Apparently, being forgettable is more dangerous than I thought.
My coworkers call me "Cart Guy". Even my parents forget my name. It's Elias Cooper by the way. My crowning achievement is shelving books for years, and only getting tased by security once—for trespassing at my own job. I've spent most of my life trying to be seen.
Then a vampire tried to eat me and immediately regretted it. Apparently, the supernatural starts to unravel if it gets too close to me. At least that is what Lila—my terrifyingly competent coworker, and as it turns out a mage—says. According to her, I am a walking dead zone for magic. A magical EMP if you will.
That one event throws me into a hidden world of vampires, fey, and magic. For the first time in my life, I'm being remembered by things that want to collect me, kill me, or both.
I'm not exactly action-hero material. I'm five foot seven. But when the supernatural hits the fan, the most forgettable man in Ohio is left holding a shotgun and a survival plan that would be generously called questionable.
Apparently, being forgettable is more dangerous than I thought.
My coworkers call me "Cart Guy". Even my parents forget my name. It's Elias Cooper by the way. My crowning achievement is shelving books for years, and only getting tased by security once—for trespassing at my own job. I've spent most of my life trying to be seen.
Then a vampire tried to eat me and immediately regretted it. Apparently, the supernatural starts to unravel if it gets too close to me. At least that is what Lila—my terrifyingly competent coworker, and as it turns out a mage—says. According to her, I am a walking dead zone for magic. A magical EMP if you will.
That one event throws me into a hidden world of vampires, fey, and magic. For the first time in my life, I'm being remembered by things that want to collect me, kill me, or both.
I'm not exactly action-hero material. I'm five foot seven. But when the supernatural hits the fan, the most forgettable man in Ohio is left holding a shotgun and a survival plan that would be generously called questionable.
From Marginalia in the Ashthorne Basement Catalogue, unsigned
“The first sign is not the cold.
It’s the way something stares at you, unblinking, refusing to look away.
Once you feel that stare, the library isn’t the same anymore. Something in here remembers you.”
The creep actually licked his lips at me. Just stared at me right in the eyes, and licked his lips, like one of those weirdos you read about on the bus. You know the ones—the kind that makes you jump off at the next stop and vow to never ride public transit again.
I kept glancing at him; he was making it impossible to listen to the woman in front of me, the one who was currently one nod away from making the night a whole lot worse. “Sir, are you listening to me? We only allow employees to re-shelve books.”
A large security guard who kept staring at me menacingly stood beside her.
“I’m Elias. I work here; I’m literally on the payroll.” I bit down on some of the anger and tried to remain calm. The last time I had gotten angry and actually shouted, that overzealous security guard had tased me in the back.
I unpinned the badge from my shirt and resisted the urge to thrust it in her face. Instead, I just handed it over to her. “See, Elias Cooper, Librarian. Employee number forty. I work the overnight shift.”
She held the badge up and inspected it, holding it to the light like a cashier checking a counterfeit bill.
“Oh, Elijah. I’m sorry. The cart guy?”
I winced. She immediately got my name wrong. That had to be some sort of record.
“Sorry, I didn’t realize I almost had Carl escort you out,” she gestured over to Carl. The bastard’s hand was actually resting on the taser. I breathed out a sigh of relief, glad that she believed me this time. That taser hurt.
“But hey, if you’re looking for someone to escort out, the guy over there is staring at people and being a little creepy. Super creepy, actually.” I turned and pointed to where the creep had sat, but he was gone.
The chair where he’d been sitting was empty. I scanned the aisles for any sign of him, but it was only the three of us. Me, the librarian, and Carl, the taser-happy guard. God, I hated Carl.
They both ignored me.
“Make sure you get those new releases put back where they belong, Cart Guy. We can’t seem to keep them on the shelves.” She pointed to a cart of romance novels. “Enjoy your shift.”
I watched them walk away, still overhearing them. They weren’t exactly being subtle.
“Who was that?”
“Dunno, never seen him before, really. But he had a badge.”
And then they disappeared, heading for the employee entrance. Probably going home to people who actually remembered missing them. Must’ve been nice. It wasn’t like I was asking to be famous. I just wanted my coworkers to remember my name without having to check my badge first.
See, that’s the thing. People forget me. Not metaphorically; they literally forget me.
Sometimes, I think it’s more than simple bad luck. Sometimes, a cashier will forget they’re waiting on me and just stare at me glassy-eyed. And it’s not only strangers.
Most people’s parents accidentally call them their siblings’ names. Mine? They just forget my name mid-conversation. Like someone hit backspace in their brain.
