The Library in the Wall

 I remember that there was a hole in the wall. The place was old, on the brink of being derelict. We were called in on contract work, hired by the renovators to make an initial survey and do an extermination run on any minor pests. My buddy was a surveyor, and at the time I was running an exterminator’s. I didn’t really do the kill work myself, but since Eric had asked me to come, I came.

It was ancient, pre-war I think? Fifties at the latest, but probably forties or thirties. No one had lived there for at least twenty-five years, and let me tell you, it looked it! The yard was weeds, not a blade of grass to be seen, thistles and dandelions. First surprise was when we were cutting through to reach the door.

It was a jungle, I can tell you that, but that wasn’t the surprise. We were ready for poor maintenance, but what we weren’t expecting was the mint. Yep, mint, great big bushels of it, running all around the house. The smell was lovely, it even covered up some of the rot-stink in the building itself.

Anyway, once we got through that, there it was. Probably was a nice place when it was built, but that timber was not having a good time with the damp. Hell, even the door was too rotten for the lock. You put the key in, and the door just fell apart. We just shrugged, since it made our job easier.

Inside, y’know, you’d probably think since the door was so bad that the inside would be bad, right? No, though, it was surprisingly clean, eh? The floors were a bit holey, and the staircase had seen better days, but hey, twenty-five years is a long ass time for a place to be empty. A bit too much mold to be livable, but not bad.

Anyway, left my buddy in the foyer to start his survey while I took two tanks of pyrethrin and my big hand-torch down to the basement. The house being so old, I was surprised the floors hadn’t caved in. Basement wasn’t flooded, or even damp! Saw hide nor hair of a roach while I was down there, but… well, the place was a little… uh… labyrinthine.

Heh, love that word. Labyrinthine. Always loved Greek mythology, ever since I was a kid.

Sorry, where was I? Ah, the basement. Yeah, there were a lot of shelves down there, big metal ones, full of stuff. I swear, y’could get tetanus just looking at the rust on those babies. What I was worried about was mostly that the pests could be hiding just about anywhere. Shelves give ‘em a lot of hidey-holes, y’know?

I was down there maybe… an hour? Searching every nook and cranny, and honestly I don’t know how I was down there so long without seeing the hole. I mean, it wasn’t exactly small, or like… hidden, or anything. It was just there. When I did see it, I remember I was worried, ‘cause I thought it might be in a lode-bearing wall or something.

It was big, almost door-sized, but it clearly wasn’t a doorway. Nah, it looked kinda like someone had gone tunneling down there. I should’ve gone and got my buddy, he’s the surveyor, right? But did I do that? No. Dumb-ass that I am, I went down on in myself. It got smaller about ten feet in, I had to leave the tanks and get on my hands and knees. Not sure what I was thinking, wasn’t like I could pretend I was doing my job without the roach poison, but it is what it is.

So there I was, crawling down a tunnel like some dumb toddler, when suddenly it opened up. I must have gone… maybe half a football field? Like sixty yards? At that point my knees hurt, damn. I stood up and cracked my back, then looked around. And boy, was there a lot to see!

So at first I thought it was more of the same basement, right? There were shelves all over the place, but it didn’t take me long to see that they weren’t the same at all. They had books all over them, and other things too, like loose papers and scrolls and sh… sorry, no swearing, right? Scrolls and stuff.

Sorry? No, I didn’t see any roaches in there, why? I mean, I think there might have been termites, there were some holes in the shelves and stuff. Only bug I actually saw was a moth that flew into my torch. What? I don’t know what kinda moth, do I look like a bug guy? Oh right. Well, I could kill ‘em without knowing too much about them.

Anyway, I was talking about the library. I -think- it was a library, at any rate. There were a lot of books. I was curious, so I took a gander at them. Some of them were in English, but there were quite a few in other languages. I think I saw some Greek in there, definitely some Latin, and some Japanese, or Chinese or something. I don’t know, I couldn’t read them.

What I could read was mostly philosophy, science and other intellectual things. Theater, I think I saw a Shakespeare and a ‘Molière’. Again with the look! Just ‘cause I’m a working man doesn’t mean I don’t know nothing. Anyway, there was nothing remotely new. I think the most recent thing I saw down there was The Secret Garden.

Love that book. My mom used to read it to me when I was small. Wasn’t the most well kid myself, so I felt a real… kinship? Yeah, kinship with Colin, the sick boy. I wanted a friend like Mary. Named my daughter Mary. Told my wife it was after the blessed virgin, but begging her pardon, it was more for little miss Lennox.

So yeah, when I saw the book, I was kinda entranced. It was a weird coincidence, right? But I guess it’s not, like, the most unlikely book to find in an old library. Still, it was weird. So I took it off the shelf and opened it up. There wasn’t even any dust on it! Good thing, too, I’m not the best with dust. Sneeze something terrible.

The book was old, and I was kinda afraid to hurt it, so I turned the pages like really slowly. That was how I noticed the publication date, 1911. That’s when it came out! It was a first edition. I was like, holy crap! I’ve got real history in my hands, right? I looked at a couple other books, and sure, they were old, like some of them were handwritten, like the Shakespeare and stuff, but there weren’t any first editions apart from The Secret Garden.

