The Midnight Hour & Other Scary Stories

Quiet

When I was a boy, my grandfather Max would tell me stories of an old library. Now he was a very soft-spoken man; quiet to a fault, so it was hard for me to hear him. He also had a head of hair, so much that it covered his ears.  My grandfather said that the library was in a town whose name had been forgotten. The only living things there were the trees and grass. He told me that it was eerie because no animals would go there. My grandfather had been there though, and this was the story he told me:

My grandfather was no older than ten and had been exploring that day. He and his family lived in a little house out in the country at that time and his parents would let him go wherever he wanted. He had no idea that there was a whole town so close by to his home. He said that it was in a forest of some kind, and great big trees had grown from inside the buildings there. You couldn't see it unless you were in the forest, and near as he could tell, no one had been there for a very long time.

He was a curious sort and took his time wandering the weed-choked streets and alleys; and though he thoroughly enjoyed his romp through the woods, there was a great sense of unease in the air. My grandfather could not pinpoint the source of this, but he was well versed in imaginary things, and so he attributed the paranoia to his own unspoken fears, disregarding the presence of anything other than his own overactive mind.

By the time he came to the library his day was well into the afternoon. The great big building had been boarded up and was made of very old stone. It looked quite menacing, he told me; so much so that the eerie feeling--the kind that makes your skin prickle on the back of your neck--returned in full force. He thought to turn around then and there, but, you know how children are.  They have this innate desire to explore. So, ignoring the warnings, my grandfather found his way inside by use of a concealed stairwell off the side of the structure. This path led him into the library's bottommost layer; an archive of sorts. It stank badly in here of mold and age.

However, there was a sign that looked fresh as the day it had been hung. It read:

'Keep quiet! Policy will be enforced.'

My grandfather found this sign amusing. Why would anyone keep to themselves in an abandoned building? Perhaps there had been a time when the sign's warning was valid, but now there would be no one else to hear him, so he passed by the sign, paying it no heed.

Then, he produced a flashlight from his backpack.

It was terribly dark in the old archive, and this darkness found its way through most of the library. My grandfather told me that it was very hard to go in there, for he was very scared. In truth, he didn't know how he had been able to move on. Yet, despite his fear, he did continue and after going up a flight of well-worn, ivy-covered stairs, he emerged in the cavernous main chamber of the library.

In that gloom, there preceded small shafts of afternoon sun; by which my grandfather felt a sliver of courage return. He began his trek amongst the books, salvaging volumes left and right. There were many interesting works on those canyon-like shelves, and though he couldn't quite reach beyond the lower levels, my grandfather was nevertheless intrigued.

Yet something still felt off to him. At this point in the story, the poor man always began to tremble as though reliving this aspect of his past was not only painful but harrowing. He told me that the longer he stood in the dark-- the more shelves he scoured and the closer he came to the center of the building-- this unspeakable dread was building.

He could hear (for his hearing was much better in those days) the clatter of something wooden, hidden in the darkness. Once or twice, he had spotted strange chimes that hung from the ceiling and stairs though he could not make out what constituted, apart from old wood, their frames. It was as though a draft blew through these devices. Yet he felt no wind.