The Witch's Collection of Forbidden Books

The ladder slid quietly across the tall, dark mahogany bookshelves as the woman held up her lantern to scan the backbones of the fiction section. Spotting and pulling down what she was looking for, she descended the ladder, her short heels clicking against it's wooden steps. 
     "If you have an eye set out for mystery, you simply cannot go without Mr. Feltz's 'Marigolds of Bronze and Silver'," she said, placing the book and lantern onto a desk settled within the bookshelf. 
     The leather cover and spine of the thick book were dark red with ornate gold lettering and floral designs. Its pages were sun-kissed and dog-eared, and the whole book was beginning to fray at the edges, all proof of much previous use. Both book and the man that picked it up were very old indeed. His wrinkled but steady hands inspected the pages before thanking the girl and placing it carefully into the bag hanging at his side. 
     His grandson told him of the young lady and of her eccentricities that morning. Supposedly, she had no interest in anything but a life totally to herself. Her appearance gave the suggestion of being in her twenties, and the silence around her house indicated she was sadly alone. Her entire house smelled of ancient wood but even older books, and everything had a specific style he couldn't place. The antique, intricate, almost dark sort of look gave the man a feeling of great calmness. The kind you feel when you're sitting in a comfortable chair drinking something warm; when the lights are off and there's nothing to see by but a lit fireplace.
     "Is there anything else you needed?" she asked him. 
     "That should be all. I read quickly, though, so I may be back soon. Thank you, dear. I'd best be on my way now. Have a wonderful night."
     The man walked up to the library doors and took a last look around before exiting. From here, he could see the whole room and all its aspects. Bookshelves took up the entire walls in front of and behind him, and clusters of various shorter ones were scattered cleverly about the room. The windows that took up the walls on the left and right were about 25 feet tall and curved at their tops a few feet before they met the ceiling. The elegant blue curtains were drawn open, letting moon- and candlelight illuminate the room. In front of the windows to his right were two faded, gold-colored armchairs, a sofa of the same color and Victorian style, and a small mahogany coffee table covered in several papers. It looked like a nice, quiet place to read and work. 
     In front of the windows on the other side of the room, deep blue velvet carpet walked up solid mahogany stairs and spiraled to the floor above; the velvet seemed to darken and spot with stars the farther up it went. He got an odd feeling looking at those stairs. His eyes flickered to the woman’s silhouette in the candlelight and, once assured that her back was turned, an invisible force began to pull his feet toward the stairs and the mystery that could lay in the room above.
    His hands ran along and admired the carved mahogany stair rail as he floated up the steps. Trying the doorknob at the top, he found the door unlocked. It slid open, revealing the startling room beyond. The air changed immediately as he stepped in. All was still, cold, and creepily uninviting. Unfamiliar herbs hung from the ceiling to dry, and something was boiling in the corner of the room. What caught his attention the most however, were the books. The shelves stood stark in perfectly strait rows in the middle of the room. Each book had a horrified or shocked face on its cover, and upon picking up and opening one, he was suddenly transported into someone else’s life. Within seconds, he had lived through all the memories of this stranger, locked inside the pages of a book that no longer seemed like a normal book at all. The very last memory he witnessed was of this room and seeing the girl from downstairs before everything went black. When he was himself again, he furrowed his brow. He didn’t understand. What kind of horrid joke could this be? Whose lives were these?
    Heels clicked gently on the floor behind him and the girl from downstairs looked at him blankly when he turned to face her. She was holding an open book, a wordless canvas waiting to tell a story. He knew what was happening now. He was going to be confined behind the prison bars of text that would relay the story of his life. He’d be able to do nothing but watch the scrolling letters and live eternity repeating all the memories he’d already lived. His limbs had begun to shake in terrified anticipation. 
    “I don’t believe I’ve added a man with such age to my collection. The closest I think would have been a fellow student of witchcraft perhaps three hundred years ago. While I doubt it will be, I look forward to seeing if your life was any more interesting than the rest.”
    With the woman’s words, she became very old. She transformed into a horribly deformed creature that was unrecognizable from her previous appearance. Her presence was now choking him, and her eyes flashed with a spark of something otherworldly. He could smell her earthy breath as she inched closer and grabbed a hold of his thoughts with a cold, grotesque hand. He couldn’t believe he would be imprisoned within a forbidden book by a witch. A witch he had trusted so easily just minutes before. Imagine! What a fate this is! He almost laughed, but the old woman smiled wickedly. Without another thought, the man’s vision suddenly went black.