The Mall of Cthulhu (8 page)

The Rockefeller Library was a giant concrete cube with long, skinny windows. Ted wondered briefly who had decided that this was the default architecture for college libraries. He personally thought they should be more gothic and creepy and full of little nooks of knowledge.

He walked up the steps and read the sign on the door. "Anyone Entering Brown University Libraries MUST Have Valid Brown ID or Affiliated Photo ID." Well, that killed his "wander around the library looking for the
Necronomicon"
plan. He peeked through the glass door, then slapped his forehead like he'd forgotten something, and walked down the hill to the same independent coffee shop where he and Laura had performed the James Bond-style covert key exchange yesterday. He was never setting foot in a Queequeg's again if he could help it. He ordered a large Sumatra which was served to him in a pint glass, and he took it to the bar in front of the window, sat on a stool and thought. He'd seen the usual bored student checking IDs at the entrance to the library. He didn't have the expertise to break in any other way, so he'd have to get past the ID checker. He really wanted to call Laura and ask for her expert opinion on how to infiltrate a college library, but then he'd have to explain how he was actively pursuing evil instead of peeing into a Snapple bottle outside of Temple Emmanuel. He looked around and briefly considered trying to steal somebody's card—the guy at the entrance to the library wasn't even looking to see if pictures matched faces—but unless he got very lucky, he'd have to spend days lurking around hoping somebody would drop or forget their ID, and that was going to be way too boring.

Lacking any better plan, he had to brazen it out with the "forgot my ID" ploy. He could try it on every student drone's shift until he got away with it. But first, he'd need some more stuff to make himself look credible. He gulped down the end of the coffee, hoped that it wouldn't be too hard to find a public bathroom in forty-five minutes or so, and went to the bookstore.

He purchased a backpack, then walked up and down the sidewalk until he saw a bus coming up the street. He ran across the street in front of the bus, dropping the bag in a way he hoped looked accidental as he ran. The bus driver blew his horn, gave Ted the finger, and gleefully ran over the backpack. Once he'd retrieved the backpack and dusted it off, Ted decided it looked weathered enough to be credible. He returned to the bookstore and bought enough notebooks and pens to give the bag a convincing heft.

From the bookstore, he proceeded to the library. He walked through the door and faced the ID checker—a pale guy with a mop of brown hair and stubbly cheeks. Ted made a big show of looking into his pockets, then swung his backpack around and rooted through it, opening the Velcro pockets. He hoped his "I'm surprised, flustered, and angry by my inability to locate my ID" act was convincing.

"Aw, geez, I'm sorry," Ted said, "I must've left my ID at home. Do you think you could let me in anyway? It's a twenty-minute walk back there, and I have class in an hour . . . ."

Ted's heart pounded during the long seconds while the ID checker looked up from his fat textbook, sized Ted up, and decided he probably was exactly what he was pretending to be, rather than some pervert who wanted to masturbate in the women's studies stacks or something. "Okay," the guy said. "Sign in." He shoved a white binder with tattered photocopied pages bearing illegible signatures at Ted. Ted signed his own name in a completely undecipherable scrawl and strode through the turnstiles.

He walked around the library for a few minutes. The directory next to the elevator said nothing about rare books, so, walking past the hideous glass globes that illuminated the stairwell, Ted walked to the basement and began a systematic search of the library. The smell of books was heavy in the air, and the quiet seemed to surround him. All he could hear was the clacking of fingers on keyboards, and the occasional page turning. He hoped that nobody monitoring the security cameras was finding him very interesting.

When he saw the Absolute Quiet room, Ted fought back the urge to run in there and fart really loud. He imagined an instruction from Laura: "Avoid audible flatulence in situations where quiet is necessary. ☺"

After ten more minutes, Ted had walked every easily accessible inch of the Rockefeller Library. He'd found neither
Necronomicon
nor Cthulhu cultists, unless they were in here doing an excellent impersonation of grad students.

Feeling dejected, Ted trudged out of the library.

