Behind The Locks || ONC 2024

Chapter 1: If A Ghost Haunts You Tonight, What Would You Do?

Milk-white clouds suffered patches opening up to the blue sky. The evening afterglow seized the opportunity to transpire golden-yellow rays across the immaculate town of Twelve Locks Valley.

Arielline would have called the first day of her first job impeccable, but only if she didn't have three more hours left to; locate customers, take details from library cards, check in and out books, and complete an engrossing novel she had just started.

Twelve Locks Valley was a small town with an even smaller population, so having more than thirty customers during a weekday was an achievement.

Call it beginner's luck but Arielline had her karma doing that thing.

Recently or at least in the past forty years or so, ever since the twelve locks, people deserted the town. It became a place one wouldn't solely depend on for stable finance, explaining the scarcity of customers.

The story about the twelve locks remains vague and the few elderly people in town prefer keeping it for themselves.

Anyway, who cared about soul eating demons in the mid nineties?

She turned to the following page of her book, before a gentle creak at the front door snatched her back to reality.

She straightened her back, tucked her cherry-red lips and rubbed them together gently, to even the shimmering gloss, plastered a grin on her face, and cleared her throat fastidiously, twirling her chair towards the direction.

To her dismay, it was a customer leaving.

She went back to her book.

Fantasies were her favorite, with a sprinkle of romance, like a chocolate candy bar glazed with thick honey.

She could do it all day; watch the elf knight in a golden armor rescue a human and eventually fall madly and deeply in love with her while fighting against the forbidden-love culture between elves and humans, run away together, start a family, and have their happily ever after.

The thrill was like that of an enchanting song that never stops playing in one's mind.

Curfew was at ten p.m. but out of people's fright of the evil lurking behind the dark, they preferred getting home early, leaving her all by herself in the library before the clock could strike eight.

She stood on her high-heels and stretched her back from the tiring sit-down for a solid ten hours. Her bones soundly coincided by cracking.

Why wouldn't anyone return books to their rightful shelves where they had found them? Each customer was lazier than the previous one, some leaving as many as three books on the tables. Only if part of her job was to kick ass none would have left them.

She took a moleskine cover directory book and toddled for the first table.

Legends Of The Invincible. She grazed down on her book to the alphabet L. Vetting further, she found a matching name and instantly knew the shelf to locate it.

Her heels echoed as she strode for the fantasy section in the heart of the library merely next to the fiction section. On its shelf was a single-book space left. She retrieved its occupant, going back for the second casualty.

Who could have ever guessed that the principal's daughter would end up as a librarian? The apple of his eye, one and only daughter. And, damn, did he care?

She could say she didn't do it as many times as her vocals could, but he gave her a deaf ear. Mrs Sofia had gnawed into his mind and fed it with thick, black lies.

Naked Coincidence. She didn't have to check to know that it was a romance story, its book cover shed a light on its genre, so she returned it to its rightful place.

Pharaoh's Empire.

Finally, after restoring what seemed like hundreds of books, she got to the last one.

She hadn't discerned the history section during her second tour by herself nor the first one with the manager, so she went back to the blueprints.

Two steps and she was adjacent to the reception. She shoved her hand behind the antique typewriter and tapped the dry pine wood table bumping into the scroll.

The giant library must have been one of the major investment areas of the government during the early 1900's. It would have been compared to a formal five-star if only it was facelifted and updated.

Its neglection was visible through; random crevices on the ceiling, flickering chandeliers, pearled-paint walls, scratched shelves, and cracked floors. Who used traditional typewriters anymore, nor keep records in books?

She wasn't complaining, but the antiquity in the library was just not twenty first century.

She unfurled the blueprints scroll, a faint golden color reflecting on her eyes.

The history section was in the far gloom of the library. Somewhere she doubted the dim chandelier would reach.

She reached into her pocket and brought out her phone, half-heartedly committing to restoring the book to its initial habitat.

Step after another, her fright of the dark embarking as she immersed herself more into it, the sound of her heels was either getting louder or every other sound receding.

She illuminated the book sections within her perimeter, knowing clearly that the history section was a distance ahead.

The outlooking window only helped so much at night, passing a lumen of light.

Navigating through profound darkness was not her forte, though her attempts to escape it were as frail as chasing the wind.

After a spine-tingling journey that took what seemed like a century, she got to a faded, white sticker scribbled with the word 'History'.

The books had slanted in an angle that she had to straighten them to find space for the book.

As soon as she placed it, a rowdy thud interjected. She whimpered involuntarily, shuffling her phone's light around her radius.

"Hello?"

She went unanswered.

"Is there anyone in the library?"

Silence answered.

A wild image of a horror movie flashed through her mind but her quick composure-regaining reflex purged it. Or at least she thought it did.

Creeping with heels was a terrible idea, just like her sneaking skills. They would probably sell her out to the stranger, but she had to know what it was that had fallen.

She followed the direction from which her ear had caught the sound, as stealthy as a thief in the night, swerving from one section to another until she got to the section.

A sprinkle of the chandelier's light illuminated half the section but most of what she depended on was her phone.

A dark red book was laying on the floor.

It seemed eerie and more when she gravitated closer to it.

Ghosts Live Tonight. The title was etched with a golden color and embellished with flowery drawings. Written by Sarah Tuesday. Like every other novel, less was written at the front hard cover.

An elevator pitch jotted at the bottom of the front cover slightly below the author's name sent a torrent of jitters racing down her spine. The temperatures promptly broke the record of the highest temperature, sweat jutting out of her skin recklessly.

If a ghost haunts you tonight, what would you do?