The Forbidden Library

Greg had always wondered what was up there.

The staircase to the shop's third floor had a rope across it with a crude hand-drawn sign that read "Please Keep Out." It would be easy enough to bypass, but there was something about that sign – the simplicity of it, the implied faith in the honor and trustworthiness of the customer – that just made you feel too guilty to disobey it. Even though the owner and proprietor of the book store, Mr. Gainsworth, never seemed to come up even to the second floor.

"Check this out!" The voice belonged to Steve, Greg's best friend and fellow reading enthusiast.

"What?" Greg said.

Steve was only visible through the faintest crack in a bookshelf that separated the two boys. He moved around the bookshelf and came fully into view.

"Oh, sick!" He said, the wide smile on his pimply face spreading even wider, "I've been looking for this one for freaking ever!"

He held up the Batman comic for Greg to see.

"Really? Cool," Greg did what sounded to him like a convincing job of sharing his friend's enthusiasm. He really wasn't that into comics. Paperbacks were his thing, and in particular, horror paperbacks. But it was great to have Steve along when he went book shopping. Made him feel like less of a nerd, that this was his favorite thing to do – far more than going to movies, or playing sports, or going in groups to the city to hang out at the mall like all the other kids.

But there was another reason he liked to have Steve along. Less important, of course, or so he told himself. That reason was as much as he loved Reader's Corner, and its seemingly endless selection of books for the taking, it was also just a little spooky when there was nobody else there. Especially up here on the second floor.

Reader's Corner was small but must have had ten thousand books packed inside of it. They reached to the ceiling in rows of bookshelves that sat against every wall, each of which were themselves packed to the limit. And where bookshelves didn't fit, more books could be found in loose piles. Every spare inch, every possible space, and no few places where customers might have wanted to stand or just edge by this bookshelf or that mountainous book pile, was taken up by books and more books. It was a book lover's paradise.

"It's like the only one I've never read!" Steve was saying, his eyes, through the thick black-framed glasses, fixed wide and glowing on the pages as he flipped through them, his head swiveling back and forth, back and forth, "This and a couple others that are just hella expensive and hard to find. Damn special editions! Man, I wonder if Mr. Gainsworth even realizes how much this baby's worth?"

On the last words Steve fell into an excited whisper of his own, his braced teeth clenching in a wide, trickster's grin as he glanced at Greg.

"He probably won't mind," Greg said, "Valuable or not, he'll give you a good deal."

Which was the truth. Mr. Gainsworth, with his warm smile and amiable demeanor, didn't seem much concerned with money. More than once he'd knocked the price of a paperback down to fifty cents on the pretext that the cover had a tear or some other such damage. Maybe it was just because they were kids, and the old man was glad to see at least a couple of them actually reading, instead of rotting their brains with those confounded video games. (Greg knew you could get Mr. Gainsworth going long after closing on that subject).

"I don't know," Steve suddenly looked serious. He'd assumed his scheming expression.

"Don't you dare," Greg said. He knew exactly where Steve's thinking was taking him.