The Lost Lenore Read online

  Table of Contents

  COVER

  TITLE PAGE

  MIDNIGHT LIBRARY

  CHAPTER ONE: DISTANT TOLL

  CHAPTER TWO: THE BUCKET MAN

  CHAPTER THREE: RAPPING, TAPPING

  CHAPTER FOUR: UNDEAD RED

  CHAPTER FIVE: BOOKS AND MORTAR

  CHAPTER SIX: RAPID RESEARCH

  CHAPTER SEVEN: JUST MIST

  EPILOGUE

  INSIDE THE MIDNIGHT MIND OF . . .

  GLOSSARY

  DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

  WRITING PROMPTS

  MICHEAL DAHL

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR

  COPYRIGHT

  BACK COVER

  Midnight Library

  The MIDNIGHT LIBRARY was named after T. Middleton Nightingale, or “Mid Night.” More than 100 years ago, Nightingale built the library but then vanished. The giant clock in the library went silent. Its hands froze at twelve. Since that day, no one has heard the clock chime again. Except for the librarian Javier and his team of young Pages. Whenever they hear it strike twelve, the library transforms. The world inside a book becomes real—along with its dangers. Whether it’s mysteries to be solved or threats to be defeated, it’s up to the librarian and his Pages to return the Midnight Library to normal.

  THE LIBRARIAN

  JAVIER O’LEARY

  – Javier is supervisor of the library’s Page program.

  THE PAGES

  BARU REDDY

  – He reads a lot of horror books. And his memory is awesome.

  JORDAN YOUNG

  – Her parents have banned video games for the summer. She hopes working at the library might get her access to gaming on the library computers.

  KELLY GENDELMAN

  – She figures helping at the library will be fun. Maybe the other Pages will appreciate her love of bad puns.

  CAL PETERSON

  – His parents think the library is a good place to expose him to more books. They never expected him to go inside a book!

  CHAPTER ONE

  Distant Toll

  Cal Peterson moved his finger along the library shelf until he found the right spot. He wedged the World War II book—Codes and Codebreakers—into the gap. He sighed and turned back to his book cart, selecting another book. Why couldn’t people just put the books back in the right spot? Cal had been shelving for what felt like hours, and he had barely made a dent.

  He couldn’t stop thinking about the old, broken clock Javier had shown him and the other volunteer Pages on their first day. It was in the middle of the massive library. Both of the clock’s hands were stuck at twelve.

  “You’ll hear the gong of midnight and you’ll see,” Javier had said. “But don’t be scared. You’re not losing your mind. You’re just inside an author’s mind. The five of us will be able to work together to make things right.”

  Cal was pulled out of the thought by Kelly’s voice. She stood beside him with three books under her arm. She didn’t seem to be in any sort of rush to get through her cart of books to reshelve.

  “You think it’s going to happen again?” Kelly asked nervously. “The thing with the clock?”

  Cal turned to look at her. “I don’t know,” he said. “I hope not. But I also hope it does, if that makes sense.”

  Kelly nodded and looked at her phone. “It should happen in a few minutes, if it does.”

  Before Cal could reply, Rolene, the information desk librarian, walked over, frowning. She was wearing glasses and had her hair piled on top of her head. She carried at least nine books in her arms, stacked up to her chin. She stopped at Kelly’s cart.

  The woman mumbled something. Cal thought it sounded like, “Good morning.” She dropped her books onto Kelly’s cart.

  “I need to get back downstairs to my desk,” Rolene said with a tired voice. “Would you put these tomes back in their home?”

  Cal watched Kelly hold back a sigh. “Sure,” she said. “No problem.”

  “It seems like there’s a ton of work to do here at the library,” Cal said. “Is there any reason there aren’t more of us helping out?”

  “A ton of work is right. Not that anyone cares if I’m dead tired by the end of each day. But you four were chosen!” Rolene said. “And there can only be four. Never less, never more.” The woman walked away, mumbling under her breath.

  “Huh. She’s interesting,” Kelly said.

