Library of Ahb 4

The door shut behind them with a chime, but the sound of raised voices was still clearly audible. 

“How is it,” Gemma said irritably, “That I cannot have a simple cup of tea without an utter fuss being raised?” She wrestled with her wallet, still putting bills and coins back inside neatly.

“How indeed,” Samantha said, bland and straight-faced. She had shoved the entirety of her change into a pants pocket to deal with later. It made a large and unsightly bulge on her rear.

Sunshine coughed, rubbing his hands together against the chill. “If you want to avoid fuss, you could try not confronting people.” He had not even bothered to get his wallet out, and had somehow finessed a free meal from the nervous government official who was still inside trying to calm down the situation.

“They were wrong.” Gemma snapped her handbag shut with an air of finality. “There is absolutely nothing cultish about the old traditions.”

“It just looks a little bad,” Sunshine said. He sucked air in between his teeth and leaned back. “Someone goes off and joins in a congregation, gets reallllly religious, and then dies young and comes back as a ghoul. Just saying it looks a little bad. That never happens with people who get really into trains.” He held up his hands as if to fend off debate. 

“The ghoul really did seem to be a bit taken aback by the situation he found himself in,” Samantha said. There was a little bite to her tone that surprised Gemma. “I highly doubt that he opted into that as part of some religious ceremony. We saw how the reanimations are supposed to work. That wasn't what happened here. Clearly, this person was going for immortality, and really messed it up. The only thing I'm questioning is this mentor who supposedly led them into it.” She crossed her arms. "It's sick."

“Yes, it’s what it looks like on the tin,” Gemma agreed. She shot the young woman a satisfied glance. “Everybody wants to live forever, some people are just pro-active about it and have unrealistic expectations.”

They waited for a while, as the hubbub inside died down a bit. 

Gemma honestly had not anticipated that asking about the person who had become the ghoul would be such a contentious subject. She could have anticipated that some might think it had been a result of a crime, and that some would condemn him. 

But she had not anticipated what seemed like a bitter and well-trodden discussion about the cult in the next town over. Just hearing that line of argument had made her blood boil. There was nothing wrong with young people deciding to leave their family business and take up religious duties. It was selfish and short-sighted to condemn that. Even if one of them turned up dead a few months later and then started eating corpses- well, it was irrational to blame the whole group for that. One rotten apple can't spoil the barrel if it rolls away and rots somewhere else.

“This is the first I’ve heard about a new church,” she said, frowning slightly. “Priests usually come through the university. But I’ve never heard of whoever this is.”

That was strange. The old religion was not thriving, to say the least. 

'But if the locals are outright hostile, I suppose it makes sense that they keep to themselves a bit.'

Gemma’s family, growing up, had been quite religious. That had only partly come from the family business of caring for the dead. It was simply a foundation of small-town life, back in those days. But in the last 50 years, it had been slowly dwindling. The war had been a shock, for certain. For some reason, nobody wanted to worship death anymore when it was all around them.

The bells on the cafe door chimed again. The city worker mopped sweat from his hairline with a sleeve, looking harried. “Thank you for waiting,” he said. “Let’s be off, shall we?”

He drove them back to the city hall, where they collected a nice check and some messages of appreciation, and then the three were left alone in the lobby. The nervous young man whose name Gemma had completely forgotten seemed very glad to leave them at an elevator and hide back in his open plan office.

Sunshine stretched, and then put his check into the wallet that he’d claimed to have forgotten at home. He looked enormously satisfied. “Well then, to the university?”

Samantha shook her head. “Not for me, thanks. I have other plans for the day.” She glanced behind Sunshine. Gemma followed her gaze but saw only an aerial photo of the town, encased in thick, shiny glass.

“You have friends?” Sunshine prodded, eyes sparkling. “Serious Samantha is already booked for the weekend?”

Her voice was cold. “I have a dead fiancé whose parents live nearby, so I should stop in.”

