Liam's Ghost Story

Liam's Ghost Story (Chapter 4)

The surprisingly cute librarian was astonished to find someone who did not appear to be homeless waiting at the door of the library when she arrived thirty minutes before the library was due to be opened. She was hesitant to open the doors early, despite the fact that she was clearly worried Liam might freeze to death while waiting outside. She pointed out that it was a bad idea to be wearing sandals when the temperature was going to continue to be below freezing throughout the day, and Liam could not help but agree with her with his most charming smile. She did not seem to be impressed that he was weathering the cold as well as he thought she should.

Thirty minutes later, she opened the door to find him juggling five snowballs. She did not seem any more impressed with that than she did with him weathering the cold, and let him into the building without another word. He dropped the snowballs with a shrug and walked into the cramped building where he hoped he could find some answers to his mystery.

Liam loved the smell of the library. The dusty flavor of old paper mingled with the stale smells of plastic dust jackets and the older leather or the pressed cardboard of the newer hardcover books. Somehow there always seemed to be the smell of burnt plastic in the air, probably from those microfiche machines that were only ever used in horror films or detective movies for researching some newspaper article of some tragedy that somehow related to current events. Which, Liam reflected, was pretty much exactly what he was doing here too .

He could always appreciate the library for what it really was: a repository of a ridiculous amount of information that likely no one would ever really need. When he was in a place like this, he always liked to cast his mind out, to search for a book that no one had ever opened. Only once in all of his trips to the library had he not been able to find at least one book that had been neglected.

Once, in a far away place, eons ago, he lay in the arms of a woman he loved and told her how he liked to find a book that was untouched and read the first page. She had thought it was one of the saddest things she had ever heard, a book sitting on a shelf collecting dust, never being read. At the time, Liam had just laughed and said that it was just a book, there was nothing sad about an object being an object. When she had pressed him for why he made a habit of finding the neglected books and giving them attention if they were just objects, Liam did not have a good answer. It was just a superstition he maintained, just a silly rote.

It wasn't until long after she was gone that Liam had finally understood what she meant. A book was just slices of paper with ink on the pages, just a boring physical object. But the knowledge inside, the information waiting in the pages, the imagery those blots of ink could invoke, they were living. And to sit there, unused, unloved, and unread seemed tragic.

With a shake of his head, Liam banished those thoughts of happier times. He felt he had to go through his ritual before searching newspaper articles (probably on microfiche) for the fire he was interested in. Taking a breath through his nose, Liam concentrated on the feel and the flavor of the books around him. Walking with his eyes closed, Liam could feel the spines of the books nearest to him, and could feel the touch of those who had last brushed the covers and pages with their gazes.

Walking this way, feeling his way to a book that had not been touched, Liam opened his eyes and was surprised to find a copy of Sun-Tzu's translated The Art of War. Usually the first untouched book he would find would be something like The Economics of Greece in the 1830's or some other rubbish. This old book was a paperback, dusty and looked to be well read. But from what Liam was picking up, the book had not been touched in at least a decade.

Squinting at the book, Liam concentrated, trying to pierce the veil of time to find out who had last touched this book. After a few tense minutes of Liam staring at the book and the book sitting passively, he had to surrender. Either time decided against giving Liam any additional information, or the book had been left alone long enough to eliminate any mental echoes the last mind that had touched it left.

Liam shrugged and pulled the book off of the shelf, flipping the thing open to the first page. Though he had never read the book himself, he was familiar enough with what the thing was about to know what to expect.

Turns out Sun Tzu was a pretty smart guy for being around 2000 years ago. Liam decided to hang onto the book for now. After all, you never knew when you would need to know a little more about war.

The microfiche was boring in comparison to the long dead Chinese man.

Liam tuned his mind to look for anything fire related in the neighborhood where the little dead girl had lived and flipped through the microfiche about one page per second. Anything that caught his eye he stopped and read fully.

Perhaps five hours later, Liam finally found the article he felt would help him put the ghost to rest.