The girls looked at the library; it seemed normal enough at first appearance. But how could they know, for they’d never been there before? This building was the older library that was rarely used by anyone, but at the time was more popular due to the other, newer library being expanded. The old library had merely been kept open because many protested its closure and destruction. The argument was that it was part of the town’s heritage, so thus it remained.

These two girls, very good friends, needed a specific kind book for a project and the school library had not been helpful in the least. School libraries always seemed to have a limited amount and selection of everything, no matter what it was. Whether it was a novel, a book about a certain time period, whatever, it never seemed to be there. Either it was mysteriously lost or someone had it out; there was always some excuse the librarians came up with. Many would agree that they didn’t do their jobs well. Three librarians and they couldn’t keep a small library in order.

Entering into the older library was easy enough; just climbing up the small amount of steps and then opening the wooden doors was not difficult at all. The architecture of the building held an older style to it, yet once inside that seemed to dim down at least a little bit. The desk was directly to the right with a giant ‘Keep your voices down” sign tapped neatly onto it. A stack of books to return to their shelves say on a cart right beside the computer, which was a rather old model. There was no way that had Internet, much less high speed.

The girls noticed the large groups of people seated at the long tables. Many of them they could recognize from school or from in their small neighbourhood. While they recognized these people, they weren’t really associated with each other, thus no acknowledgement passed between them. They just carried on with what they were doing, as if no one had entered the library at all.

What did pass between them was a woman, though she didn’t proceed on her way, but came to a stop right in front of the two girls. It was like she appeared out of nowhere merely to startle them. She looked them up and down with her dark brown eyes, instantly judging whether they were about to cause some unwanted ruckus in her library or not. She seemed satisfied with them, though, as she cleared her throat.

“Well, how may I help you young ladies?” the librarian asked, her voice strangely un-pitched.

“We’re looking for a book about things during the 1930s,” stated the first girl, Ceara. She was a little taken aback by the sudden appearance of this woman, but was otherwise unfazed.

“The 1930s?” the woman thought considerably for a moment, bringing her right hand to her chin and obtaining a pensive gaze on her face. After a moment she proclaimed, “Follow me,” and began scurrying off in a direction leading to the back.

Ceara, along with her friend, Luella, followed after this seemingly unorthodox woman with mild hesitation, but this passed quickly. They realized that she was going to lead them to the books they needed, so no matter how strange she appeared to them, they should follow. So, thus, they followed, though they kept their distance.

The bookshelves they passed were old and tall, sitting in the little indentations that had been fixed into the carpet after all the years of their sitting there. The dulled grey carpets supported these heavy bookcases without fail, showing no signs of them being able to tip over. The books on those shelves though appeared as though they might break the shelves they sat on. Perhaps they would crash down, splintering the wood and destroying the texts that sat upon them due to the weight on the old wood. No such thing transpired though.

Solely silence ensued, apart from the scuffing of Luella’s overly long pant legs on the carpet, throughout the library. Just as one would expect from a library, though it rarely seemed to happen, or so many found. Luckily, it wasn’t one of those eerie silences that brought forth unsettling feelings; it was a normal silence in every form.

With finality, they came to a halt, though the librarian stopped so abruptly that the two teenagers nearly bumped into her. Without saying a word, she turned sharply down an aisle of bookshelves to her left and continued walking once again. Both teens looked at each other for a moment with a certain amount of perplexity before pursuing the woman once again. Her pace was much slower by that point, making it easier to do said following.

“Here,” she stopped abruptly again and turned to face the bookshelf. Sporadically, she waved her hand in the direction of the books and said, “These books will help you.” With that, and strange oddity to go along with it, she left them.

“Hey, wait a minute!” Ceara called after her, but the woman didn’t stop in the least. Sighing, Ceara turned to her friend, “How very helpful.”

“Yah, she’s strange,” Luella agreed with every entirety. She stared off in the direction that the woman had left for several moments before looking at the bookshelf before her.

Though the books were indeed neatly organized, the words on the spines of these books merely fired out at them without much indication of what they were about. Both girls wondered if these were even non-fiction books, for some of the titles were so random that they didn’t seem to fit what they were looking for at all. Perhaps the librarian had misunderstood?