  “Yeah,” Cal replied. “Really interesting. She called the books ‘tomes.’”

  Before they could say more, there was a distant sound: the gong of a bell. It sounded muffled, as if it tolled from far away, but each strike made the shelves and books vibrate.

  One, two.

  Cal watched the ladder in the aisle shake and roll a bit along the carpet.

  Three, four.

  Cal pulled out his phone and checked the time. It was 12:00 p.m. Right on time, he thought.

  Five, six.

  With each gong, the entire library transformed before his eyes. The books changed from crisp and colorful new hardcovers to old, dusty-looking volumes.

  Seven, eight.

  The carpeted floor turned into cobblestones. The dim electric lights became lanterns with flickering candles inside of them.

  Nine, ten.

  A hazy fog circled their feet.

  Eleven.

  Cal sniffed the air. It smelled like fire and old leather.

  Twelve.

  “Well, this is new,” Kelly said. She reached out and touched the old books lined up on their black shelves. “I mean, old, actually.”

  “Here we go,” Cal muttered.

  Things were about to get interesting.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The Bucket Man

  Cal glanced around the library. A cold, damp breeze blew through an open window in one stone wall. Its purple curtains billowed in the wind, like old ghosts. Outside the moon glowed over a misty graveyard. A leafless tree, swaying in the wind, looked like a skeletal hand bursting out of the ground.

  “Baru? Jordan?” Cal called.

  “They can’t hear us,” Kelly said. Then she shouted, “Javier! Are you here?”

  “I’m here!” someone shouted. Footsteps pounded toward them. It was Javier.

  “Thank goodness,” Cal said. “This place is—”

  “Beyond creepy,” Javier said. “I know. But try not to worry about it.”

  “The whole place just turned dark and spooky,” Kelly said. “I don’t know how to not worry about it!”

  Suddenly a black streak flew past them. Cal whipped around and saw it. Perched on the corner of a tall shelf was a shadowy figure. It had shiny, dark eyes and a long, sharp beak.

  “It’s a raven,” Cal said, pointing. “An enormous one.”

  The raven cawed. It wasn’t afraid of them.

  The bird didn’t move. Which at least meant it didn’t come any closer. And Cal didn’t have time to worry much more about it, because just then, he saw Baru and Jordan running toward them.

  “Oh, good,” Javier said. “You’re all here. Let’s get to work.”

  “Last time we helped teach a spider named Charlotte how to spell,” Cal said. “And that brought us back where we belonged. Anybody know where we are now?”

  “This is right up my alley, unlike the world of E. B. White and Charlotte’s Web,” Baru said. He was the horror fan of the group. “But I don’t know whose work this is yet. It’ll come to me.”

  “Hopefully soon,” Cal said. “I don’t like the look of this place.”

  Jordan crossed her arms and tossed her hair. “I don’t like it either,” she said. “And my dad would NOT be happy to see where his little girl is right now.”

  The rest of the g
roup ignored that.

  “Does the raven mean anything to any of you?” Javier asked.

  “No,” Cal said, looking up at the enormous bird. It was staring straight at him. “But it looks like it wants something, doesn’t it?”

  “It probably wants to get out of here as much as we do,” Kelly said.

  CAW! said the raven.

  Then they heard a deep, hoarse voice. “WHERE . . . IS SHE . . . ?”

  Cal looked around, but no one was there. A cold breeze filled the room. He heard footsteps. They sounded like they were coming closer to him with each step.

  “Over here,” Javier whispered. He pointed to one of the large wooden tables. The five of them crowded together underneath.

  A hulking figure holding a large bucket stepped from the shadows. Slop dripped from the end of the trowel he held in his other hand. The sight of the slop made Cal shudder.

  “Gross,” Jordan whispered.

  The man paused, looked down an aisle, and then turned. “WHERE . . . IS . . . SHE?” the man moaned as he thumped away.

  “That was weird,” Kelly said.

  “Super weird,” Cal agreed. He stuck his head out and looked down the aisle. “Come on. It looks like he’s gone.”

