higher on his shoulders. “I don’t get picked on anymore, but for a long time… anyway, I just didn’t want to cause problems for you.”

  “Thanks, but I’d rather be walking with you than most of them. They’re all weird.”

  “I thought you said I was weird.”

  “Yeah, but you’re, like, at least alive in your weirdness. I look at these other kids and it’s like there’s nobody home. I swear there’s something in the water here.”

  “Boredom,” Olly said, sounding like he thought he was forty. “I mean, does anybody want to be living in Olmstead? Middle-of-nowhere Indiana isn’t exactly teen mecca.”

  Amrita stripped the little yellowed leaves off a honey locust twig hanging overhead as they walked past. “Yeah, but we lived in Muncie for a few years when I was younger, and it wasn’t like this. Ever been there?”

  He gave her a bitter smile. “I have literally never traveled more than twenty miles outside this town.”

  “I haven’t gone a whole lot farther, but I’m telling you, kids in other cities aren’t like this. They laugh, they do dumb stuff, they get in trouble. Here it’s like they’re cattle lined up at the slaughterhouse. I can hardly even get anybody to fight me.”

  He gestured at her still-healing split lip. “Looks like you manage all right.”

  She laughed and jutted out her chin to him, showing off the scabbed cut. “Not bad, right? I wish I knew how I managed it. I had to work with Rafe Judkins on that phylum-class-order worksheet last week. Remember that?”

  “Yeah. Rafe’s the one with glasses, right?”

  “No, he’s the redhead. Super freckly?”

  “Uh…”

  “Shit, man, you really don’t pay attention to people, do you? Anyways, on our way out of class I told him he probably had a squid in his family tree somewhere, and he hauled off out of nowhere, take it back take it back, and I have no idea what it was about. I’m surprised you didn’t see – it was right down the hall from Mauer’s class.”

  “I bug out as fast as I can, usually. Why a squid?”

  “I was just joking. ‘Cause he’s all pale and noodley, y’know? That is one hundred percent the strongest reaction I have ever seen from anybody in this town, and I have no idea why.”

  Olly threw a little smirk at her. “And here I thought you were a good fighter.”

  She waved a fist at him casually. “I can kick your ass if you want to find out. And maybe he got in a good punch, but have you seen him in school since?”

  “Since I apparently don’t know who he is…”

  “God, you’re hopeless.”

  They walked in companionable silence down uneven sidewalks and cracked, weedy asphalt toward Olmstead’s Main Street, passing a shuttered barbershop, the Quick Mart with its mostly empty shelves, and an old brick house stuck between shops with a huge hole in its roof. Broken windows theory, she mused. This whole town could use a good torching.

  “You could have just talked to me in class,” she said, latching onto a thought she’d had earlier. “You didn’t need to call me just to say we were meeting at the library after school. Your phone sucks, by the way. I could barely understand you.”

  “I can use our landline,” he said, eyeing the dilapidated house critically, “but it’s always scratchy if I’m the one holding it.”

  “It’s okay to just not like technology, you know. It’s probably not because you’re secretly some electrically-charged mutant.”

  He shook his head. “You’ll see.”

  “So why not just tell me in class, then?”

  He hesitated and hunched further into his backpack. “I dunno.”

  “Holy shit,” she exclaimed, laughing to cover the drop in her stomach. “You dick. You’re the one who doesn’t want to be seen with me.”

  “That’s not it,” he protested.

  She turned around. “Screw you. You can figure this shit out yourself.”

  “No,” he said, catching her by the elbow.

  She spun, one fist raised, and he dropped his hand. The urge to pound him was high. “Dude, do not play games with me. I will end you.”

  “I know. I’m sorry, seriously. I promise I don’t care about being popular. You’re the only person who’s said more than five words to me in I don’t know how long, and now there’s this thing, and I know you said not to think about it, but I can’t help it, and I had the worst dream I’ve ever had last night, and I had to call you this morning just to make sure it had all actually happened and that I didn’t make it up, and I’m sorry, I know it’s weird and I should have just said something in class, but they’re not sheep and they’re not zombies, they’re quiet and they’re watching and if you give them anything they’ll use it against you, you have no idea—”

  “Whoa, dude,” she said, taking him by the shoulders and giving him a shake. He had tears in his eyes. “Take a breath. It’s okay. We’ll go to the library, all right? Damn. Chill.”

  He took a shaky breath and turned back toward Main Street, walking a little ahead so he could wipe his eyes without her seeing. She let him pretend.

  “Sorry.”

  “What was the dream?”

  “I can’t even remember. It was just… bad. Evil. When I woke up, I was so scared I couldn’t even make a sound. I just laid there, felt like hours, convinced that the worst thing ever had just happened, or was about to happen, or… Utter destruction. Worse than death. Worse than never existing.”

