Two-Fisted Librarians #5

I pulled the door open and went inside. If anything the hallway was even darker than the alley outside but Hattie had thankfully brought an electric torch. We walked slowly down the corridor, checking doors as we went, but they were all locked. It was much colder inside than it was outside. Halfway down the corridor we heard a noise. I knew the others heard it, because they froze the same as I did. But if they hadn’t I might have begun to question my sanity. The screech that we heard was unearthly in its pitch, its volume, its length. If I ever hear that sound again it’ll be too soon.

“Wha-” But before I could even finish a word, there were more screams.

Though these at least seemed more earthly. Then the sound of bullets. Lots of them. Then it all stopped, and there was just silence.

Ernestine walked up to the last door in the hallway and kicked it open, screaming at the tops of her lungs that everyone in the room should freeze. If you ask me, she seemed more than a little suicidal. It was to my great amazement that she was met with nothing. No gunshots. No screams. Nothing.

The lights in the room flickered on and off, showing, well, showing a scene that nobody really wanted to see. There were bodies all over the room. Or parts of bodies at least.

We entered the room, and nobody looked too thrilled at checking the bodies. Not too surprising really, librarians are more used to checking for damage on books, not people.

Lawrence took the lead, mumbling something about “back in the war”, and approached the first of the bodies. Or part of a body as it turned out. Just a torso. No legs, no arms, no head. ­|8­