The Library of Souls

by Richard Denney

  I took in a few deep breaths before pulling her into one of the aisles and letting the words flood out from my trembling mouth.

  When I was done telling her everything, she didn’t look angry anymore, in fact she looked like she actually felt sorry for me, which was worse. I hated pity.

  “Why do you let him do this to you?” Now she was acting like a therapist. This girl could take over the world if she wanted to.

  “I don’t have a choice. If I out him, he’ll throw me out on the streets or I’ll end up in a wayward home and I don’t want that. I’d rather help him get rid of ghosts until I’m eighteen than sit in a wayward home waiting until I lost my freaking mind.” I couldn’t believe I was spilling my entire self to this girl. I barely knew her and she was probably going to tell on me anyway, so what was the point of showing an ounce of vulnerability?

  She let out a gigantic sigh that echoed down the aisle and glared at me. She wasn’t going to ruin everything after all.

  “Fine, I won’t say anything. You’re young and not to be mean but how in the world are you going to get rid of all of these ghosts?” Jade was right. I knew my strengths and knew that this job was too big for me, but that wouldn’t change anything. Monty was not going to budge, I was stuck.

  “I have no idea,” I said leaning against the shelf, suddenly I was exhausted from using my gift and I just wanted to plop myself on my bed back at the hotel and sleep for a hundred years, at least.

  CHAPTER 5:

  THE RETURNING

  The next day Monty and I were sitting in his car pigging out on greasy burgers before we headed back inside of the library once again. I didn’t want to go back inside. I really wanted to help Jade and the library, but a part of me wanted to get as far away from this town as possible. But I knew Monty wasn’t going to let that happen.

  “I don’t like this place,” I said swallowing a chunk of burger. All night back at the hotel I tossed and turned, trying to figure a way out of this insanity, but nothing seemed to click.

  Monty groaned and took a big slurp of his diet coke.

  “Listen kid, this place is making me some big money and what is my favorite thing in the entire world?” Monty nudged me hard. He was trying to play around with me, even though he was terrible at it. But I’d rather have a weird playful Monty than the evil uncle version of him. Some days it was like he didn’t even know who he was.

  “Money,” I forced a smile on my face. “But…”

  “-No buts! I make the decisions around here and we’re staying. Just go around the library and ask the ghosts to shut up instead of telling them to get the heck out. Then we can get the heck out of here.” I could tell that if I pressed any further, the ugly version of him would make a grand appearance and I wasn’t in the mood to deal with that. Sometimes I could see my real uncle in him, as if the real Montoya Santiago was scratching at the door trying to find his way out. But then he’d say something horrible and we’d be right back to mortal enemies.

  “Fine,” I said, taking a big bite of my burger. I decided to drop the subject, for now.

  An hour later Monty was with Ms. Freestone placing his red post-it notes on the areas with the most energy, which was something I had to teach him so people would think he was more legit. I, on the other hand was with Jade in the children’s section on the second floor of the library. She was shelving some returns and looked more worried than I’d seen her yesterday.

  “Everything okay?” I asked then wanted to slap myself. Of course everything wasn’t okay. This freaking library was basically ruining her life.

  Jade stood up from shelving a few board books on the bottom shelf and dusted her hands off on her smock.

  “I found an old photograph yesterday after you left. It was on one of the tables as if someone had put it there for me to find.” I watched as Jade pulled what looked like a postcard out of her back pocket and handed it to me.

  Even before I touched it, I knew it was real. I could practically see the paranormal energy oozing out of the photograph. Taking it from her, I turned the photo around and had to squint my eyes to get a perfect look at it.

  “What is it?” I asked, staring down at the black and white photograph in my hand. It was sizzling with energy and if I held it any longer it was going to drain me dry.

  “I’m pretty sure it’s a photo of Black Veil,” she explained pointing to a nearly transparent black shape hovering in the photo. I could see it now and it made me shiver.