Sunshine flinched. “I didn’t mean…. I’m sorry.”

Gemma pressed her lips together very tightly, not trusting her expressions. She didn’t know if Samantha would appreciate sympathy. They made their way to the train station and Samantha strode through the first gates without comment or a goodbye.

Only once she was out of sight did Gemma turn a withering look on her companion. “You are an idiot,” she said.

He nodded. “I am aware of that right now, yes.” 

No amount of puppy eyes would dissuade her. Gemma poked him in the chest with an index finger. “You need to use your sense, professionalism, and some sensitivity. You saw the man die, you should remember. It was only a couple of months ago.”

“I’ll apologize to her,” he said, looking down. “And, uh, I’ll try not to say stupid things.”

She sighed, long and slow. “See that you do,” Gemma said, but her heart wasn’t in it. “Let’s go to the university now. Although I’m not certain it isn’t a waste of time.”

“No ideas on where to start looking…?” Sunshine led her over to the machines along the wall and started feeding coins in to buy tickets. 

“My mother was mentioned, we were directed to the staff yearbooks, and the ghoul gentleman said “they”, indicating that we are looking for at least two different people,” Gemma said, feeling tired just at the thought of it. “I suppose we should look at staff from around the time that my mother was in school, as well as contemporary staff. Anyone with an unusually long tenure or good aging might be a person of interest. And if these mysterious people are expected to notice us before we find them, they are presumably both competent and present, or at least have someone present who will notice and report on our activities.”

Sunshine handed her a ticket. “Sounds about right to me. I wish he would have said ‘look for the man with the handlebar mustache’ or something specific, but we’ll work with what we have.”

Gemma hummed. “And you’re certain that he was telling the truth?” She asked.

He shot her a startled look. “You’re asking me?” His lips twisted. “I’m not the one with magical insight but… yeah, I think he was telling us the truth. He seemed to think it was funny. There was definitely some kind of inside joke there that gave him satisfaction. He might be fucking us over by sending us into a dangerous situation blind, but he isn’t protecting whoever this is by sending us in the wrong direction.”

She nodded slowly, digesting that. “Thank you for your insight,” she said. “And the ticket.” They made their way down the stairs. It was too early for the post-work rush, so their steps echoed in the mostly empty space. Their train to the university station took a little more than 20 minutes from the suburbs where they had been asked to come.

The whole city had grown around the university. It had the oldest buildings in the area. Many of them dated back to when Ahb had been the cultural capital of the area, center of knowledge and arts, and the surrounding areas had just been subsistence farms that occasionally sent tribute off into the dark and deep. 

They headed to one of the very oldest buildings. The library was cold and imposing, with a black stone face that stretched up 4 formidable floors. The top had actual crenelations, like a castle might. When Gemma had studied there, she had more than once wondered who might have been likely to besiege the library in the distant past. 

No way to know now.

The yearbooks were not available to be checked out. They were kept, along with other school memorabilia, inside a glass room on the center of the second floor. As a visiting professor, Gemma actually did have an ID that would allow her to access those materials. She was pulling it out when Sunshine stepped in front of her. 

“Good afternoon,” he said, so cheerily it hurt her head a little. “Doctor Jakar, right?”

…Gemma gave him a skeptical look. The young woman behind the desk was almost certainly a student. She had pink streaks in her slightly messy hair and no wrinkles at all.

The desk worker who had been standing up gave them a polite smile. “I’m afraid he’s still out at lunch,” she said. “Can I help you with something?”

“Oh!” Sunshine said. He looked devastated. “I must have made a mistake with the time. I was going to have a look at the special collection.”

The student worker glanced between Sunshine, who had peeled off his jacket to reveal a collared shirt, and Gemma, who was wearing a sweater and pearls. “From one of the other library branches?” she asked. She bent over slightly, and Gemma could hear the gentle sound of a drawer sliding out. “I can let you in. Oh, I do need to see your ID.” A key jangled lightly.