Luella was about to reach up and grab a book with a title that caught her eye, however she halted when she heard her friend beckon her to her right. Lowering her arm, she walked over to her friend, wondering what it was that caught her attention. Perhaps she’d found the right section of books?

“Look at this place. It’s way too creepy,” Ceara commented, looking for the light switch.

Luella found herself following her friend into some sort of back room, which was deeply shrouded in darkness. She could hear her friend scuffing around in the darkness, trying to find some sort of light, however she wasn’t interested in that at the moment. There were books in there as well, though she wondered why they weren’t out on the shelves like the other books.

“Should we even be in here?” Luella suddenly asked, turning blindly in the direction she could hear the scuffing coming from.

“Why not? The room was open and it is part of the library,” Ceara reasoned as she flicked on the light within the room. She felt the switch click between her fingers, but was rather disappointed to find that the light within the room wasn’t very bright at all. It was insanely dull to her eyes, though it did allow her to see better than she had a moment before.

The bookshelves within that room were short, much shorter than the others out in the main library. These shelves only came up to about their waists, as if intended for children. The floor beneath their feet was tiled, not carpeted like the rest of the building, and there was a thick coat of dust covering everything. It was evident that people hadn’t been in there in a long time.

Luella looked up at the lights on the ceiling, as they only seemed to dim further, bringing back a certain amount of the darkness that had been invading the room before. Even with such, she walked over to one of the small bookshelves with curiosity, crouching to see what these shelves bore. Much like she’d done in the other room, she reached out to grab a book off the shelf, though this time she actually picked it up.

The thin book slipped out of her hand though, with the dust that covered it encumbering her ability to hold it. When she picked it up though, she saw that the cover was indeed for a children’s book. The words were so faded that she couldn’t tell was it was called and the image on the cover was much the same way. She could barely make out the cartoon-ish drawing of some sort of animal and a human together. It was automatically assumed that it was some clichéd tale of a human’s bond with their beloved pet, but she couldn’t be sure, nor did she care.

She replaced the book on the shelf and stood, placing her hands on the bookshelf, idly looking around the room. Her eyes could see that her friend was doing some exploring as well, picking up random books or whatever else she found lying around. Dusting off her hands, Luella also decided to snoop about some more, no longer caring as to whether they were allowed to be in their or not. Ceara was right, in her opinion. Why would the room be open if they weren’t allowed in there?

There wasn’t much to be seen in the room and there was no visible indication as to why the room would be so desolate. Maybe it was solely because there weren’t enough children to keep it open and clean? It was assumed by both girls that this had been a children’s room; one because of the bookshelves being the height they were with the books they had and there was also a rocking chair in the far corner of the room with a small area rug. Perhaps that was where the children sat while someone read them stories; that seemed only plausible.

Movement caught Luella’s eyes though; movement from beside her on her right, while Ceara was on her left. Her head turned quickly in the direction she saw the movement, almost doing a double take to make sure she wasn’t seeing things. What she saw though, only made her eyes grow wide with shock and potential fear.

What her eyes witnessed was a shape; a white, translucent shape that merely remained motionless at that point. This shape resembled that of a human, definitely a child or someone who was shorter, though she was sure it was a child. There was just this air to the being that it was young and immature. Her mind couldn’t escape the idea of it being a child.

Several seconds later, she saw more of them, all gathering around the first, as if the first was their leader. Their heights and sizes varied, however they all bore the impression of children and she was still sure they were children. Her eyes refused to move from their forms as she just stood their as motionless as they were, perhaps even more so in a sense that her body felt rigid.

“Do you hear that?” Ceara stood tentatively, much in the same fashion her friend was. She could see her friend standing like this, thus why she asked the question. Though, she guessed she would have asked it anyway.

At first, Luella heard nothing but her own breathing, yet she then heard another noise flood her ears. Music. It was definitely music, though hard to tell at first what the instruments were. Horns, perhaps flutes and clarinets as well. Whatever they were, she could tell that they were playing in a minor key. She’d taken music classes before and could tell without difficulty whether the tune held the upbeat, cheery sound of a major key signature or the rather creepy sound of a minor key signature. This was a minor key without a doubt and the music was very haunting indeed.