  “This has a lot of dark energy in it, we need to be more careful when handling supernatural objects like this,” I said, handing the photo back to her. Instead of putting it back into her pocket she picked up a copy of Peter Pan, slipped the photo into a random part and sat it down on her cart.

  I walked away from her and over to the second floor railing. I leaned over and stared down at the first floor. The library looked so much bigger from up high.

  “Don’t do that!” Jade grabbed me by the arm and yanked me away from the railing. “They could push you over. It’s happened a few times.”

  Chills spun down my spine as I recalled the articles I’d read online.

  “So, now that you’re back, should I show you around the library more and see if we can talk to some more ghosts?” It occurred to me that maybe she needed to keep her mind off of her life always being in danger, so I smiled back and told her to lead the way.

  We were in the back of the second floor where large stained glass windows let in the gray daylight. I could see dust particles floating in the shards of light and for the first time in the building, I got a sense of warmth, which told me that a less harmful spirit was nearby.

  I was about to tell Jade that there was someone else back here with us, when a floating orb caught my attention. I watched as it hovered in the air and back through the wooden archway we’d just come through. It hovered for a few seconds more and then vanished behind a dark bookshelf.

  Simon… a playful voice slipped into my head. It was young and broken up like a radio station going in and out of tune. I knew it was coming from the dark bookshelf and it didn’t want Jade to know it was there.

  I turned to Jade, who was looking through her phone’s camera, trying to catch something. I admired her for trying, even though there was a good chance she wouldn’t get anything without an ability like mine.

  “Jade!” another voice rang out and Jade nearly dropped her phone in surprise. “Can you come down here please? I need your help with the basement door again!” I recognized it as Ms. Freestone.

  Jade turned back to me and shoved her phone into her smock’s pocket, clearly irritated that she had to go and help Ms. Freestone when she’d rather be up here hunting for ghosts.

  “I’ll be right back. Just stay here and wait for me,” Jade said as she spun on her heels and started back through the archway.

  “I’ll be here,” I waved, a little too excited that she was leaving. I watched her as she hurried back to the front of the second floor and waited until I could hear her footsteps charge down the staircase.

  It was like fate. The spirit wanted me alone and now it was getting its wish. I didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing.

  The silence on the second floor was almost too much for me, I almost thought I went deaf for a moment as I stood there waiting for whatever spirit who wanted to talk to me to show itself. I just hoped that the warmth I’d felt was the orb I’d seen hide behind that shelf. If not, and it was something horrible, I had to make sure I was ready to run.

  Finally to get the ball rolling, as Monty likes to say, I spoke to it.

  “Okay,” I said aloud. “I’m alone.”

  As if responding to my voice, a freezing gust of wind fluttered through the heavy velvet curtains on the windows and rushed right into me. I toppled to the ground on my back as a sharp pain erupted in my tailbone. I looked up thinking there’d be nothing there, but of course, I was wrong.

  Standing a few feet from me was the same little boy
Jade and I had seen yesterday. I crawled backwards instantly afraid of what he was going to do to me.

  “Why… are you… afraid of me?” the little boy said. I stopped myself from crawling and looked him in his milky white eyes. He looked hurt, like me trying to get away from him was hurting his feelings.

  “You almost hurt us yesterday,” I told him, trying not to anger him. My teeth began to chatter from the cold he’d once again brought with him.

  “Not hurt you...” the boy explained as he took a few steps backward as if I was scaring him now. “Warn you…”

  “Okay, I’m sorry.” I told him trying to calm him down. He seemed to get what I was saying and hugged his toy train.

  “Why do you… want to be here?” the boy’s voice was gaining more static, as if he were growing weaker. If I wanted to speak to him more, I needed to hurry before he disappeared altogether.

  “I’m trying to help you,” I said. “How… how did you die?” another gust of freezing wind raked at my body. I forgot how touchy the “how did you die?” question was.

  The boy hugged his train tighter and stared at me, his wide milky eyes boring into mine.