Sunshine dug the lanyard out from underneath his shirt and held it out for inspection. “The south campus,” he said cheerily. He then launched into a long and not terribly interesting story about what was ongoing at the library branch that he worked at. Gemma felt her eyes glaze over. In pure self defense, she stopped listening in favor of just following as the young woman led them up and unlocked the glass room. 

“You can’t take anything out,” she said, somehow managing to interrupt Sunshine. The girl tucked a bit of wavy hair behind an ear and began to back away. “If you’re touching anything from the historical collection, make sure to use some of the gloves over there. You already know that, of course, but I have to say so. Lock up when you’re done and leave the keys at the desk.”

“Thank you,” Sunshine half-sang. After the girl was gone, he turned a more serious expression on Gemma. “What years are we looking at? Do you know offhand when your mother was a student here?*

“No,” she had to admit. “I can make a guess, however…” She frowned at the bookshelf, trying to do math in her head. “I would guess that my mother began her undergraduate degree around this year, maybe as late as here.”

“Okay, let’s pull those and the years before and after,” Sunshine said. He was all- business now. “We’ll find her to confirm we are looking at the right teachers, then list all of the staff at the time- do you know her department- no, people change degrees all the time,” he cut himself off. “We better look at every staff member.”

“I agree,” Gemma said. “Find those names, see if anyone looks suspicious, and then start checking older and newer books to see if there’s anything unusual.”

…Sunshine looked a little pained. She had to agree.

They got to work. There was a small table. They stacked it with books and then sat down and just started flipping through. Sunshine was the one who found her mother’s sophomore photo first. “That hair, though,” he said, delighted. 

“It was fashionable then,” Gemma said, but her heart wasn’t really in the defense. The photo was more than a bit ridiculous. Her mother had smiled for it, wide and toothy. At 19, she had a bit of a baby face still.

“She was a cute kid,” Sunshine said, flipping to the staff section of the book. “Do you take after her?”

“Not really.” Gemma found the book from the year prior and started taking down names of the staff members, as well as notes on their general appearance and perceived age.

Someone knocked on the glass.

Gemma looked up to see a young person who she didn’t know. It was a young man, presumably a student, with swept-back dark hair. He stuck his hands in his pockets and waited for Sunshine to scramble over to lean out of the door.

“There was a call for you,” he said, sounding bored. “At the front desk. Samantha from your office said that the meeting from this morning went longer than expected and she’d like a call back at 5.”

“Saman- ah, thank you,” Sunshine said, covering his confusion quickly. “She hung up, then?”

“Yepp.” The student snapped bubblegum in his mouth, yawned, and sauntered away, task complete.

Sunshine slowly let the door close. There was a line pressed between his eyebrows when he looked back at her. “That was odd, wasn’t it,” he said, voice low.

She hummed agreement, keeping her face down. “I can’t help but think that Samantha was trying to convey something.”

“Not sure what, though,” Sunshine agreed. He sat back down and tapped his fingertips on the table rapidly. “Call at 5- call her where?”

“She said she was from the office,” Gemma said, wondering if someone was listening in to them. This whole cloak and dagger affair was wearing on her nerves.

They did not have an office, by any means. They never worked together, except when they were out on site.

She strained her memory, trying to think of places associated with Samantha. Perhaps Samantha really had gone to see Takumi’s parents, but she wouldn’t expect them to be able to contact her there. Without his last name, there was no way they could even hope to call the right number. The city hall where they had been in the morning?

Had to be. “The office,” Gemma repeated, a little more confidently this time. “Ah, she must have been caught up meeting with that nervous young man.”

Sunshine nodded, taking it at face value. Or pretending to, at least. 

They worked a lot faster after that, stress making the glass room feel stuffy and hot. They needed to finish up, and get to somewhere they could make a call. Samantha wouldn’t have called if it wasn’t important. She certainly wouldn’t have used such a strangely mundane and inaccurate way to convey her message, either, if everything was alright. 

