‘That’s the morgue,’ Doreen McGill said, pointing. This was clearly a lady who pointed every chance she got. ‘You only have to – ‘
‘Morgue?’ Sam asked, turning toward her. His heart had begun to knock nastily against his ribs. ‘Morgue?’
Doreen McGill laughed. ‘Everyone says it just like that. It’s awful, isn’t it? But that’s what they call it. Some silly newspaper tradition, I guess. Don’t worry, Mr Peebles – there are no bodies down there; just reels and reels of microfilm.’
I wouldn’t be so sure, Sam thought, following her down the carpeted stairs. He was very glad she was leading the way.
She flicked on a line of switches at the foot of the stairs. A number of fluorescent lights, embedded in what looked like oversized inverted ice-cube trays, went on. They lit up a large low room carpeted in the same dark blue as the stairs. The room was lined with shelves of small boxes. Along the left wall were four microfilm readers that looked like futuristic hair-driers. They were the same blue as the carpet.
‘What I started to say was that you have to sign the book,’ Doreen said. She pointed again, this time at a large book chained to a stand by the door. ‘You also have to write the date, the time you came in, which is –
‘ she checked her wristwatch – ‘twenty past ten, and the time you leave.’
Sam bent over and signed the book. The name above his was Arthur Meecham. Mr Meecham had been down here on December 27th, 1989. Over three months ago. This was a well-lighted, well-stocked, efficient room that apparently did very little business.
‘It’s nice down here, isn’t it?’ Doreen asked complacently. ‘That’s because the federal government helps subsidize newspaper morgues – or libraries, if you like that word better. I know I do.’
A shadow danced in one of the aisles and Sam’s heart began to knock again. But it was only Doreen McGill’s shadow; she had bent over to make sure he had entered the correct time of day, and
– and HE didn’t cast a shadow. The Library Policeman. Also …
He tried to duck the rest and couldn’t.
Also, I can’t live like this. I can’t live with this kind of fear. I’d stick my head in a gas oven if it went on too long. And if it does, I will. It’s not just fear of him -that man, or whatever he is. It’s the way a person’s mind feels, the way it screams when it feels everything it ever believed in slipping effortlessly away.
Doreen pointed to the right wall, where three large folio volumes stood on a single shelf. ‘That’s January, February, and March of 1990,’ she said. ‘Every July the paper sends the first six months of the year to Grand Island, Nebraska, to be microfilmed. The same thing when December is over.’ She extended the plump hand and pointed a red-tipped nail at the shelves, counting over from the shelf at the right toward the microfilm readers at the left. She appeared to be admiring her fingernail as she did it. ‘The microfilms go that way, chronologically,’ she said. She pronounced the word carefully, producing something mildly exotic: chron-o-lodge-ick-a-lee. ‘Modern times on your right; ancient days on your left.’
She smiled to show that this was a joke, and perhaps to convey a sense of how wonderful she thought all this was. Chron-o-lodge-ick-a-lee speaking, the smile said, it was all sort of a gas.
‘Thank you,’ Sam said.
‘Don’t mention it. It’s what we’re here for. One of the things, anyway.’ She put her nail to the corner of her mouth and gave him her peek-a-boo smile again. ‘Do you know how to run a microfilm reader, Mr Peebles?’
‘Yes, thanks.’
‘All right. If I can help you further, I’ll be right upstairs. Don’t hesitate to ask.’
‘Are you – ‘ he began, and then snapped his mouth shut on the rest: – going to leave me here alone?
She raised her eyebrows.
‘Nothing,’ he said, and watched her go back upstairs. He had to resist a strong urge to pelt up the stairs behind her. Because, cushy blue carpet or not, this was another Junction City Library.
And this one was called the morgue.
2
Sam walked slowly toward the shelves with their weight of square microfilm boxes, unsure of where to begin. He was very glad that the overhead fluorescents were bright enough to banish most of the troubling shadows in the corners.
He hadn’t dared ask Doreen McGill if the name Ardelia Lortz rang a bell, or even if she knew roughly when the City Library had last undergone renovations. You have been athking questions, the Library Policeman had said. Don’t pry into things that don’t conthern you. Do you underthand?
Yes, he understood. And he supposed he was risking the Library Policeman’s wrath by prying anyway …
but he wasn’t asking questions, at least not exactly, and these were things that concerned him. They concerned him desperately.
I will be watching. And I am not alone.
Sam looked nervously over his shoulder. Saw nothing. And still found it impossible to move with any decision. He had gotten this far, but he didn’t know if he could get any further. He felt more than intimidated, more than frightened. He felt shattered.
‘You’ve got to,’ he muttered harshly, and wiped at his lips with a shaking hand. ‘You’ve just got to.’
He made his left foot move forward. He stood that way a moment, legs apart, like a man caught in the act of fording a small stream. Then he made his right foot catch up with his left one. He made his way across to the shelf nearest the bound folios in this hesitant, reluctant fashion. A card on the end of the shelf read: 1987 – 1989.
That was almost certainly too recent – in fact, the Library renovations must have taken place before the spring of 1984, when he had moved to Junction City. If it had happened since, he would have noticed the workmen, heard people talking about it, and read about it in the Gazette. But, other than guessing that it must have happened in the last fifteen or twenty years (the suspended ceilings had not looked any older than that), he could narrow it down no further. If only he could think more clearly! But he couldn’t. What had happened that morning screwed up any normal, rational effort to think the way heavy sunspot activity screwed up radio and TV transmissions. Reality and unreality had come together like vast stones, and Sam Peebles, one tiny, screaming, struggling speck of humanity, had had the bad luck to get caught between them.
He moved two aisles to the left, mostly because he was afraid that if he stopped moving for too long he might freeze up entirely, and walked down the aisle marked
1981 – 1983.
He picked a box almost at random and took it over to one of the microfilm readers. He snapped it on and tried to concentrate on the spool of microfilm (the spool was also blue, and Sam wondered if there was any reason why everything in this clean, well-lighted place was color coordinated) and nothing else. First you had to mount it on one of the spindles, right; then you had to thread it, check; then you had to secure the leader in the core of the take-up reel, okay. The machine was so simple an eight-year-old could have executed these little tasks, but it took Sam almost five minutes; he had his shaking hands and shocked, wandering mind to deal with. When he finally got the microfilm mounted and scrolled to the first frame, he discovered he had mounted the reel backward. The printed matter was upside down.
He patiently rewound the microfilm, turned it around, and rethreaded it. He discovered he didn’t mind this little setback in the least; repeating the operation, one simple step at a time, seemed to calm him. This time the front page of the April 1, 1981, issue of the Junction City Gazette appeared before him, right side up.
The headline bannered the surprise resignation of a town official Sam had never heard of, but his eyes were quickly drawn to a box at the bottom of the page. Inside the box was this message: RICHARD PRICE AND THE ENTIRE STAFF OF THE JUNCTION CITY PUBLIC LIBRARY
REMIND YOU THAT APRIL 6TH – 13TH IS NATIONAL LIBRARY WEEK COME AND SEE US!
Did I know that? Sam wondered. Is that why I grabbed this particular box? Did I subconsciously remember that the second week of April is National Library Week?
Come with me, a tenebrous, whispering voice answered. Come with me, son … I’m a poleethman.
Gooseflesh gripped him; a shudder shook him. Sam pushed both the question and that phantom voice away.
After all, it didn’t really matter why he had picked the April 1981 issues of the Gazette; the important thing was that he had, and it was a lucky break.