  “Came with mommy to look at books… woman in black pushed me over there,” the little boy pointed to the second floor’s railing.

  “I’m sorry,” I told him. ‘Woman in black’ must’ve been Black Veil. It seemed she’d been here a really long time.

  “I died… you will die too… if you stay longer. She will get you, she… will.” His voice began to grow with so much static and he began to flicker like a candle flame.

  “What’s going on?” I asked him as he hugged his train and closed his eyes tight.

  “Gotta go now… she’s close by. Bye-bye.” And just like that, the little boy was gone. I could still feel the cold and my heart was resting in my throat. As the coldness dissolved, a sudden warmth enveloped me and pulled me toward a wooden coffee table in the second floor’s seating area.

  Dust covered the table and before I could turn and walk away, a heart began to appear directly in the middle of the dust. I stared at it, wondering why a spirit would show me something like this. Just as quickly as the warmth took me over, the drawing vanished. I spun around to see if I could catch a glimpse of anything leaving, but all I could see was Jade standing in the archway with a look of concern on her face.

  CHAPTER 6:

  UNCLE MONTY VS SPIDER WEB

  I was in the employee break room sipping on a cup of coffee while Monty groaned in exaggerated agony. He was lying on the lunch table while Ms. Freestone wrapped his left wrist with white gauze. While I was having a conversation with the little boy on the second floor, Monty had walked into a spider web. Thinking it was a ghost, he tried to fight it off and ended up tumbling down the basement stairs.

  Jade had come up to get me thinking something serious had happened to Monty, but I knew just as I walked into the break room, he hadn’t broken anything serious. It was just a sprained wrist and he was playing it up, as usual.

  “I’m sorry this happened to your uncle,” Ms. Freestone smiled at me, still wrapping gauze around his wrist.

  “He’ll be fine, right Uncle Monty?” I patted his back, harder than anyone should and he coughed up a grunt, knowing that I knew exactly what he was doing.

  “Yeah…” Monty glowered at me. “I’ll be fine.”

  “Good, well I need to get some paperclips to hold that gauze so I’ll be right back. I also have to make a quick phone call to make sure the other mediums are going to show. Jade, please go begin locking up for me.”

  Other mediums? She didn’t say anything to us before about having more mediums in the library with us. I waited for Ms. Freestone and Jade to leave before I sat my mug of coffee down, crossed my arms, and stared at Monty.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” he snapped. “I did fall.”

  “I know you did, but if this some kind of ruse to get more money from Ms. Freestone I think you’re a certified butthead, Monty. And how are you going to keep up your so-called ability when the other mediums get here. They’ll know.”

  “I’ll figure that out. Just mind your own business, kid.” Monty stuck his tongue out at me like a two-year-old and went back to hugging his wrist.

  “I saw another ghost earlier. It said we’d be dead if we stayed much longer,” I explained to him. He rolled his eyes and turned to me. But instead of spewing out a load of ignorant fury, he actually looked serious.

  “We… we need the money, Simon. The place in NY is gone. They evicted me two months ago. We’re basically homeless.” Monty explained. I’d never really heard him talk to me like this before. As if he realized that he was speaking to me like a human being, his demeanor took a complete 180 and he snarled at me. “Quit busting my chops, kid.”

  We were homeless. All of my stuff, all of my belongings from when I moved in with Monty were gone. My dad’s key collection, my lucky teddy bear… my mom’s favorite VHS tape full of I Love Lucy episodes. It was all gone.

  I had to fight back tears as I pushed myself up from the stool I was sitting on and headed out of the room, ignoring Monty. I wanted to hit him. I wanted to punch him so hard in the face that he’d forget who he was. I wanted to get the heck out of here, now.

  I hurried down the hallway and headed for the front entrance. Before I could make it to the doors, a hand wrapped itself around my shoulder and pulled me back. I turned to see Jade and the look on her face told me she’d been listening to Monty and me. I wanted to scream.

