Chapter 20
“Just…listen?” Ollie asked hesitantly.
Red nodded. “For as long as you think you need to, and then describe.”
“Okay…”
The instructions were simple enough. But as someone with possibly undiagnosed ADHD, focusing on listening was another task of willpower in getting his mind to do the thing, while trying to not do other things at the same time.
Taking a deep breath, he decided to just go for it, even though he wasn’t sure exactly what he was supposed to be looking for. Or rather, listening out for… Or hearing…
At first, Ollie’s ears zeroed in on the loudest noises in the room, which was his own breathing, followed by Red’s. Then, he was drawn to an annoying, fast ticking noise that seemed to come out of nowhere the longer he listened.
Frowning as he tried to place it, his eyes widened when he realized it was coming from Red, and now that he had, he knew exactly what it was. “Your heartbeat…I can…hear it? Which is bizarre, and not humanly possible, but somehow, I can still hear it.”
“Forget what is humanly possible and just keep listening. I suggest closing your eyes, it can help.”
It was kind of hard to forget, but he would try.
Sighing, he closed his eyes and went back to listening, rushing to focus back on Red’s heartbeat, as that seemed as good a place to start as any.
It took a while for Ollie to pull away from that noise, but eventually, he was drawn to a sound that was barely a whisper at first, before growing as loud to him as his cat’s heart.
His brows pulled as he tried to identify what the hell it was.
Ollie was certain the sound wasn’t coming from this room but possibly the one next door, and for some reason, he felt like he recognized it, yet…
couldn’t quite place the scratching, almost skittering noise, along with a random… fluttering?
Ollie’s eyes snapped open wide when he realized what it was, crying out in horror, “BUGS!”
Rushing from the secret room back into his private library, he remained focused on the sound, spinning around as he tried to pinpoint it.
“Ollie, this is the opposite of focusing!” Red snapped as he followed him.
“There are bugs in this room!” he said, then added, “Near my books!” just so his cat clearly understood the dire circumstances.
“You can deal with it—”
“Now! I can deal with it now!” Ollie spun around, listening. “THERE!” he growled, as he pointed toward the far corner to his right, on the same wall as the door to the hall.
Scurrying over, he began to pull books out, setting them on a small table nearby, as he looked for the noisy little fiends, before shouting in triumph when he spotted the two beetles. But as he looked at the duo, he hesitated.
Ollie knew what he needed to do…but…what if they were a family?! WHAT IF THEY WERE IN LOVE?!!
Red eyed Ollie’s tense back and sighed heavily, as he knew exactly where this was going. “Ollie…”
His witch looked sharply over his shoulder at him, his eyes already glossy with tears.
“Do you need me to do it?”
Ollie spun, pressing his back protectively against the bookcase, his arms out wide as if to ward him off. “How could you? They are a family!”
Yep…that was exactly where he thought it was going… Well, at least one of the possible directions. Really, it all depended on how many bugs Ollie happened to find.
Red took a deep, calming breath before asking, “Do we have to have this conversation every time you find some sort of vermin in the library?”
“What do you mean every time? We have never had this conversation!?”
He snorted. Well, his witch had gotten him on a technicality, he’d give him that. “Yeah, only because I couldn’t talk before now. But I was certainly present as you had the exact same conversation with either yourself or one of the other librarians and/or staff here.”
Ollie started to glare, as his bottom lip popped out into a pout.
Briefly glancing back at the beetles, the man huffed defensively.
“Well, it needs to be said, because killing is not always the answer! And it’s not the answer now, as these are beetles, and beetles can fly, and there is a perfectly good window in the kitchen. I just need a cup and some paper…”
He stared blankly, and his witch stared right back, his gray-blue watery eyes wide and begging behind his rounded glasses.
Red sighed again and gave in. “Fine, fine, I’ll go get them.”
Ollie smiled as he watched the beetles fly off. “Have fun, you two,” he giggled as he shut the windowpane.
“Okay, bugs taken care of. Now, back to work, Ollie,” Red grumbled as they started walking back to the secret library within his private one.
“Okay, but I did hear pretty well, right? That was what you wanted me to do?” he drawled as they reached the secret room, before giggling again when he spotted the ghost kitten and rushing over to her. Crouching down, Ollie started to rub her belly as she flopped over onto her back.
