Tread Softly

Gone! She was nowhere in sight. A creepy feeling scurried up his spine.

Probably she just went into the building back there.

But what if she is the witch? What if she followed us down from the mountains, followed us home?

As he climbed the steps toward the library door, he pictured the witch in the dark with her arms high, shouting her curse over the noise of the wind and rain. He tried to imagine how she might look in a gray pantsuit, wearing fashionable glasses, her hair fixed up. With a sick feeling, he realized she might look very much like the woman he'd just met. If only he'd had a better look at the witch's face.

'Don't be dumb,' he said to himself out loud.

Then he took off his clip-ons and pulled open the library door. Carpet silenced his footsteps as he walked toward the circulation desk, where a young woman was reading. She held a felt-tipped pen. She wore a white blouse with a frilly collar, and had golden hair like Karen. Benny saw nothing threatening about her. She looked up as he approached, and smiled. 'Hello,' she said.

'Hi,' Benny whispered. 'Is it all right if I look around for a while? I'm waiting for my cousin. She's in class.'

'Certainly. No problem. If you want to look at some magazines, the periodical room's over behind those stacks.' She pointed to the right.

'Thank you.'

'Help yourself. If you have any questions, I'll be right here.'

Benny thanked her again, and walked over to the card catalog. Nobody else was using it. Except for a few students seated nearby at long tables, reading or scribbling notes, the big room was deserted.

He studied the drawer labels. Finding one marked WIK-WIZ, he slid the drawer open. He flipped through the cards toward the back of it. Soon, he came to a card marked Witchcraft in Salem Village. Behind it was Witchcraft Through the Ages, then Witchery Ditchery Doc, a novel. No good to him. He flicked that card forward. Witches and Warlocks. That sounded useful. But the next card set his heart racing: Witch's Spells and Potions.

He looked at the call number, and frowned. Instead of Dewey decimal numbers, which he understood, there was a series of letters.

Well, the librarian had offered to help.

Taking the ballpoint from his shirt pocket, he started to write the letters on the heel of his hand. The pen skipped badly. Then he noticed a small tray of scrap paper on top of the catalog. He took down a piece, and wrote out the call letters, author, and title.

Then he returned to the circulation desk. The woman finished marking a passage with her yellow felt-tipped pen, and smiled up at him.

'I'm sorry to bother you again,' Benny said, 'but do you know where I can find this book?'

She glanced at the paper. 'Oh, that'll be downstairs. Are you familiar with the Library of Congress system?'

'No, I — '

'Well, you just go alphabetically along the shelves. They're all labeled. Then, when the books are all lettered the same, you go by the numbers underneath. It's pretty simple, really.'

'Fine. Thank you. Uh. it's downstairs?'

Nodding, she swiveled her chair around and pointed. 'Right through those double doors.'

'Thank you,' he said again. Taking the scrap paper, he walked alongside the counter and pulled open one of the doors. It swung shut behind him. The landing was dimly lit. Benny looked up at the fixture, a globe with the debris of dead bugs showing through its frosted glass. Wrinkling his nose, he started down the stairs. They seemed to be concrete, but rang under his footsteps as if there was metal inside. The echo made him uneasy. He tried to descend more quietly. As he neared the next landing, he imagined taking off his shoes to muffle the noise. That would be dumb. And what if somebody saw him? 'Hey, kid, put your shoes on. What're you trying to pull?' Besides, why should he worry about making a little noise?

When he reached the landing, he looked down the final (light of stairs and hesitated.

It was dark down there.

The globe overhead cast its light on the first few steps, laded, and left the lower ones in murky gloom. The fixture below was a dull, gray ball, its bulb either turned off or dead.

He'd seen a movie last summer, where a monster lurked under a staircase. He leaned over the railing and peered down. There did appear to be an open space beneath the stairs.

Don't be a jerk, he told himself. He took a deep breath and charged down into the darkness, more certain with each clamoring footfall that he was not alone in the stairwell. The bottom of the stairs took him by surprise, lie thought there was one more step, but there wasn't. His right foot pounded down hard on the floor, sending pain up his leg. He stumbled forward, his shoulder driving open the door, and fell sprawling as the door slammed the wall with a stunning crash.

He picked up his glasses and glanced at the lenses. They hadn't broken. He put them on, and slid the clip- ons back into his shirt pocket. Then he got to his feet. Rubbing his.ore knee, he looked down the long aisle ahead of him. He glanced to the sides, down narrow lanes between book-helves. He saw no one. More important, no one had seen him; he felt like a clumsy idiot.

Klutz.

It was like the night he'd tripped Heather.

Good thing Julie wasn't here to ride him about it.

On the other hand, he almost wished she was here, except for a buzzing sound from the fluorescent lights, the room was silent. It's supposed to be silent, he reminded himself. This is a library. But somehow it seemed too silent. He strongly suspected that nobody was down here but him.

With a glance at the lettering on the shelves to his left, he realized that the witchcraft book was probably somewhere down that aisle. He should find it, grab it, and hurry upstairs. But the thought of the stairwell sent a shudder through him.

Sooner or later, he would have to face it. Unless he waited down here long enough for Tanya to come. The librarian knew where he was. She'd tell Tanya, or maybe she'd come down herself in a while. Or some students might show up and. For all Benny knew, there might already be students down here, silently searching the shelves. If he found one, he could follow him out.

This is really dumb, he thought, as he started walking slowly up the center aisle. He glanced each way into the narrow spaces between the shelves.

There's nothing in the stairwell. I'm just yellow.

So I'm yellow. If there just happens to be someone else down here and I just happen to see him leaving, I'll just happen to follow along. No harm in that. Nobody has to know what I'm doing. Nobody will ever know, if I don't tell.

He was halfway to the end of the aisle without spotting anyone when he noticed a sound like someone panting. He froze. The sound seemed to come from his right, somewhere not far ahead. Between those shelves. If he took just one big step, he could probably see.

It was a quick, harsh gasping sound that someone might make after running hard. Then a moan that made his skin prickle.

He knew he should take that single step forward. Or better yet, stride boldly by and just happen to glance over as he passed. But he couldn't. Instead, he backed silently away.

After several paces, he ducked into the stacks to the left. Hidden by the ceiling-high shelves, he made his way quickly to the far wall. There, he turned left and rushed back the way he'd come. He passed between the final set of shelves. Crouching at the end, he peered down the center aisle. He saw no one. He glanced behind him at the door to the stairs, only a couple of yards away.

Maybe he should run for it. The stairwell frightened him, but now it seemed no worse than the room itself. He had to get out of here before. The book. He needed the book. If he left without it, all this would've been for nothing.

He eased backward. The scrap paper was a crumpled, sodden ball in his hand. He picked it open, spread it out, and compared the series of call letters to those on a book near his shoulder.