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Library Card

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Fandom: Trancendence AU (Gravity Falls)

Warnings: Major Character Death (past), PTSD.

Author's note:

This is the fic I wrote for the first TAU Zine. It's been a while, and I never posted this to Ao3, so I'm posting it here!

When Henry Corduroy moved to Gravity Falls, he expected weird. It was what the place was known for, after all. Gravity Falls was the famed epicenter of the Transcendence, the place from which all sorts of magic and incredible strangeness sprang forth into this world. It was also home to Old Man McGucket, who considered himself married to an ordinary raccoon. "Weird" was exactly what he expected.

What he did not expect—and could not have possibly fathomed—was having to chase a demon out of his library almost daily.

But that was how it had been, Wendy said, ever since the Transcendence. The Mystery Shack, and then the Library of the Supernatural which had been built in its place, had been stalked by a blur of gold and black for years. It was obsessed with the place. Henry knew this when he decided to work there. He only wished he'd known just how obsessed the thing was, and how often he would be defending library patrons from it.

Henry was dedicated, sure, but he was not exactly strong, and that was where Wendy came in. On days like today, he would call her from safely behind a bookshelf, and she would rush on over and “take care of things.”

“OUT!” she said firmly, brandishing her axe defensively. It arched its back and hissed, sending golden sparks flying. “You’re scaring the customers!”

Henry was quick to stomp out the sparks that flew his way before they set the carpet on fire.

The demon narrowed its venomous yellow eyes at her. Its claws had already left grooves in the hardwood, and oily shadows dripped off its frame. It was black as ink aside from those eyes.

With some difficulty, Wendy relaxed her grip on the axe and lowered it. “I don’t want to fight, you know that," she said. "Just back off, okay? Go back to wherever it is you stay—”

Alcor growled out something that sounded almost like a word, heavily distorted by an eldritch echo and the rumbling emanating from its chest. Wendy responded by taking another step forward, to which it bristled and slunk lower to the floor.

“No fighting today, alright buddy? Just—” she gestured to the wide-open door with her axe— “go outside for a little while. You can come back after the library closes, okay?”

He didn’t move, so she repeated herself. “Okay, Alcor?”

Alcor scratched its claws into the floor and gave her one last defiant stare before crawling outside like a spider, leaving trails of oily black goop on the floor, walls, and doorframe.

After its wings disappeared from the doorframe, Henry collapsed against the receptionist’s desk, letting it support his weight.

“Wendy, I don’t know how—” he stopped to let out a deep breath— “I don’t know how you’ve done this for six years. That thing is terrifying.”

Wendy dropped her axe on the desk with a dull thunk. She looked exhausted, both physically and mentally. “I dunno, man. He’s kinda my responsibility. I can handle it.”

Henry sighed. “I still don’t see why having a history with it makes it your responsibility. Its a demon. Shouldn't we just call a qualified exorcist?”

Wendy visibly bristled. "No. I can handle him, Henry." She sharply clipped her axe to her belt. “I’m leaving now. If he comes back, call me. Don't hurt him, okay?”

"I won't," Henry said. "You know I won't. It was just a suggestion."

Wendy grabbed her backpack from the floor where she'd slung it off in a rush. "Right." She looked back at Henry, conflict evident in her features. "And, uh, thanks. For letting me do this."

“Um. Yeah, of course," Henry said, though he couldn't see how fighting off a demon three times a week was something she wanted to do, nor something Henry had much of a say in her doing.

After Wendy left, Henry finally took in the damage. It was... extensive. Oily, inky goop pooled in deeply-gouged claw-marks (which covered the previous deeply-gouged claw-marks). Chairs and tables were knocked astray. A few books lay open where patrons had abandoned them when Wendy told them to leave.

Well, Henry thought. It looks like the Library is closed. Again.

The demon didn’t stay away for long. It always returned, though it didn’t necessarily make a scene like yesterday.

Today, Henry found it in the back room, curled up around a stack of books he hadn’t gotten around to shelving yet. The demon’s wings were wrapped around itself and trembling, as if protecting the books, and it shuddered when Henry opened the door and cast light onto it.

