This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/BlairDaniels on 2025-07-17 03:31:35+00:00.

It started raining torrentially a few minutes after we’d arrived.

I grabbed my five-year-old and raced across the parking lot, getting halfway drenched.

We made our way downstairs to the children’s library. It was empty except for the librarian sitting behind the desk, reading a book. “Sorry,” I said, as we dripped water everywhere.

“No worries. Stay as long as you need.”

We walked over to a table. Since we were the only ones here, I took off our wet shoes and socks, used my hoodie to towel-dry Jack’s hair. Unfortunately I didn’t have a change of shirt or anything, but Jack seemed fine. He ran over to the Lego table, smiling.

I’d planned to just make a pit stop, but I guess we were going to be stuck here for a while. No way I was going to drive in that mess.

I pulled out my phone and began to scroll. Rain pelted down, dripping down the glass of the narrow windows near the ceiling. From what little I could see, the parking lot was a gigantic puddle.

A flash of lightning, a peal of thunder, and then the lights flickered.

“We have a backup generator, but I’m not sure it’s on,” the librarian said, looking up at the ceiling. “Let me go check.”

She hurried out of the room, and then it was just the two of us. “I want to get another Pete the Cat book,” Jack announced suddenly.

“Do you want me to come with you? Remember where they are?”

“Yeah.”

I smiled as he ran off towards the bookshelves. Listened to his little pattering footsteps. Then I heard him gasp, and that made me about fall off my chair.

“Jack?”

“Momma,” he said, running back to me, with a mischievious grin on his face. “Mama, there’s another person!”

He pointed back towards the aisles.

I froze.

I hadn’t heard anyone else. Whoever was back there… were they being quiet on purpose? No. Not quiet.Absolutely silent.

“Who’s back there?” I whispered, picturing some creepy older guy flattened against the shelves, watching us. But Jack replied:

“A little girl.”

I let out a sigh of relief. Then I followed him back to the aisles.

He was right. There was a little girl standing there, in front of the books. I couldn’t quite see her face from this angle—it was hidden behind her mass of unkempt brown hair. She held a book open in her hands and appeared to be reading, swaying slightly to and fro.

I glanced around the library. As far as I could tell, her mom (or dad) wasn’t down here. They must be upstairs. She looked kind of young to leave all by herself—she was a little bigger than my son, maybe six?

“Do you need help?” I asked.

The girl didn’t turn around, or respond in any way.

“Maybe—maybe she’s deaf!” Jack said.

I mean, that was possible. But it was more likely she was just really absorbed in her book. “Come on,” I said. Her parents were upstairs for a minute, and I wasn’t going to interrupt a reading child.

But the minutes crept on, and no one else came into the library. Not even the librarian, who was supposed to be checking on the generator. The lights flickered a second time, and then a third. Rain drummed on the windows. Fingers of lightning shot across the sky.

Just as I was thinking maybe I should check on the girl again, the lights flickered—and went out.

Jack immediately started to cry. I closed the three feet of space between us and hugged him. “It’s okay, it’s okay,” I said, turning my phone’s flashlight on with my free hand. “It’s okay.”

What about the girl?

I hadn’t heard her cry. Oh, no, she must be so scared, in the dark down here without her parents! I got up, sweeping my flashlight across the shelves—

She was standing right there.

Peering out at us from behind the bookshelf.

As soon as the flashlight swept over her, she darted back behind the shelf.

“Hey, it’s okay!” I called out. “I’ll help you find your parents upstairs. Come on, we’ll all go together.”

Nothing happened. Maybe this was why her parents felt they could leave her alone—she was really good about stranger danger.

“I know I’m a stranger, but I have a kid too. See? Say hi, Jack.” He said hi, somewhat reluctantly. “We’ll go find your parents upstairs, the three of us. Okay?”

Silence.

Where the hell was that librarian? If she were here, she could probably phone upstairs, or bring the parents down, or something.

Holding Jack’s hand, I ventured into the aisles.

The first aisle was empty.

The second one was too.

The third—

She was standing at the end of the aisle. Perfectly still. Her back turned to us. All I could see was that wild, messy hair.

“I promise we’re good people,” I called out. “I’ll help you find your parents.”

Lightning flickered through the windows.

“Will you please just come upstairs with us?”

Thunder rumbled.

Maybe she was deaf. Or nonverbal. Still… there was a horrible feeling in my gut now, that something about this was really, really wrong.

No one would leave her down here for so long.

The parents would come running as soon as the power went out.

Where’s the librarian?

You know what? This is not my fucking problem, I decided finally. I will go upstairs, and I will tell the librarians there is an unattended child downstairs. They can find the parents, or call the police, or do whatever they have to.

I turned around with Jack and started walking towards the door.

Ch-scfff. Ch-scfff.

A scuffling sound behind me. It sounded like slow, deliberate footsteps… but they were dragging their feet.

I whipped around—to see that the girl was walking towards us. Walking backwards, still facing away from us.

She was wearing shoes that were far too big for her.

Ch-scfff. Ch-scfff.

I grabbed Jack’s hand and yanked him towards the library door, running as fast as I possibly could—

The door slammed shut in our faces.

I grabbed the knob. Twisted and pulled.

It wouldn’t open.

“Hey!” I screamed. “Let us out!”

I slapped my palms against the door, the entire frame rattling. Jack began to cry. I scooped him up and, holding him with one arm, tried the knob again—

My phone’s flashlight flickered.

Ch-scfff. Ch-scfff.

I whipped around to see the little girl standing behind us.

She was facing the right way now. But her eyes were just darkened pits of nothing. “Where are my shoes?” she said, in a monotonous voice that almost sounded like a recording. “Where are my shoes?”

Ch-scfff. Ch-scfff.

I could hear her getting closer. But I didn’t dare look.

“Where are my shoes?”

“Mama,” Jack cried.

“Wherearemyshoes? Wherearemyshoes?”

“LET US OUT!”

“Wherearemyshoeswherearemyshoes—”

A hand clawed at my arm—

“Over there!” I screamed suddenly, pointing back towards where we’d left our shoes, wet from the rain.

A second of silence.

And then the lights flickered back on.

The doorknob turned under my fingers.

I burst out into the hallway, screaming. I ran up the stairs and didn’t stop.

There were no parents upstairs. The librarian who’d abandoned us was on the phone, trying to troubleshoot the generator. When I told her about the girl, they came down and looked for her everywhere.

They didn’t find her.

Or my son’s shoes.

Instead, there was a pair of tattered old women’s flats, sitting right next to the library door.

Those, and the bleeding scratches on my arm, were the only evidence she’d even been there at all.

The librarians didn’t tell me anything, but through hours of internet research, I finally found it. An obituary. A little girl had died in the library, about a decade before. The obituary didn’t give details about the death, but it did give details about her: she was neurodivergent, nonverbal, loved to read… and absolutely hated being barefoot.

This kind of gave me the warm fuzzies for a minute…

Until I came across the second obituary.

Six years ago, an older woman had died in town. She hadn’t died in the library. Not exactly. She’d died from a horrible infection that had developed, after she’d sustained deep cuts…

On her arms…

After she visited the library.

The library had promised to “revisit safety practices” and “sanitize all surfaces,” but I had a horrible feeling that wasn’t going to work.

I looked down at my own cuts, pulsing with pain.

She didn’t mean to. She was in survival mode, fight-or-flight, focused on the fact that she needed shoes.

But what was going to happen to me?