The Librarians ...and the Sleepwalking Caretaker (Budapest Mysteries - part 2)

The Lonely Lonesome Caretaker

Jenkins opened his eyes and sighed. Once again, he hadn't woken up in his bed. This time, he was standing next to the travelling device. The back door was glowing, a sign that it was still active. The Librarians and their Guardian hadn't returned from London yet. Jenkins yawned. He was still very tired. Il had been a few days now since he started waking up in various locations of the Library in the middle of the night and he had come to the conclusion that he was sleepwalking. To the best of his knowledge, this was a first in his long life. His best guess was that it had something to do with the Librarians leaving the Annex a few months ago. Jenkins had actually enjoyed being alone again, resuming his experiments, cataloguing and testing artefacts. After a while, he had started to think about the young Librarians. He followed their progresses through the clipping book, noticing how cases would appear and disappear. A feeling of pride accompanied every solved case. The Librarians also called him occasionally, asking for advices. Then, the calls stopped and that's when Jenkins realised that he missed them. Flynn had sent him a postcard, mentioning how much fun he was having exploring the world with Eve.

At that point, the Caretaker had felt the emptiness in his life even more accurately. He decided that he needed an occupation that would prevent him from thinking about them and therefore focused on the projects he had neglected since the Librarians entered in his life. He closed the clipping book and stopped checking on the cases.

Jenkins tried to remember when he had actually started to walk in his sleep. The first time he woke up in a different place than his bedroom dated back a week ago. He had found himself in the main room, a book about Arthurian legends in his hand. He didn't think much of it at that time. He put the book back in its shelf and went back to bed. Since then, he had been waking up every night, once in his lab, then in the library. As time went on, he was feeling increasingly more tired every morning as if he didn't get enough sleep at night. When the Librarians came back, he naively thought that everything would be back to "business as usual". Alas, it seemed that his condition hadn't really improved. Worse, he wasn't feeling the least relieved that they were all back.

"What's wrong with me?" He muttered to himself before deciding that drinking tea before bedtime didn't help at all.

His mind wandered to the clipping book. Colonel Baird had been surprised to find it closed. He didn't think much at the time, but now he wondered if the Library was punishing him for not caring enough about the Librarians and their Guardian.

"I'm not Judson," he said out loud. "I didn't ask for any of this."

He didn't expect any answer, of course, but he hoped that he would soon be able to resume a good night's rest.

The Caretaker was about to leave the room when the back door started to glow intensely, a sign that someone was about to walk through it. The team probably solved the case in London. Jenkins wondered if they had found the missing Flagons, and more importantly, if they had managed to identify who stole them and for what purpose. He suddenly regretted his lack of curiosity about the matter. Usually, he would have performed a small investigation on his own, trying to gather as many information about the objects as possible. He was so tired that it didn't even cross his mind.

He decided that he should for the Librarians who would probably want to tell him all about their adventure and came closer to the door, mentally preparing a welcome sentence.

The words died on his lips as his eyes opened wide when he saw who had come through the door:

"You?!"