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"Hello," a friendly voice said.
Mara looked up from the shelf she was dusting and took stock of the child in front of her, his hand raised in greeting and his smile sincere. Her sister would say he had a face full of sunshine. Granted, Elin would also say he was not a child but a young man -- Elin's grin would grow wider, hungrier. Mara, however, had her standards and children did not meet them.
The child's windbreaker, sneakers, and side-swept haircut weren't exclusive to any age group, these days when no-one knew how to dress to impress when out in public. Something about him was peculiar, though. The more Mara stared, the more his youth bled to the surface of him.
"May I help you, dear?" A maternal tone worked rather less often these days than it used to, but she'd guessed correctly: his smile did not fade and he came closer.
"Do you have any books about graveyards?" the boy asked without hesitation.
Once, Mara might have found such a question odd or disturbing, especially coming from someone so young. Why, a child born in this century might not lose a loved one to illness or disaster for decades. Modern people lived longer and healthier lives, and in general Mara found this useful. (A larger pool to choose from was always welcome.) But just yesterday a fully grown woman with three of her own offspring in tow had asked her if the library carried a series of novels which were entirely filled with poorly-written filth.
Fifty shades this and fifty shades that. Standards of fashion were not the only standards that had deteriorated of late.
The boy stood waiting for an answer, the set of his jaw making him seem older for a few seconds until his face smoothed out again.
Only a trick of the light, Mara thought.
"We have a fine selection of YA books," she said, "and I believe several patrons your age have enjoyed the novel Cemetery Boys." She led the child a few steps away to the new release case in the young adult section.
He glanced at the colorful books but shook his head regretfully. "No, ma'am. I meant, would the library have anything on local graveyards?"
"You're working on a research paper?" Mara guessed.
"Yes," he said, "something like that. I'm new to town. My name's Jack."
"Well, welcome, Jack." Mara knew it was hard to be the new kid in school, especially in a town as small as Foxhole. Especially when a child was as strange as this boy. "I suggest you try the state room. Miss Elin, who works in there, may be able to set you up with some public county records information, newspaper articles on microfilm, that sort of thing. Oh, there might even be a diary or two; the library has saved quite a few from prominent local families."
"Thank you," the child said.
Very polite manners! Mara approved.
She remembered Harlan Pogue breaking ground at nearby Lime Hill at the ceremony held on a cold January morning, 1860. Not a moment too soon, as it turned out, with the war on its way and so many graves soon to be dug.
Pogue had been from one of those prominent families. He’d had beautiful public manners but dreadful private ones; he’d been one of Mara's first after arriving on the continent. To feel him suffering beneath her powerful flank, face contorted with pain as he choked for breath, sweat dripping from his purpling head and chest, had always been a delight she recalled with fondness.
She hoped the boy wouldn't want much history on Lime Hill. She knew for a fact most of the records had been burned when the cemetery was later plowed under and the land sold to WalMart. All part of the brutal march of time.
The boy had not yet started towards the glassed-in state room when he waved at a tremendously tall, handsome man who'd just come in the door by the check-out. The man was dressed well, in a tailored gray suit, befitting someone with an important job like financial consultant or attorney.
"Is that your father?" Mara asked, smiling at the child's enthusiasm.
"One of them, yes." The boy began to go to him. "Thanks again for your help!"
Well then. Mara knew more than a few children had multiple parents these days. She wondered about the child's mother. Bless the woman's soul, the paperwork for more than one divorce would likely have cost a fortune. Once upon a time, a divorced woman would've been drummed out of town. If she could not afford to leave, she may have been made simply miserable by the gossips and the scolds, and the latest marriage would suffer for it.
Mara tsked, thinking on the cruelty a community was capable of. Still, she herself had taken advantage of more than one fraught relationship. Those husbands were often bad in their own ways, spineless or incapable of comforting their wives properly. Tormenting their dreams had given Mara satisfaction she sometimes found difficult to achieve otherwise.
On the other hand, if she were being honest, meting out justice could get old, in a way she herself didn't. Sometimes what one wanted was to feel a man scream in agony, his hands scrambling toward but finding no purchase in her rich, thick mane. Sometimes knowing he would spend all his remaining years scared to close his eyes at night for what terrors might await him in the dark, in sleep he could not escape, was just the cure for a long stretch of less than rapturous encounters.
If she were being very honest, the boy's father might be an ideal candidate for pursuit. She didn't recognize him; perhaps both he and his son were new to the area. He nodded as he passed Mara, respectful of an elder. He wore no rings and his eyes were a kind shade of hazel. She could easily imagine them filled with fear, and the thought was pleasing.
She would ask Elin for his and the boy's surname later. Elin excelled at learning that sort of thing about the patrons.
Or -- and as Mara thought of this, she realized how much fun it would be -- she could simply shrink to the size of a sliver and slip out of the library when the father and child left, follow them to whichever cemetery they chose to explore, and trail them from there to wherever they dwelled. There was no guarantee, of course, that the father slept alone, but surely it was part of the excitement of the hunt to discover whether or not he did.
And if he was alone, Mara could ensure he would not be for long.
Elin could have the boy.
Keeping eyes on the visitors, Mara returned to dusting, content in her renewed sense of purpose and happily daydreaming of the nightmares she was soon to provoke.