The little apartment fills with mocking laughter, the exact kind you’d expect from cynical college-age souls who’ve just been told their host knows a story that could scare their hair white.
And when Christian, their host and gamemaster, goes on, with a twinkle in his eye, “I swear, it’s true … after you hear it, you’ll never want to set foot in the library again,” that laughter gets hurricane loud.
Christian’s sly, almost imperceptible smile holds its ground until the jeers of disbelief die down. “Sure, students aren’t allowed in the stacks,” he continues. “But that doesn’t mean the library can actually keep them out.”
Beth snorts. “So someone’s gotten past security. Did they steal a book? Like one of those,” she made air quotes with her fingers, “‘priceless grimoires’?”
“Oh, it gets way hinkier than stealing.” Christian’s eyebrows rise conspiratorially. “Kinkier, even.” From his post on the love seat, he scans the apartment living room, the assembled lads and ladies, three of each, arrayed on couch, extra chairs, floor. “We’re all adults here, right?”
Beth again: “In body only.”
The hoots of derision start again, but Christian’s smile doesn’t waver. He looks from face to face, sees he has each one hooked. If he says, “Fine, I won’t tell this story,” they will demand he keep going, threaten to bleed him if he doesn’t.
To some degree their skepticism is all sham. They’re already a captive audience. They dared him to scare them.
They come to his apartment off campus because he delivers the goods. Role-play gaming runs at its best when storytelling drives the collective delusion rather than chance dice rolls, and he can spin a story. But usually it’s understood that his stories are pure balderdash.
This new tale, not part of the game, might not be made up. “Couple years ago, I had a fellow sharing the rent with me, Derek,” Christian says. “I’ve never heard of anything scarier happening on this campus than what happened to him in the library.”
“Ooh, did he meet an eldritch horror?” Preity tries to emulate Beth’s knife-sharp sarcasm but she only succeeds in sounding slumber-party giggly.
“Wait, let me guess,” butts in Oscar, who always seems compelled to one-up Preity. “He learned something mankind was never meant to know!”
He doesn’t get a laugh. Christian says, “Any of you heard of the Sixth Floor Club?”
Tyrell, the biggest and youngest of the players, ROTC, U.S. Marine Corps Scholarship, leans forward, eyebrows already raised in disbelief. “That like the Mile High Club?” When Christian just smiles, Tyrell emits a deep-voiced cackle.
All the others join in except newest member Vonda, pink-haired and bespectacled, who shouts, “What’s on the sixth floor?”
But no one can answer over Tyrell. “No way,” his burst of mirth concludes, “absolutely no way.”
“Man, there’s always a way,” says Eric, edgy Beth’s big-shouldered but mild-mannered squeeze. She smirks. “But wow. Sixth floor, that’s the big special collection. That’s the sealed vault.”
Six to one, but Christian says “Hush, now,” and they do. “Once you understand a couple things about Derek, you won’t find any of this far-fetched. I almost said ‘hard to swallow.’”
This time, Vonda snorts. “Perv.”
“Guilty as charged. So was Derek. But unlike me, he was pretty to look at. He was super slender, and he had this rock video haircut and really big blue doe eyes and a pouty lower lip, even. Kind of like what Audrey Hepburn would have looked like as a man.” Eric and Tyrell, both body-builder buff, exchange looks. Beth notices and swats Eric on the shoulder. They’re a funny couple, crew-cut Chinese electrical engineer and short, zaftig, sharp-tongued artist.
“Women love that look.” Christian raised his hand to solemnly swear. “He’d go to the Friday poetry slams and come back here with a stunningly beautiful girl. Every week, a different girl. Always gorgeous. A couple times, two girls at once.”
That shuts the macho boys up. Oscar fidgets, takes off his glasses, wipes them with a napkin. Preity asks, sounding honestly concerned, “Were you jealous?”
“Of course. But, eh, he didn’t rub it in my face or anything. But then there was a girl, this pale spike-haired brunette named Bonnie, that lasted multiple weekends. And started hanging out here weekdays, too. At first I thought Derek had switched gears and started going steady with her. But once I was around them enough I figured out it wasn’t that. It was all physical, like they were addicts, to each other. A big part of it, I thought, was that in Bonnie he’d found a girl who had no boundaries. Whatever he wanted to try, she was up for it. I remember seeing bruises on her neck. And they weren’t hickies. Hell, I saw bruises on his neck, too. And bite marks. Like, scabbed. On her shoulder, on her thighs, not kidding. But she always seemed happy to be here, they were constantly, constantly sucking face. That could be weird to walk up on, ’cause they even sort of looked alike.”
