by Alec Dunn
When he questioned Lucretia about the personal training regime she had set Max upon, he felt foolish, like a child running to his mother complaining about silly, petty things.
Lucretia, Max is pulling faces at me.
Lucretia, Max is being naughty.
It’s not fair.
Max won’t let me stop running.
She laughed at him and reminded him of Stephanie. Isn’t that what a personal trainer did? Made you exercise when you didn’t want to? She threw the question back at him without a hint of apology. Didn’t he want to get fit? Didn’t he want Stephanie to notice him? To like him? Isn’t this what he had asked for? She made him feel ungrateful, guilty even.
He had never really had friends his own age before and now he did he was letting them all down. The life his mother had lived was erratic. And her life had been his life. In happy moods she described him as her ‘precious blessing’ or ‘her anchor’, in darker moments she called him a ‘chain’ or ‘baggage’ or worse things, but he had been her constant shadow in all her travels, until… the image surged out of his recurring nightmare and into his waking mind: her face horribly twisted. Lines of age and pain were deeply etched into her cold clay-like skin while her mouth was wide open releasing its silent scream.
He shuddered.
They had travelled Europe; stayed with friends, many times; lived in a forest over one summer, Tristan still remembered picking blackberries in the summer, walking under the sun dappled shadows of the trees. They had lived in an artists’ colony filled with weird people, some nice, some wankers; stayed on a commune, communist wankers; lived with various partners, rich and poor, honest and criminal, drug addicts and pushers, mostly wankers; squatted in a London flat, where needles and strangers littered the bare floor, thin broken people lying among thin broken furniture. The filth and the stench and the memory of it haunted him. That was where she had died. More pleasant had been the occasional stays with grandparents, when they were still alive.
Making lasting connections with people had seemed pointless.
He had always been isolated, alone.
He had never really had friends.
And that now left him at a loss. How should he behave towards others?
Had he been inconsiderate?
Questions filled his mind. What exactly did he owe, Max? He hadn’t asked Max to break Ryan Sankey’s leg. Sure, it made his life about a million times easier, but he hadn’t asked for it. What did his new friends expect of him? What were these ghost tours all about? Max’s appearance never seemed to get worse, but he was always suffering from some massive bruising or new scratch or gash. Why? And why did he need to get fit? He was definitely fitter. He could look at himself in the mirror and see the difference. It was amazing really, but why? What was going on with this reading group? They never seemed to actually read and Tristan could read pretty well now. Was he really a part of it?
These were the strange questions that gripped his mind. There were questions but no satisfactory answers.
The questions led to dead ends.
Full stops.
More questions.
His mind twisted back on itself, eating into itself, chewing up known certainties and vomiting questions.
Questions, questions, questions.
The questions ate away at his mind when he went running, which now he was fitter, he was starting to enjoy. They squirmed about when he chatted to Lucretia about her favourite horror books and why the films were not quite as good. They surfaced like a bloated corpse in a frozen lake when he noticed Max’s new scratches but, like a corpse, they kept silent. Strangely, they didn’t bother him when Stephanie commented on how good he was looking and asked him if he had been working out. Perhaps he was distracted.
Tristan was fearful of the ties his friendship placed on him and the debts he was expected to pay. Gregor had said that he could not come on the next ghost walk, but soon, Tristan, soon you will be ready. He might have turned his back on the whole strangely demanding mess.
As it turned out though, Tristan found another question to plague him, a strange question that eclipsed all other questions from his mind, a question that demanded an answer.
It happened on a Thursday. The period before dinner, he had been sent from PE to The Base as a punishment for forgetting his swimming costume – this was deliberate. Tristan was becoming much trimmer as well as healthier from the constant running. The frame of his body was solid, muscular, but he was still on the podgy side and didn’t like to strip off before others – and Mrs Wright, assistant to the much loved Miss Fritchley at The Base, knew him as a ‘good lad’ and so had made him do a little work but then let him go far too early to dinner.
Tristan’s feet had found their way to the library without thinking. Where else would he go? The large room, rich with dark stained wood shelves and shadows was completely empty apart from dust and the musty smell that caught in his throat. The smell of old, unread books slowly decaying. Tristan had found himself a simple book to read and a corner to sit in.
He sat between two shelves, in the cold light from the window, and concentrated his storm grey eyes beneath a frown of concentration on the large dancing letters on the page before him. They settled, mostly, into order and he formed the words of the story with reasonable speed. And so it was that in concentrating and ordering words and following the simple story he became blind to the world around him.
He didn’t notice when Gregor’s shuffling tread entered the library.
He didn’t notice the ancient man’s breath rasping in excitement as he pulled a chain from around his neck and used the key pendant upon it to open a drawer in the desk.
He didn’t notice that Gregor used both shaking hands to gather up a heavy, large, black book bound in what looked to be thick leather that was cracked and scuffed with age.
He didn’t notice as Gregor’s trembling hands seemed to almost stroke and caress the book.
He didn’t notice the whispers and mutters that fell from Gregor’s thin purple grey lips as he seemed to share his secrets with the book.
