Nia Hawthorne

Lily’s Sanctuary. That’s what the owner and my boss named the bookstore I worked in. Lily was his dear wife, who was killed in a car accident. Boss grieved for a good while before fulfilling her dream to move the previously tiny bookstore to a bigger space. I was hired during the transition, being a trusted and valuable customer.

The new Sanctuary at first seems to occupy a space about the twice size of the old location, but makes up for it by being three stories tall. It’s the biggest of the independent bookstores. In addition to the old favorites (Ancient Greece’s epic poems to the works of the Great Depression), they now carry modern favorites.

Except Meyer. Sparkly vampires are not allowed.

Nerds love it. Everyone else…didn’t for a while but they got over it I guess.

But I’m babbling again. I do that a lot.

Last night I was helping with closing the store while listening to Boss’ suggestion of renting an orangutan for a day to help with promoting the store. I had to burst his bubble by telling that there was a possibility that no one would get the reference. “Plus I don’t think there’s a way of renting an orangutan,” I added. “Although the zoo may do it but then orangutans must be hard to look after. They’re wild animals and it may climb all over the place and tear apart the books and bite off customers’ noses or our noses.”

“Fine, spoil my fun,” Boss grumbled. “Ook.”

Boss, a fifty-something man with a jock’s build, hated being called Mister or Sir. “Every time you call me one of those, I get a year older,” he would say. Of course it’s not true because Daisy would’ve killed him years ago if it was.

Daisy was his daughter, by the way. High school senior. Practically cloned from her mother from what I’ve seen from pictures.

“You and Daisy keep on wrapping things up,” Boss told me. “I need to bring the car around.”

“Okay,” I answered.

The only thing that was left to do was turning off the lights, third floor first. I looked up from the first floor. The lights switched off. Daisy must’ve turned them off. She would then walk down to the second floor and do the same thing.

Instead she was rushing back down to the first floor, not slowing down until she crashed into me. She was shaking badly. “Daisy? Did something happen up there?” I asked her.

“There’s something up there!” she wailed, her voice muffled by my shirt. “I was turning off the lights and then something brushed up against me!”

“Someone hiding up there maybe?”

“No! No, it wasn’t a person!”

“Maybe we should—“

“Let’s leave!” she interrupted.

“We can’t. If it is a person then he’ll be free to steal whatever he wants. He can even let in his friends and they can steal with him. We need to—“

“RAT!” she interrupted. “I remember now! It was a rat!”

“Okay, go outside and wait for Boss. I’m going to finish turning off the lights.” I pried her off of my body.

“NO!” She cleared her throat and spoke in a quieter voice. “What if the…rat…is still up there?”

“Then we can set traps.” I climbed the stairs to the second floor. The lights were still on and it was very quiet. I reached around and flipped the light switches, then made the mistake of peering into the darkness.

Two big, round yellow eyes. Like headlights. Peering back at me.

I gasped and turned around to run, accidentally running into the wall on the first attempt. “It’s a rat, it’s a rat, it’s a rat!” I chanted to myself in denial.

That’s what I said to Daisy when I met her at the front door, and to Boss when we climbed in the car. But we both knew…

That was no rat.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~~*~*~*~*~*~

The next day was an off-day. Weekends were my days to volunteer at the library, a space that was even bigger than the bookstore. It was a good way to shake away the dreams of swarms of yellow-eyed shadows. What was that thing anyway? Could I find an answer in the library?

I didn’t bother paying attention to my surroundings until someone bumped into me. Or maybe I bumped into them. Either way, the books that I was carrying were knocked onto the floor. “I’m sorry,” the boy said after slipping off his headphones.

That explains it. He was so absorbed in his music that he didn’t even notice me. I reprimanded him about the dangers of doing that but he probably didn’t even pay attention to half of it. I gave up and just stacked the books back to their proper order, occasionally taking one from him.

“Wow, you’re really organized!”

I paused for a moment, my ears only hearing his first sentence. “Of course. You need to be organized to work here. It’s easier to shelve and find books if they’re ordered. But some people just put books wherever they can and just knock the whole system out of order. It’s hard to find things that aren’t in their proper place.” I lifted the stack and started to leave.

Oh, he wanted to know my name.

“My name is Nia Hawthorne.”