Oscar shifts uncomfortably in the bean bag chair. The rest are rapt. Tyrell rubs unconsciously at the anchor, globe and eagle tattoo on his shoulder, black against the dark brown of his skin. Maybe he’s thinking about bite marks.
“I confess,” says Christian, “I’m the one who told them about the Sixth Floor Club. They were both sophomores, hadn’t heard of it. But I’ve been here a long time, as you know. That’s what being a professional student does for you. I’ve heard all the urban legends.
“I didn’t think they’d go for it for real.”
* * *
The next time Derek and Bonnie let themselves in late, there was another guy with them. He’d brought multiple partners back, but another guy was a first. Older guy, kind of hippie looking, long gray hair pulled back in a ponytail. John Lennon glasses. I didn’t ask any questions. I figured it was just the next experiment, you know?
Then a week went by when I didn’t see Derek at all. Nor Bonnie, who by then had her own key. I figured maybe they’d switched to her place. But eight days after that threesome, Derek comes home alone. He woke me up at two in the morning. He was shaking like a leaf in a storm. Those big blue eyes of his were eerie when the moonlight from the window caught them.
He told me that I should never, ever tell anyone else about the Sixth Floor Club. I started to laugh at him and he punched me. He was a welterweight but his fist hit my mouth like a fucking brick.
We all love to imagine that when someone attacks like that we’ll spring right up and whoop some ass. But I froze. I couldn’t process it. And he kept on talking like nothing happened.
So he and Bonnie were members of this closed chat group for … sexual adventurers on campus, I guess you could say. I’d never heard of it, but I guess I wasn’t surprised to learn that it existed and those two were in it.
They queried about the Sixth Floor Club after I told about it and got a lot of responses like Oh, I’ve heard of that and I can’t imagine a creepier place to fuck and some being really into that idea and some angry that the topic had even been broached.
But Derek gets a private email from this guy named Lloyd. I work at the library, he says. I can tell you the schedule and loan you the keys you’d need. I’ll do it if you’ll let me watch when you and your girlfriend go at it.
So Derek immediately pings Bonnie to let her know and it’s something they haven’t tried yet, and she’s all for it. Turns out Lloyd was the gray-haired guy they brought here.
Once they were in the bedroom he just sat in the chair by the desk and didn’t say a word, didn’t crack a smile. Something about that just made the whole situation that much more intense, Derek says to me. We put on a real show for him, he says, especially Bonnie.
I couldn’t believe he was sharing some of the things he then shared with me. How he started to get resentful, because he had to hold back, watch himself, so that the show could keep going, but she could … you know … as many times as she wanted. And the guy, they didn’t know if he was an actual librarian or a custodian or what, not saying a word, not asking to join in, not giving any sign he’s even into it.
But then, Bonnie takes pity on Derek and starts doing something that’s going to bring a big finish, so to speak. And right at the moment of truth, this Lloyd stands up, throws the keys on the bed and leaves without another word. The guy scared Bonnie when he did it and it made her bite down.
Luckily, the injury wasn’t serious. I think the fucker meant to make her do that, Derek told me.
They had what they wanted, though, and Lloyd had already told them all the whens and wheres.
The next night was a Sunday, when the library closes early. They could do what they wanted to do and still be out before midnight. Campus security sometimes comes in to do rounds, but they don’t go to the upper floors unless they hear a noise or something, and sometimes not even then. At least that’s what Lloyd said.
Behind the library there’s a stairwell, at the bottom of it is an emergency door, behind that is a staircase going all the way up the spine of the building, and they had a key to that door, and to the emergency door that opened from the back staircase right into the climate-controlled sixth floor vault.
He and Bonnie were pawing all over each other, all the way up. She was commando in a skirt so she wouldn’t have to strip, Derek said. They thought about just staying on the sixth floor landing and getting it over with there. But that would have been cheating. They wanted, you know, to go the distance.
