Chapter 3
Finley
The library is vacant.
I know it for a fact.
The teens who came in to work on a group project left to go get food at the diner. They couldn’t have announced their decision louder. The weekly stitch-and-bitch club, a group of ‘fiesty’ grandmothers, left at six to go have a glass of wine at the bar. Nobody else has been in.
Yet, someone’s watching me.
Their eyes burn on my back, giving me a sense of unease. Someone is here. It makes the hairs on my neck stand over and over again. That’s not the kind of feeling anyone would be able to chalk up to paranoia or an overactive imagination, and certainly not me. Not after years of being here.
I’ve worked in the library long enough to know someone is watching, and that someone is dead. I swallow thickly, running my forefinger down the edge of the ancient text laid out on the counter.
The library is haunted. For as long as I can remember, the spirits reside in the depths of the shelves. It took a long time for me to be still when one is felt. A longer time to communicate, to understand and to not be startled. This presence is notable though.
The library is housed in one of the oldest, most-active buildings in the entire town. A section of the floor down the aisle that’s nowhere near where I’m standing creaks as if the building can hear me thinking about it. My eyes shift as goosebumps flow down my shoulders.
I stack the old books in the crook of my elbow and leave the circulation desk with easy strides. The reaction is instant. My breath gets short and a chill races down my spine and the feeling of being watched—being followed, closely—gets so strong that I almost react.
I don’t turn around, though.
It’s a game these ghosts play, I think. They used to startle me. They still try to do so. My lips kick up in an asymmetric smirk.
There are other games they could play if they wanted to drive me crazy or run me out of town, but other than a few books thrown off the shelves and doors opening and closing when they’re not supposed to, nothing ominous has happened.
Other than the general haunting. They simply exist and want their presence known. Perhaps that gives them comfort.
Clearing my throat, my shoulders back, I step into one of the aisles to reshelve borrowed books that have been returned. Movement flickers in the corner of my eye, but I pretend I didn’t see it.
Some spirits or ghosts don’t want to be looked at, and they’ll use the shadows to their advantage. You’ll see a creepy face when you don’t want to, or a figure that doesn’t look right, and then you’ll never be able to un-see it.
I’ve worked here long enough to know better.
Long enough to know all about the history of the building, and how it was originally the town hall.
That’s where the leaders of the town would go to meet and decide issues of the day. It sounds innocent enough when you phrase it like that, but there have been times when the leaders of the town—mostly the older men—would decide to go after people who scared them.
They’d decide to go after women they could easily label witches.
I’ve only seen one of the women once. But sure enough, I knew it was her because I’d spent that week reading about the trials.
I knew her face when I saw it. She came and went, perhaps at peace with someone in this realm understanding the horror of what had happened. And knowing she was innocent.
She was the first, but not the last. Some come and go, others, like the one behind me, stay. What they crave from their hauntings, I do not know.
The heavy book in my left hand is a record of town meetings.
In buildings like this one, sometimes there would be debates that turned into arguments.
Some of those arguments even turned bloody.
Passionate and emotional energy was expended here when this was the town hall, and that was before it was the courthouse.
I can’t tell you how much justice was actually done in these walls, but justice wasn’t the only thing done here. Corruption and lies and fear form a long-lasting layer over the original hardwood.
More of the boards creak as I cross to the opposite side of the main hall.
There are rows of bookshelves in the largest study room with my circulation desk in the center, more toward the front. The aisles are narrow so we can fit as much shelving as we need to house the library’s collection, but none of the aisles are as narrow as the one in the very back.
It’s probably against some building code to have an aisle that narrow, but nobody who’s in charge of enforcing those codes ever does anything about it. It’s where I feel the most presence. Where so many spirits hide. Tucked away with the history of this place.
Whenever the fire marshal comes around, he avoids the aisle in the back like someone tiptoed their fingers down his spine and blew between his vertebrae.
They probably did.
They’ve done it to me.
With my shoulders squared and in silence, I go from aisle to aisle and stack to stack.
The sensation of eyes on the back of my neck gets stronger, then lets off, then gets stronger again.
I remind myself to breathe deep and normal.
My mind might be used to the fact that the library I spend most of my time in is haunted, but my body isn’t.
I’ve been haunted by night terrors of death before. Often waking and needing to know who it was and what exactly happened. The visions so real.
But other dreams have come, day and night, regardless of whether or not my eyes are shut. Dreams of comfort and gratefulness.
The spirit behind me, I am unsure of. It’s something that’s old and wary, or maybe my age and devilish.
I don’t know for sure. I don’t know if I’ll ever know for sure about these particular ghosts.
But I sure as hell want to know. The secrets of this town inspire the stories that come to me.
Every moment I get I write the thrilling short stories and give the spirits a way for their silent screams to be heard.
I’ve written seven now under a ghost penname.
No one knows it’s me and no one needs to know.
It matters to me though. To hear their tales, tragic and otherwise and share what they wish to be known.