Exiting the library, Ted decided to turn left on Prospect Street. He walked around a bunch of utility workers tearing up the street in front of the List Art Building, another rectangular concrete fortress that seemed to be a rejected college library design. Glancing to his left as he continued up the street, he saw a white building marked Hay Library. He pushed the heavy wooden door open and found himself in a marble entryway with a portrait of someone he assumed was Hay gazing benevolently down on him. To his right was a small room with a bunch of papers in display cases. A small sign read "Items from the Lovecraft Collection." Of course! The
Necronomicon
wasn't in the Rockefeller Library at all! It was here! Maybe.

Ted examined the papers in the cases. There was a letter from Lovecraft in New York denouncing all of the Mongrel Races he encountered there. Nice! There was a typescript of "The Call of Cthulhu." The rest were all letters and essays and certainly not the
Necronomicon
. But if it was anywhere in Brown University, it was in this building.

Ted decided to wander around. Through doors at the end of the hallway he could see the librarians behind a counter. It would certainly be no good to wander up and ask for the
Necronomicon,
so Ted decided to poke around. He walked up carpeted steps and found himself in another hallway under the gazes of a variety of portraits. He gingerly opened a couple of wooden doors with brass handles and saw people working behind desks. He walked up another flight of steps and found more doors and more hardworking librarians.

Well, if the
Necronomicon,
certainly the crown jewel of the Lovecraft collection (if it existed), had been stolen, it was unlikely they'd put other stuff from the collection on display. It was also unlikely that he'd be able to wander more or less freely through a building that had recently had a priceless text stolen from it. Then again, would they have been able to tighten up security after the theft of a book they claimed they didn't have?

Ted left the Hay Library and turned on to brick-sidewalked, tree-lined Prospect Street and walked aimlessly. Glancing to his right, he saw a wooden colonial house with a small wooden sign on the corner. "Samuel B. Mumford House," it read. Lovecraft had, according to a label in the display in the Hay Library, lived in the Samuel B. Mumford House at the end of his life.

Pulse quickening, Ted walked around the back of the house, trying to pretend he was just a grad student out for a stroll. There were no cars in the gravel driveway, but there was a garbage can. Still feigning a casual attitude, Ted opened the lid of the garbage can and found what appeared to be ordinary household garbage. A recycling bin next to it held a few issues of the
New Yorker
and
Vanity Fair
. Somehow Ted doubted that these periodicals were favorites of Cthulhu cultists. Still, it could be that they were occupying the Mumford House and posing as regular people while ripping it apart searching for the
Necronomicon.
There was nothing else to do but break in.

Ted gingerly removed the contents from the recycling bin and turned it upside down. Standing on it, he gently pushed upward on one of the windows, silently thankful that old colonial houses like this didn't have screens or storm windows.

The window seemed to be stuck or else locked. Ted spread his fingers on the glass and tried to give the window a more forceful push upward. This time it did open, but just about half an inch. As Ted was getting ready to slide his fingers under the bottom of the window, an alarm began to scream.

Panicking, Ted ran blindly from the house down Prospect Street, then turned right hoping to get downtown and cower by the river or slip into the crowds at the mall or anything to just get the hell away from this neighborhood where the police were probably already looking for him for breaking and entering and/or murder. Stupid, stupid! He cursed himself for trying to do Laura's job and fucking it up so thoroughly. He'd be lucky to get home alive.

Ted was so busy cursing himself that he didn't realize he'd stumbled through the protective tape and into the Ocean State Power work site he'd passed earlier. He decided to brazen it out and keep running down the hill. Unfortunately, he soon found his path blocked. He stopped short and looked at the roadblock. The guard was a forty-year-old white guy who was remarkable only for the absence of the gut that most guys his age, and, indeed, most of the guys on this job site carried around.

"Can you not read?" Mr. Average said. He was obviously annoyed, but this strange diction and relatively low volume was not the obscenity-laced tirade Ted was expecting. "Where could you possibly be going in such a hurry?"

A part of Ted, the part that tended to speak in Laura's voice, knew he should just step around this guy and not draw any attention to himself, but another, louder part resented this guy questioning him like he was the high school principal instead of a guy digging up the road.

"Well, I hate to keep your wife waiting," Ted said, smiling.