“How about this one?” Sunshine asked, pointing at a grey-toned photo. He showed her the cover to reveal that it was from 20 years before her mother had become a student. “Look at his face.” He put it next to the first-year yearbook for comparison.

Gemma eyed the photos. They both showed a rather handsome older man. It was hard to judge age accurately when one photo was black and white and one in color, but he did not appear to have aged much if at all in that 20 year span. She would have guessed his age around 60, in both of them.

“Shultz,” Gemma said, committing the name to memory. It was familiar. She was a slower researcher than Sunshine, but she also had that name on her list. She ran her finger down the notebook, checking the name and then the column of years in which it appeared. He had still been teaching 8 years after mother graduated, at least. She checked his photo.

“Handsome man,” she said mildly, showing Sunshine the photo.

He was, too. Interestingly, she would have guessed his age at about 45 in that photograph.

“I think we found our guy,” Sunshine said. “One of them, at least.”

“There is a problem.” Gemma looked at the man in the photo, and felt her jaw tense. “He is dead. I am quite certain of it.” She frowned. “As certain as I can be.”

“And how certain is that?” Sunshine asked. He leaned his elbows on the table. “Well. I suppose he ought to be dead, regardless, judging by his age. But still.”

“I know that name, because he was one of the 20 people who went into Ahb 50 years ago.” Her hands were shaking, so she put them on her lap. “I was checking names against the bodies in the hall. There was a body with that name.”

Sunshine let out a long, low breath. He cursed. “That’s… That’s counterintuitive. Think he expected to be one of the survivors and just got backstabbed by whoever was lurking in there?” His voice was harder than she liked to hear. “He was teaching at this school a bit too long, to not be in that club, if you know what I mean. So he wasn’t a little lost lamb going into the darkness.”

“Maybe,” Gemma said, committing the face to memory. It had looked different without skin. “My mother was somewhat of a dabbler, and she died down there. Perhaps…” Her voice trailed off. “Well. I suppose that for obvious reasons, that type of person is more likely to be interested in Ahb than the average Joe. Maybe in an attempt to safeguard less informed people, and maybe in an attempt to gain from it. I’d imagine that either way, one is likely to find themselves raising a hand to go down there if called too.”

There was a long silence.

When she glanced up, Sunshine looked a bit stricken. He quickly glanced away. “Sorry about your mama,” he said.

She blinked. And then she laughed. “She would be gone either way,” Gemma pointed out. “And it was a long time ago. I got my resolution.”

“Oh,” Sunshine breathed. He ran a hand through his hair and nodded. “That’s why you joined up, then? Not just out for the glory and fame?”

“Mostly the glory and fame,” Gemma said, voice dry. She glanced up and then closed the book with a snap. “Someone is coming.”

Sunshine glanced up and blinked rapidly.  He closed his book as well and stacked it on top of the pile he had finished, and then shoved them onto the shelf 4 at at time. “That’s the librarian that I claimed I had an appointment with,” he said. “Probably wondering why I’m here today when I’m supposed to be here next week for something unrelated.”

Lovely.

"Doctor-"

"Doctor Jakar!" Sunshine interrupted, sounding absolutely delighted to see the older man bearing down on them with spectacles and a checked suit. "How are you? Excellent! I am so glad to finally meet you. Do you have a chance to talk?" He practically bounced out of his chair and to the door, blocking any view of the books that they were using. Gemma took the cue and started putting them back on the shelf, working as fast as she could. 

"Ah- I am a little busy. Well, I can spare a few minutes. Did you- I must have misread my schedule this morning, I completely apologize."

She finished. She looked at her wristwatch and felt her face blanch. Ten minutes. She had less than ten minutes to get to a phone, look up that number, and contact Samantha.