He froze, staring like a deer in headlights, but it didn’t attack. It only wrapped itself tighter around the stack and squeezed its eyes shut against the light. It looked somewhat like a very large, very scary bat.

“Uhm,” Henry said, intelligently. “I was going to, er, shelve those today. If you don’t mind.” Good, good—speaking to the creature this way went against every screaming instinct in his body, but Wendy told him to do it like this. Casually… like a normal person. Easier said than done.

He took a step closer. “May I—”

He was cut off by a low, threatening hiss that reverberated in Henry's bones and then some. It scared him so badly, he took off down the hallway without even bothering to shut the door behind him, simply concerned with escaping with his life.

He was around the corner before he could notice the door being gently, carefully closed from the inside.

Henry found it on top of the bookshelves once.

It was invisible, so he easily could have missed it, but after watching three different books on the top shelves float up and disappear, he put two and two together and realized the demon was stealing them.

Oh, no. That was against library rules, and Henry had to put his foot down.

He pulled the ladder out of the back room and propped it against the shelf he last saw a book disappear from, climbed all the way to the top, and situated himself on top of the shelf. He held his hands out to the open air and commanded, with barely any tremor in his voice, “Give them back to me.”

The air in front of him wavered, but appeared to remain void of any demon or books.

“Right now. Those belong to the library.”

The air wavered again and rumbled, a deep vibration like Henry was inside the belly of some beast, and then the books tumbled into his lap.

“Ack!” he cried, fumbling to catch them all. “Woah, that was…” It suddenly hit him what exactly he’d just done. “Oh, wow,” he said faintly. “I just… oh, wow. I need to lie down.”

“I will not have you terrorizing my patrons, demon.” Henry was rather proud. His voice only shook a tiny bit when he spoke. He thought he managed to sound pretty scary, for a twenty-year-old librarian wielding nothing but a broom.

The demon did not look intimidated. It was on a chair, but it was not sitting in it—at least not how a normal human person would sit—and its entire body was void-black, traced in golden brickwork patterns. It gripped the wood and flared its wings like some gigantic, satanic bird.

There were a few people around, and they had put down their books to apprehensively watch the face-off from a safe distance.

One, however, was standing just behind Henry. She was a girl of about fourteen, and she gripped his shirt like her life depended on it. It was understandable—she’d just had a book snatched directly out of her hands by a high-strung demon.

Henry brandished his broom. “Look, you can’t take books from people who are reading them, okay? Just—give it back, or I’ll have to call Wendy!”

Alcor rose up a bit in the chair upon hearing her name.

“That's right, I’ll call Wendy, and neither of us will like that!” he threatened. “She’ll have to come all the way here from work and kick you out!”

The demon’s claws unhooked from the chair and its brow furrowed. It almost looked like it was thinking. Then, with a barely audible pop, it was gone, revealing the teenager’s stolen book beneath where it had crouched.

Henry and the teen sighed in sync, relieved.

“I’m so sorry about that,” he said. “I’ve tried to get it out, but it seems to love books.”

The girl nodded quickly, clearly still frazzled. Henry went to fetch the book from the chair. “What were you reading, anyways?” He turned it over to the cover side. “A World Transcended?”

“Ah, yeah. It’s, uh, it’s a fictional retelling of the Transcendence. It’s mostly accurate, see—” she took the book and pointed out a label on the cover— “but it’s told more like a novel. It’s really interesting. This is only the first book.”

"Interesting," Henry said thoughtfully. He looked up and smiled. "I'll let you get back to reading."

He left the girl to settle down again, although she was noticeably more tense than before, and returned to the back room. He’d been organizing a new shipment of books, and he really needed to get back—

Closing the door and turning around, Henry was shocked to come face to face with Alcor.

“What the—”

Stumbling back into the door, he gasped in a breath and held it, not daring to breathe as the demon studied his face mere inches away. It was standing up on two feet, which was highly unusual, and its gold-on-black eyes flicked across his face with unnerving intelligence. Henry was reminded for a moment that though he’d been treating it like a rabid animal that had found its way into the common room, it was sentient and probably even capable of speech.

After a few long moments of uncomfortable silence, Alcor turned back to the darkness of the storage room, leaving Henry to collect his jumbled and increasingly frustrated thoughts.