  She sucked at her teeth. “I took a slug of Jim Beam and slept like a baby.”

  He laughed in a despairing kind of way. “Yeah, stupid of me not to.” He walked in silence for a moment, stewing. “I don’t know, but I think something’s really wrong. We never should have gone there.”

  She linked arms with him. He was tense, almost quivering, but after a few steps with her hand on his arm, he relaxed just a little. “We don’t know what we saw. Or what we heard. It could have been anything.”

  He looked right at her. “I have to find out.”

  “I’m here, aren’t I? Maybe I’m not feeling like I need three Xanax, unlike some other people I could mention, but I’m very much down with finding out what that weirdness was about. Where is the library, anyway? I didn’t even know Olmstead had one.”

  “People don’t go there much. It’s in this weird little cul-de-sac behind the YMCA, and there’s no other way to get there but through the building.”

  She laughed sourly. “Provide a public service and then make it as hard to find as possible. Sounds about right.”

  The Y was a sad, squat two-story tan brick building a good thirty years behind on renovations. Amrita had gone in once with her mother to work out back before her sciatica got bad, but they didn’t have any punching bags and the indoor pool smelled of both mold and chlorine, so she’d never gone back. A squat, toadish man sat at the front desk and glared at them as they entered.

  “We’re just going through,” Oliver assured him. “Library.”

  The man said nothing, but he didn’t stop them, either. His eyes tracked them all the way down the hall as they passed big, windowed rooms that held a scattering of grandmothers and listless children using exercise machines.

  They passed out of the rear doors and Amrita took a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. “Ugh, that place is the worst. Smells.”

  “Yeah, there’s not a lot to invest in public structures around here,” Olly said, sounding sad. “But at least there’s this.”

  He pointed across the mossy, enclosed courtyard to a building she’d never seen. It looked like someone shrank the Cathedral of Notre Dame down to three stories and stuck it in a backyard.

  “What. The. Hell,” she said.

  “Right? It’s the oldest standing structure in town, maybe in all of Indiana. Classic Gothic architecture, or at least mostly, built in 1869 by Zebediah Whateley, a pretty famous weirdo who helped found the town. Used as a church for a while, then sat vacant for ages and eventually became the library. I read a book that said Main Street was actually supposed to be a hundred feet further this way and the building would have been right on the road, but the city planning’s been a mess since day one.”

  There were spires and cornices and other things that Oliver probably had names for, but it was the gargoyles that caught Amrita’s eye. They clung to the roofline, glaring down, wings spread, talons clutching the stone, tentacles sneaking out from their backs and shoulders.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “This place is gnarly.”

  “Yeah. Apparently old Whateley wanted the whole town to look like this.”

  “It’s striking, don’t get me wrong, but I’m glad he got overruled.”

  “Well, he disappeared not long after it was built. People think his kids killed him.”

  “Of course they did. Nobody who builds something like this has the rest of their shit together.”

  They breached the front door, pulling on a massive iron ring in the center of the peaked, iron-hard oak slab. Amrita expected a horror-movie squeal from the hinges, but it drifted open silently. The interior was not the dreary Dracula castle she was expecting, but rather had aging modern furniture, lighting, and carpet incongruously butted up against quarried stone walls and spiral carved-stone staircases. It had the hush of libraries everywhere and a smattering of patrons scattered through the cavernous first floor.

  “Do they have enough books to fill this place?” she whispered.

  “No, the second and third floors are shut off,” he said in low tones. “I’ve tried to sneak up, but the librarian Ms. Gilman is a hawk.”

  She gestured to a gray-haired, spindly woman sitting at a massive desk under a faded sign that said Circulation on the far side of the room. “Is that her?”

  “Yes, don’t point,” he hissed. “She hates me already, and I don’t want her to think I’m talking about her.” The old lady was already looking in their direction, though Amrita couldn’t see her expression behind her glasses.

  They walked slowly over to the woman. “Why does she hate you?” Amrita said, keeping it quiet. “You must use this place more than anybody.”

  “I think it’s because Dad goes to the Lutheran church and she’s a bigwig with the Baptists. She always acts like I just stepped in crap and I’m getting it all over the carpet.”

  She scuffed the worn gray nylon turfing underfoot. “I don’t know that would do much harm at this point.”

  He snickered. “Don’t let her hear you say that. This place is her own personal castle.”

  They approached the circulation desk and Oliver put on a big smile. Old Ms. Gilman was completely absorbed in something she was writing and did not look up.

  “Hello, Ms. Gilman,” he said.

  The woman cocked her head and looked up, her eyes passing over Oliver as if he weren’t there before alighting on Amrita. She gave a motherly smile that had hard edges on it.