"Did you get the loan request, we were talking about putting in a new order but I think that with the water damage on the third floor, we should look at dealing with what's going on in the basement instead. Ah, sorry, I shouldn't bother you with that."

"No, no, I'm quite invested in that collection as well, of course."

They would be here for an hour if she didn't do something.

"I was going to ask-"

"About what we discussed on the phone? Yes, of course. My office would really be better. Shall we lock up?" The librarian was looking at her now, over Sunshine's shoulder.

"Yes, of course." Gemma picked up the key and her handbag, and tried to look both friendly and uninteresting. She didn't know what Sunshine was pretending to have been researching, but it was probably not relevant to anything she would be working in. She locked the door and then immediately handed the key into Dr. Jakar's waiting hand. It disappeared into a pocket. "I'm afraid that we are in a bit of a rush."

"No trouble, no trouble, we'll only be a minute," Dr. Jakar said, trotting down the stairs ahead of them. She had no choice but to follow. He beelined across the first floor lobby to the biggest office and held the door open.

Reluctantly, she did. She managed to make eye contact with Sunshine, who gave her a nervous little smile.

The door shut. He gestured for them to sit. Sunshine did, but Gemma hesitated. "Actually, do you think I could borrow your phone, at the front desk?" she asked, feeling stressed. It could take several minutes to find the right number. She didn't have it written down.

"Of course," Dr. Jakar said, genial. He blinked eyelashes that were as white as his hair. "I just wanted to take a moment- if you are who I believe you are, I was asked to pass a message to you, ma'am." He gave her a slightly strained smile. "One of the professors heard that you were dropping by and gave me a note for you. You teach demonstrations with Dr. Emmet in the Bio department, right? He's on sabbatical, and the visiting professor said he'd like to discuss the class with you."

"Ah." Gemma blinked.

She absolutely did not teach demonstrations with Dr. Emmet in Bio. She occasionally led field work with Dr. Hari.

"Thank you, it's very kind of you to pass it on," she said, wondering if this was more skullduggery or if she was about to take someone else's mail. "May I?"

Dr. Jakar pulled a cream envelope out of his top desk drawer. Her name was neatly on the front in bottle-green cursive.

She managed a smile. "Thank you." She put it in her purse. "I'll be right out front."

With the help of the young man who was now behind the desk, she found the number for the city hall and had the line ringing at 4:59. As she listened to it ring, she pulled the envelope out of her purse.

A receptionist picked up. "I was told to call at 5:00, to speak with my colleague Samantha," Gemma said, hoping that was enough information.

"Just a moment," said a bored female voice. Then music started.

She fiddled with the envelope, and then decided to open it. She broke the seal and tore the top off. Samantha picked up on the other end of the line as Gemma unfolded the single sheet of paper.

"I'm glad you could call," Samanatha said, her voice much higher than it was in person. "I managed to talk to someone from the cafe this morning and get some more information. I'm going to go visit that congregation, as long as you think it's a good idea."

"I think it can't hurt," Gemma said. Her attention was mostly fixed on what she was reading. 

A sigh came through the line. "It could mean nothing, but it might be relevant. I'll tell you more in person. But at the very least, this is probably where our friend from this morning met his mentor. It would be interesting to get in contact with them."

"Oh, yes," Gemma agreed. "That would be something." Samantha was still talking like someone was listening in. Was she actually being watched? "We did make it to the library, by the way."

"Oh?" Samantha said. "Find anything interesting?"

Gemma hummed, and folded the paper back up. "Something worth looking at," she settled on, not willing to repeat what she'd read out loud. The student librarian seemed to be half-asleep, but even he would probably perk up and start paying attention if she admitted that someone had told her there was a corpse on campus and he'd like her to come talk about it in his office. "I might be here a while later. Enjoy your trip up north."

"Drive safe," Samantha said, which was absurd, because she knew that Gemma didn't drive anywhere at all. "I'll talk to you tomorrow. Tea, at your house."