by Mac Flynn
Chapter 2
Miss Hamish found me in that position a few minutes later. "Leslie, what am I going to do with you?" she mused.
I yelped and sat up straight. "I-I'm really sorry. I was just-um, just cleaning the dirt molecules off the counter."
My boss came up beside me and smiled. "You're a smart girl, Leslie, but so absentminded." She slid onto a nearby stool and shook her head. "Sometimes I think you're in your own little world and nobody else is invited inside."
I shrugged and picked at some of those invisible dirt molecules on the counter. "I guess I'm just wishing for something to happen."
"Then you'll have to be the person things happen to," she replied. She noticed my frown. "Things happen to people who are looking for them, not to those who sit on a stool picking at dirt molecules."
I leaned back and sighed. "I guess you're right."
A mischievous glint slipped into her eyes. "Of course I'm right. I'm your boss. And speaking of being your boss, I have an assignment for you. Could you take care of the recent stack of books that just got dropped off? We had a doozy of a pile come in about an hour ago that still needs someone's attention before they take over the back hall."
"No problem." I slid off my stool and stepped toward the partition wall, but Hamish wasn't quite done with me.
"And Leslie?" I glanced over my shoulder at her smiling face. "Try not to bury yourself in one of the returned books again," she teased.
I smiled. "I won't make any promises."
I went into the rear maze that constituted the working space given to us librarians. The hallways were narrow and on either side of the entrance to the back room were three storage rooms with hallways between them. Directly to my right and set into the wall was the basement door. I walked forward and took the second left, then kept going until I hit the second right. That led to the employee entrance and beside that was the drop box area. There was a slot for books with a soft cushion on the floor to catch the returned items. Like I said, that place was a maze.
I sighed when I noticed the stack of books was almost as tall as the slot that stood three feet off the floor. An empty cart stood at the ready for the poor soul who was assigned the duty of hauling them to the front area to be sorted. I sighed, knelt down, and plucked a few of the books out of the pile. That's when it slid out from the center of the mess. It was a book eight inches tall, six inches wide, and a few inches thick. The cover was as black as coal with rough ridges all across it. There was no title on the front or even along the spine, and when I flipped it over I was surprised to not find a bar code on the back. All the books for the library except the rare ones had bar codes glued on the back.
I opened the cover to find a title engraved in gold letters on the front page. "Darkness Residing In the Heart of Man," I whispered. I wrinkled my nose and browsed through the other pages. They were all blank, and I snickered when a thought came to her. "I guess darkness must be ignorance because this book isn't telling me anything."
"What book isn't telling you anything?" a voice spoke up behind me.
I yelped, jumped up and spun around to find Miss Hamish behind me. "Don't do that!" I scolded her.
Hamish smiled. "I didn't realize you were so deep into reading, which was something I told you not to do," she scolded. She looked past me at the thing in my hands, and nodded at the book. "But what do you have there that's so interesting?"
"It's just a book I found in the drop box." I handed it over, and Miss Hamish glanced at the cover.
"Very interesting. This cover is made out of some sort of animal skin," Miss Hamish told me. I gagged and hurriedly wiped my hands on my clothes. "Did you find any note to go with this book?"
I shook my head, but gestured to the pile of returned books on the floor. "No, but I'm not done with today's mess. For all I know there could be an elephant hiding in there."
Miss Hamish opened the cover and frowned. "Are all the pages empty?" she asked me.
"No, the first one has the title."
"Really? In fine print?" Miss Hamish wondered.
I frowned and stepped up beside my boss to view the first page. It was as smooth and blank as the others. I couldn't understand it. "I'm sure something was there. It said something about darkness in people's hearts."
"Well, if it's still there then the author used invisible ink to hide it, so we'll just have to assume this is someone's idea of a joke," Miss Hamish replied. She closed the book and flipped it over. "Though I have to admit the skin looks pretty old, and it's wrapped nicely around some yellowed paper." She scrutinized the book a moment longer, sighed and shrugged. "Well, if you find a note tell me. Otherwise just put the book in the Lost and Found. Someone might have accidentally dropped it in," Miss Hamish instructed as she held out the book to me. I hesitated to take the dead animal skin, and Miss Hamish smiled. "The book doesn't bite."
