1
Librarian Scott Taylor paused at the door to give the library one last look before he stepped outside into the October rain. Lights off, night service on, overdue money locked away in the safe, it all looked good except just then he saw someone slip between the stacks back by the mysteries.
"Hello?" Scott let the door close as he stepped back into the building. "Hello there, the library is closed?"
The Pearce Public Library lacked hiding places. From the circulation desk Scott had a clear line of sight down the fiction aisles to the mysteries along the back wall. To his right, the bathroom and the storage room, but the person he'd seen had been going the other way. And they were small. Like it'd been a kid.
Scott frowned. It wouldn't be the first time a kid ended up at the library at closing without a ride. But they usually didn't hide in the library. Most of the time he ended up calling their parents and waiting for someone to come pick them up. How any parent could leave a child alone at the library and not be there before it closed he didn't understand. Especially not these days.
"Hello? Come on out. I need to close up the building. Can I call someone?"
No answer came from the nonfiction stacks. With only five aisles they didn't have much of a chance of eluding him. Scott listened carefully but he didn't hear any noises. After closing the library always was so much quieter. During the day, between the computers, the buzzing fluorescent lights, kids that lacked quiet voices and people on cell phones, he could hardly think sometimes.
Scott reached over past the doors and flicked the light switches up. One. Two. Three. Four. The ceiling tubes came on and lit up the library. He walked around the desk and started walking along the aisles. The kid didn't have anywhere to go now that he couldn't see. No one in the aisle with the travel books and poetry. No one in the arts or self-help sections. Cookbooks, dogs and sciences all empty. Scott got all the way up to the first aisle, to UFOs and Microsoft Office books without finding anyone.
He frowned. The only place that left was the kid's section, but the shelves there were low enough that any kid as tall as the one he'd seen would be visible. Unless he crouched down.
"Come on, now. No more hide-and-seek. I need to close up."
No shame-faced kid came out of hiding. Scott walked away from the nonfiction sections, past the reading and browsing area by the new books and into the kid's section. He walked quickly along the aisles of juvenile fiction, looking past the rows of chapter books to the picture books along the back wall. He found nothing.
Impossible. No way the kid got away. Scott walked along the start of the picture books to the back of the juvenile section and made a circuit around the entire chapter book area. No one hiding at the ends of the aisles. But now that he thought of it, maybe that's what the kid had done in the nonfiction section.
It only took moments to walk up the back aisle. Nothing. He went into the computer section along the front wall and looked beneath the long counter in case the kid somehow got there and hid beneath, behind the chairs. Nothing.
Scott stopped by the display case at the entrance and scratched his short beard. There couldn't be a kid in the library. But he saw a kid. He was sure of it. He looked over at the restroom and storage room. It didn't seem possible, but maybe the kid hid at the end of one of the nonfiction aisles, then went the other way after he passed by the first time.
The restroom was empty, except for the faint smell of urine tainting the air.
No one in the storage room either. For good measure Scott checked his office. No one. The library was empty. Either he imagined seeing a kid, or the kid got out somehow. Scott turned off the lights one-by-one, plunging the library into darkness again. He unlocked the door and pushed it open.
He looked back one last time.
He didn't see anything. Scott stepped out and shut the door. He got in his car and backed out. He drove around the block to the pharmacy, parked and walked back to the library.
Walking back he shivered in the chilly rain that seeped down his collar. He couldn't shake the certainty that he had seen a kid in the library and he couldn't leave without being absolutely sure that the library was in fact empty.
At the back of the library he picked his way around the puddles in the parking lot to the front of the building where the windows were low and large. He rounded the corner and peeked into the window.
Light from the streetlight behind him made it hard to see anything except the reflections of the rain-slicked street and the houses across the road. Hopefully Mrs. Stanfield in the green ranch house across the way wouldn't notice him and call the police thinking he was trying to break in. He could explain what had happened, but it would be embarrassing.
He cupped his hands around his face and leaned against the glass.
Now he could make out the new books area and the kids areas. The only light in the library came from the security lighting up above the circulation desk and those two small lights did little to illuminate the building. It looked empty.
Scott felt relieved. He didn't know why a kid would hide in the library after it closed, but he didn't want to take the chance. Now he could go home without a worry.
"What're you doin' there?"
Scott jerked and turned around to face the speaker, his heart racing. Mrs. Stanfield stood behind him in a bright red rain coat with a broad yellow umbrella clutched in one liver-spotted hand.
