Imagination, Faith And Magic (Part Five)

Part One Here
Part Two Here
Part Three Here
Part Four Here

It is difficult to see a cloud properly.

It's a bit like H2O. Having been taught that they are mundane, we tend to forget that they are highly combustible. At least, we forget until lightening strikes.

How she came to be standing in that small library on that stormy day in late September is a thing I can't seem to remember. No doubt but that she had been driven there like the leaves and the newspapers and the various bits of odd trash before the dark, rushing clouds assembling in the sky. How she got there, I don't know, but nevertheless that's where she was.

It was a library like the way libraries are suppose to be, not the way they are now. Today, libraries are long on technology and and short on shelves. Today, they clear out books to make room for computer labs. Today, teenagers on cell phones laugh and talk with their friends while IM'ing someone in China. But that's not the way libraries used to be. And that's not how this library was.

It was an old red brick building with a flag flapping in the wind outside. There was a dark grey monument as well - perhaps to some Civil War soldier. When you opened the door, the smell of thousand mysteries swirled about you and gave you tingles down your spine. Closing the door behind you, the silence utterly engulfed you in its ringing energy. And oh! Books, books everywhere! Joy of the longing soul! And in the center of the first floor stood a real, honest-to-God card catalog - made out of mahogany, no less! Looking up from there you could see into the second floor - a catwalk with the wooden ends of the bookshelves just peeping through the railing, taunting you to come up.

Well, it's not like it took a lot to tempt her.

Starting in the far back corner, an old stairway ran along half of the back wall, ascended up to the second floor. The carpet on the stairs was a relic of some decade past, kind of a grimy green-grey, worn down in the center by years of hard labor. (It is hard, you see, to be a path of learning.) Andi walked toward the bottom of the staircase and put her hand on the rail. As she swung around facing the stairs to begin her climb, she saw them - it - the other stairway.

Dark, dusty wood with cardboard boxes stacked haphazardly on the first couple of steps going down - it was a descending staircase running parallel with the ascending one. The second staircase had been hidden by a wall, which ran between the two staircases. It was this wall Andi had assumed to be the back wall of the library, but obviously it wasn't.

She lingered there for a moment, staring down the badly lit stairway that clearly wasn't for public use. It felt like peering into a tunnel, for it didn't open up at the bottom, but just continued - a skinny corridor running underground, disappearing in darkness. Thunder grumbled outside. The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end - just like yours and mine when we get a little creeped out in the dark for no apparent reason. Just like our hairs would stand on end if we were about to get struck by lightening.

I don't know why she did it, but she did.

Down, down, down she went. Goosebumps all over, prickly feelings on her neck and back. At the bottom of the stairs, the corridor continued. There were several doors on either side and very far away, at the very end, there was a tiny room, dimly lit, with more bookcases.

She walked silently along the corridor, barely breathing. The farther she walked, the more her skin prickled. Her imagination was racing, creating images of every door she passed opening noiselessly for some strange creature to peer after her. But she wouldn't look back - wouldn't do as Lot's wife did - she just kept walking forward, towards the little room at the end.

She hesitated for a moment, and then took one slow step in the room, and almost screamed.

"Ah, there she is!" exclaimed a distinctly British voice.

To be continued...

posted by Headless-in-GR @ 9/13/2006 09:24:00 PM