All His Wrath

“Dagnabit!” Danielle fumed. “Why doesn’t someone turn the dratted alarm off?” She was in the school library, which was her favorite place on the campus of Parkside. The solitude helped her think. It had lots of books about foreign countries, which had become both important and interesting to Danielle since last year. She’d intently studied those books, highlighting the lands of Scandinavia, especially those with a broad sweep of the history of Norway. In fact, she’d just been reviewing a book focused on Norwegian communities of the nineteenth century when the alarm had sounded. And awakened her. She’d been asleep, her face nestled by the book.

“Turn it off!” she yelled. Then she realized she’d just broken a cardinal rule in Parkside Junior High’s library. Horrified, she looked around quickly to see if the librarian, Mrs. Uffante, had heard. “Hm, that’s odd. Where is she? Come to think of it, where is…anyone?”

Immediately, Danielle felt a wave of fear roll over her. She couldn’t remember when she’d last seen someone in the library, or even if she had ever seen anyone. And that blasted alarm kept ringing.