The Glen Hartwell Public Lending Library in Dirk Hartog Place had been founded over a century and a half ago and was one of the best reference libraries in the state of Victoria — second only to the State Library in Melbourne.   So Ernie was confident that he would soon find some reference to the demon woman.   However, after more than an hour of futilely flicking through mythology texts in the non-fiction section at the back of the library, he was ready to ask for help.

Looking down the long aisle between the rows of floor-to-ceiling length bookcases that separated the library into different sections, Ernie could see the head librarian sorting through yellow index cards at her desk near the front of the library and thought, ‘Not old Glenda?   Surely I couldn’t ask her?’

Glenda Pettyjohn had been employed at the library for as long as anyone in the area could remember.   Barely 150 centimetres tall, she was grey-haired and wrinkled, wore her hair in a tight bun high atop her head and looked to be frozen in her late eighties.   Although she never seemed to grow any older, no one could recall her ever looking any younger either.   When Ernie had first started high school twenty-one years earlier, it had been Miss Pettyjohn who had attended to their needs during the two-hour-a-week library period.   And before that Ernie’s father had claimed (perhaps as a joke?) that thirty years before that when he had started high school Miss Pettyjohn had already been ensconced at the library, already looking as though she was pushing ninety.

‘But how could I?’ thought Ernie, remembering with terror the sight of the pearl white thighs and what they held between them lowering toward his face.   ‘How could I even hint of female genitalia to old Miss Pettyjohn?’

Yet when at last he summoned up the courage to approach her, weaving a weird and woolly tale about having heard vaguely of a legend that he wanted to read up on, the old lady didn’t bat an eye at the talk of female genitals that opened to reveal razor-sharp teeth.   Without a word she led him back toward the reference section at the rear of the library.