Anabelle and the Mouse

      The librarian shot her a sympathetic smile as she closed the door. This wasn’t the first time Anabelle had been locked in with her studies, and it was unlikely to be the last. There was something both serene and disconcerting about being alone in here. The quiet, the dim lights, the soft hum of the air conditioner when it cycled on – these Anabelle found comforting. But she couldn’t let her thoughts wander, or she would overthink the nook she sat in into a tomb. 

           “I’ll get out one day,” she told herself as she shifted in the hard wooden chair. “This is not my final resting place.” She had often studied late during the last three semesters, but no other class had prompted so many late nights as the creative writing course she was currently struggling through. Her muse, she had concluded, must be a night owl.

           The creaking of the well-worn chair echoed off the floor and bounced around in the vaults of the ceiling. Anabelle paid it no mind – this too was a familiar sound – but suddenly there was more than sound bouncing off the ceiling.

           She looked up from her work just in time to see a small gray object falling toward her. It landed on the desk in front of her with a squeak. The mouse seemed to be just as confused as Anabelle, and they stared at each other, motionless, for several seconds. 

           The mouse ended the stare-off and placed his paws on her open book. Anabelle couldn’t help but laugh at the irony. Her literature book was open to a chapter titled “On Fairy Tales.” She half expected the mouse to start speaking to her.

           The mouse did not speak, but he did begin to squeak and run in circles. To her amazement, however, he stayed on the table, running and jumping across the pages of her book. Finally, Anabelle extended her hand to her little visitor. The mouse jumped into her hand, then ran to the corner of the desk, then back to her hand, then back to the corner. He paused at the corner and looked at her.

           “Do you need help getting down?” Anabelle asked. “I guess the floor is a long way for you.” Never mind that he had just fallen from the ceiling. Perhaps he was too traumatized by that fall to attempt another leap.

           She held out her hand at the edge of the desk and the mouse scurried into it. After lowering him gently to the ground, Anabelle expected him to dart off to his hole somewhere among the shelves. Instead, he repeated his earlier performance, this time scurrying back and forth between her feet and the staircase a few feet away.

           “Really?” she exclaimed with a laugh. “You want to go back up?” Suddenly she looked over her shoulder. Her voice boomed in the quiet, and now she felt quite self-conscious. If anyone could see her right now they would surely think her sanity had slipped away completely. She wondered how many others were sitting in asylums right now due to late night fiction writing. Probably not many.

           Ignoring her sanity concerns, she scooped the little gray fur ball up and stepped onto the first step. After a moment’s consideration, she released him onto the banister. He ran confidently up for about two feet, then toppled off with a squeal. 

           Anabelle picked him up. “Are you okay? Here, I’ll carry you.” He chittered as she climbed up the first flight of stairs, but stayed calmly in her hand. When she tried to set him down at the top of the first flight, the mouse stayed in her hand.

           “All right, to the third floor we go,” Anabelle said. “This is as high as I can take you, little buddy,” she said when they reached the top. She lowered her hand to the ground again.

           The mouse stepped down from her hand this time and sniffed, his whiskers twitching as his head turned left, then right, then back to the left. The smell to the left seemed to appeal to him more, so he started in that direction. Anabelle stood at the top of the stairs and watched, thinking he could find his way home from here. But as she turned to go back down the stairs, she heard small protesting squeaks.

           Turning back, she saw the mouse staring up at her. He squeaked twice more as he pawed the floor. She had already taken two steps toward him before it occurred to her that she was literally being led around by a mouse. She shrugged, shook her head, and followed her new friend across the polished wooden floor.

           The mouse led Anabelle on the least straight path possible, down one bookcase and along another, sniffing at each intersection for the right way. Finally they arrived at an old but otherwise unremarkable door in the corner. The door was obviously original to the library.  While the lower floors had undergone multiple renovations in the library’s multi-century existence, the third floor received significantly fewer visitors and had therefore generally been overlooked by decorators and designers.

           It was imperative to the mouse, however, that not only he but Anabelle as well pass through the door. He could have easily squirmed underneath, but instead stood up on his hind legs and pawed at the door, earnestly squeaking his request.

           “I can’t, it’s locked,” Anabelle said sympathetically. She tugged lightly on the tarnished brass handle to show the mouse she was telling the truth.

           But the door was not locked. As soon as the handle was depressed, it gently swung in a few inches, creaking on its hinges. The mouse ran confidently inside, but Anabelle paused. “I’m not sure I’m supposed to be here,” she said, more to herself than to the mouse. Her first worry was of betraying the librarian’s trust, but soon she was imagining the old floorboards giving way and dropping her to her death (or at least a couple broken legs). She shook her head. “I’m sorry,” she told the mouse. “You’ll have to go the rest of the way on your own.”

