We step inside the library and there’s a most unwelcoming face waiting for me.

  Not that I’m necessarily unhappy to see him, but I’m pretty sure he’s unhappy to see me. Or see anyone to be honest.

  Mr. Woe, the guidance counselor who played havoc with my schedule, sits behind the main librarian’s desk. Like the ‘real’ library the interior is set up exactly the same. A large collections desk where multiple librarians could work is followed by ten foot tall bookshelves in the rest of the library proper.

  Somehow, Mr. Woe is the only one in the faux-library, and yet somehow the giant space is made smaller for his presence. Even though I know roughly the dimensions of the library, the shelves somehow press closer together, the ceilings lowering themselves to shrink the space. All of it - walls, shelves, and ceiling threatening to collapse at any moment. I’d seen a similar effect in the guidance office where I first met him. He somehow created an oppressive mundanity. A threat.

  “Mister Morecroft,” he drawls in his low, depressive tone. Just listening to it reminds me of all the rock stars of a few years back who sang songs about how terrible their lives were. He’s the Dashboard Confessional of people.

  “I told you my name was…oh never mind.”

  “Don’t be so rude,” Wrath whispers. I’m tempted to fire back at him, but we’re in public.

  “I’m sorry, sir, but you don’t have access to the special collections. For questions about permission, you’ll need to speak with your Dean to arrange a writ of access.” Woe speaks so slowly that it takes him several minutes to get all the words out, each one crossing his lips like they want to hang themselves on the way down - they just need a little more courage first.

  “Tell him to check your file,” Wrath whispers.

  “Check my… file?”

  “One moment, sir.”

  He disappears into the back while Wrath manifests at my side. “What’s going on?” I demand.

  “We’re at the Library,” he says happily.

  “Wrath…”

  He rolls his eyes, and then hops up on the counter. He doesn’t sit there long, though. A quick glance over his shoulder in the direction that Woe disappeared, and he hops back down, dusting himself off. “Look, you’ve noticed that everything you’ve been researching has been a dead end. And I know you’ve heard about the special collections. You just have to ask for access.”

  “It doesn’t sound like it’s that easy.” After all, Freddie wouldn’t have thrown a fit the way he had if just anyone could ask for access. It seemed like he’d asked, pleaded, cajoled and many other synonyms and nothing had worked.

  “That’s because he wasn’t you,” Wrath replies, reading my mind. I’m not entirely sure if he actually does, or if we’ve been friends so long he knows how I think. It wouldn’t surprise me to know he could actually read my mind but he’s never abused it, and never given a straight answer, so I choose to let it go. “Look, you know the Morecrofts were very plugged in to everything that’s going on in this town. When they all discorporealized—“

  “—Died, Wrath. They died.”

  “Cemetery, cemetary,” he says idly pronouncing them more like tomato-to-mah-to. “Anyway, when they died, all of their works that were of special significance became the special collections here in the Library-Under-The-World.”

  “Is that where there’s nothing decent at the library at home?”

  He gives me a look. “You have a funny idea of ‘decent,’ Theo. Books that would twist your understanding of the world and shatter your psyche are not exactly light reading. Or decent, at least not to most people. And your mother always said that you could read books written on human flesh and in human blood after college. Education first, monkey!” he waves an admonishing finger, doing a reasonable impression of my mother’s voice.

  “So you’re saying that I should get access just because I live in Morecroft Manor?”

  He shrugs. “As far as this town is concerned, you’re basically already a Morecroft.”

  “And you think we’re going to need it?”

  He gives me a curious, startled look. “What?”

  “To investigate this zombie thing. You think we need the special collection?”

  His expression clears. “Oh! Oh, yes. Probably. I forgot that the normals here don’t like confronting the true face of the world, and that blood rain a few days back really set the tone for the school year, didn’t it?”

  Not for the first time, I’m confronted by the idea that Wrath knows something that I don’t. Which is silly, because if he knew something, he’d tell me. But every so often, he reveals a hidden depth about the world and our places in it. Before, he did this with the Doom Clock when it woke up unexpectedly. And now, with this clandestine trip into a secret library.

  “Wrath, do you—“ but even as I struggle to ask the question, Mr. Woe returns and interrupts the moment.

  “My apologies, sir,” he slowly begins. “Your file was updated once the semester commenced. The Dean himself added your writ of access to the special collection. “

  “And what about my friends?”

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  “Your friends, sir?”

  “The other ones who are being—“ I shake my head. “The ones in my class. There are four of us altogether.”

  “That is most unusual sir. The Morecrofts generally do not associate with the townsfolk.”

  I pull myself up to my to stand as tall as possible. “This is a new generation of Morecrofts, Mr. Woe.”

  He studies me for a moment. “Indeed, sir.” He seems to make a note in my file, which is odd, but he closes the folder with a grim finality. In his defense, though, there’s a certain grim finality with everything that he does. “I don’t suppose that sir has gotten his ‘friends’,” and here he does an elaborate, yet sluggish attempt at air quotes, “to sign indemnity waivers in the event that decisions taken may render them psychologically decimated or eaten by creatures that live under the skein of the world?”

  “Uhm… what?”

  “Never you mind, sir,” the man replies dourly. “I’m certain that the Dean will make sure that all the necessary forms have been signed and notarized.”

  “That’s not— I don’t—“ I look at Wrath helplessly, but he’s avoiding my eyes at the moment. ‘Psychologically decimated’? ‘Under the skein of the world.’ I hate feeling like I don’t know what’s going on, but I somehow feel even more unprepared than normal.