"I don't know, we don't know what animal that came from," I pointed out. "Besides, shouldn't we be handling that thing with gloves?" I asked her.
Hamish shook her head. "I'm sure it's just an old book that somebody didn't want anymore. If it hasn't been picked up by someone in a few weeks we can add it to the college's Forbidden Collection." The Forbidden Collection contained all the old, valuable and eccentric books owned by the library. They were stored on the top floor of the library and couldn't leave the building. This empty book with an animal-skin cover certainly qualified as eccentric.
I hesitantly took the book and shuddered when my hands grasped the dry, bumpy cover. I tentatively held it between two fingers and hurried to Miss Hamish's office in the back room. We kept the Lost and Found box back there so nobody could swipe anything from it because sometimes we found expensive items like iPods and cell phones. The large transparent plastic box with the words Lost and Found taped on the front sat beneath Miss Hamish's large wooden desk in her bookshelf-and-book-cluttered space.
I was almost to the office door when I ran into an obstacle, namely my coworker and fellow college student, Marvin Murphy. The boy was as dorky as his name, with his pocket protector in his pocket and thick-framed glasses on his nose. His love of books was only exceeded by his ability to annoy me, and right now he did that by standing in my way. He'd just come out of one of the spare rooms and blocked my path to the office door with his cart. His bespectacled eyes caught sight of the strange object in my hands, and he pointed at the book. "What's that?" he asked me.
"A bomb, and if you don't let me put it in the Lost and Found it's going to go off," I warned him.
He frowned. "Talking about bombs isn't a very bright thing to say on campus. You could get into trouble," he told me.
I rolled my eyes. "I'll be sure to watch my language around the speech police, but could you move? I really do need to put this in the Lost and Found." I tried to get around him, but his cart wedged tight against the wall.
"Let me look at it," Marvin commanded. Before I could object or agree, he swiped it from my hand and glanced over the cover. He wrinkled his face. "What's this made out of? Old cardboard?"
I folded my arms and smirked. "Nope, animal skin."
Marvin's face blanched and he quickly held it out to me. "Take it back," he ordered.
I stepped back and furiously shook my head. "No way. Just put it in the Lost box. That's where I was trying to take it, anyway."
"I won't do your work for you, now take it back," he insisted.
I rolled my eyes and nodded at his cart. "I can't. Your cart's in my way, remember?"
Marvin hurriedly shoved the cart back into the room he'd just vacated and tossed me the book. I juggled it in my hands for a moment before I got a good hold and hurried into Hamish's office with Marvin the Ass bringing up the rear. I dragged the Lost box out from beneath her desk and dropped the book into the pile of miscellaneous things already in there. We stood over the box and looked down at the innocent, if grotesque, book.
/> "What in the world is someone doing leaving something like that in the library?" Marvin wondered.
"Someone shoved it into the drop slot. Maybe they wanted to donate it to us," I suggested.
"What's the book about?" he asked me.
I shrugged. "Don't know. The pages are blank and there was a title on the front page, but Hamish and I couldn't find it the second time I looked."
Marvin raised an eyebrow and cast a disbelieving look at me. "A disappearing title?"
I scowled at him. "It's possible. Maybe somebody made the book up as a prank and the title appears and disappears," I suggested.
He nodded at the book. "Then open it and see if it's there again."
"You open it."
"Maybe it likes you better."
"Maybe it'll like you if you try it."
Marvin rolled his eyes and sighed deeply as though he was dealing with an annoying child. "Very well, I'll be the brave one." He reached down with quivering fingers and flipped open the cover. The first page was blank. He glanced at me with a triumphant grin on his face. "You were saying?"
"I swear there was a title on that page. It said something about darkness in men's hearts. Would I really think up something that sounded that stupid?" I pointed out.
Marvin frowned and stroked his chin. "Perhaps, but what about that darkness part?"
I frowned at the insult, but shrugged. "Like I told you, the title was something about darkness being in men's hearts. Why?"
