The Repository

The Repository

At night, the sounds of laughter and howls of anguish could be heard through the thick, solid stone walls of the Romanesque structure that began its existence as a church in the twelfth century. It is said to be haunted.

The town of Stoneleigh was named for this medieval stone architecture, which was restored and modernized over fifty years ago. The foundation is solid. The arches and barrel vault ceilings in its interior have withstood the ravages of time to become The Repository, the library it is today.

Adaline Martin didn’t believe in ghosts. She was the first to eagerly enroll in the writing workshop for young adults, hosted by The Repository this coming weekend. Addie, as she preferred, had never written beyond the personal journals she kept throughout the years. Writing about her emotions was an escape and a catharsis for a life plagued by abuse and heartache. It was always her dream to write something beyond herself, something relevant to the world. The writing workshop offered her that chance.

The rumors of a haunted library were simply town lore in Addie’s mind. It didn’t deter anyone from using it. The town council used them as a selling point for tourists on the town website. Some of the locals claim to hear strange sounds coming from inside walls that are several feet thick, something that should be structurally impossible, but Addie’s own grandmother once made mention of them in a letter to her daughter, many years ago. As with many things in the world, time renders things like this irrelevant and unproven.

A mixture of excitement, anxiety, and impatience simmered just below the surface each day as the workshop date neared. As was her habit, Addie pulled out her latest journal, named Penelope, to pour her feelings onto the pages. Addie always named her journals. They were friends after all. They alone knew the depths of her soul.

Penelope’s blank pages stared back at her, nonjudgmental and patient as she plucked the opening words from the whirlwind that sometimes overwhelmed her.

July 5, 2025

I did it, Penelope. I signed up for the workshop. I have no idea what I will be writing about there, but I won’t abandon my time with you completely. I can’t wait to write something I can share with others. To find my voice outside of these pages. Uncle Robert strongly objected to my joining this group, but Aunt Freda secretly gave me the money so I could go. She made me promise not to tell Uncle Robert, and I certainly won’t. I know well what his anger can do to those who cross him. I don’t like lying, but I will if it means learning how to harness imagination and words to create a whole new world. Wish me luck!

I awoke on Saturday morning to unrelenting sunshine, boring a hole through my closed eyelids, as if nature were making sure I didn’t miss my workshop today. I jumped out of bed, dressing in record time. I tried to hide my excitement as I entered the kitchen because Uncle Robert always resented any kind of happiness under his roof.

He and Aunt Freda had taken me in after my parents had died in a car crash when I was thirteen. Aunt Freda, my mother’s sister, was kindhearted but submissive to her husband. Uncle Robert was cruel. The price for speaking your mind in this house was a beating. The price for telling anyone about the beating was surely death, or at least that is what he wanted me to believe. At thirteen, why wouldn’t I believe him?

Now, at age eighteen, I didn’t think he would ever do something that extreme, but he could still hurt me. I have the bruises to prove it. A slap here, a shove there, and daily obscenities were still better than the attention he gave me the first few years after moving in. He doesn’t do that any longer, mostly because I had found the nerve, at age sixteen, to threaten him with telling the school nurse about him. Aunt Freda never knew, or she pretended not to know, but she was also a target of his physical abuse. I would leave, but I have no money, no car, and no voice. The workshop promised to change that, or so I hoped.

I quickly finished my breakfast and helped Aunt Freda clean the kitchen. Uncle Robert had already left to work his weekend job.

“Go on, get moving or you will be late,” Freda winked at me and smiled at our secret conspiracy.

I stopped long enough to give her a big hug and kiss before running upstairs to grab my backpack, which contained all the friends that I had written in over the years. I didn’t dare leave them in the house, in fear of either my aunt or uncle finding them, so I took them everywhere I went. Cordelia, Marigold, Samantha, Cleo, and of course, Penelope were my constant companions.

Picking up the flyer for the workshop I had hidden inside Penelope, I felt the pleasant stirring of hope. If I could learn to write material that people wanted to read, it might be my way out of here. I knew I was pinning too much on a single weekend event, but it was the first step of the many I have yet to define. Smiling, I ran downstairs and out the back door, waving to Aunt Freda. I rode my bike into town, something I do every day for work. It’s difficult to ride over the cobblestone streets that have graced the town square for hundreds of years, so I locked my bike in front of a modern coffee shop on one of the side streets and walked the rest of the way.

Nervous excitement shifted into awe as I entered this ancient masterpiece. The ribbed vault ceilings and arched windows reflected a period of architectural elegance and reverence for the religious beliefs of the time. The Nave of the old church had been set up as a meeting room where our workshop would be held. Walking through the repository, or library as many called it, the scents of old leather and ink mingled with a musty aroma from the aged wooden bookshelves lining the stone walls and alcoves.

I could almost feel the history coming alive. The words of my ancestors, captured for eternity, for all who cared to reach out and learn about their lives, or the stories they told. Touching one of the older-looking books on the shelf as I walked by, a shiver of electricity shot through my body. The hair on my arms stood up as if the air itself were alive. It didn’t scare me. It inspired me.

The workshop was ready to begin, so I took a seat at the large conference table. There are twelve participants, including me, who signed up for this event. Marc, the instructor, was a younger man in his early thirties, I am guessing. I knew immediately he would be fun and engaging by the hat he wore. It was a black, oversized flat hat, similar to one I saw in a portrait of William Shakespeare.

For the next four hours, Marc took us through the basics of writing from the different types of genres to the creative process of fiction, non-fiction, and memoirs. He even discussed journaling. I touched my backpack tentatively, thinking of what I had written over the years, knowing I could never share that content in a group like this.

