Ear defenders around his neck, he listens. A radiator clangs somewhere in Nonfiction; the wounded man breathes at the base of the stairs; a police radio crackles out in the snow. Blood ticks through his ears. Nothing else.
But he heard thuds upstairs, didn’t he? He remembers the police SUV rolling onto the curb, Marian dropping the pizza boxes into the snow. Why was she bringing a stack of pizzas to the library just before closing time?
Someone else is here.
Beretta in his right hand, Seymour creeps toward the stairwell where the wounded man lies on his side, eyes closed, sleeping or worse-than-sleeping. The glitter in his arm hair glints. It occurs to Seymour that maybe he placed his body there as a barricade.
He holds his breath, steps over the thickening lagoon of blood, over the man, and goes up. Fifteen steps, the edge of each lined with nonslip adhesive. Blocking the entrance to the Children’s Section is something unexpected: a plywood wall painted gold, the gold almost green in the glow of an EXIT sign. In the center is a little arched door, and above the arched door runs a single line of words written in an alphabet he does not recognize.
Ὦ ξένε, ὅστις εἶ, ἄνοιξον, ἵνα μάθῃς ἃ θαυμάζεις
Seymour sets his palm on the little door and pushes.