Put Me On The Shelves

by Andrew Langston

Inside here, he was home.  The dark shadows that hid the far corner could be hiding anything, or anyone.  A silence, surrounding and all consuming, huddled next to him, along with authors such as Steven Kind, H. P. Lovecraft, and Richard Matheson.  The boy was young, and small for his age, a fact amplified by his oversized coat.  Ghosts were moving along other alleys turning pages of other books, creating a presence that could not be seen.  His heart was beating and his palms perspiring, but a grin on his, grin that showed every one of his crooked  teeth, showed he was content.

The moldy the third floor of the library held no secrets in the day light, however, as the boy sat in the very back ally of shelves, the clock chimed midnight, and all was dark.  He pulled out a small flashlight, the kind you would find on the front of bicycles or in emergency kits under the passenger seat of a Honda.  The small beam of light traveled over spines of books with silvery, faded letters.  The noises of the ghosts went dull and a thick film seemed to cover all of the boy's senses.  He looked from I Am Legend to The Pet Cemetery slowly, almost leaving a trail in the dust with his eyes.

Around the corner he heard faint voices coming closer, and he ducked lower and pulled his coat around him tightly.  The people would not know what to think if they found him sitting there in the dark among such horrors, perhaps they would laugh at him.  The boy stood up when the voices were gone, and a comforting cold embraced him.  He remembered a tale he had told when he was a child about a boy growing up in a graveyard, and the grin was again traced across his lips.

The boy took in a deep break, relishing in the musty scent of a thousand undisturbed books.  He felt he understood them over anything else; people, schooling, technology.  He was home with the dead and undead and forgotten and only to be remembered if someone were to pick up a copy of one of his friends.  In the dark of that library the boy fell asleep.  He drempt  of strong hands pulling him out of a crowd of flesh consuming undead.  He dreamed of stormy oceans and the horrific monsters waiting for him to fall overboard.  Then, finally, he dreamed he was in a cabin by the lake, where a man was planning to molest him then drown him in the lake, and keep it all a secret.

He was woken abruptly around two a.m. when a boy named Carl found him laying in the back alley of books.  Carl worked at the library and had been given the graveyard shift, which only exists to sweep out the last of the bums that stick around for a warm place to sleep.  Recognizing the boy, Carl shook him awake and told him he'd have to leave, the library has been closed for over three hours.  The boy pulled his coat around him and brought himself shakily to his feet, and he left the library, whispering a small apology to his friends.