  “I’ll have the porter bring around the books you’ll be needing.” Mr. Woe continues slowly. “Please find a table and the books will be up shortly.”

  “Books? What?”

  Wrath turns and begins walking deeper into the library, and dazed, I follow along.

  I hurry to catch up to Wrath. “How does he know what we’re looking for?”

  “He’s the Librarian-Under-The-World? Or the acting one, at least. They’ve had a terrible time filling the position the last few years. A few Librarians go mad and carve the names of pop stars into their skin and suddenly no one wants to be a librarian anymore. Kids today don’t understand the meaning of hard work.”

  “What? Pop stars?”

  He looks at me curiously. “Didn’t you know that pop stars are the new gods? And the old gods always want what the new gods have. So they started incarnating themselves, and now you have pop princesses who can consume your soul just by singing you a funeral dirge with a funky beat.”

  “I don’t…”

  He puts a clawed hand on my shoulder. “Don’t worry. You’re not in any danger.”

  “Because I… don’t have a soul?” I ask, bewildered.

  “No. Because you’re the ugliest boy I’ve ever seen. No pop princess would ever want to look at you, let alone feast upon you.” He pinches my cheeks carefully.

  “Wrath…”

  I set my back down on the same table I’d sat at with my friends, and there’s a moment where I stutter at the thought. Friends. I have actual friends. Not that Wrath hasn’t been my best friend for my entire life, but Nico, Winter and Isaac feel more permanent than any of the friends I’ve had before. There was always something ephemeral about the others - like some part of me knew they would only be around for a few weeks or something. Even as they were coming into my life, they were also already on their way out. Transient friends, maybe. A stop to a much different destination.

  But these friends, they feel like they might be around for awhile. Even Isaac, who I at least knew even if we weren’t close before, had been in my life longer than anyone else outside of family. Most people hadn’t lasted a full semester.

  “Here you are, then,” Wrath says, pushing a pair of books across the table towards me. They’re both small volumes, more like a journal rather than a mass market publication. A single piece of vellum parchment sticks out of the one on the top.

  “Where did those come from?” I ask, looking around. When we sat down, the table was empty.

  Wrath shrugs. “He said he’d bring the books over when they were ready. He must have had them already pulled aside for you.”

  “But he didn’t even know what we’re looking for.”

  “Didn’t he?”

  “How could he?”

  Wrath just fixes me with an enigmatic expression. “Sometimes fear works better than faith, Theo.”

  “Nope,” I say, taking a stand. “No.”

  He sighs. “There’s some things in life you need to take on faith. And there’s some things in life you should take on fear. And this is one of the latter. The less you know about the things that peruse these stacks, the better. The books you need will arrive when you need them, and as long as you don’t go looking any further, you’ll be safe. If there were a true Librarian, things might be different, but we’re dealing with the best we can right now.”

  The idea that Mr. Woe is a substitute amuses me for some reason, but Wrath’s commentary about the library feels like a zoo where the animals are the ones in charge. And maybe haven’t eaten in a few years.

  “So the library knows, then?”

  Wrath nods simply, and I pull one of the books over towards me. Pulling it open, the vellum parchment begins to fall out. Incident Report, it begins. I continue to read.

  Security measures during the summer session were allowed to go lax during lunar cleansing periods. During this gap of time, several volumes appeared to vanish from the archives. It is unclear on initial review whether the artifacts were stolen, or if they chose to liberate themselves. An investigation is underway.

  Authorities have been accessed.

  I slide the parchment across the table to allow Wrath to view it. “That’s what the Dean was talking about, wasn’t it?” he says.

  “Yeah, that makes sense. I’m guessing that whatever volumes went missing are the kind that the library was created for in the first place.” I’ve seen enough of the world, even as remote from it as we are, to know that there are things out there that most people shouldn’t be exposed to. Things like the Doom Clock, fidget spinners, or other dark paraphernalia.

  Books, though, were a particular opportunity for evil. Books didn’t just contain ideas. Or maybe it was better to say that books contained all kinds of ideas: good ones and bad ones. Exposure to the wrong ideas could lead to an infection of bad choices, of fanaticism and access to things that have been asleep longer than the whole of human existence. Of things that gods would be scared of, things older and more savage than them.

  If someone had gained access to the wrong type of book, which is certainly seemed like they had… could they have tapped into something like one of those god nightmares?

  I open the first volume again, and begin to skim. The book is hand written, at least a hundred years old, and the paper is almost oily and translucent. But it seems to be information about a particular volume.

  Augustus Morecroft, 1854. The Lost Star is a terrible volume. In the village, fanciful tales say that if you sleep with a copy under your pillow, you will dream of your future. Only when you dream, there is nothing but an endless, consuming night waiting for you. In the morning, the person is gone, leaving behind only ashes where they used to be.

  The ashes themselves are strangely medicinal. Stirring them into tea restores vigor, as my sister Adelaide soon realized.

  I skip past the discussions of people tea and further into the volume.

  The Lost Star has many copies, and one can almost feel them when you hold a copy. I have held one longer than any of my siblings, and used it to hunt down the others. Now there is only the one remaining. The Lost Star alters perception. I can only imagine what it will be capable one day. It extracts wishes from the mind and allows the user great power… if they have the calmness of spirit to handle it.

  I fear few men are born with that kind of stillness inside.

  “Want to bet on if The Lost Star is this book that went missing?” Wrath asks.

  I don’t think we need to ask at all. I think the Library has already confirmed it.