I guess I didn’t help my case, though; five-foot-seven (five-ten on dating apps—sue me), aggressively average brown hair refusing to actually commit to a style. I even grew a beard after reading in a magazine that beards make you stand out more.
Which was why that creep had bothered me so badly. He had just been staring at me, as if he actually saw me. I could still feel his eyes, as if he were still watching me. I shuddered slightly and dropped a book.
I heard the door open and looked up to see a copper-red-haired woman enter, nearly six feet tall. Loose strands of hair escaped bobby pins and swept across her freckled cheeks. She wore a blue scarf, a well-loved leather jacket that was more about comfort than fashion, and boots that had obviously seen better days.
Her green eyes found me and stayed. Not past me. Not through me. On me.
Those were the eyes of Lila Willows, the one person in this building who reliably remembered my name. I was never sure why she was different from everyone else, but I was always glad she was.
“Lila,” I said, sounding a little more relieved than I had meant to. “I thought you were still out of town.”
“I got back early. Figured I’d pop in and check on you, Cart Guy.”
Cart Guy. Lila said it as a joke, but the rest of the staff didn’t.
“Oh. Um. Good trip, at least? Find anything interesting?”
“Eh. It wasn’t as lucrative as I’d hoped,” she said, removing her scarf. “Rumors of a scroll written by some long-dead pharaoh promising eternal life turned out to be just a recipe for bread.”
Our jobs at the Ashthorne Municipal Library could not have been more different. My job was putting romance novels back where they belonged and hoping Carl didn’t tase me again.
Lila had actual adventures. She was “acquisitions,” which was library-speak for Indiana Jones with better sarcasm. For my birthday, she’d given me an Amazing Fantasy #15 comic. The real one—mint, still in plastic. That’s the kind of rare Lila dealt in.
She was good at finding things that couldn’t be found; maybe that was why she remembered me.
“Oh, well, that sucks,” I said. “Wasted trip then.”
“Oh no, I bought it. I plan on telling my uncle that it’s exactly what he wanted. Watching him follow all those steps to just end up with a sourdough starter will be worth the aggravation he put me through, sending me to Egypt at the last minute.”
Lila’s uncle owned the building and always wanted the rarest books for his private collection. Like some book-obsessed dragon that cared more about the price tag than the actual stories.
She carefully lifted a narrow case and set it onto my cart, handling it gently, as if it might crumble if jostled.
“Mind taking that down to the basement later?” she asked. “I’ll be back tonight to log it in, but I need a nap. Those flights get worse every time.”
“Yep. As soon as I finish re-shelving all these copies of the latest wet-floor-sign generator.” I held up a bestselling romance novel. “Hung Jury. A tale of courtroom passion, where the deals aren’t the only things on the table.”
“Ew, Elias. Don’t be gross.” She wrinkled her nose. “And wear gloves. You don’t know where those books have been.”
I actually did know, and that made the act of shelving them worse. “Don’t worry. I’ll wash my hands before handling your precious scroll.”
“Thank you. I’ll see you in the morning. And don’t forget the case. I didn’t drag that thing across three airports just to have it shelved with the smut.”
I waved her off, half-smiling.
I put on an audiobook to help fill the silence. I lived for audiobooks, how-to guides, novels, and anything that put a voice in my ear, keeping me company.
Working right along, I lost track of time and only noticed how late it had gotten when I glanced at my watch: 11:59. Almost time for the college kids to show up, desperate to finish term papers due tomorrow.
A sudden creak broke the quiet, and I looked up, expecting to see the flood of students. Instead, the lip-licking creep stood there. The one who’d been staring at me, standing by the front desk.
How’d he get back in? I hadn’t heard the door open.
“Is there something I can help you with?” I asked; he must have wanted something. Don’t they teach people manners? Don’t just stare at people. Ask.
“I am here to claim a very specific parchment,” he said. “An older scroll from your archives. That woman brought it in earlier.” His eyes glinted. “It is far more valuable than anyone here realizes.”
The way he spoke felt wrong. It wormed under my skin and stayed there.
“Oh. Um.” I swallowed hard, something inside me screaming to run, run, and never look back. “We don’t actually let people check out archival materials. But I can set you up at a research table. Gloves, book supports, all that.”
This wasn’t my first run-in with late-night weirdos; usually, they wanted to escape the Ohio cold or beg for bus fare, not a rare scroll.
He picked up a book from the front desk, flipped through it for a moment, and then settled that stare back on me. “Oh, no. I am afraid I will be taking that scroll with me.”
As he stared at me, something fumbled in my brain. Maybe I should let him just take the scroll; the library wouldn’t miss it. I shook my head, clearing the thought, pushing my cart forward, desperate to end this interaction. “Archival materials stay in the library,” I said. “Rules are rules.”