  “You heard everything?” I asked.

  “I was about to walk back into the break room when I heard you both talking. It seemed important, so I waited. I’m sorry about everything. Why didn’t you tell me about seeing the little boy again?” Now it was Jade who looked somewhat hurt. I had to come up with something. I couldn’t tell her the truth. If I did, she’d feel even more at fault than she did right now about me being here.

  “I didn’t have time… you came up right after he left and told me Monty fell.” I could see she believed me and went right back to smiling.

  “You were leaving weren’t you?” she asked, twisting her fingers.

  This time, I couldn’t lie.

  “I was. I was going to run. I don’t know where I was going to go, but I was going to leave Monty-”

  “-And me behind… I still need your help, Simon.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said and I meant it.

  “I forgive you,” she grabbed me by the arm again and pulled me toward the back of the library. “I found something while I was locking up the back of the library. I wanted to show you.”

  I followed along, Jade’s cool grip leading me down an aisle of extremely old looking books. We stopped in front of a giant yellow book with the number 12 printed on the spine. I tilted my head in wonder as I saw what Jade had found.

  “Ectoplasm… in a book?” I shook my head. “I’ve never heard or seen anything like this before.” I reached out to touch it and it shocked me, which I should’ve known would happen. Unless it’s coming out of your own body via spiritual possession, ectoplasm is harmful to Ghost Talkers on the outside. The milky white substance was dripping out from the spine of the book, creating a large puddle on the ground before our feet.

  “I knew it was something paranormal,” Jade got excited. “What is it, exactly?”

  “It’s a substance of spiritual energy and it basically means there’s a lot of energy in this library, which isn’t hard to deduce. This book must have some kind of spirit inside of it, which can happen sometimes. They can possess anything from dolls, phones, cameras, to books.”

  “Is it supposed to stink?” Jade asked as she pinched her nose.

  “Yup, like rotten meat and those exploding fart bags. It’s gross.” Quickly, I pulled out my camera and snapped a photo of the ectoplasm seeping out of the book.

  “Um, Simon?” Jade’s voice quivered. I tore my eyes away from the ectoplasm and followed Jade’s gaze to the win
dow at the end of the aisle. The window was fogged up and in perfect cursive, words began to appear on the glass.

  Second floor.

  Finally, someone else wanted to talk. I was about to tell Jade we were headed to the second floor again when a familiar voice ripped me out of my thoughts.

  “Simon, where are you?” Monty hollered in a playful tone. He was a good actor, I could tell you that.

  “Ms. Freestone is probably going to ask you both to come back tomorrow afternoon since the sun’s about to go down. Tomorrow we’ll see what’s waiting for us on the second floor, okay?” Jade whispered as the footsteps of my uncle and Ms. Freestone grew closer and closer.

  “Okay,” I said and we turned back one final time to the window. The message was gone.

  CHAPTER 7:

  BLOOD BATH

  The next morning at the hotel my mind was still spinning. When we left the library for the second time, I felt like a giant weight had been lifted from my shoulders and even though I wanted to help Jade and the library, a part of me didn’t want to step into that place ever again. But I knew that was never going to happen. Ms. Freestone called super early this morning and Monty was about to curse her out for waking him up, if he hadn’t recognized her voice first. She told him that she wanted us to come back tomorrow instead. It was like music to my dear uncle’s ears.

  Since we didn’t have to go back to the library until tomorrow, he was out blowing his new check on god knows what. Ms. Freestone gave him half the payment yesterday and after we ‘get rid’ of the ghosts, she’d give him the last half. He left me here to do a bit more research. He didn’t want to hear any more of my thoughts on not going back to the library. He simply just didn’t care, his mind was on money as usual.

  But I cared and doing further online research wasn’t going to help. I needed to get info from the best source in the world, this town. I asked Monty if I could explore the town a bit while he was gone, but all I got was a hand wave and a door closed on my face, which in Monty language meant ‘whatever’.