Be Careful What You Read After Dark

Words have meaning--but do they have life? Can they actually leap off a page to take you on adventures--even those which you don’t want to go on? 

      Berlin, Md. historian John Simpson, a long-time friend of mine, called me one Friday and excitedly asked me to meet him at the back door of the Berlin Library at 4:15, right after closing. 

     I couldn’t figure out why he wanted to meet at the library and why not during regular business hours in this public place where nobody would interrupt our private discussion? Also, the library probably was far less “public” now anyway because of pandemic-limited capacity requirements.

     In any event, John, a library board trustee, insisted that the meeting had to be held after closing. My curiosity spiked so I decided to take him up on his “offer.” I went to the Harrison Avenue door and knocked three times as he instructed. The sound of my knocking echoed through the empty library and, shortly, John opened the door to the darkened interior with a creaking sound rivaling those in most of the Hitchcock films I grew up with in the 60s.

    We sat down at one of the long reference room tables and he opened James Paterson’s latest mystery and threw it down in front of me. Without saying a word, John pointed one of his arthritic fingers to one of the most gory murder scenes in the latest Alex Cross mystery.

     “Read the first paragraph,” he commanded. Just as I did so, a purple haze enveloped the interior of the library and transported us across downtown Berlin to Route 50 and down Racetrack Road to an abandoned farmhouse next to a greenhouse that barely stood up against the weather.

    The door of the house creaked open and a hand suddenly appeared at my back and pushed me inside. I looked around and found that John not only had joined me but his hand had come out of the darkness to get me more involved in his creepy mystery tale.

    “I came to the library last Saturday to do some reading,” John whispered in the pitch darkness, “and, suddenly, this cold chill came over me. Then, when I opened the Paterson book I just showed to you, what looked like a bookmark with a note on it fell out of the book. Didn’t know where the note came from, but it instructed me to return to the library after hours for further instructions. The incident peaked my curiousity though, and I figured I would bring in ‘reinforcements’ to see if I was just going crazy in my old age or would this weirdness happen again and go further. That’s when I thought of you.”

     “Thank’s alot. Couldn’t you let it rest or find other ‘reinforcements’ to become partners in  your strange explorations of the occult? Whatever brought us here can’t have a positive experience in mind for either of us.”

      Just then a chilling breeze blew over us. Of course, you would expect plenty of breezes in a farmhouse breathing its last, but the breeze seemed completely centered on the two of us while the rest of the house seemed unbelievably and comfortably warm.

      Then I suddenly felt a tap on my shoulder. Didn’t come from John, because he had both hands at his side. I turned around and a dark silhouette grabbed me by the shoulder and motioned with its other hand for me to follow it. Another eerie form did the same to John. We couldn’t escape. Looked like we had no choice.

     Our “hosts” pushed us toward the half-destroyed opened back door of the house. They motioned for us to follow them to the abandoned greenhouse to the left of the farmhouse. There we found a large hole in the ground. In the hole we found what looked like a treasure chest we had seen in many pirate movies. 

     The shadowy form with me motioned for me to open the chest. With a rusty hammer that just happened to be laying on the greenhouse floor I pried upon the chest and looked at its contents. I reached into the chest and found a stack of papers bound by a red ribbon. On top of the stack I found a “List of Those Who Recently Met Their Makers on This Property.”  Strangely enough, myself and my friend John had our names at the top of the list.

      Our strange “hosts” then grabbed us by the collars. We thought for sure  they planned to add us to their list of the recently deceased. We ran as fast as we could out of the greenhouse and started sprinting down Racetrack Road toward Berlin with the strange figures right on our heels.

    However, in the next instant, our ghostly pursuers disappeared and the purple mist that had transported us to the farmhouse again appeared and whisked us back to the library’s back entrance. John put his key in the lock to let us back in the library, but his key did not work. We quickly got into our cars and sped to our respective houses.

      The following Monday John called me again. “As a historian I can’t let this rest, and I am sure you want to find out if someone is out to get you. We have to go back,” he said. 

     Against my better judgment, but this time in broad daylight, I met John in the library parking lot and we drove to the site of the abandoned farmhouse. To our surprise, we discovered an open field where the farmhouse and greenhouse had once stood. 

     We then drove to the Worcester County Hall of Records in Snow Hill to see if  the deeds and history of the property could shed some light on our weird mystery. County employees referred us to the building department supervisor, who said the farmhouse and greenhouse had been sold and torn down a month before. This meant the structures supposedly did not exist on the night of our strange adventure.