The Book Collector

By: Bethany V.

               With the size of those sparkling white webs along the stacked books and crammed shelves, you’d think the spiders roaming here were the size of chickens, and was that a dead rat in the corner? Maybe the rat got too close for the chicken-spider’s liking and the oversized spider took a bite out of it. But the giant spiders aren’t what made Gabrielle nervous, it was the old librarian with his bent and twisted back, his marble looking eyes always staring at you from afar, as if he was waiting for you to speak so he could cut your tongue out. And his hands! His hands were so crippled with arthritis that they looked more like thin, twisted branches from a tree, rather than fingers.

                And not many things scared Gabrielle, at least not like the old librarian and his sharp tongue. She was a non-believer of things such as ghosts or hauntings. She believed in science, not nonsense! In fact, science is why she was here in this ancient, dark library with its creepy architecture that was as old as Da Vinci.

Gabrielle’s finger lingered over a variety of colored books with names written on their bindings. She read the names aloud as Annabelle, Clark, Elisha, Eric, and Hailey. She took Eric out of its place and flipped through its pages, finding it to be a rather tedious biography of a boy bound to wreck havoc just for his simple curiosity. She put it back with a frown and looked over the other books, coming to a black book with a golden inscription of ‘Living Magic’ on the front. She was about to pull it out when she heard the sound of the limping librarian approaching. Quickly she fled from the forbidden shelves and out the back exit…

                Later that week, Gabrielle returned to the ghostly library for one reason only. She was missing something in her college paper stating that such things as magic and ghosts were not real, and this library with its dark, looming shelves and shifting shadows was a perfect place to find that missing piece she was looking for.

Gabrielle tapped her pencil lightly against her bottom lip as she looked over her research. “What is it that I am missing?” she whispered to herself. She looked over her shoulder at the intimidating, overstuffed shelves and the dim darkness. She sighed and thought back to her last visit when she was browsing the musty scented shelves in the back.

Her eyes lit up and she knew what she was missing, but the luster in her eyes faltered when she glanced up at the librarian with his intense gaze. She was going to have to ask the creepy librarian.

            The old man eyed her with his menacing, glassy eyes as she approached, judging her with every step. He cocked his head to the side and looked up at her from his cluttered desk. She noticed that the computer was covered in dust, as if he never used the thing, but how else did he manage the library? Or was he too stubborn to learn how to use the blasted thing?

            “Excuse me,” Gabrielle whispered. “I’m looking for a certain book for my paper. I was thinking it might be in the reserved collection.”

            He glowered at her and muttered, “No one’s allow’ in the back. Have ye been snoopin’ around me shelves!? Those are mine! Mine!” He raised his voice, pounding his skinny, lump of a fist on the desk, making Gabrielle wince. “I won’ tolerate troublemakers,” he mumbled.

            Realizing Gabrielle was loosing her chance to find that mysterious book she had eyed in the librarians special section, where all the older and mysterious books were held, she pleaded, “I haven’t been in that section, I swear,” she lied, “but a title of a book caught my eye when I passed there. Can I please look at it? I’m missing something for my paper. This paper could mean graduating college or not!”  She clutched her fists to her chest, begging him with her eyes that looked to be the color of an inexpensive sapphire, expecting him to yell at her and demand she leave the library and never return.

            The librarian narrowed an eye towards her and licked his parched, cracking lips. “You don’t want to go into me shelves, I promise ye,” he said, his left eyeball slightly twitching to the side. Exasperated, she turned away from him, ready to take her things and leave, until he yelled at her from behind with his old growling voice, “Those books are mine! Mine!”

            “Crazy old man,” Gabrielle muttered. ‘How could he deny me this? I needed that book!’ Her paper needed to be perfect, and he was preventing her from it. ‘I’ll show him. I’ll go into his special little section and get my hands on that book—even if it kills me!’

            Gabrielle turned a corner, out of the old librarian’s sight, that is, if he could see.  She walked down the many rows of book shelves, passing spots of darkness in-between dim hanging lamps on the ceiling. The old man only kept half of them on during the night when someone was still here. ‘He was probably some hermit,’ Gabrielle thought.

            But the farther she went, the more her steps slowed, the more her ears ached at the noise she was making as she took each step, the sound of her clothing rustling, her footsteps, and her hitched breathing. She was almost to a creep now, her eyes darting about, staring at the daunting shadows, searching for the old librarian and ready for him to stick his long nose around the corner and catch her.

            Her head twitched to the side as she saw a shadow move. It did move, didn’t it? Gabrielle scolded herself with putting such nonsense in her head. There were no such things as ghosts and shadow people, and certainly not magic. She was just scaring herself with what imagination she did have. ‘It was probably just a chicken-spider,’ she reassured herself.

            She suddenly remembered a character from a scary movie she saw and her imagination ran with the idea of that creature hobbling up behind her, chasing her on all fours, doing the crab walk, and its milky face starring at her and mashing its teeth. It would come out from one of the shadows and creep up behind her, making not a noise. Then, she would feel the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end, and when she turned, it would throw itself at her, its carnivorous mouth upon her.

