Spirit World Adventures

Chapter 18 - The Library

For a moment, I just sat there. Maybe it was for eternity; how was I to know? I didn't know anything anymore. My heart felt broken. My legs were tired, my mind was racing, and I felt weak and distant from myself. This place was cruel. It was worse than Above because at least in the normal world, I knew it was ugly. I knew it was toxic and bad and I didn't expect anything different. I wore my gas mask like everyone else, went to school, played around and laughed with my nan. Life was simple, in the badness of it all. I didn't ask for anything else. But then this world, this one didn't play fair. It told me there was more. That a world could be colourful and delicious and fun and full of incredible things. And then it took it all away. Like dangling candy in front of us and then snatching it back; or worse, like biting at our outstretched fingers.

Look, I was tired. I was lonely. I was scared. Kya may have abandoned me a while ago now – again, I have no idea exactly how long ago – but I still felt an inkling of her. Like a wisp or whisper in my chest of her. Seeing her chained up, I then knew why she hadn't come to me, because she physically couldn't. What had tied her up, though, and why? Why was she so scared of me? I needed answers and the winds brushing at my back weren't giving them to me. It spoke in a language I didn't understand. And so, once I was done sulking, I got up in a fierce fury and marched. I marched. I marched. I ran. I ran.

Finally, there it was. The Institute in all its wonky glory. I needed Master Jack, right now. I yelled out his name. I yelled for Sal and Belle and Olivia and Acacia. None of them came and when I barged through the front door, I saw...books.

Hundreds, thousands, millions of them. I could never count them all if I tried. Had I somehow entered the third-floor library/office room? No, that wasn't possible, and this was definitely a much, MUCH bigger collection of books. My anger slipped away when wonder and confusion set in. What was this place? Something or someone was whispering all around me, like the wind had done but it was in all different types of voices and languages. I got closer to the books and saw chains running across some of the books; a grassy, mossy thing clinging to some others; and even a mist hanging around another section. When I got to ones I could read clearly, I saw that they each had names and dates on them.

George B. Hastings: 1804-1848

Fredrich Loch: 1810-1832

Maryanne Willis: 1829-1843

Were these...people? Real people? It reminded me of gravestones and as soon as I had that thought I shuddered and stepped back. But then Veronica the Tree's words came back to me: 'The people here are spirits, things that were once alive in the real world...' That had to be it. These are for the spirits who had died.

'Maybe there's one for my cousin, Nia,' I said aloud to the books.

'You thought it out quickly.'

My breath caught in my throat as I turned around to see something floating towards me. It was a person hovering above the ground in a kind of disconnected, weird body that was normal but not at the same time.

'What is it with things jumping out at me?'

'That's what spirits and ghosts tend to do, sweetheart, but you needn't get scared if you expect it, right?

'So you're a spirit?'

'I like the term ghost, as I'm dead and all that.' She shrugged, 'I'd say that any of the things you find in here, especially, are of the ghost variety!'

There was something chilling about the word, but she was so bubbly that I didn't feel afraid of her. Perhaps that was a mistake, considering the situation, but I trusted her.