The creep moved in front of my cart so fast it looked wrong, like the world had skipped a frame—or twenty. “You will give me the scroll.” He leaned in so close I could smell him; he reeked of damp soil with something metallic underneath. His eyes bore into me, deep and penetrating.
A cold slip of confusion brushed through me—like forgetting what I was about to say—then vanished.
I looked at him, then at the cart, then back at him. My mind defaulted to my usual defense: sarcasm.
“Congrats,” I said. “You found the one guy who still won’t break policy.”
He cocked his head like a bird trying to work out a puzzle, as if trying to figure out why I hadn’t given him what he wanted without question. His hand shot out and gripped me by the throat. I forced myself to meet his eyes, refusing to let him see me flinch.
The lights above us flickered, and he recoiled from me as quickly as he had grabbed me, scrambling backwards like I was the one who had attacked him.
The door opened, and I turned to see Lila in the doorway. “Lila, call the…”
When I turned to point to him, he was gone again. How was he disappearing like that constantly?
“Elias? You okay? You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Lila said, walking over to my cart and setting a cup of coffee down.
I dragged in a shaky breath, scanning the stacks for the weirdo. “Not a ghost. Just some creep who got handsy.” I ran my hand over my throat, trying to steady myself. If I told her the truth, she’d think I was a lunatic.
Lila glanced around quickly. “Creep?”
“Yeah, a creep.” That was the word, right? It was the only one that my mind could latch onto without changing my entire world. “He wanted that scroll you brought in earlier. Did you log it into the system while you were at home?”
“Why don’t we head to the basement?” she said, but her voice was just a little too easy, like she knew something she didn’t want to share. “It’s safer down there.”
I thought I caught the movement of a shadow from behind one of the shelves, so I decided that was a good plan.
“Yeah. Basement sounds like a great idea.”
If you're a reader of the paranormal who's been looking for something fresh and unique from the genre, perhaps with a quick-witted "nobody" as the main character, look no further than Hollowborn Roots by Joshua Arnold. Arnold has managed to take all that we thought we knew about our favorite paranormal lore, even factoring in well-known pop culture references, and twist it into something new, and it's an absolute delight.
The story is technically multi-perspective, but it's written mostly from the perspective of Elias Cooper, who's felt invisible his entire life. His teachers forgot he was a student in their classes; his roommates would forget he lived in their apartment; cashiers would forget they were ringing up his purchases; and despite working there for years, shelving books and doing other tasks during the night shift, he's known mostly at the library as the "Cart Guy." Only the beautiful, red-headed Lila seems to know who he is without a reminder and trusts him with tasks at the library that others probably wouldn't even think to offer him.
But that aspect of their relationship changes everything one night when Lila comes back from acquiring an ancient scroll and entrusts Elias with securing it in the downstairs archives. A man, or a monster, or something, approaches Elias, demanding the scroll, and Elias realizes that the man can see him just as clearly, if not more so, than Lila does, not offering him the blank stare and immediate forgetfulness that others do. But when he tries to take the scroll by force, Elias has other surprising effects on him, demonstrating strength and resilience that he never would have thought possible.
Because as it turns out, vampires, witches, fae, and other mystical creatures are real, and while Elias is easily forgotten in the mortal world, he's not so easily forgotten in the paranormal one, because without even trying to, he dims the magical elements around him. Vampire compulsion is only a suggestion to him, and vampire strength is hardly more than human strength. Magical wards created by witches are a mere suggestion around him. And that's not a threat that's so easily forgotten, even if the last thing Elias wants to be is a threat or special.
Realizing that he won't be safe alone now that his "secret" is out, Lila takes Elias in, eager to find out "what" Elias is, since it's obvious that he's something other than totally mortal, and paranormal figures are either going to want to put a stop to his ability to mute theirs or to use his abilities against others, neither of which are promising outlooks for Elias.
Get ready for an incredible dive into the unknown as Elias is confronted with countless new creatures and abilities and learns much more about himself and what he can do than he ever would have bargained for. The story is incredibly fast-paced and full of fun jump scares, the depictions of the creatures are spot-on, originally-written, and visceral, and the reader is sure to feel like they are there with Elias and Lila while they figure all of this out. Elias's humor, both humor and internal monologue, are excellent additions to the story and make Hollowborn Roots a totally new, paranormal experience.
If you're looking for a fresh take on these tropes, especially now that we're in the "BER" months of the year and Halloween is just around the corner, truly, look no further than Hollowborn Roots by Joshua Arnold. You won't be sorry!