  They climbed out from beneath the table. The raven still sat atop a bookshelf, staring down at them.

  “OK, what’s with the bird?” Jordan asked. “It looks like it wants to eat us.”

  “I’m not sure,” Javier said. “I haven’t seen it before. I don’t think it could eat us, though. Peck our eyes out, maybe, but—”

  The raven crowed and then tapped and rapped at the bookshelf a few times. Then itflapped its large wings and adjusted its claws on the shelf, gazing down at them.

  “OK,” Jordan said. “Not helping.”

  They watched as the raven spread its wings and glided onto a sculpture of a woman’s head a few yards away. The bird squawked and pecked the stony surface a few times. Then it looked at them again, as if waiting for something.

  “Whose head is that?” Baru asked.

  Javier walked over and squinted at the carving. “I’m not sure,” he said. “I’ve never seen this sculpture before.”

  “Um, hello?” Jordan called. “Can we focus here? We’ve got a mean-looking bird and an even meaner-looking bucket man on the loose in here.”

  “That’s Pallas,” Kelly said. “The Goddess of Wisdom.” The other kids stared at her, and she shrugged. “I had to do a project on Greek mythology for school,” she said.

  Baru clapped. “That’s it! I know who the bird is!”

  “Wait,” Cal said. “What do you mean? And keep it down. I don’t want Bucket Man to come back here.”

  Baru turned to the raven, still watching them from its perch atop Pallas. “Greetings, bird,” Baru said. “Do you have anything to say to us?”

  Cal laughed. “Seriously, Baru? Birds can’t talk.”

  “Nevermore,” squawked the raven.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Rapping, Tapping

  The Pages and Javier stood around the raven in awe.

  “Aha!” Baru said. “I was right.”

  “Explain,” Jordan said. “Please.”

  “It’s from Edgar Allan Poe’s poem ‘The Raven,’” Baru said proudly. “I read it a whileback, along with some of his scary stories. In the poem, the raven perches right on top of this head!”

  “But it talks,” Jordan whispered. “That bird just said—”

  “Nevermore,” the raven said again, cutting her off.

  “So we’re stuck . . . where?” Cal asked.

  “In Edgar Allan Poe’s world,” Baru said. “At least, I think so.”

  “I’ve never read anything by Poe,” Kelly said. “But I get the feeling he was a little strange.”

  The raven tapped and rapped its beak against the statue head. It cocked its head as though it were waiting, and then croaked, “Nevermore!”

  “Can that bird say anything else?” Cal asked.

  “No,” Baru said. “And it’s what drove the narrator in Poe’s poem mad. It seemed like the bird wanted to tell him something, but ‘nevermore’ was all it could say.”

  “Got it,” Cal said. “We should get out of here before it drives us mad too.”

  “Javier, has the library ever changed to Poe’s version before?” Jordan asked.

  “No,” Javier said. “It’s different each time. And each time I’ve felt like I was in some sort of dream. Like the worlds in these stories and poems are released from their pages and made real for a short time.”

  CAW! The raven rapped against the stone head again.

  “He doesn’t like being ignored,” Jordan said.

  “Does anyone?” Kelly asked. “The Poe thing.”

  Jordan narrowed her eyes, but didn’t respond. “Maybe he’s hungry,” she said. “Anyone got some bread or something?”

  “No,” Baru said. “But that wouldn’t work anyway. Ravens usually eat carrion. You know, rotting meat or roadkill. So unless anyone has any of that . . .”

  “Gross. Forget it,” Jordan said.

  “Nevermore,” the raven squawked, and then tapped again.

  “I got it!” Cal yelled. “Does anyone have a piece of paper?”

  Javier reached into his back pocket and produced what looked like a folded piece of ancient parchment, inked with a fancy script.

  “This was my grocery list,” Javier said, eyeing the paper. “It seems to have . . . changed.”

  Cal flipped the paper over to the blank side and found a spot at a table. “Anyone have a pen?” he asked.