            Gabrielle shook the images away, silently scolding herself again, ‘What is with me tonight?’ She convinced herself it was just the library, and that she didn’t have a sinking feeling in her stomach as she approached the ‘forbidden section.’

            Gabrielle reached her destination and ran her finger against the books, looking for that particular book with the black binding and golden letters. She knew it was somewhere around here. She tapped the black book beneath her still finger and grinned, ‘Living Magic, that was the one!’

            She pulled the book out of its careful place and knew that her paper would now be perfect. She placed one hand under the binding and used the other to open the book, but just as her hand reached to open it, the book ripped open! Its black pages were like a shadowed mouth full of sharp, curved teeth and it snatched her hovering hand in its makeshift mouth, biting her like a hungry shark!

            Gabrielle screamed, not just from the burning sensation of her hand but of the utter horror of what her eyes were seeing! Part of her couldn’t believe what she was seeing, the other part kept thinking, ‘I’m going to lose my hand!’

            She dropped the book with a thud as she pulled her hand away from its gaping jaws. As it landed on the floor, it was just a normal book once again, but this didn’t stop Gabrielle from running away from the old librarian’s special section and collapsing well away from the forbidden shelves. She hid in the darkness, somewhere between the hanging lamp’s light. She tried to feel the flesh of her hand between her fingers, expecting there to be nothing left and a bloody mess, but what she found was even more horrendous. She bit back a scream of anguish and terror. Her hand felt as flimsy and light as a sheet of paper.

            ‘Doctor.’ She had to get to the doctor. ‘He would know how to fix this, wouldn’t he?’ Dazed but in such a panic, she ran through the layers of shelves towards the front doors. She caught a glimpse of her hand in the light as she ran past the hanging lamps. ‘Paper, my hand is paper!’ And the more lights she passed, the more she found that her paper hand was becoming a paper arm!

            Panic and confusion continued rising as she sped towards the door as it came in sight. She held out her normal arm, ready to burst through the door, but instead she got a shocking surprise as pain bolted up her arm and she fell over. The door hadn’t budged. It was locked. And now she knew she wasn’t dreaming. More panic.

            “I told ye to leave em’ be,” a familiar, taunting voice said from behind.

            Gabrielle swung around, crying. “What did you do to me?” she screamed at him, accusing him of this disastrous magic.

            “I? It was you who did this to yer’ own self. I warned ye! I did! Those books are mine!” he said, shaking his pale, twig-like finger at her.

            Gabrielle discovered that her whole arm was now a thin sheet of paper, and it continued to grow. What had that book done to her!? Why had the old man not clarified? “How do I stop it?” she cried. “Tell me!”

            He meshed his lips together in a thin line and narrowed his marble eyes at her. “Leave, and ye will be set free of the spell.”

            Gabrielle stood up, “Then open the door!” she pleaded.

            The old man shook his head, showing no remorse. “These doors will not budge even for me until the spell is completed. Ye have to reach the emergency exit.” There was a faint smile on his lips, but Gabrielle didn’t dare argue with the old man, knowing how stubborn the old fool was, she just ran past him and through the shelves like a blind animal racing from its prey.

            Gabrielle’s eyes darted every which way, trying to remember in her scrambled brain where she had seen that emergency exit. She lost all feeling on her left side, except for her pounding foot as she raced for the other end of the building. She swayed and tripped, her paper body confusing and disrupting her balance.

            ‘Where was that sign!?’

‘There, that faint red glow in the back!’ She was almost there!

She fell.

Gabrielle’s whole left side was paper, except her head. She crawled towards the exit, but the spell was winning the inevitable race. She felt her other leg succumb to the spell and she was now using her chin and fingers to drag herself along the tile floor. She was so close; she could now see the grain of the wooden door.

Her fingertips reached for the door, almost brushing the hard wood, and then, everything went completely white, like a snow storm where one puts his hand a few inches from his face but cannot even see the shadow of his fingertips. The white slowly faded into darkness so black that it was like a black hole, consuming all in its path, consuming her conscious, memories, and her whole self.

The old librarian hummed to himself as he hobbled over to his special books where he held a heavy, light colored sapphire book in his crooked hands. He put it under his arm and let his twig-like finger brush against the books, reading the titles, Annabelle, Clark, Elisha, Eric, and Hailey. He pushed Eric and Hailey apart and shoved the cheap sapphire colored book in-between and brushed his hands as if the book had left dust on them. He limped back down the row of shelves, waving his hand at the discarded black book on the floor as he passed, and it flew up back into its rightful place.

            The lights flickered off all around the library and a bang sounded as the old man left for the long night. Darkness consumed the large building and all was completely silent. Not a chirp of a cricket, not the shuffle of papers or giant spiders, and not a scream. The darkness was temporarily broken as a light flickered above the shelf where the new book had been placed, revealing its title.

            Gabrielle.