He didn’t notice Gregor leafing greedily through the pages or his dark purple red tongue flicking out to loll hungrily over his lips.
Tristan did notice the bell that heralded the official start of dinner time. So did Gregor. Both of their heads looked up at the same time.
Tristan looked about the library from his hidden recess.
Gregor looked up with protective and wary secrecy at the door of the library, closing his book carefully.
Tristan saw Gregor and realised that Gregor did not see him. He knew that he should now make his presence known, but he didn’t want to have to go over and start talking to Gregor. The snub of not being invited to Gregor’s latest ghost walk was still stinging his pride and tiny, wriggling questions filled him. He decided to wait for the others to join him, for Lucretia and maybe Max to arrive before starting to talk to Gregor. He watched the old man caress an large leather bound book to his chest and unlock a drawer. He saw him whispering to it, soothing it to sleep like it was a baby. He watched him lock it away and place the key around his neck.
When three tiny boys charged into the library, loudly swearing about something, Gregor did not know that anyone else was there.
Gregor thought there were only the young strangers to the library and himself who were present.
Tristan did not recognise them, but thought they must be Year seven or eight.
“She’s a bitch. A bitch. I hate her!” the first boy said with venom.
“I’m not doin’ no detention for that bitch. She can piss off!” a second boy said loudly.
“She’s never gonna’ catch us. Where the hell are we, anyway?” The third boy was laughing, excited by the fun.
They might be young, but they were used to trouble. There were many similar boys and girls at Hillcrest Community School, although Tristan rarely saw them come into the library.
From where he was sitting, Tristan
could see the back and side of Gregor’s head. He saw him nodding at the boy, he saw the purple tongue flick over his lips, he heard the rasping, coarse, yet still powerful voice of Gregor, “Welcome, my young disciples, to the library, a hallowed temple of knowledge. There are many doors that stand before you, doors to other countries, doors to other worlds, the past, the future, doors into the minds of the living and doors into the minds of the dead.
What door are you looking to pass through my little ones?”
Did Gregor ever expect this kind of speech to work? Tristan looked at the brazen poses and overtly confused expressions on the little bundles of bad attitude standing before Gregor. This could only ever go one way, Tristan thought.
“The teachers in this school do my head in. He sounds just like Miss Simmons, the stupid bitch.”
“How old are you?” one wide eyed boy demanded insultingly.
“What the hell are you talking about, you old fart? I can’t understand a word you’re saying,” another cried at the same time.
And this was the way. Didn’t Gregor know this?
The boys’ default setting was ‘screw you’. They would return to this in the heavy face of authority – screw you – the grim face of difficulties – screw you – the open face of challenges – screw you – the sneering face of someone belittling them by using complicated words and language – screw you, screw you, screw you.
Tristan was intrigued how Gregor would handle the trouble that had come into his library.
“What book would you like to read?” Gregor words were shorter now, his trembling voice more challenging. “Take a book and sit down, my ignorant young men. This is a library. You can sit and read, but you will be silent.”
This was never going to work.
“Take a book?” came a reply with pretended confusion from the first boy. “Take a book?” His voice was rising.
Hadn’t Gregor known that telling them what to do would only make the situation worse?
“What book?” The little hands of the enraged young student were fast, snatching a book from the library desk. “This book?” The boy held it in front him, pulling a face like he was examining the contents of a used nappy. “What’s the point?”
Gregor’s voice was filled with disdain, “Knowledge, my little one, knowledge is the point. You sound like a hollow vessel.” The voice crawled out of his throat like a monster, ripping into its young victim, hate and contempt clawing into the young mind. “You make noise, but have no substance. You have no knowledge. You are empty little one, empty.”
The boy’s brittle attitude answered in the only way he knew. He returned hate for hate, anger for anger.
“What’s the point?” he repeated. “I can’t even read,” and he suddenly threw the book across the library. The book described a sad arc, its pages flapping uselessly like the thin wings of an airborne penguin before crashing into the hard wood of a shelf. The boy’s face was a mask of defiance.
One of his companions laughed uncertainly, but the other tried to calm him down, “Let’s just go, yeah. I don’t want to stay in no stinkin’ library.” They were obviously not quite sure of what the punishment might be.
Gregor’s disgusted voice dripped with venom, “Ah, Joshua, I am so disappointed in you.”
“How do you know who I am?” The book throwing Joshua was genuinely surprised.
Gregor’s voice hissed out the words, “Knowledge, my boy, I have knowledge. In the same way that I know your equally sadly lacking companions are Samuel Hodge and Liam Davis. In the same way that I know your head of Year is Mrs McIntyre. In the same way that I know there will be consequences for misbehaving in my library.”
The two named boys looked shocked also and uncomfortable. “Let’s go,” said either Samuel or Liam, Tristan didn’t know which.
“C’mon Josh, I’m hungry. Let’s go to the canteen.”
“No. I’m not hungry. You’re just being gay. What’s Mrs McIntyre gonna do? Consequences? There won’t be any consequences. I didn’t even know this school had a library.”
His friends were not so confident, “Josh, let’s just go.”