“You did successfully manage to unlock your enhanced hearing. But we should try one of the others next. My suggestion, as it’s a bit easier in this setting, would be smell. We can try sight later tonight, as it’s the best time to practice when it's dark.”
“Aren’t you just the cutest little thing,” Ollie cooed as he tickled her belly, ignoring the biting cold of her fur.
Meow! The kitten responded cutely as she batted at his hand.
“Ollie…” Red ground out.
Eyeing the kitten, he gasped in realization. “I haven’t given you a name!”
“Ollie, focus!”
He let out a groan. “I’m focused…on what I want to focus on right now.
And like, if we are practicing tonight, do we really need to keep going right this very moment?
Besides, I need to name my kitten. Also, I still need to figure out how to help that diner ghost. And doing that technically would be practicing, right?
” He looked toward Red with a hopeful smile at the last part.
His familiar stared, his face full of judgement, before rolling his eyes and, with a sigh, saying, “Fine, fine…but you aren’t getting out even a minute early tonight!”
“Deal!” He giggled. “Now…” Ollie eyed the ghost kitten. “What should I name you?”
Looking at her light-gray coloring and stripes, he once again was leaning toward her possibly being a red tabby when she was alive, but it was hard to really know for sure because of the black and white. But it wasn’t like he needed to name her based on coloring anyway.
“I’m gonna name you…Pumpkin! Yes, Pumpkin, because I found you on Halloween!”
Red let out a super judgy, monotone Meow as Pumpkin just blinked up at him.
“What?! It fits, and it’s a cute name! Besides, all that matters is that Pumpkin likes it.” He tickled the kitten as he gushed, “And you do, don’t you, Pumpkin? Yes, you do!”
Meow, the ghost kitten said happily as she tried to grab his hand with her paws.
Smiling brightly, he straightened up and moved to the bookcase labelled ‘Ghosts’, with literal scary ghosts carved into the edges. Like screaming faces pressed up against a sheet type of creepy.
“Now…onto the next task at hand. How to help that diner ghost… The main issue is that I don’t know how they died, and I don’t think I can purposely look at a Death Mark again without coming off as a weirdo…”
That and the fact he hadn’t managed to successfully do it again since that first time. And okay, so they still didn’t have a name for the woman, but that was mostly because he hadn’t had a chance to research yet… So, really, the main issue was the death part.
Ollie pursed his lips as he eyed the shelves.
Most were bound in leather, all of various heights and thickness, but very few of the books had actual writing on the spines, and the ones that did were handwritten and very vague.
Vague, as in, some just said ‘Ghost’, and more than a few were in other languages.
The fact was, while Ollie would love nothing more than to just sit down and read every book one by one, that wasn’t the best use of his time… Not to mention, he didn’t actually have the spare time to do that—as Ollie still needed to run the library and all that.
“The question is, what book will help me do what I need to…” Ollie trailed off, blinking when a dark-green leather-bound book on the fourth shelf began to glow. “Well, that’s helpful,” he said with a laugh of disbelief as he pulled it free. The glow disappeared as soon as he did.
Taking a seat at the table, he was about to open it when he quickly set the book down with a gasp. “I need to wash my hands!”
Red scoffed. “Ollie, these books are preserved by magic. The little oil on your hands won’t harm them.”
He hesitated for a moment, before carefully flipping open the cover. He found a handwritten title page in cursive, which simply said: ‘Visions of Ghosts, guide written and illustrated by Ashton Garmond’.
Turning the page, he found a table of contents and, based on some of the wording in the chapter titles, he was assuming it was late Middle English, possibly from the late 1400s.
While the pages certainly showed their age with their yellowed coloring, to the touch, they felt nowhere near as brittle as they should.
In fact, they felt quite pristine and sturdy, which really reinforced how well whatever magic had been cast on them was working, while easing some of his worries about damaging them just by touching them with his not-recently-washed hands.
He was sure the rest of the book would likely be helpful at some point in the future, but based on the chapter titles alone, Ollie flipped ahead to chapter twelve, as it was titled ‘Death Marks’. As he flipped through, he couldn’t help but be impressed by the hand-drawn illustrations.