"I'm not sure, but I swear I've read a similar passage in another book. One of the Forbidden ones on the top floor," he replied.
"Is that supposed to be important?" I wondered.
"It's more than you know about the title," he argued.
"I know way too much about that book already. Why would I want to learn more?" I countered.
Marvin rolled his eyes. "Fine, be stupid. I'm getting back to work before I get in trouble." He stomped out of the room, returned to his cart and pushed it, and himself, into the maze of hallways.
"Of all the thousands of people on campus I'm stuck with the biggest annoying geek-nerd of them all," I muttered. I turned my attention back to the book, and was surprised to find the cover was shut. I didn't remember either of us shutting it. I leaned into the box and gingerly flipped open the cover. My eyes widened when I saw, in bold golden letters, the title I'd glimpsed earlier. "Darkness Residing In the Heart of Man," I reread. I swirled around searching for Marvin or Miss Hamish, but neither were around. "Just my luck," I muttered.
Fortunately, I had a plan, and I wouldn't leave everything completely up to luck. I grabbed a paper and pen, and wrote down the title so I wouldn't forget it again. Then I gingerly grabbed the book with the cover open and dashed out of Miss Hamish's office to the front desk. There I found both my boss and my coworker talking about the latest Librarian Monthly magazine cover story. Riveting stuff. "The title's back!" I exclaimed.
Miss Hamish and Marvin both turned to me with a disapproving glare, and the head librarian put her finger to her lips. "Your indoor voice please, Leslie," Miss Hamish softly ordered.
I screeched to a stop in front of them and sheepishly grinned. "Sorry, but the title came back," I whispered. I held out the title page to them, and the pair peered at the book. I expected their faces to show interest, but there was only confusion. They glanced at each other, and then to me.
"I'm afraid there's nothing there," Hamish told me.
I frowned and quickly turned the book to look at the page. It was blank again. "B-but it was there! I saw it!" The two stared at me with disbelieving looks, but I had further evidence of its existence. I dug into my pocket and pulled out the slip of paper with the name. "I wrote the name down. It said Darkness Residing In the Heart of Man. See?" I handed the slip to Miss Hamish, who frowned and turned it to one side.
"I'm afraid all I see is your poor handwriting and a blank page in a book," Hamish told her as she handed back the paper.
"Maybe next time you should take a picture. It lasts longer," Marvin teased.
Miss Hamish shot him a warning glance, and then looked back to me with a kinder expression. One somebody would give to a person not quite right in the head. "I'm sure you saw something, Leslie, but right now you need to get to work and finish checking in those books. Understood?"
My face fell, and I glanced down at the floor and nodded my head. I understood all too well. Miss Hamish didn't believe me, and neither did Marvin. As much as I didn't like his opinion, I was desperate for someone, anyone to believe me. "I'll get right on it," I promised my boss.
Miss Hamish smiled and gave a quick nod. "Good, now let's all get back to work before this place is overrun with books and malfunctioning printers." I turned away, but another word from my boss stopped me. "And give the book to Marvin to put back in the Lost and Found. The owner might come for it."
Marvin cringed, and I was hurt. I wasn't insane, and I could do something as simple as put the book back. "I can put it back," I insisted.
"And I'd rather not touch that thing," Marvin spoke up.
Miss Hamish looked at us with such a firm, terrifying glare that I quickly handed off the book to Marvin and he hurried off to put the book in the box. I tried to slink away to the return slot and have a good cry at Hamish's lack of faith, but she put a firm hand on my shoulder. I didn't look back so I could hide the tears pooling in my eyes. "Is there something going on you need to tell me about?" she asked me.
"Like what?" I mumbled.
"Like you're doing drugs," she bluntly suggested.
I whipped my head around and glared at her. "I'm not that stupid," I snapped.
She pursed her lips together and shook her head. "I'm not saying you are, but you've been acting very strange all night. Stranger than usual," she added with a hint of a smile. "Are you sure there isn't something you want to talk to me about?"
I looked her square in the eye. "Positive."
Hamish sighed and let me go. "All right, get back to work before we're up to our necks in returned books."