Ceara, who’d only heard the music at first now saw the figures that Luella was staring at as well. Willing her body to move, she drew closer to her friend to get a better look. These figures, she saw to be white, though more opaque than her friend saw them, though she didn’t know how her friend saw them. She only knew that Luella was just as frightened as her by these figures and the strange music that accompanied them.

“Do you think it’s them playing the music?” Luella managed, her voice dry and cracking with the fear rising with her. She saw these to be ghosts, and damn she was afraid of ghosts. Sure, they fascinated her in a sense, but now being face to face with them, she was scared.

“Does it really matter?” Ceara responded with her own question, not caring as to whether or not it was these children-like figures playing the music that swarmed around her.

“There you are,” the voice of the librarian shifted through the music, her form moving behind them to flick on some more lights. She moved the switches up and down, though the lighting situation didn’t improve any. “Hmm,” she thought aloud, “Well, what else can one expect from not using this room in a long time?”

Ceara looked over at her, her eyes still rather wide from what she’d witnessed with Luella. She could hear the music dying out now, as if the librarian’s presence drove it away. When she looked back to where the figures had been, she saw nothing. They too had vanished.

“Come now, this is no place to search for the kind of book you two are looking for,” she ushered them out of the room as she said this, having flicked the lights back off a moment before. “It used to be the children’s library, though no one uses it anymore. All the children go to the other library and even if they do come here they don’t like the books we have. So we naturally just let the room be,” she explained quickly, as if making a hasty excuse for an awful mess.

She led them back to the books they were looking for, suddenly fascinated in helping them search for a book about the 1930s. This searching had hardly commenced when they suddenly heard the most peculiar noise come from the main part of the library. A female’s scream rang out over the bookshelves and even in their still frightened state, both Ceara and Luella found themselves following the librarian back to the main part of the library.

When they arrived on the scene, they found that the girl was now spinning around, much like dancing. She was no longer screaming, though many onlookers looked insanely confounded by what they were witnessing. Many also stifled their laughter at the scene, perhaps thinking that this was all a big prank of some sort.

“What’s wrong?!” the female’s presumed boyfriend stood close to her, though he dodged her every move as she swung her body around in many intricate circles.

“She looks like she’s possessed,” Luella idly commented, the fear leaving her little by little with the mildly amusing sight of this girl spinning around.

“Possessed? Do you think it’s what we saw…?” Ceara trailed off before thinking that maybe she should back to the room and call off the spirits. She, like Luella, had guessed that they were ghosts, and this only seemed to prove it a little bit more. Quickly, she decided that she should go back to the room and began running in that direction.

Luella noted instantly that Ceara was missing from her side and she looked around to see where she’d gone. Her eyes found that she was running back in the direction they’d just come from. Hastily, she attempted to deduce what Ceara was doing. Was she going back to the room?

Luella turned, about to follow and she was really surprised to find her own voice shouting out at the same time. “NO!” the hoarse sound escaped her throat and she saw Ceara stop instantly. She could also feel all eyes on her because of her shout.

Luella felt her shout paled in comparison to what she heard afterwards though. Another voice rang out; a perilous scream, one that sounded male, crashed through the room around them, however she didn’t think anyone else had heard it. How could they have heard it, when it was so much like the music had been before; foreign and haunting, yet it seemed non-existent.

After halting her run, Ceara heard the same cry that Luella did. This cry seemed much more powerful than the one that had left Luella and it frightened her all the more. She pivoted, to get a look at the main area of the library, for after aforesaid cry, she heard no other noise from within the library. The silence, unlike the silence that had been in there previously, was not normal. This silence held an eerie, horror-film air to it. One that could send shivers down anyone’s spine.

Both girls looked at those who’d been around them, horrified to find that they were all now lying on the ground. It didn’t even cross their minds that these people could merely be unconscious as they lay where they’d fallen sporadically. The only thought that struck their minds was that they were all dead, somehow having been killed.

The two didn’t even notice fully that the white forms had returned, now surrounding around them in a much larger group. When they did notice, they then noticed the music again as well. That same, haunting music that had scared them already was now much more present in their minds. The forms of the figures became much more present as well. Faces, sinister and filled with malicious intent now lunged at them, throwing them into the same darkness that held the others. Death.

Yet, even with no one left to hear it, the music continued to play and the spirits began to dance around to their music. It was almost as if the children wanted their music to be left as it had been before the library became so populated again. Unheard.

End