           Anabelle reached out to pull the door shut, but before she could do so the mouse ran back to her. Perhaps it was her imagination, but his squeaks sounded like pleas for help as he stood again on his back legs and pawed at her sneaker. She sighed. People always told her she fell for every sob story, but she hadn’t ever really believed that to be a problem. But even she was disappointed in herself this time. A mouse? Really? Was she truly about to risk bodily injury and her reputation for the whims of a mouse?

           She reached for her phone in her back pocket, thinking she would take a video of her current situation. If nothing else, she could show it to the librarian when she confessed to her misdeeds the next day. But her pocket was empty, and she now remembered that her phone was on the table two stories below her. She could have gone back for it, but the mouse wouldn’t have understood and might not wait for her. 

           She pushed the door further open and peeked inside. A corridor no more than fifty feet long led to another door. The windows forming one side of the triangular roof were old and dirty, but they let in plenty of moonlight to light the passage. Anabelle took a deep breath, let out one more sigh, then stepped through the door. 

           She took each step with more confidence than the last. The floor felt solid beneath her feet, and she wanted to get to the other end before she had time to overthink what she was doing. She stopped at the door, noticing a change in the mouse’s behavior. Instead of leading her confidently, he cowered behind her right foot. 

           The conservative part of her brain hoped that the door was locked. Her curiosity was now stroked too, however, so she pulled on the handle expectantly. The door opened toward her, scraping against the floor inside.

           The silence was shattered by the frenzied flapping of wings. Anabelle instinctively covered her face with her arms. A moment later, a cloud of bats rushed past her. She would have panicked, but wonder won out as she looked behind her at the bats forming ranks in the corridor. They milled about for a minute, then disappeared seemingly into thin air.

           She heard them again a moment later, flying about in the vaults of the ceiling. Looking up, she saw that the wall she had just walked along did not reach all the way to the roof, allowing plenty of room for creatures possessing the gift of flight to come and go as they pleased. As the bats grew quiet, she looked down to check on her friend. This time she did panic. The floor at her feet was empty. 

           Anabelle looked down the hall, frantically scanning the floor. No luck. She thought to call out to the mouse, but realized she hadn’t given him a proper name. She shifted her foot to check the shadows between her legs. Nothing.

           Then she felt something fuzzy brush against her ankle. Kneeling down, she carefully extracted a terrified mouse from the inside of her jeans. She set him down on the ground and gently stroked his head. “They’re gone now,” she said. “You should be safe.”

           The mouse peeked out from between her knees, sniffed the air in both directions, then cautiously approached the open door. Anabelle followed him.

           The light switch outside the door worked, illuminating the small room. Several dilapidated desks were stacked against one wall, and the floor was littered with dirt and debris.  Anabelle set one foot into the room, not wanting to disturb years of neglect. Her friend had no such reservations. He ran across the room, under one of the desks, and chittered loudly.

           Anabelle cringed as she stooped down, thinking of the havoc this was going to wreak on her sinuses. She hadn’t included losing the ability to breathe for a few days in her earlier list of things that could go wrong. But the mouse chattered on, and curiosity once again got the best of her. 

           With her face nearly touching the floor, she peeked under one of the desks. Her mouse friend was in the corner with another mouse. The two were deep in an animated conversation. Noticing her, Anabelle’s friend approached her, then returned to the other mouse, then returned to Anabelle again, just as he had done to lead her to this room. Anabelle knelt on the dirty floor to get a better look.

           With her head nearly under the desk, she finally understood the reason she had been brought all this way. The second mouse’s tail was caught under the leg of the desk. Anabelle stood up and lifted up gently on the desk. She heard skittering, then more chattering. After setting the desk back down, she looked under it again. The two mice were rolling around together, wrestling with one another much as human children do. After half a minute, they ran off and disappeared into the shadows near the wall.

           “Not even a thank you,” Anabelle said aloud, shaking her head and laughing.

           Back at her table on the library’s first floor, Anabelle tried to make sense of what had just happened. Why had the mouse fallen from the ceiling? Had he led her up to scare off the bats, then discovered that his friend was caught? Or was his whole purpose to help his friend, and the bats were merely circumstantial? She had so many questions that she knew would never be answered.

           Shaking her head one last time, she pulled her computer toward her. She still had a short story due tomorrow, but she now knew exactly what to write. The story was supposed to be fictional, but who would ever guess that the tale she had just experienced was true?