Weekly Writing – February 18 2023

It was Rochelle’s idea to leave a card out for it. Just a plain, ordinary library card sitting on the checkout desk, with a pamphlet and bookmark and one of those fancy new pens, the whole shebang. It couldn’t hurt, she reasoned, while the rest of us laughed. Or at least, it would hurt a lot less than books disappearing up into the vents and coming back as confetti shredded from broken spines, if at all.
We couldn’t argue with that. It felt a little bit like leaving cookies out for Santa Claus, or an apple for the raccoon that comes up on your back porch. It was, I thought, just our way of feeling a little more in control of something that had been making our lives hell.
That scratching in the vents. The feeling, constantly, over your shoulder, that you’re being watched. The missing books, torn carpets, and worse, all the people who stopped coming in, because they could feel it, too.
The card was gone in the morning. The pamphlet, bookmark, pen, everything. We laughed, of course, and accused each other of taking them as a prank, and all pretended not to see the scratch marks on the desk, as if something with grotesquely long claws hadn’t had an easy time scraping the card off the counter.
The next morning, there was a neat stack of books on the counter, four from every corner of the library, cooking to sci-fi, and that card sitting on top of them.
What could we do? I mean, we could have just ignored it, put the books back on the shelves, but it felt too much like we’d invited this. Rochelle was off for the day, or she would have done it herself, I’m sure, but I checked those books out, put the card on top of them, and left them there on the counter, stacked as if someone was going to come back for them.
The next morning, they were gone. Twenty seven mornings later, they were back.
Stacked on the counter, with the card on top. All in perfect shape, except for faint scratches on the covers, as if those claws could only handle things so carefully.
Since then, it’s been like clockwork. A stack of books goes, a stack of books come back. We all joke about it, how it could have just come out of the vents and asked for a card, but I think we all understand. It’s a lot less terrifying sometimes to just assume you’re unwelcome instead of giving people the chance to say it to your face.
And if it does ever show its face, if it has one, if it ever does drop out of the vent in front of the checkout desk, I’ll try not to scream, and smile as I ask it if there’s anything I can help it find.