  “Hello, dear, and welcome,” she said to Amrita. “I don’t believe I’ve seen you come in before. I’d remember a pretty young woman like you.”

  Amrita froze, looking back and forth between Oliver, whose smile was wilting, and prim, bun-wearing Ms. Gilman, who apparently saw no one except her. “Uh, hi. We were hoping to look some stuff up.”

  She beamed. “Certainly, dear. I can log you into one of our computers if you don’t have a library card yet.”

  Oliver cleared his throat. “Have any of my requests come in, Ms. Gilman? Egyptian Iconography, or maybe that one on Mesopotamia?”

  The woman kept her gaze on Amrita. “Guest logins are only good for twenty minutes of Internet access, but I’ve got a spare member account that will let you browse for an hour. Follow me this way, dear. If you plan on coming back frequently, I can help you set up your own card.”

  The woman was walking away, clearly expecting Amrita to follow, but she stayed put. “He was asking about his requests, ma’am.”

  She spun about, clicking her tongue. “Mr. Mason, bothering me will not make the books appear any faster.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “They haven’t come in, then?”

  She stood there with lips pressed tight, then with a sigh went back to her desk, opened a drawer, and slapped a hardcover book onto its surface. “Keep it overdue and I’ll charge you double fines this time, young man,” she said, and walked away.

  Oliver gathered up the book. “Go on,” he told her. “See if you can find anything on that word we found. There are some other reference books I want to check. I’ll come find you in a bit.”

  Amrita reluctantly trailed after the old stick of a woman, who had bent over an ancient computer and was typing in some credentials. She noticed that for all the woman’s friendly words, she’d positioned herself so Amrita couldn’t see the keyboard as she put in her password.

  “There you are, dear,” she cooed, standing aside. “You’re Anit’s daughter, aren’t you? And Elizabeth’s? I’ve been hoping to meet you.”

  Amrita sat down, wishing the woman would go away. “That’s me.”

  “Good folk, your parents. We were glad when they moved back in. They elevate that entire neighborhood.”

  “You know them?”

  “Oh, yes. Well, not personally. Your grandmother was a member of our congregation years ago, long before your father moved away looking for work.”

  Amrita shifted in her chair, wishing it were okay to punch old women. “Dad’s too busy for church stuff. He works two jobs.”

  She smiled, somehow looking both comforting and creepy. “Oh, my dear, a body needn’t go to church to know the true shape of the world.”

  Amrita clicked aimlessly at the computer’s desktop, at a loss for words. Old lady Gilman leaned in close.

  “Forgive a nosy grandma, but be careful who you spend your time with, young woman. Some folk aren’t to be trusted.” She cast a meaningful glance over her glasses in Oliver’s direction and drifted away with a smile before Amrita could sift her outrage out of the deep pool of unease in which she was floundering.

  She typed FHTAGN into the search bar and scrolled mindlessly through the results, seeing nothing as she thought back over the strange conversation she’d just had. What’s her deal with Oliver? Is it really some church rivalry? There’s no way that weird old bat knew my grandmother. Her father refused to talk about his family; all Amrita knew was that she was named after her grandmother and that there’d been some big fight not long after she was born. Elevate the neighborhood? What does that even mean? She kept clicking, letting the words pour in through her eyes without ever making sense of them.

  Oliver sat next to her a few minutes later, and she felt a wave of relief.

  “I don’t like that lady,” she whispered.

  “I think you have to be a total monster before they let you become a librarian,” he said. “Find anything?”

  “I don’t know. Nothing useful. It looks like there’s some old sci-fi stories that use the word, but I swear they just throw together random letters for the names in that shit. I mean, look at this,” she said, gesturing to the screen. “What is Nyarlathotep? Or Yog-Sothoth? There’s like a zero percent chance I even said that right.”

  He sat well back and squinted at the screen. “Nothing from any other languages?”

  “See for yourself.” She scooted aside, gesturing to the mouse and keyboard.

  “No, you do it.” He leaned away from the machine, looking uncomfortable.

  “Are you kidding me? You have a serious hang-up, dude.”

  He sighed and reached forward, touching the side of the old tube-style monitor. It immediately fuzzed and started rolling vertically. He lifted his finger and it stopped, though the spot nearest his hand was still discolored and jumbled. He set his finger down again and the screen went crazy once more.

  “Whoa. You really weren’t kidding.”

  “I told you.”

  “So, like… is it just computers? Try this.”

  She pulled out her old cell phone and handed it to him. He took it with a long-suffering look. The moment it hit his hand, the green monochrome screen went dead. He held the power button, but nothing happened.