How could one share the deepest anguish, the overwhelming grief, and unresolved anger that can eat away at your soul, if allowed to live outside of paper? Some would say that shedding light on the trauma will resolve it. For me, it can only exist in print. Where my voice can rant and rave and scream at the injustice, then at the end of the day, I can close the cover on it and put it away.

As our first assignment for tomorrow, we were instructed to draft a short essay on any topic in a genre of our choice. My thoughts were swirling in a whirlpool of ideas. I couldn’t wait to go home and work on it, so much so that I hurried out of the building, got on my bike, and rode home right away. It wasn’t until after dinner that I realized I had left my backpack at the Repository. The anxiety churned in my gut, making me nauseous and on edge. Those journals were my life.

After dinner, I couldn’t take it any longer. Aunt Freda had gone outside to her garden to pick herbs for a recipe she wanted to make later. I followed her out and explained that I needed my backpack and wanted to ride back into town to get it.

“Addie, the Repository is closed at this time of night!” she exclaimed.

“I know, but there is a security officer who lives in that small addition on the back of the building. He lives there for free in exchange for watching over the place. I can ask him to let me in.”

“I guess it would be ok,” she said hesitantly. “You are almost an adult,” she smiled.

Almost an adult? Eighteen is the legal definition of adult, but I wasn’t going to argue with her now. I gave her a quick thank-you kiss and headed back into town on my bike. Stoneleigh was a small, close-knit community rarely plagued by crime, so I felt safe pedaling into town in the dark. Looking up at the towering castle-like structure of the Repository, the moonlight bathed it in an eerie glow as clouds, darkened by the night sky, floated above. I had never been inside at night, a fact that made my breathing quicken and my skin tingled as I approached the building.

I started to walk around back to talk to the security guard, when I heard a sound at that stopped me in my tracks. A faint keening wail of indescribable anguish drifted through the walls of the Repository. Standing transfixed, I also heard a subtle clamor of overlapping voices as if a crowd of people were all talking at once. I could not make out any words, but there was a sense of conflicting energies. Solemn, dramatic, heartache, and humor, an amalgam of emotions.

I moved closer so I could hear better, but the noises grew softer. Maybe the building wasn’t closed after all. I grasped the sturdy door handle and pushed, surprised that it was unlocked. The interior was dark, illuminated only by the glow of moonlight through the high, arched windows. The air crackled with unseen energy, and I could feel the hair on my head lifting with static electricity. I should have been scared, but I wasn’t. Something was drawing me inside.

I headed to the Nave to collect my backpack. I saw it lying on the table, with my friends, Cordelia, and Marigold, spilling out of the open zipper. A bolt of fear shot through me. Tears blurred my vision as if I were underwater. Someone had read my journals. Seeing them lying here, I felt naked, violated in some way.

Cordelia captured the intense grief and the cold, aching loneliness of losing my parents. She listened to my fears about my future and the changes my body was going through when I had no one else to talk to. Marigold was my escape from the sexually perverted assaults from an uncle who was supposed to take care of me. She captured the physical and mental abuse by a man who would slap a little girl across the room for making a joke about his mismatched socks. Marigold soothed the wet, snotty, sobbing tears of a young teenager criticized for body shape and ill-fitting clothes.

I sat at the table, lost in thought, staring mindlessly at the rows of books that seemed illuminated with a strange glow. The air was thick with the smell of old leather and ink. It was then that I heard the voices, one by one, as clearly as if they were sitting at the table with me. I listened, spellbound to an ethereal voice narrate quotes and stories, and emotions from the books that lived in the Repository.

“Woman must not depend upon the protection of man but must be taught to protect herself.” Susan B. Anthony 1871

“As traumatized children, we always dreamed that someone would come and save us. We never dreamed that it would, in fact, be ourselves as adults,” Alice Little.

“You must do the things you think you cannot do,” Eleanor Roosevelt

The messages were inspirational, as if the books themselves were talking to me. Then, I heard the voice change into one that sounded eerily like my own. A gut-wrenching sob of defeat erupted within the walls of the repository, not from me but from the pages of Marigold.

Dear Marigold,

I want to escape the hate that is enveloping me in this nightmare I am living. I hate that I am a prisoner of this life, this house, this man. I hate it so much I can’t eat or sleep. I have no one to talk to and no one to genuinely love me. Please send me a sign that I should go on living.

The ethereal voice answered in the voice of Anne Frank, “Where there is hope, there is life. It fills us with fresh courage and makes us strong again.” and “I don’t think of all the misery but of the beauty that remains.”

The voice changes once again, as if now talking directly to me. I listened in rapt silence.

“Adeline, you possess a gift that only a few can claim. The miracle of the Repository is that you can hear the words of those whose voice mattered, even when they didn’t believe it themselves. Throughout history, writers have expressed their truths and experiences not only for posterity but for self-preservation. They relive those stories within this ancient structure. Those who can hear the voices are the very people whose own voice has been diminished. We are not ghosts. We are the spirits of the words preserved through ink and paper. Don’t be afraid. Find your voice and share your stories with the world, then let your words reside within these walls too, so that others, with no voice, may find the strength to go forward, as you have.

And I shared my stories. My old journal friends are the keepers of my past and still hold the words that will always slice through me, but they no longer need to keep my secrets. I write almost every day at the Repository, along with a group of young people close to my age. I have found real friendship, but most importantly, I have found hope.

And I continue to hear the spirits of the words, to guide me through life.