Why did it insist on staying here, in the Library? Why was it so obsessed with their books? What could they possibly have that a demon wanted…?

Alcor was settling cross-legged inside a tiny alcove in its book stash. It looked at Henry expectantly. Gone was the hostility he'd encountered last time he'd found the demon tending its hoard.

“What do you want from me?” Henry hissed.

The demon’s ears flicked down and its expression changed to something slightly… offended? Insulted? Or… hurt? It picked up a book from its pile and set it on the floor between them. It was the second book in the series it had just tried to steal.

Henry knelt down next to the pile. Books were haphazardly stacked around it in a sort of semicircle. Henry picked one up, trying to ignore the flinch and quiet, choked growling from above him.

“A Theoretical View of August 2012?” He asked. “Why do you want this?” He picked up another. Our Transcendence. That one was philosophical, he knew. August, 2012. A horror-adventure novel based in reality. The Pines Legacy. Supernatural Origins. TIME magazine, November 2012 edition, with an extensive article about the Transcendence advertised on the front. The more he looked, the more Henry began to slowly realize what Alcor was interested in.

“Is this what you want?” He asked. “You’re interested in the Transcendence?”

Alcor took the book from Henry, claws just barely brushing against his hands, and placed it back on its stack. It moved with care, making sure to not scratch or damage the cover, and then looked at Henry, as if asking, Do you understand now?

“Do you want to… do you want a library card?”

Alcor paused from tending his stacks and blinked at Henry. Oh stars, this conversation was a bad idea—if it could even be called a conversation at all.

“I mean,” he fumbled, “if I made you an account, you could check out books, and you wouldn’t have to steal them anymore. We can show on your account that you’re reading them, and nobody else can take them.”

Alcor looked down at the books he’d collected. Then he looked back at Henry with warmth glittering in his golden eyes, and smiled.

The card was bright, shiny plastic, emblazoned with the name and logo of the library. It was after closing hours, so Henry and the demon stood alone at the desk. He held it out carefully, not wanting to startle Alcor and get his hands shredded. The demon took it and, just as carefully, turned it over and over in his hands.

Henry held out a pen. “You have to—" Alcor nodded, snatched the pen, and scribbled something on the signature line. "Uh, yeah. Just like that."

Henry’s curiosity won out and he leaned over to get a better look at what the demon had written. It was… a mess. He couldn’t tell what he was looking at. He thought he saw a capital P, and maybe an S at the end, but it was otherwise impossible to make out.

Alcor, however, looked thoroughly proud of his work, holding up the card and practically beaming.

“Well,” Henry said, adjusting his glasses and turning away from the monstrosity of a signature, “now you can check out whatever books you want. Oh, only ten at a time, though.”

The demon nodded and disappeared with a soft “blip” sound. He heard the sound again from somewhere within the rows of shelves, and then the sound of scuffling books and turning pages. Otherwise, the library was blissfully quiet.

Henry sighed. It was a nice evening, from the look of the clear purplish-pink sky outside. While the demon gathered his reading material, Henry finished closing up the library. All the while, he could hear Alcor moving through the library. For once, the sound didn't put him on edge. It sounded like any other patron browsing during a quiet hour.

When he was done, rather than go straight home, Henry found himself on the porch outside, sitting on the swinging bench that Wendy had insisted he keep in place and enjoying the cool breeze. At some point, Alcor made that blip sound and appeared in the seat next to him. Henry jumped a bit, then relaxed when he realized that the demon was distracted. He already had his nose buried in one of the books he had chosen. It had a lot of pictures, and Henry suspected that those were what he was looking at.

Henry looked at him. “You know you haven’t actually checked these out yet, right?”

Alcor blinked at him and scowled with a little huff. Henry smiled despite himself. “Just don’t take them out of the library, okay?”

Alcor relaxed. He probably hadn’t been planning on leaving the library at all, Henry realized, now that he wasn’t being chased out.

That was fine, Henry thought. He could deal with a demon in the library if it used a library card and didn’t terrorize the readers by stealing their books.

He could handle this without Wendy’s help, he realized. He could keep Alcor under control without hurting him, calling an exorcist, or even waving around an axe.

All it took, it seemed, was a library card.