Jackie smelled something. It was different than the usual library smell of basement closets and bleach. This smelled like burnt coffee during a sinus infection, a stale sting in her nose. She turned to Diane, whose eyes were pointed down, cheeks flushed, nostrils flared.

“You smell it too.”

Diane nodded, putting her finger to her lips.

A distant hum. They looked around. Diane took Jackie’s hand. Jackie didn’t notice. The distant hum was perhaps a nearby growl.

“Keep moving,” Jackie said.

Diane did nothing. Jackie stood, pulling her up by the hand. The noise was between distant and nearby. It was between a growl and a hum.

“Hiding won’t make whatever that was go away,” Jackie said.

Diane clutched at the science fiction shelf as Jackie led her, heel-toe, heel-toe, quiet, into the biography section.

The section was extensive, taking up most of the wall leading to the back of the library. The only book in the section was the Official Biography of Helen Hunt. There were a lot of copies. It was a well-stocked biography section. If anyone needed to know about the life of a person, for instance Helen Hunt, then this section was extremely helpful.

A few turned-out copies of the book revealed a smiling Helen Hunt on its cover. Helen’s eyes stared back directly at the viewer. Helen’s smile had a hard edge, a tight anger to it. Her hair was pulled back to display the intricate clover-shaped forehead tattoos that Helen Hunt is known for. Between the actor’s teeth, Diane could see a gray smudge in the famous dark of the famous maw. The gray seemed to move, to flicker. It was pacing to and fro. Jackie saw it too. A bright glint, like a cat’s eye in a dark room, flashed out from between the award-winning actor’s teeth. Jackie put one hand to her own mouth and tried not to breathe. Diane pulled herself close to Jackie’s shoulder. Helen wasn’t smiling at all. They must have seen it wrong. She was frowning, angry, still showing all of her teeth. Or no, the woman on the book covers was definitely moving.

Her mouth was opening and the gray movement inside became fast and agitated. Diane gave a light shove and they ran out of the biography section before Helen could do anything more.

Now they were deep in the fiction section, surrounded by books that told nothing but lies. They breathed heavily from their run, but tried to keep their breathing as quiet as they could. They could not keep it very quiet at all.

From one of the shelves, an arm reached out to them. It appeared to be more or less human. Diane made a sound that was not quite but similar to a scream. Jackie stopped, turned, and put her hand over Diane’s mouth.