THE THIRD NIGHT
Working in the Library, a new librarian makes a strange discovery.
I should not have opened the diary.
That’s the first truth.
The second truth, well, read on.
The diary waited in Romance. That was the first detail I could not forgive.
Not History.
Not Crime.
Not Fiction.
Romance.
It sat between a battered copy of Wuthering Heights and a modern paperback with a pink spine, as if someone had placed it there as a private joke.
I noticed it during the last hour of my shift while straightening the section.
The library was emptying for the evening. Two students are muttering over laptops. A man wearing a green jacket sleeps. He sits in an armchair, mouth open, in the Travel section.
The diary must have been left. It was out of place.
No barcode.
No call number.
No library stamp.
It was thick, covered in blue cloth, speckled with glitter, the sort sold to girls who still believe diaries are private things.
I should have turned it in to lost property. I didn’t.
I shut the lights out.
Closed the library.
Went back to my flat.
I opened it.
The entries are, well, weird.
Handwritten.
Trembling, written with such force that the pen had carved faint grooves into the page beneath.
It was dated June 12.
Entry: June 9
I did not sleep.
Around one in the morning, I woke. Moving shadows on the curtains.
Branches, I thought.
I looked outside.
People in the road.
Dozens of them.
They came from every house, joining in little knots and streams, walking the same way.
Couples arm in arm.
Children skipping.
Elderly men in jackets.
Women carrying blankets over their arms.
Going where?
No speaking.
No laughing.
Just walking.
Purposefully.
I watched for a few minutes.
Then dressed.
Then followed.
Curiosity is a stupid lantern.
It shows you enough to keep walking.
The streetlights led us over a rise and down into a wide valley.
Floodlights had been rigged.
Bright enough to bleach the grass white.
People were sitting along the slopes, shoulder to shoulder, staring down as if waiting for a match to begin.
I asked an old man beside me what was happening.
He grinned.
“Patrick’s transformation.” He then hurried down the hill.
A man stepped into the field wearing colorful ceremonial clothing. He carried a wireless microphone with the easy confidence of someone who had done this many times.
He welcomed the crowd.
Then introduced a boy.
Patrick.
Seventeen.
Naked.
Broad-shouldered.
Frighteningly calm.
Patrick would undergo three trials to prove himself a man.
The crowd cheered.
A bull was led into the field.
Rope removed.
“You know what you must do,” the announcer said. “Kill it with your bare hands.
It sounds impossible.
It was not impossible.
Patrick teased the beast.
The fight was ugly.
Quick.
And longer than I can bear to write.
He was tossed.
Gored.
Trampled.
But Patrick kept coming back.
Finally, blood running down his chest, Patrick seized the horns with both hands as the bull lifted him.
With a violent twist of his arms, Patrick wrenched the beast’s neck around with a circular motion.
The sound carried across the valley like a branch snapping in winter.
The bull collapsed.
Did not move.
The crowd stood to applaud.
I did not.
That was the moment people noticed I didn’t belong.
Music began.
Fires were lit.
I went home.
Locked the door.
I should have left the village that night.
But it was three in the morning.
I was tired.