The vault was cold and absolutely as creepy as advertised. That musty, acidic smell of old paper was thick as a fog. The shelves were so tall and wide that Bonnie and Derek could only walk between them single file. No light reached them, so they had to use their cellphone flashlights, and doing that they discovered that the reason why the shelves were so big was because most of the books, or as you put it, Beth, grimoires arranged on those shelves were the size of headstones. In the light from their cellphones they looked cracked and pink like dried-out hide.
It seemed like every turn they took just sent them in circles. But Lloyd had told them about a soundproof reading room that, if they left the door open, would give them a view of the main entrance to the vault, so they’d see if a guard came in. Supposedly they’d have enough time to slip out that emergency exit before the guard could reach them. Derek wasn’t so sure about that once they found the place.
But it was in for a penny, in for a pound. There was a table in the room with a lamp, and a wide, plush chair. Derek turned the chair so it faced the door and the aisle that led to the vault entrance. He took a seat and Bonnie straddled him. It was wonderful and incredibly frustrating at the same time, he told me, how it was his job to keep watch, to stare out into that dark vault, and Bonnie’s job to make it impossible for him to concentrate.
Because she did her job really well, he didn’t notice there was another person in the room with them. He shut his eyes to savor what was happening and when he opened them again a woman was standing just inside the door.
He was so off-guard, he didn’t scream, didn’t do anything. Bonnie didn’t even notice.
The other girl didn’t make a sound, just stood there, watching. Like Lloyd had, except that guy was old and creepy and this girl was take-your-breath-away beautiful. She had dark hair, dark skin, dark eyes —“dusky” was the word Derek used, I guess that was his English major showing —but she had a round face that projected the kind of innocence you see in vintage photos. She was kind of clothed that way too, wearing this pale, frilly, multi-layered thing that looked like a Victorian dressing gown.
She kept quiet, looking right into Derek’s eyes as he and Bonnie kept grinding together. He stared right back at her, and the more he did, the prettier she looked. He didn’t breathe a word about it to Bonnie. Something told him that if he did disaster would follow. And he didn’t want to tell her. He didn’t want to share. He held that other woman’s gaze until he couldn’t anymore. He actually said this to me, that he never orgasmed so hard in his life, like his brain was blasted right out of his skull.
When it was over the other woman was gone. He wanted to go looking for her right then and there but that would mean he had to tell Bonnie what had happened. She was all triumph and mischief and nibbles and he didn’t want anything more to do with her. But he didn’t let on, he said, just hurried them back the way they came, knowing he was never going to answer Bonnie’s calls or texts or instant messages again.
Because he was going to go back and find that girl.
He stayed away from the apartment so Bonnie couldn’t find him. She never came looking, so maybe she didn’t care as much as he thought. It didn’t matter though, because he could not stop thinking about the dusky woman on the sixth floor. There was nothing rational about this at all. Just like he knew he couldn’t say anything to Bonnie, he knew he couldn’t tell anyone else, either, or he’d ruin it. He would never see her again.
He’d have gone right back into the library the next night, but Lloyd had warned him in all caps not to go in there after midnight, and even though it sounded stupid and Lloyd offered no explanation, he made himself stick to the rule.
He skipped classes. He stayed out night after night. The wait was agony. He didn’t sleep until Sunday rolled around and he could go back to the sixth floor vault.
Walking between those stacks alone was ten orders of magnitude worse. He started looking all around my room as he described it to me, like he thought something might have followed him.
Once he was back among the shelves, the shadows made by his little cellphone flashlight warped in ways that didn’t match the objects he illuminated, and he kept hearing a noise like pages flipping. Or shuffling footsteps. He couldn’t find the reading room, though he followed the same path. Finally his light went out, though his phone had plenty of charge.
When something brushed his back, he did scream.
It was her, her gown and her skin just different shades of darkness.
His fear drained away. He asked her name but she didn’t answer. Instead she took his hand, led him to a big wooden table at the center of the vault. Next thing he knows her shift has dropped away and she’s climbing onto the table, graceful as a cat. Dark as it was, he could see every curve of her against the shine of the polished tabletop. She smelled like salt and honeysuckle.
He didn’t have to be told twice. He stripped and crawled on top of her. She wrapped her legs around him and drove him in. Everywhere his skin touched hers, it was like an electric current fired up his nerve endings. The noises around them got louder, and he could see movement in the shadows, solid things with glistening skin and sharp scales, but he did not care.
