Mr. Linden’s Library

Story I wrote for English. Always feels good.

He had warned her about the book. Now it was too late. She collapsed onto the bed, the book lying across her outstretched arm. Green tendrils slowly unfurled from its worn spine and began wind their way around her wrist as the rain battered against the windowpane.

She had come home from school the way she had for years, crossing the street, and then ambling past the diner, around the corner, and into the alley. Today was a special day, she remembered as she ducked around a trash can. It was Halloween. All the kids in the neighborhood would be overjoyed, getting on their bright costumes and running around the streets for candy. All except one, she thought with a smirk. She would be staying at home tonight, tending to her mother just as she had every other night since the diagnosis.

She nervously eyed the dark clouds forming in the sky and buttoned up her raincoat, hugging herself against the chill. Somehow there was a palpable air of impeding disaster. She hurried on.

Just as she was rounding the corner to come out onto her street, something caught her eye. She almost kept going, but suddenly she was gripped by an irresistible curiosity; it felt as if the door was summoning her to it. She backtracked her last steps. It was a door. A small, dark, dirty door in the place where there had been an empty brick wall for all the years she had passed it. She moved closer. There was a sign on the top, barely visible through the grime. She squinted through the drizzle that was just beginning. “Mr. Linden’s Library,” she murmured.

The door was squeaky as she pushed it open. A musty smell flooded her nostrils, the smell of leather and old paper. She looked around, coughing. The place was enormous. There were shelves everywhere, stretching as far as the eye could see, teeming with volumes of all shapes and sizes. A small voice in the back of her head protested that it was much too big to fit in the small, crummy old building. “Hello?” she finally managed, weakly. For a moment there was nothing, but then she noticed a small man with long beard and a tophat like a stovepipe. He was standing on a sliding ladder with his back to her..

“Welcome, Allison,” he said, nonchalantly, holding up his eyepiece and scanning the titles on the bookshelf in front of him. “I was wondering when you would show up.”

“Who are you?” she stuttered.

“Why, Mr. Linden of course,” he stated, momentarily turning to face her before returning to his work. “I’ve been looking forward to seeing you for a long time.”

Allison made an attempt to move toward him, but almost tripped over a book. She picked it up. It was much too heavy for its size.

“That’s for you,” Mr. Linden said without looking at her. “It’s the only way to save your mother.”

Allison’s eyes went wide. She tried to open the book.

“Don’t!” shouted Mr. Linden, holding up a hand. “That book is very powerful. Under no circumstances may you open it when the moon is full.”

Allison tried to remember if it was tonight.

“Yes, it is” Linden said, barely glancing up from the dictionary he was leafing through. “You can open it tommorow.”

She moved towards the door.

“And not a moment sooner.”

Allison walked out the door, only to find herself once again in front of the tiny, ramshackle row house. She regarded it silently for a moment before running home in the gathering storm.

“Mom!” She burst through the door and flung off her raincoat. “I found a cure!” She ran up the stairs to her mother’s bedroom, drowning out her mother’s feeble response and waving the book all around, which caused her to lose balance because it was so unnaturally heavy.

“Well, what is it, dear?” her mother croaked from her bed, sounding more excited than she had in years. Allison, sitting on the bedside, started to open the book, but remembered the mysterious Mr. Linden’s warning. “Go on!” prompted her mother. Allison paused. She had waited too long for this, too long to free her mother and herself. Clouds billowed and rain began to come down outside. She opened the book. Her eyes went wide when she saw what was written inside. Lightening struck, throwing the shadow of a man wearing a tophat like a stovepipe into sharp relief. She collapsed, her breathing shallow.

He had warned her. But now it was too late.