"Oh, Mrs. Stanfield, you startled me."
"Mr. Taylor? What're you doin'? Locked out?"
"No, no. Just making sure everything was okay."
Mrs. Taylor's perpetually down-turned mouth opened, then closed again. She shook her head. "You'd best get out of this rain. Catch your death, you will."
"Yes, ma'am." Scott watched her walk off across the street, her blue rubber boots squeaking. Quite the colorful lady.
As he turned to go he saw a blue light flicker in the library, between the juvenile shelves. A lighter? He looked back at Mrs. Stanfield but she was still making her way across the street. He leaned against the window again.
There was a light. He could only see it through the books, not directly, but it flickered and danced like fire. Arson! Scott ran around towards the front of the building, his hand going into his pocket for his keys.
At the door he fumbled them out, unlocked the door and yanked it open. He ran towards the juvenile section. The light still flickered, dimly but there, on the aisle that started with Beverly Clearly and ended with C.S. Lewis. Scott reached the end of the aisle and saw the girl.
She looked small with long hair that tumbled down her back in waves over her dress. She sat on the floor with her back to him and the flickering light he'd seen came from her. It looked like a blue flame, like burning alcohol. Except it didn't just sit above her, it seemed to come from within her. Scott shivered and felt cold air flowing away from the girl past him.
He didn't know what to say, or what to do. He stared at her.
A faint whispery sound and the movement of her arm told him she had a book in her lap. She was sitting and reading a book. A girl that looked like she was made of blue fire.
A ghost. What else could she be?
"Hello?"
She stiffened but otherwise didn't move. Then slowly she turned her head slightly to the left.
"I'm the librarian." Scott took a breath, sure she could hear his heart pounding. "Do you need help?"
She twisted around then and looked up at him with deep black eyes. In her lap she held a copy of The BFG by Roald Dahl.
"I can't read it," she said and her voice sounded like Fall leaves blowing down the sidewalk. "It's my favorite."
Scott swallowed. He tried not to shake too much as he crouched down in the aisle and extended his hand. "Do you want me to read it to you?"
"Yes, please," she lisped.
She twisted around to face him and handed him the book. Scott felt tears stinging his eyes as he faced her, recognized her, and took the book. "What happened to you, Noelle?"
In whispers like rain she told him about the bad man that had come for her after she left the library. His chest felt both heavy and light. He couldn't have prevented what happened. The police said as much when he had talked to them. Tears dripped from his eyes. He brushed them away and turned to the first page and started reading by Noelle's light.
The further he got into Sophie's story tendrils drifted away from Noelle to the book, touching it lightly before sinking into the words on the page. She got fainter and fainter the more he read but the happier she looked. She streamed into the book page by page until he couldn't see any more.
Scott stood up, ignoring stiff legs and carried the book up to the desk where the emergency lights glowed. He sat down in his chair there and continued reading the story. As he read he felt a joy spreading through his limbs from his hands and through his head from his eyes. It was Noelle's joy in the story, coursing through his veins. He finished and didn't resist the urge to hug the book close to his chest. His very favorite book.
2
The next morning when he opened the library he displayed the book right on the desk. Who should come in first but Mrs. Stanfield herself.
"You ought not be out in the rain," she admonished.
"I know, ma'am."
She reached out and fingered the cover of The BFG. "What a sweet book."
"You can check it out," he said.
Her eyes widened. "It's a children's book!"
Scott smiled. "Maybe, but there's a child in all of us. Take it, I think you'll like it."
"Okay," she said.
Scott pulled up her record and scanned the book. He felt a twinge of regret when he let it go but she needed the book more than he did right now. Noelle would see to it that she enjoyed the book. Her and anyone else that checked it out. He almost considered a sticker in the cover reading, "This book is haunted." Except that wouldn't make sense. Besides, he didn't support labeling books based on content.
He waved to Mrs. Stanfield as she left then turned his attention to processing the returns from the book drop. The day looked to be a good one.
Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed it!
This is a new challenge. I’m writing short short stories, under 2,000 words, many under 1,000 words. I’m sharing them to my Instagram stories. They’ll drop off that, but premium READINARY subscribers can read the full archive of stories here. When I have 100 stories, I’ll publish a collection of them all.
Best wishes, always — Ryan
THIS BOOK IS HAUNTED
Copyright © 2022 Ryan M. Williams
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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