  Jordan pointed at the table, and Cal turned. There was a feather quill stuck in an inkwell a few inches away.

  “Oh,” Cal said. “Right.”

  “What are you doing?” Kelly asked. She sat down next to him.

  “I think that raven is trying to say more than his favorite word,” Cal said. “But I might be wrong.”

  He dipped the end of the quill into the ink. Then he waited. After a moment, the raven tapped and rapped his beak against the statue. When the bird tapped, Cal made marks on the paper. Quick taps were recorded with a single dot. Longer, harder taps he captured with a dash.

  This went on for a little while, and then the bird stopped.

  “Oh, wow,” Javier said, peering over Cal’s shoulder. “That looks like—”

  “Morse code,” Cal said. He held up the paper and smiled. “That bird is trying to tell us something!”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Undead Red

  “Wait a second,” Kelly said. “Wasn’t Edgar Allan Poe from like . . . a long time ago? Was Morse code even invented then?”

  Cal hadn’t thought of that.

  “Too bad the books have all changed,” Baru said, gesturing around the library. “We could look it up.”

  Javier shook his head. “Actually, the contents of the books are the same. They just have a Poe-etic look to them in this version of the world.” He chuckled.

  “I remember some of the letters,” Cal said. “You know, S-O-S. But not all of them. If we can find a book with the Morse code alphabet, that’d help.”

  “To the three-eighties!” Javier cried, thrusting his fist into the air. “Come on. Follow me.”

  They stood up. But before they could head upstairs to the nonfiction section, a horrifying figure emerged from the darkened doorway. It was tall and had the face of a long-dead corpse. It wore tattered clothes, streaked with red, that looked as if they’d been rotting for years. It stared at the group with dark, empty eyes.

  “Um . . . everyone?” Kelly whispered. “You’re all seeing this too, right?”

  As if in response, the creature raised a rotten hand toward them.

  “Bring . . . her to . . . me,” the figure ordered. The monster’s voice came out in a ragged hiss, as though its throat were damaged. Or rotting away. Which, Cal thought, it probably was.

  “I hope he’s not talking about me,” Jordan cried, backin
g away.

  Slowly, the tattered corpse took another step in their direction. The raven crowed and tapped the stone head again.

  Cal felt his heart thunder in his chest. Despite his fear, he snatched up the piece of paper and quill he’d used to record the raven’s Morse code.

  Tap-tap-tap-tap.

  “We have to decode the tapping,” said Cal.

  Baru took a deep breath. “No time. I know what that thing is,” he whispered, fear on his face. “And we need to run. Now!”

  Cal and the others didn’t need to be told twice. The entire group turned and ran toward the staircase, darting across the common area of the library.

  “This way,” Javier said. “Come on.”

  He led them upstairs to a dimly lit aisle. “Cal, you and Baru come with me,” Javier said. “We’ll find the Morse code books. Kelly and Jordan, wait here, where you can see downstairs and be our lookouts. Keep an eye on the . . . well, whatever it is. If it moves, hurry over to the three-eighties and find us.”

  “Wait!” said Jordan, stopping them. “What is that thing? It looks like a zombie. And I can smell it from here.”

  “It’s the Red Death,” Baru said quietly. “It’s another character from Poe’s work, I’m afraid.”

  “We’ve got company,” Kelly said. She pointed across the room. It was the man with the bucket, walking into the stacks.

  “They both seem to be looking for someone,” Cal said.

  “That’s right,” Jordan said. “That dude with the bucket said ‘Where is she?’”

  “And the Red Death zombie thing said ‘Bring her to me,’” Cal said. “Was that in any of those books, Baru?”

  Baru was quiet for a moment. Cal imagined he was trying to sift through his vast memory bank of horror stories.

  “I don’t remember the Red Death looking for a woman,” Baru said. “That thing was more of a symbol for a nasty disease that was spreading.”

  “A real disease?” Kelly asked.

  “No, no,” Baru said. “It was something Poe made up, but in his story, it wiped out everyone at a masquerade party.”