Scary Story

In between the bookshelves of a ghostly library is a dream for some bookworms, while it is a nightmare for others. It was mid-September, and young Alison Greenwood was looking for a new mystery that the library said they now held in their autumn newsletter. She wanted to read it before anyone else did, and to tell her patient boyfriend, Daniel Collinson all about it before he got the chance to read it. She loved the smell of paper. She adored books and reading. Of the many possible uses for a library, that was her favorite. She wasn’t bothered by the creepy, crooked backed, had-to-be-a-witch librarian, Miss Annabel Bertrand, with her long graying black hair, as if it were a new type of smoke, infecting the books, or even that boy that had to be close to her teenage years, playing pointlessly on a computer (with short brown hair and glowing, reflective, green eyes like hers). She enjoyed drawing the comparison of herself between the people that were one or two shelves away from her. Plain looks, but wild imaginations, much like a stallion that cannot be corralled anywhere but the library. That was when her pleasant moment of reflection stopped vibrantly. In the mostly quiet, usually sound environment of the library, a realistic, unimaginative, curdling scream was heard, that could only foretell of one or two things. Alison should have run away like the mouse from the cat, but she was inquisitive. That scream sounded like it was only a few shelves away from her, shelves that seemed to prompt and forewarn her to turn around. Her legs didn’t halt until they met the view of a delicate woman, sprawled out on the floor, obviously hugging a fellow mystery book, with some disastrous red liquid called treacherous blood, beginning to pool around her chest, as if any human could be a broken oozing fountain. Alison started wondering on the spot: “What were those classic, murderous ghost stories told about the library around this time of year?” Apparently, she wasn’t the only one to get a curious ghost, she heard an elderly gasp, not from the air conditioner, behind her. Thomas Winters pulled into the nearest parking spot to the Poudre River, Old Town Public Library with beaming eyes, refusing to stay focused on anything for that long. He was a detective, recently called to this book repository to begin investigating a supposed murder. First, he surveyed every car in the lot, as if he were a bird flying south for the winter. One of them could belong to a murderer. Slow breathing. Speedy heart. He had the same reaction, no matter how many bizarre murder cases that he solved. A library was an odd place to find a victim though. The Old Town Poudre River Public Library. That was one of the libraries that his wife, Maggie spent a lot of time at, with their friends, especially when he was thick on a case and she needed something to distract her, like another story in another world. That was then. This was now. He ignored the banging in his ears to observe the extensive, early Halloween decorations that this library had. Check Out Our Newest ‘Boo’ Books! Did We Scare You?, Ghostly Goblins and Spooky Stories Found Here!, Double, Double, Toss and Turn, Pages Flutter, and Fright, it Burns. Decorated with cartoon ghosts, goblins, and witches, it made him laugh, in spite of himself. He supposed this was a dramatic reaction, and he didn’t need to be there. This library, as evidence showed, loved the spooky holiday, and were sporting that in September. At the immediate moment that he entered through the door, a frazzled, witchy woman with graying, black hair, and dim blue eyes rushed out a nervous spell at him (doing anything but bewitching), “2nd to last mystery shelf. Someone killed inside my library! It was her!” Thomas squinted at her nametag that addressed her as Librarian-Annabel Bertrand, so of course she would be past nervous enough, she sounded more full of emotion than a steam engine is with coal. Next, he looked at who her long, pointed finger was accusing. The view was too innocent to honestly describe. She looked like she was trying to convict a mouse of murder. The teenage girl had light brown hair and bright, wide green eyes. The young girl was stuttering, “I-I would never. I was just the first one to find the body. I would n-never.” “Show me the body. I don’t know how this library is set up.” He broke in, his belief deepening like a pebble slowly falling to the bottom of a pond. The Librarian Bertrand grabbed his arm and dragged him to the 2nd to last shelf, mystery section where the evidence lay there in a gathering pool of blood, a distant crowd huddling full of frightened observers. If this was a scare, it was working, even for him, in his fast flowing of blood stance. Breathing the starch air felt the same as complete intoxication. Thomas went to the library the next day almost as soon as he woke up. He needed to get this case closed, and off his mind. He ignored every part of his soul that morning that told him to stay home. Ignorance is not bliss. Never fall in that trap. Librarian Bertrand was the first thing that he saw near any shelves, looking more depressed than ever, seeing the library was empty. Nothing chases people away like a factual, murderous, ghost story. She nodded, to greet him, before he departed to the deadly shelf where Sarah Dispariton was murdered the previous day. Bertrand would have guided Thomas, but wanted to avoid anything involving this. She did not wish to add anything spooky to the library that was unneeded. He understood this, and began walking himself to the haunting shelf. He almost made it, but like they say; that library is haunted and sometimes, a book can take you away.