A footstep scuffs on the floor behind my back. Out of instinct I almost forget and turn around, but I don’t. I move along the back aisle instead, to the place where Hazel touched my hand earlier today. A warmth flows through me at the thought. A short groan threatens to leave me as my eyes close.
I cannot think about her without getting hard. It’s an instant reaction. I brace myself with a hand on the shelves, close my eyes, and inhale the scent of her.
It’s been hours and hours since she was here, and the library is full of old books and older wood and stone. With the heat all the way on for the recent cold snap, all I should be able to smell is warm radiator.
But there she is. The scent of her, teasing me.
My eyes open slowly as a thought hits me: Is it the ghosts playing a trick on me?
I can feel them getting closer. They don’t have to be able to read my mind to see the effect Hazel has on me.
She’s had that effect for a long time, ever since she first walked through the door of the library years ago. Her presence is calming and yet all consuming. She’s beautiful and intelligent and of all the people in this town, she would understand I think.
How my life changed when my parents passed, how I hid in books as a child.
How I searched for them and yet found myself here.
They’re gone I know, and I am at peace with that.
What I’m left without them is a gift most do not have.
Peace with the dead and an energy that welcomes spirits.
They have comforted me, befriended me in some ways. And given me powers I cannot explain.
The living do not intrigue me as much. Or at least they didn’t used to. But then she came in. Hazel.
It was like lightning struck me when I first saw her. The shock kept me still. She was there, between the two aisles that everyone else avoids. The aisles where the spirits rest. And she was at home there, searching through the texts for a story I might have already known.
And I… Didn’t make a move. I merely watched. What was she doing and why did they give her peace in their home here. I had to know, but I didn’t even know her name.
It was easy enough to get her name from some of the ladies in the knitting club, and even easier to find out that she took over the Bewitched Boutique, and even easier to walk down the street on one of my breaks and glance in the window of her shop.
The bells chimed as I came in for a cup of coffee in the corner of her shop. It didn’t take long for me to feel comfort with her as well. The allure is addictive. Watching her in the library on dark nights. Sharing stolen glances. I’m sure she understands the dead in the way I do.
Hazel has been studying the history of the town, and its most well-known coven, for as long as she’s been here.
I let out a curse into the books as the floorboards creak again. They know my fantasies of Hazel. They know what she does to me.
I’ve thought of a thousand different ways to approach her, and none of them seemed right. She doesn’t come here for me and I don’t wish to startle her and scare her away as the ghosts do to others.
But then today…
She came in, and I felt it. I felt curiosity coming off her in waves. I’ve felt it before, but I didn’t want to assume it was about me no matter how many times I caught her looking.
Today, I knew. I can still feel her fingers brushing against mine like it’s still happening.
This darker side of me is only one aspect of my life.
Of course I have a life to share with someone.
Friends and a home where I host parties and poker nights.
With a PhD in archival studies and the occasional course at the local universities, I have a life I could share with another.
They’d never have to know this secret of mine.
But I’ve never wanted someone only to hide from them.
Then there’s her and I just know if I were to tell her, she would understand.
Although I fear I’ll scare her. It is not often I think of her so much.
I close my eyes and grip the edge of the counter, there’s something in the air tonight.
“I have to do something for her,” I say out loud, then pick my head up. “What, though?”
I slide one book into place, then another, and just as I’m about to shelve the last one, an old, black book no taller than my hand jostles out from the titles around it. My body stills.
This book is one of my favorites. It’s a romance from another era. From the coven era. One of the women wrote it and had it hand bound, and somehow it made its way from her house to her granddaughter’s house, to this library. A romance book; romance her.
“Thanks,” I say to the ghosts, who don’t give any hint that they heard me.
I slide the last book in its place on the shelves, then take the old, leather bound romance up to the circulation desk.
I pull the antique carved wood chair out from under the desk and take a seat.
Then I take out my grimoire. My scribbled notes of the stories they’ve told stare back at me. As do the sketches.
My grimoire is a simple watercolor sketchbook.
Nothing obnoxious or suspicious. Merely a home to my thoughts and notes, and summonings of sorts.
The pages are thick enough that I can write with ink and add illustrations if I need to, but to everybody else, it’s just a sketchbook—not worth stealing, not worth a glance.
I flip through a few pages, and the sketchbook falls open to exactly the spell I need for tonight. A chill flows through me as I read it over as if confirmation.
“She’d love this. Wouldn’t she?” I say beneath my breath.
It’s a spell that allows someone to feel what the writers felt while they were writing the book.
It lasts as long as the candle is burning, and all you need to do is touch whatever book you want to experience.
The spell awakens the spirit of the writer for as long as the flame still burns on the wick.
She can experience the intensity of what the spirits wished to be known.
Bringing them more to life for only a moment.
I could offer this gift to her. I could show her this side of me and see if she would enjoy this thinly veiled realm of life and death as I do.
If she desires more I could give her so much more. I could give her anything and everything she could possibly want. Tomorrow night, I’ll see exactly what she thinks of me and exactly what she desires.