The guy's face reddened and he got right in Ted's face. "I suggest," he said through clenched teeth, "that you walk away from this work area. You have disrespected me, and I cannot brook such disrespect. Uniform or not, if you are not gone from my sight in ten seconds, I shall take you into the back of the Ocean State Power van and perform such unspeakable acts of torture upon your person that you will beg me for the sweet mercy of death."

Ted froze. How many people on earth would use the phrase "beg for the sweet mercy of death"? He was standing here like an idiot having a face-to-face argument with the guy who'd impersonated a busty blonde in Virtuality and threatened Ted's life, nay, his very soul.

Ted quickly turned and ran, throwing "And you wonder why your wife wants a piece on the side. Freak!" over his shoulder. He ran until he found some steps down to the sidewalk that ran along the side of the river. He came to a bridge and clambered up the crisscrossing supports and hunched in the shade twelve feet above the walkway. For ten minutes he did nothing but watch the walkway beneath him. Eventually he convinced himself that the coast was clear, and he climbed down and took a circuitous route home. Once he was inside his apartment, he called Laura.

"Hey!" she said. "Find something at Temple Emmanuel?"

"Laura, I found them!"

"They're at Temple Emmanuel?"

"Ah, no, not exactly. They're, uh, tearing up College Street."

"They're tearing up College Street? How?"

"Well, they've got Ocean State Power trucks."

Laura sighed. "And what exactly makes you think they're evil cultists?"

"I, um, actually spoke to one."

"You
spoke
to one? Jesus, did you even look at the instructions I wrote you?"

"Well, I got hung up on the part about peeing in a plastic jug."

"I did not say a plastic jug! That would make way too much noise! Anyway, you . . . You know, your life could very well be in danger, and you just go toddling into even more danger! Do you
want
to die, Ted?"

Ted was ashamed. "No," he said quietly.

"Then you have to let me help you. Now. Why did you speak to this guy?"

"Well, I got distracted because I was running away from . . . uh."

"Running away from uh? What the hell is that? What were you running from?"

"I set off the alarm when I tried to break into Lovecraft's house."

Silence came on the line, stretched out, and made itself at home, not leaving for a full minute. Finally Laura spoke.

"And what did this power guy say that made you believe he's in league with the unholy?"

"Well, after I implied that I was late to an adulterous liaison with his wife, he told me he was going to make me beg for the sweet mercy of death."

"Yeah? And?"

"That's exactly what the virtual centerfold with the lead pipe said to me in Randolph Carter's room! Do you think there are two people in New England who would say 'beg for the sweet mercy of death'?"

Silence came back, but this time it was banished after only ten seconds.

"I guess I hate to admit this, but probably not. Unless that's like some line from one of your tentacle stories that everybody quotes or something."

"You think most power company employees quote Lovecraft when somebody says they're tapping their wife?"

"Tapping? What the hell is that?"

"You know, gettin' busy. Gettin' some. Hittin' it. Tappin' as in tappin' that ass!"

"Tapping? I guarantee that's a frat-boy coinage. Woman as keg. Jesus. Every time I think you guys can't stoop any lower, you surprise me."

"Yeah, okay men are pigs. I know I only did one year of college, but I had that down by my first semester. You're ducking my question."

"Alright. I admit it seems unlikely that a power company employee would defend his wife's honor with quotes from old horror fiction."

"Exactly! So they must be looking for the
Necronomicon
there."

"What street did you say they were on?

"College. In front of some concrete monstrosity of a building. Something art center."

Ted heard the clacking of keys in the background. "Okay. Is it the List Art Center?"

"Yeah."

"That is the original location of the Samuel B. Mumford House, which was Lovecraft's final home. They moved the Samuel B. Mumford House around the corner in 1959."

"I was right! Because if Lovecraft buried the
Necronomicon
under his house, that means it's under the List Art Center now! So they really are Cthulhu cultists!"

"Well, this does make it a little more likely that the people you saw digging up the street are actually looking for the
Necronomicon.
Up in the air is the question of whether this book which, by the way, everybody insists Lovecraft made up, actually exists."