The Smell of Dust

The library sat on the edge of town - a squat brick building wrapped in ivy, its windows clouded with age. Locals called it the "Graveyard of Stories", a forgotten space nobody went anymore. Bare shelves and flickering lights scared everybody off. For as long as anybody could remember, it had been a place that people were glad to pass by but never to enter-except for Mara.

Mara worked the night shift. She had her reasons for taking it-the quiet, the isolation, the thought of spending hours surrounded by the whispers of books was comforting to her, even in this desolate place. She wasn't here for the stories; she was here for the silence. But tonight, something felt off.

She had first smelled it, like wet paper and mold, left to rot. It clung in the air, prickling the back of her throat. It seemed to seep from somewhere deep inside the building, seeping into her lungs as she attempted to breathe.

"Must be the pipes," she muttered to herself, the voice hollow in the emptiness.

She continued shelving books that hadn't been touched in years, thick volumes with pages that crumbled under her fingers. Dust puffed up in little clouds as she worked, settling in her hair and clothes, as if the library itself was trying to mark her. She checked her watch; only an hour left. But the smell only grew stronger, filling the air like a damp fog.

And then she heard it: the soft shuffling sound, as if some heavy thing dragged itself slowly across the floor. She froze, listening, and for a moment there was only silence. But then it came again, closer this time, moving down one of the shadowed aisles, slow as a ghost.

A prickle of unease flashed through Mara and was shaken off. Surely just a rat, she told herself, though the creature hadn't sounded remotely rat-like. She moved down the aisle, the flashlight chopping through the darkness there; nothing but shelves upon shelves of dusty books met her except for the oppressive quietude of the library itself. She let out a breath of resignation, deciding it was probably her own imagination.

And then she saw it: there, on the floor, faint smear of something dark and sticky leading down the aisle. Her heart thudding, she knelt to take a better look. The smear was an odd color, between black and brown, like old blood left to dry; and she just couldn't shake the feeling that it was leading her to somewhere.

Curiosity wrestled with fear as she stepped along the trail. It wound between the shelves, turning deeper into the library, leading her into a portion of the building she had not explored before. The smell was stifling now, bitter and metallic, scraping at her lungs with every shallow intake. She was turning back when she saw a door at the end of the aisle.

The door was wooden, peeling and rotting in places, with its brass handle eaten through by rust and tarnished to a deep green. She hesitated, every instinct telling her to turn away and leave; but her hand went out and she twisted the handle.

Cold, damp air rose from within it, wrapping around her ankles like icy fingers. She swallowed hard at that. Her footsteps echoed off the stones as she began her descent.

At the bottom she found herself in a room of small size, its walls of dank stone, and without a window. There was no one in the room-almost.

Against the far wall sat an old wooden chair, atop which rested a book, older than the rest and whose leather cover seemed almost, as if burnt all round. No title and not a single marking was there but such an aura of silent wickedness seemed to seep from its pages.

Out of morbid curiosity, Mara advanced and took the book, the cover of which her fingers touched; a strange warmth flowed through the skin and prickling impressions ran like wires as she felt that the book itself was living. She turned over the first page of the volume, expecting words, but the photograph stared back at her.

It was a picture of a woman sitting in the very chair she now stood by, the same room, the same dim light. The woman in the photo looked remarkably like Mara, down to the dust in her hair and the smudges on her shirt. She started to turn the page again; this photograph had captured her standing by the door she had just walked out of, looking back over her shoulder as if someone had snapped the picture from behind.

Page after page, she saw more photographs: all of which she had taken, all of which showed where she had been five minutes before: walking through the hall, after the blood trail, opening this door.

She opened the last page, froze. The last photo was of her, just as she is, standing in the tiny room. But standing just beyond her, half-hidden in the shadows was a figure, its features indistinguishable, but made of something that turned her blood cold.

The light flickered, shadows seeming to creep closer from all sides. She turned, her heart hammering. The room was empty.

Or so she told herself.

The stench grew stronger, edged with the acrid bite of rot and something old and wet decaying in the walls. In the stillness, she could hear the soft, raspy breathing-too close-right behind her. The chair creaked, as if something settled into it, getting comfortable.

Mara's fingers went cold and the book slipped from her fingers, opening on the floor. Her photo stared back at her, and looking down, she realized it had changed.

In the picture, her own face was erased to a blank, vacant void, while the figure behind her grinned with a mouth too wide, teeth glinting like shards of broken glass.

The light flickered, once, twice, and out.