Fushigi Yuugi Fan Fiction ❯ Legend ~ Book One: Girl of Legend ❯ Two: Down the Rabbit Hole (in a Manner of Speaking) ( Chapter 2 )

   KC had never liked the basement. It was dark and smelled like mildew and old parchment, and it looked like a dungeon, having been built somewhere in the early nineteenth century. It was creepy and cold and as if that wasn't bad enough, one of the librarians had told her the building was once used as a temporary courthouse before the official courthouse had been completed, a hundred and fifty years ago. It was rumored that some of the less pleasant sentences had been carried out in that very basement, and sometimes one could still sense the spirits of those dead criminals wandering around, seeking vengeance.

   Needless to say, KC avoided going down there during her volunteer days as often as possible. She wasn't superstitious by nature, but she'd seen too many horror movies with similar settings to ever feel comfortable being in one. Sometimes she cursed her overactive imagination. Now, of course, was one of those times, when her eyes kept trying to show her things she was sure weren't really there. Such as the large, bulky shape half-hidden behind an old bookcase. Surely that wasn't really the serial ax murderer she'd seen on a bad slasher flick the other day…

   KC clenched her teeth and clung desperately to her wavering courage as she darted through the large room, dodging broken chairs, spare shelves, packing boxes, and cobwebs left and right. She miraculously managed to not kill herself as her boots thudded dully on the packed-dirt floor, and finally, she reached the other side where a large, decidedly-modern door heralded the entrance to the basement reference room.

   She could practically feel the breath of those alleged vengeful spirits ghosting down her neck—which was kinda stupid, really, considering spirits didn't breathe—as she sought to get the key into the lock. Was it her imagination, or did she just hear something rustle behind her? It had sounded suspiciously like wingbeats.

   "Ack! Bats!" she squeaked and redoubled her efforts. She hated bats almost as much as she hated vengeful spirits, and unlike spirits, bats were real and showed absolutely no distinction between a moth and a human head; they seemed to dive-bomb either one with no discretion at all. She knew this from personal experience.

   Another rustle of wings and a faint, high-pitched shriek reached her ears, and she nearly bolted from the room. Did bats shriek? She thought she remembered watching a documentary about bats in South America, and she was pretty sure those bats had shrieked. Of course, the suburbs of Boston were as far from South America as a person could get, but what if some had escaped from the zoo or something? There was a zoo in Boston, right?

   KC managed to drop the keyring twice as she dodged imaginary bats winging overhead, wasted even more precious moments trying to pick the right silver key out of the bazillion other silver keys on the ring. "Can't they label these things?" she complained as she inserted the fifth key into the lock and turned it. She was rewarded with a faint click as it released. In another moment, she'd darted inside the room and tripped over its raised cement floor before she slammed the door behind her. Whew. Safe. Let's see rabid bats try to dive-bomb her head in there. She took a calming breath, and immediately began to feel silly over her unreasonable panic attack. Whoever heard of South American bats living in basements, anyway? Attics would be much more to their liking.

   KC glanced around the room to gather her bearings. Dim light streamed in from overhead windows, their barred, street-level glass liberally coated with outdoor grime. It gave the room a dark, murky appearance, shadowed the tall bookcases that stood in straight lines across the expanse of the floor and along the walls. The shelves were filled with dusty tomes as thick as her arm and probably as heavy as Kimiko's backpack. There was a decidedly modern computerized panel just beside her head; after a moment's examination, she realized it was for a climate-control system. Well, that made sense. Hundred-year-old texts probably wouldn't survive the cold humidity of the basement without one. More importantly, there was also a light switch, which she flipped on. A row of overhead fluorescent lights crackled to life and flooded the room with electric brilliance.

   She draped her coat over the back of a chair and dropped her heavy pack on the floor beside it, headed toward the shelves to start searching the rows of books. She didn't know exactly what she was looking for but hoped all the same that she'd find it. The titles were worn and hard to read, and she found herself squinting to make out the illegible print. Some of these books were really old, she realized. The titles had been stamped into the leather covers, not just printed on with ink, and the covers themselves looked cracked, dry and brittle. She wondered if any of them were worth anything.