“No. Nobody cares about this library. Look at it. Look at him. I mean, look at him. He’s so old. They can’t even get a normal person to work here. And what’s that smell? Have you had an accident, mister?
I’m gonna stay here and play with the books. You don’t scare me, talking shit about consequences. I hate this school.”
His two friends left through the library doors while Joshua gave his insulting speech, his voice rising. Alone, he snatched out, grabbing another book from the library desk. “What about this book?” The boy virtually danced about in his attempt to taunt the elderly librarian. The book was waved about recklessly. “What was it you said about books and doors?” The boy looked from the book in his hand to the still open doors of the library in an over-exaggerated manner, reminding Tristan of an elaborate pantomime act.
What am I going to do next?
And yes, the book went sailing through the open doors.
Gregor’s whispered voice dripped with malevolent disgust, “Libraries are sanctuaries of knowledge, but you are ignorant.” As he was speaking, the ancient man stood taller than Tristan had thought he could stand.
“Books are sacred, but you treat them with contempt.” The shadows in the room seemed to gather to him. “They say that silence is golden, but you make needless noise.” The ancient librarian was a pillar of whispering darkness.
“Now, ssshhhh.” Gregor put his finger to his lips and the darkness seemed to reach out like a shadow over the young boy.
The boy’s face did not show any great reaction. He was not intimidated by an old man standing up and whispering mean things to him. He opened his mouth to retort.
Tristan was impressed by Gregor’s stage presence, very dramatic, he thought. The old man was not without mettle, but he didn’t believe it would do him any good. He waited to see what the boy would do next. How was the boy going to take it further?
The boy’s innocent blue eyes expanded and his face churned in hatred. The mouth opened to vent his anger. Tristan fully expected shouting, swearing, book throwing, maybe some tables.
The boy’s face was surprised. The shadows that had reached out gathered round him like a fist. His mouth opened, but no sound came out.
Sssshhhhh, and Gregor had held his finger to his lips.
The mouth opened and no sound was made.
The boy’s eyes were wide.
His mouth was wider. He was screaming at the old man, swearing, insulting, threatening, shouting and all in absolute silence. The mouth was moving and there was no sound.
Sssshhhhh.
The boy’s eyes were filled with fear now and he took a couple of steps back. His mouth seemed unable to open fully anymore and his head rocked and snapped from side to side as he tried to force his jaw apart.
Gregor’s whisper slid into the silence like a sharp knife, “Sorry, what was that?” He paused, waiting for a reply as the boy twitched and convulsed before him. Gregor continued with the dispassionate tone of a man watching a spider eating a fly, “Silence and doors, little one. As they say, one door closes and another door opens. Are you familiar with this saying?” The pause was mocking as the aborted scream that should have filled the library gave only silence.
The boy was not able to open his mouth although the muscles on his face strained and bulged. He was actually pulling at his jaw now with desperate fingers, trying to prise it open.
“No? Then allow me to continue. There are many doors and you chose to walk through mine. This is my library. Mine. And you walk through my door in ignorance. Let this be a lesson, little one. If you walk through my doors, bring something. Knowledge is power. Above all else, you need knowledge. If you have nothing to say, then stay silent, otherwise you’ll just embarrass yourself. Knowledge is like the air we breathe, without it you suffocate.”
Gregor’s gloating smile, the smile t
hat Tristan couldn’t see from the angle he was sitting at, could be heard in his voice.
Tristan watched as the boy went from the wide eyed horror and fear of being unable to speak to a desperate and gasping suffocation. He fell to his knees. His hands clawed at his mouth, leaving nail marks, red and bleeding, at his neck. They reached out to grasp the air and grabbed at his own throat as he gagged on the very air he dragged into his lungs as though on water.
Gregor’s voice seemed amused now. “I warned you there are consequences. You should not come to my library unless you bring knowledge with you, little one, unless you know how to find your way.” Gregor seemed to Tristan like a child pulling the legs off insects, cruel and greedy for pain. “You shouldn’t have come to my library. There are many doors here and you seem to have got lost.”
The boys body was convulsing on the floor, his eyes were strained wide in bloodshot panic. He was choking in silence, drowning in a room full of air. Tristan watched in horrified fascination as the boy’s movements became weaker.
The elderly librarian calmly leant over the desk to observe his twitching form. Then Gregor reached out and picked up the phone. “Laura, is Elizabeth there with you?” he sounded urgent and concerned. “I have a boy who has had a fit and collapsed,” he was bordering on panic. Calm breath as though holding it together. “We need a first aider here, immediately. In fact, call an ambulance. I am very worried about him. There seems to be some difficulty breathing.” Rising panic. “I’m afraid, if we don’t act quickly, we could lose him,” dramatic sob.
Gregor picked up his walking stick and slowly shuffled around to the now motionless form of Joshua. Tristan could see a thin stream of frothy saliva finally escape the boy’s lips and trickling down the side of his face. Gregor prodded the boy’s body with his walking stick and knelt beside him, his back covering Tristan’s further view of the body. And Tristan thought he heard a faint whisper carry across the library, “Now, let’s be having you, my little miscreant. Come to me.”
Tristan was unable to process the events he had seen.