It was like fate almost, my favorite book when I was a kid, a first edition and all. Mary was three, and I wanted to start reading longer things to her, and I’d thought about The Secret Garden as an option, and boom! There it was, on a job.

I didn’t want to just take it though. I mean, this was clearly someone’s collection, so I snooped about a bit more to see if I could find an exit. I figured anyone with a library like this had to be wealthy, right? Maybe I could trade some exterminator work for the book, or hey, I knew some construction guys that could patch the hole in the wall. I figured they’d be grateful for that, at least!

But I tell you, I couldn’t find a single exit! It was super strange, the place must have been huge, but no matter what, there was not a sign of any kind of door or staircase or what-have-you. I must have gotten turned around a lot though, ‘cause I kept finding the hole again. It was a bit creepy, to tell the truth. It was very quiet in there, and dark, of course. There were no lights or candles or anything, just the shelves with the books in ‘em.

In the end I threw in the towel. The place was so big, it wasn’t as if no one would know about it… why are you asking about that again? I told you, just a moth… yes, just one. Can I finish the story now, please? What? Har-har, very funny. Fine, may I finish the story?

Let’s see… right, it wasn’t as if it could be secret or anything. It was probably some rich folk’s private library. Now, I’m no thief, so even though it was painful, I put the book back and I left out the hole.

Now here’s the real strange part. When I got back, I realized I must have been gone a while, and I was kicking myself over having left Eric to do all the work while I was mucking about in a library. So as soon as I could stand up I started running. Must’ve been about then that I missed the pyrethrin, ‘cause I don’t remember seeing it after that.

At any rate, I got out of the hole and rushed up the stairs. I was full out of breath when I got back to the foyer. Eric was still there, and when I apologized for being so long, he gave me a funny look. We joke around a lot, him and me, I mean, what buddies don’t? But I’m not the joking type when I’m at work, and that was how he took my apology. As a joke, one he didn’t get.

Y’see, while I was sure, certain! I’d swear on my mom’ s grave I was down there a good hour or two, Eric told me I was only gone ten minutes. I didn’t believe him at first, but he showed me the time, and sure enough we’d been there maybe twenty minutes total, half of which was spent hacking at weeds and mint.

So I took him down to the basement to show him the library, asking him as we went if he knew where it might be. It hadn’t occurred to me at the time, but the house wasn’t the most central. It was a little ways off one of the old highways, all by itself in the middle of nowhere. The only reason the renovators had bought it was because the land around it had been got by developers, and they wanted something to sell.

Why they didn’t just tear it down, I don’t know. Regardless, he didn’t know about a library, or even another house anywhere out there, so wherever the hole lead must have been part of the property. He was none too pleased about that. The renovators didn’t say a thing about a library, and surely they must have known, right?

Only, when we got down to the basement, the hole wasn’t there. It was straight up gone. It was by far the spookiest sh… stuff, sorry, that’s ever gone down in my life. But it doesn’t end there! I checked around the basement again, and there were bugs everywhere. I’ve seen my share of infestations, and this one was ba-ad. That was about the time I realized the pyrethrin was gone.

I wasn’t happy about that, and neither was Eric. He seemed to think it was some kinda practical joke, and he didn’t appreciate it at all. We made up later, but he was mighty mad for a while. Anyway, I had to go back home to pick up more roach-killer, ‘cause boy was I gonna need it. Luckily I didn’t live too far, close enough that Eric wouldn’t be done with his survey before I could get back, the house being big and all.

But the weirdest part of the whole thing was this: I got in my truck, and I was halfway home, when I noticed there was something in the shotgun seat. Y’know what it was? That’s right, it was The Secret Garden!

Now I was all shook up. I was one-hundred percent sure I’d left the book back in the library, even though I wasn’t sure the library was even real any more. It must have been though, cause I sure as hell didn’t buy a first edition of The Secret Garden on exterminator pay.

So there it was, the book I’d wanted for my little girl. Well, I said three hail Marys’ and chalked it up to a bit of a hallucination. I mean, there were a bunch of shelves down in that basement, maybe I just thought I’d seen a library. I must’ve found the book there.

Well, I’m not a thief, but I couldn’t bear to leave it in that basement. I figured, no-one’s gonna be missing it, the previous owners being dead and gone, so I took it, and I left it at home.

What else? Oh yeah, there was one more weird thing: when I got back to the house with more pyrethrin, the mint was all gone, except what we’d cut. I was sure that it had surrounded the whole place, but I must’ve been wrong, huh? I worked long hours back then, way too long. I was tired as hell, and I must’ve been seeing things.

Anyway, that’s the end of the story. Why’d you want to hear it? You putting it in the paper or something? If you do, leave my name off it- this whole thing’s embarrassing. The mint we cut? I took a bit, Eric took the rest. It was mighty strong stuff, I tell you what, it could ring your head like a bell if you put it in tea. Oh, you need a surveyor? Here’s his card, tell him I sent you, he’ll give you a good deal.

Well if that’s all, ma’am, I’ll take my leave. What’s that? Mary? Oh, right, I read the book to her, she really likes it. We’re teaching her to read with it. Whatever miracle preserved it in that stink-pit, I’m grateful. It’s made my little girl very happy.