In an abandoned library, Kasia finds that the books can speak. But some voices in the dark would rather stay buried, and one of them has already noticed her.
The abandoned library looked as if it had been left behind in a hurry and then forgotten for years. Rain leaked through the damaged roof, turning the dust on the floor into damp gray streaks, and cobwebs hung between the shelves like torn curtains. Kasia pressed closer to the cracked glass and stared into the dark interior, one hand around the strap of her rucksack.
She had come because she was curious. She had stayed because the place felt wrong.
The door gave a dry groan when she pushed it open. The sound echoed too long, swallowed and returned by the hollow room. Kasia stepped inside, set her bag down, and switched on her torch. The beam cut across leaning bookcases, warped table legs, and piles of books swollen with age. Every few seconds, a drip from somewhere above struck the floor with a sharp, lonely tick.
Then she heard it.
Not the drip. Not the wind threading through broken panes.
A whisper.
Put me back.
Kasia stopped so suddenly her torch beam jerked across the shelves. She held her breath and listened. The silence that followed was thin, waiting, as if the library itself were listening too.
The whisper came again, closer this time.
You do not belong here.
She turned slowly, scanning the aisles. Nothing moved. Then her light landed on a single book half-hidden on a lower shelf. Its cover was dark and cracked, but painted eyes stared out from it, fixed on her with unsettling patience.
From somewhere above it, another voice muttered, sharp and dry: Don’t open that one.
Kasia took one step back. A shiver ran over her arms, but she could not look away. Books should not speak. Shelves should not sound like they were breathing. And yet the room was filling with it now: low voices from the maps, a soft murmur from the globe near the far wall, the stuttering click of the old typewriter as letters sprang onto the paper by themselves.
WARNING.
LEAVE.
Kasia swallowed. "Can you hear me?"
The painted eyes on the book seemed to narrow.
Its pages opened on their own, stopping at a chapter headed: WAKE UP.
Before she could lean in to read, something crackled through the room like breaking ice. Her torch flickered once, twice, and the shadows between the shelves deepened, thickening into shapes that were not there a second ago. One by one, other objects began to shift, edging out of the darkness with a restless, metallic creak.
A book slid from the shelf beside her and fell open at her feet.
Then, from the doorway behind her, came the slow, unmistakable creak of a footstep.