   She finally came upon a book that seemed promising, perched on a shelf directly over her head. She tilted her head and squinted to read the worn title printed on its spine with fancy, scrolled lettering. "'The Histories of the Orient'. Bingo!" she exclaimed, and reached up to pull the huge volume from its shelf. She probably should have looked for a stepladder. Or even a chair. But time was wasting, and KC was impatient. So, ignoring all semblance of common sense, she gripped the bottom of the heavy book and yanked. Hard.

   She got the book easily enough. Unfortunately, she got its neighbor along with it, whose faded ribbon page-marker had somehow gotten caught beneath the weight of the first book, thereby dragging it forward and straight off the shelf. Needless to say, she was a bit surprised to suddenly find herself flat on her back with two rather large and unwieldy books cradled haphazardly in her arms, squeezing the breath from her lungs.

   "Boy, am I glad no one was around to see that," she wheezed and pushed the heavy tomes off her body so she could sit up. She didn't feel injured, but she wasn't sure she could say the same about the books. She checked the first volume over, noted with relief that it didn't seem any worse for wear from its impromptu tumble off the shelf. The second book, however, had a very obvious crease right down the middle of its cover. She bit her lip; the bend may or may not have already been there, but she'd been too busy trying to dodge the thing before it landed on her head to actually get a good look at it beforehand.

   "Mrs. Potter's gonna skin me alive," she groaned, attempting to unbend the stiff leather as much as possible without cracking it. "I wonder how much of my life savings I'll have to give up to pay for this. So much for a new car." She pounded her forehead against the book a few times, then sat with her eyes closed and wondered if it was at all possible to start the entire day over again. "I really hate my life," she decided with a heavy sigh and opened her eyes.

   That was when she noticed the third book not three inches from her knee, its red cover a shocking contrast to the dark brown, nearly black leather of its neighbors. She blinked a few times and wondered how she'd missed seeing it as she slowly reached out to touch the small volume. It felt real enough. It must have been stuck between the other two books. Given that it wasn't even half their size and barely thicker than her index finger, it was no wonder she hadn't noticed. It also looked old, the cover faded and a bit worn around the edges. She picked it up carefully, hoping she hadn't damaged that one, as well. There was a bird imprinted on the cover with a long tail. It looked kind of like a peacock. Over it, a title had been embossed in golden letters. Chinese letters.

   "Yes!" For a moment, excitement returned as she opened the book, only to fade again when she realized the pages were also printed in the same foreign language. "Well, damn it." She glared down at the brief message scrawled on the first page, as if it was the book's fault she was straight back at square one. The paper was thin, delicate and nearly translucent from age. The vague outlines of an illustration on the opposite side caught her attention, so she idly flipped the page for a better look.

   She was completely unprepared for the flood of brilliant, crimson light that burst from the pages and engulfed her in a hazy, red glow. The sound of wingbeats returned, nearly deafening as they thrummed the air all around her, and she screamed and hurled the book away.

   Well, she tried to, anyway.

   Only instead of flying across the room, the book simply hung in midair, all by itself, as the light continued to pour from its pages. She gaped stupidly at the spectacle before belatedly realizing that the book appeared to be moving closer. Or rather, the book wasn't moving, she was! It was pulling her across the floor right to where the light burned brightest. A horrifying realization occurred that she was actually about to be pulled into the book.

   She screamed again and whipped around to race full-speed to the exit. Only she wasn't getting anywhere and to her horror, the shelves, the walls, even the floors began to turn translucent, to fade right out from under her.

   A folding chair somehow got itself tangled in her legs, and she landed with a pained gasp on the floor, which still felt solid enough, even though she could see right through it. The pull got stronger and she felt herself being dragged backward, felt her body leave solid ground. She shrieked and scrabbled for purchase, clawed at the floor, grasped shelves and whatever else she could lay hands on. She saw her pack and lunged for it; her hand just barely caught one of its straps before the red light flared brilliantly, and then she was falling, falling through a swirling red and black vortex, as stars and light and the fading library room spun around and around.

   The darkness of oblivion rose behind her eyes and she knew no more.

   The Chinese tome hung suspended for another long moment, still glowing softly with eerie power. Finally, the red light flickered, died, and the book dropped to the ground with a dull pat, an ordinary object once again.