The Good, the Bad, and the Damned

Chapter Four

I run my fingers of the dusty spines of the books. Occasionally I stop to check a title and find that I can't seem to make out quite what it says. Eventually I pick out a book at random and open it. It's written a novel, so no pictures. And it's written in Latin. I'm not sure how I know it's Latin and not Greek or some other dead language, but it does explain why I couldn't make out the titles. All of these books were written in old, long dead languages. One of them is even in hieroglyphics. 

"What are you looking for?" Alex asks. I jump. I had forgotten he was there. "Forgotten me already?" he says teasingly. 

"Of course not," I say, probably a little too quickly. "I'm looking for something to draw. Or even something to read, but none of these books are in English."

"No wonder this place is so dusty," Alex points out. I nod and place the book that I'm holding back on it's shelf.

"Come to me," a voice says.

"What?" I ask.

"I didn't say anything," Alex responds.

"I wasn't talking to you." 

"Oookayy." Alex turns his attention back to his homework, but I know he's shooting scared glances at me as I look around desperately for whoever spoke. I'm about to give up and accept that it was just my mind when it comes again.

"Come to me. I know you can hear me girl. Come. Don't be shy."

"Where are you?" I say. Alex looks at me in confusion.

"Okay now you're creeping me out," he says.

"No not you," I say shortly. "The voice."

"What voice? Do I need to drive you to the hospital? Specifically a psych ward?" He says.

"Don't be stupid. That voice. I know you can hear it."

"No. I really can't. Seriously, are you okay?" The voice has stopped talking. 

"Yeah. I'm fine I guess." I keep looking around the bookshelves, occasionally glancing furtively over my shoulder to find nothing and no one but Alex, who is still looking at me like I'm crazy. I turn back to the shelf that I'm standing in front of to find that my hand has unconsciously moved upwards and is just barely touching the spine of a book. Almost without even realizing I pluck it from the shelf. It feels so right in my hands. I don't want to put it back down. I blow the dust off of the cover. It seems to be written in a mixture of Greek, Latin, and even Hieroglyphics. And the words in each are placed at random. "Any chance you speak Latin?" I ask Alex.

"De facto faciem," he responds. I look at him in surprise.

"You're kidding."

"Nope. I'm fluent."

"Why? Of all languages. Latin?"

"Most languages are rooted in Latin so it's actually the most useful to learn," he says matter-of-factly. 

"Any chance you speak Greek and read Hieroglyphics too?" I question him.

"Ah no such luck there I'm afraid. Why?" I can tell he's not really paying attention by the way his forehead is creased in concentration while he looks at his homework.

"Because this book is written in all three, alternating, at random," I respond. That gets his attention. He looks at me. 

"Why would anyone do that?"

"Maybe to keep people from reading it," I respond. I thumb through the pages, thinking. I'm not good with rules. If someone tells me not to do something, it just makes me want to do it more.

"Let me guess. You're gonna try to read it," Alex says with a sigh. I look guiltily at him.

"Wanna help?" He rolls his eyes at me and looks back down at his homework. Then, surprisingly, he smiles.

"Anything for a reason to stop doing this," he says, closing his textbook. I return his smile and sit down next to him. I grab a notebook from my backpack and he hands me his pencil. In return I hand him the book. "Keep in mind it's gonna be hard to translate without context," he warns me.

"I know. I'm just curious." 

"Whatever you say." 

For the next couple hours he points out a word and translates it for me. I write it in my notebook. When I finally look at my phone, I realize that I'm late for practice by at least fifteen minutes.

"Shit," I say. 

"What'd I do?"

"Not you. Me. I'm late for soccer practice. Any chance you'd be willing to meet here tomorrow to continue?" I ask, shoving my notebook into my bag along with the book. 

"Oh. Sure," he says, clearly startled by my sudden movements.

"Awesome. Thanks," I say, practically running out the door, and eventually out of the building. It isn't until  I get home that night that I realize I took the book from the library without checking it out, and that it hadn't triggered any alarms. Apparently even the technology  had forgotten that that little corner of the library existed. Now, telling this story, I wish I had forgotten it too.