They kissed, and her teeth were long, he’d kissed many many girls and he knew hers were too long and sharp, but he also knew she wouldn’t hurt him. Her body pitched and quivered under his, and he let all control go. He didn’t realize how lost he was until she met his gaze, and he became aware that he was watching his own body hammer against hers, that he was floating somewhere above, like in a dream, and it was that gaze that she was staring into, while things moved in his peripheral vision, circling the table, their forms like crocodiles, except they had too many legs, too many eyes. That certainty that he was safe started to waver, and he tried to look at one of the creatures straight on.
But then she squeezed him even harder with her legs and if he thought the time before was the orgasm of his life, it was nothing compared to what happened then. He thought he was going to die and he wanted it to be true, would have been happy had that been his last moment alive.
But it wasn’t.
Next thing he knows he’s alone on the table. He could still hear those noises in the stacks.
He wanted to shout Where are you? but he was too scared. Something like a big heavy box bumped his head when he moved.
He managed to get dressed, though, and when he tried his phone again it worked. He shined his light on the object on the table. Then he started screaming.
At this point, there in my room, his voice cracked and he shook so hard I thought he was going to reenact his screaming fit. He started speaking really loud, like he was yelling at me, but he was still telling this story. He didn’t remember leaving the library, just that next thing he knew he was standing in that outer stairwell. His phone showed him 3 a.m., though he’d snuck in about 9:30.
And as he’s talking to me, he’s shining that very same cellphone light under his face, like this, and he’s saying, that book on the table, it was one of those special ones they whisper about here at our creepy little university. It was bound in human skin. But even though it was flattened, stretched and lacquered, he could make out a face on the front cover. It was the dusky woman’s face. The book was bound in her skin.
* * *
Nervous titters gradually amplify into full scale laughter as the assembled unwind themselves from Christian’s campfire tale.
“You’re a sick puppy,” says Tyrell.
“Thank you,” Christian replies.
“Wow, that was stupid,” says Beth. “Did you yank that out of your ass or what?”
“Baby, you were breathing just as hard as the rest of us,” says Eric, who gets punched for his insolence.
“I’m going to have nightmares now,” says Preity. “And I’m not going to set foot anywhere near that library.”
“You’re welcome,” says Christian.
It’s Oscar who asks, “Where’s Derek now?”
“Couldn’t say,” Christian says. “I never saw him again.”
Amid the gasps, Beth pounces. “This Derek guy wasn’t even real, was he?”
Christian just shrugs.
A new round of jeers results. But they are happy jeers. Christian smiles. He’s done his job well. They’ll be back.
Eventually everyone files out save Vonda, curled feline on the couch. She pats the spot next to her. Christian doesn’t need to be told twice.
She asks, “So was there a Derek?”
“Maybe. I might have taken a liberty or two.”
“Tell me.”
He touches her cheek, brushes a fingertip against her lips. “Maybe.”
She kisses his finger, then sucks on the tip, slides her lips all the way down to the knuckle.
* * *
Many nights later, Christian, which is not his real name, switches on a lamp, violating the darkness of the sixth floor vault. Before him on the big oak table lies a massive book, big as a suitcase. He spreads it open, flips past one ghastly image after another.
He pauses at a contorted visage that fills an entire page, its distortions making it appear as if it is simultaneously an ink illumination drawn by a deeply disturbed artist and a flattened specimen somehow shellacked onto the leaf.
Not-Christian flicks the image dead center, right in the uvula ringed by a screaming mouth compressed and stretched to three times human size. “Long time no see, buddy,” he says. “Your escapades sure make a great story.”
He keeps flipping, past more flattened frights. “And now we see who took the bait.” At the last one, he gasps, child-like, as if his next words will be, “I’m telling…”
His fingers shouldn’t be able to find purchase on the smooth surface of the page, but somehow they do, and he pulls up a flap that wasn’t there the instant before, stretches it, the dark brown membrane expanding to reveal the eagle, globe and anchor. “Oh, Tyrell,” he says, “who’d have thought it would be you.”
He lets the flap snap back into place, flips through the few remaining empty pages, then shuts the book. Gently, he places a hand over the face that greets him.
“Not long now, love.” He brushes his fingers across empty eyeholes, draws them down to stroke the desiccated lips. “Not long at all.”