  “The more advanced it is, the worse it gets,” he said. “I can use the washing machine if I don’t sit next to it, and old rotary phones will work, though not super well. Forget it with cell phones and computers. No chance. I have to go into the bank to withdraw money, because ATMs are useless. I’m going to have to learn how to restore old cars once I get my license. If they’ll let me take the test on paper, at least, because otherwise I’m out of luck.”

  “Bro,” she said, deeply impressed. “You are literally a mutant.”

  “Yeah,” he said, sounding weary.

  She took her phone back. “Did you break it for good?”

  “No, give it a minute and it should be fine. So will you work the keyboard, please?”

  “You didn’t find anything?”

  He still held the Egyptian Iconography book. “Even the oldest Egyptian stuff I can find looks way more refined than our little statue buddy. Maybe there’s something Sumerian that matches? I don’t know enough about that period yet. The only thing I’ve ever seen that has that same sense of crude carving is the Venus figurine they found in Germany. It’s so old it’s almost pre-human, but even that feels more… well, more human than our statue does.”

  “How so?”

  “Well…” He shifted uncomfortably. “It has very human features.”

  She frowned, nonplussed. “What do you mean?”

  He turned a little red. “It has these huge boobs. Bigger than its head.”

  Amrita smirked. “Perv.”

  “I didn’t carve it.”

  “We should have brought our statue with us to show the lady.”

  He shook his head. “I’m not showing something valuable to that woman. She’d take it, or call the police or something.”

  “Is someone calling the police?” Ms. Gilman’s voice sounded behind them.

  They both jumped and turned guiltily. The old woman was smiling down at Amrita, ignoring Oliver once more. She took a breath as if to say something else, but then her eye fell on the screen where FHTAGN stood proudly at the head of a results list. The air hissed out through her teeth and her eyes went wide, her glasses making them seem even bigger than they were.

  “Oh, my,” she breathed. “It’s time.”

  Amrita and Oliver exchanged a glance.

  “Time?” he asked.

  The librarian snapped back, recovering her poise. “Yes, Mr. Mason. It’s time for you to run on home. Your father just called looking for you and said he needs you home immediately. He sounded quite concerned.”

  Oliver frowned. “My dad called?”

  “Did I stutter, Mr. Mason? Be a good boy for once and run along. I’ll help Miss Rajani with her work.”

  Oliver looked at her, dubious, and she shrugged back at him. She was half-tempted to just walk out with him and leave this weirdo librarian behind, but she was practically vibrating in her skin as she waited for Oliver to leave, and Amrita was curious what it was that she didn’t want the boy to hear.

  “Go ahead,” she told him. “I’m good here.”

  He hesitated. “You sure?”

  She grinned, acting more confident than she felt. “What am I gonna do, burn the place down?”

  He laughed and nodded. “Come by my house when you’re done.” He scribbled his address on one of the tiny scraps of paper they kept by the computers for writing down book locations and pressed it into her hand. She gave him a wink and he turned away, but not before giving Ms. Gilman a very cool look.

  “One of these days someone’s going to run that family out of town,” Ms. Gilman whispered savagely, watching him go.

  “Why’s that?” Amrita asked, putting as much brightness and innocence into the words as she could.

  Old lady Gilman beamed down at her, taking her by the hand. Her parchment skin was cold and dry. “Never you mind, dear. I want to show you something. I think it’s time you saw.”

  Curiosity warring with apprehension, she let the librarian pull her through the room to a shadowed corner, where she paused before an old door set into the stone wall. She fished a keyring out of her cardigan pocket, quickly finding a large, toothy key of black iron and inserting it into a keyhole so old it looked like just a hole in the wood. With a beatific smile, Ms. Gilman swung the door open on dead-silent hinges, revealing a smooth stone staircase heading down into darkness.

  Amrita paused, dread blooming in her stomach. The last dark staircase she’d gone down hadn’t turned out well, and she wasn’t anxious to try out another. “I didn’t know this place had a basement.”

  “Most don’t. But if you’re already searching out the Old Tongue, it’s time to let you in on a few secrets. Oh, your grandmother would be so proud. To think that I get to be the one who shows you! I never hoped.”

  Amrita licked her lips. Her heart was thumping uncomfortably, and she couldn’t look away from the dark maw of the descending stairs. “My grandma knew about this?”

  “Oh yes, my dear. She’s the one who first showed me.” The gray-haired librarian descended a stair and held out her hand. “Come now, don’t be frightened. It’s your time. The Old Ones wait for you, and there’s a whole marvelous world of real, actual truth just below.”

  The Old Ones wait. A shadow of formless power stirred in her like a vole burrowing in deep soil. Those words meant something, and she wanted to know what.

  She took the old woman’s hand.