The Librarian

The man had just quietly disappeared. He left behind the bookmark to end all bookmarks. Adam, the librarian, couldn’t find that at the moment either. It just wasn’t in the book he was fairly certain he was reading. When you have five or six going at once, it’s hard to keep track of what mood you were in last, am I right? He thought he was reading a book of Robert Frost poetry, but the marker was not there. This is the problem with working in a library. It is entirely possible that he had laid it down on a side table during a slow moment, then left it when someone asked him a question. He was usually more careful than that, though. 

We should start with the library itself. It is a rather small structure, with old brick inside and out. There’s even a fireplace that still works and is lit in the fall and winter, with big comfy chairs of all sorts for all ages placed around it. There is a coffee pot and a single camp burner for a tea kettle, on top of a little cabinet with a sink and cups. Two floors of books, no genealogy, research, or any departments like that. Fiction, non-fiction, and how-to is all that these shelves held. The hard wood floors are beat up in a loved kind of way. It’s a place where you could seriously lose time.  

When Adam first came across the bookmark, it was in a mystery left lying on one of the many side tables spread around. He took it to the check-out counter where it stayed for two weeks, waiting for someone to come get it. When no one came, he picked the book up and flipped through it. The bookmark fell out and he wondered how old it was and how it was still in one piece. As he picked up the place holder, his head filled with images of several different people, places, and scenarios. He dropped the marker as the scenes flashed through his head. There were so many that he thought he was having some kind of a stroke.  

The rectangular piece of fabric did not look special in any way except that it was completely embroidered. It was hard to tell if it was embroidered fabric, or if it was threaded together to make a fabric. Bizarre symbols took up all the space. As Adam touched it again, he suddenly felt suspicious of certain characters that he had seen last time. There were weird associations between some people and some objects. If he left behind the shock of what was happening, he imagined that this might be what a detective’s head looked like inside. Hm.  

What would happen if he placed the marker in another book? He had no idea why this notion occurred to him, but he thought he should try it. He went on a hunt to find an entirely different kind of book, just to prove to himself that he wasn’t crazy. The DIY section called his name. Yes. A book on motorcycle repair was exactly the thing. He placed the mark between two pages and looked at his watch. Maybe ten minutes would do it. He took the book with the placeholder and put them behind his counter then went to straighten up some more. While he wandered the upper floor, he noted that it was time to treat the floors again. In fact, it might be time for another complete top to bottom deep clean. Moving all the shelves and books happened every two or three years. Most general cleaning took place weekly and monthly on a more regular schedule.  

When he was left in charge of the old building, those were the only instructions he received. The library should be run as he saw fit. He was the librarian after all. The time would come when he would pass the duty on to someone else, and that would be his time and person to choose. He couldn’t imagine ever wanting to do anything else, but he supposed it was sure to happen somewhere down the road. Reflecting on what needed to be done spurred him to the desk to make a list and a schedule. Before he knew it, a half hour had passed. The bookmark looked different, but in any way he could define. Nothing happened when he picked up the book and opened it. But when he picked up the bookmark from the pages, different motorcycles flooded his head. He saw what tools to use to do certain things, different ways to do the same things on a variety of bikes and so much more. It was all just suddenly there in a way he would never have understood just reading the manual alone. 

What a way to read, he decided. Wondering how it worked when you were actually reading the book it was placed in, he thought of the latest book he had wanted to delve into. Since it was a rainy day, he lit a fire in the fireplace, started some tea, grabbed his book, not expecting anyone to wander in today. The room warmed, the kettle whistled, and Adam settled down with a good horror story. What a mistake that would turn out to be. The front door opened and in walked Mrs. Stillson. Adam put the mark in his book and got up to see what he could get for her. She didn’t get up and down the stairs as well as she used to, but she could tell you so much about the library itself that you always wanted to jump to help her out. She took a cup of tea while while he looked for the best books for her. Rarely did she dislike his choices for her. 

Once she had had her tea, looked over her prizes for the week, and told a tale of hijinks from her youth, she popped open her umbrella and toddled home across the street, and he sat down again in the big poofy armchair to continue his book. Book in hand, he removed the bookmark and almost screamed as his head filled with dark forest sounds and mists and screeches. If he worked at it, he could remember that not everything going through his head was his. Though, it did seem to be what his imagination worked up while he was reading. Sort of like a baking scenario for your head. Maybe, in the future, he would not use the ribbon for scary stories. There were so many more books to read. 

He finished that book and went to lock up for the night. On his way down the stairs to his cozy little apartment with the book he started yesterday and wasn’t quite in the mood for, he gave a fleeting thought to the missing owner of the bookmark. Getting ready for bed, and turning the overhead light off, he crawled into bed. He opened the book and removed the bookmark. How had that gotten in this book? Well, at least he had found it. Once more, he delved into the story of the librarian who went looking for someone who had left a book in his library...