Mr Linden's Library (As Interpreted by Laura Vance)

Written by Laura Vance

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A writing exercise from my high school creative writing class, in which we had to contrive a story from a deeply unsettling image without being able to look up what the story was truly about. After researching it afterward, I'm mildly embarrassed of the outcome, but here you go.

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Elaine was very young when her father decided to work for the elderly Mr. Linden on Benson Cove. For the years before the library incident, she had always considered Mr. Linden to be a cranky old miser, even when he would gift her chocolates after dinner and smile at her so hard that his eyes would wrinkle. She was a cautious girl that was wary of his kindness, irrefutably convinced that it was a siren meant to lure her into the hardened, black shell within. Her father merely said she was paranoid and wisely instructed her to “lighten up,” though she was never one to listen.

The two lived in a cottage on the estate that bore flowers from the cracks in the windows and hosted miles of ivy that crawled up and down its redbrick walls. Mr. Linden had given them Coronet Cottage when he discovered Mr. Thomas’ “transportation predicament,” meaning that he had to ride the 5AM train into town and walk three miles to and from the station every day. “That won’t do,” he said in his voice that sounded terribly akin to a protagonist’s in a black and white movie. “You will live here with your girl. You can garden and she will be raised on the estate just like my Jimmy. The nanny, the tutors, the works. She just has to stay out of the library, but you know all about that.” Mr. Thomas did, indeed, know all about that.

“My Jimmy,” of course, referred to Mr. Linden’s grandson, James William Theodore Linden IV, who was much too young to bear such a heavy name at the time. At two, he was just a year older than the baby Elaine Thomas, who’s hair was coming in in tight, blonde ringlets. They indeed grew up together as a brother and sister would, suffering through the intolerable tutors and scraped knees and everything the nature of childhood could throw at them. They fished in Mr. Linden’s lake every Saturday morning and stayed up late watching Sunday night cartoons. They threw food at each other and bit each other's fingers and made palaces in the orchard’s trees. It was a fairly good childhood by any means, so it wasn’t until Elaine was eleven when she first questioned the strange affair of Mr. Linden’s library.

She had grown up knowing about the library the way a child knows about a hot stovetop. Though she had never actively grazed herself on the circles of infernal medal, she saw how the water simmered on a pot and how Anika, the cook, would hiss if she wasn’t careful. Just as it was a law of the universe to not touch a hot stove, no one, except Mr. Linden himself, was allowed to enter Mr. Linden’s library. Not even Jimmy.

But there comes a time when humans begin to question the nature of the universe; when they don the hats of the philosophers before them and begin to ask the presumptuous question of “why?” Why does the wind blow? Why do we die? Why isn’t anyone allowed to enter Mr. Linden’s library?

Elaine posed this question to Jimmy on a warm, summer evening on Mr. Linden’s lake. They were stretched out like beached whales as the grass gently hugged them with every gust of wind. She closed her book and stared at him as he answered.

“I don’t know,” Jimmy told her truthfully after a moment of contemplation. “I haven’t really thought about it.”

“Really?” Elaine walked past the looming, engraved wooden doors every single day, consistently suppressing the urge to take a peek inside. “Why not?”

Jimmy sighed, closing his eyes without a care in the world. “It’s just how it’s always been, I guess. Besides, we’ve got everything else, don’t we? What do a few books matter, anyway?”

Elaine wanted to say that it wasn’t the books that mattered, rather the principle of the entire thing, but she didn’t. If not even Jimmy – who was the most inquisitive person she had ever met – cared about the library, perhaps it didn’t need to be worried about. She wouldn’t ask that question out loud for another two years, but not a day went by when she didn’t think about it.

It was September of her fourteenth year when she asked it again. The estate was overwhelmingly orange, and every inhale was crisper than an apple bite. Jimmy stood on the front porch, looking proud and smart in his Williamson Academy uniform as Anika snapped a photo of him and a beaming Mr. Linden. “Every Linden boy in the last five generations has gone,” Jimmy repeated to Elaine in an excellent imitation of his grandfather some weeks before. At the time, his eyes had welled with tears when he realized that there was no way out of his inevitable destiny at the boarding school, but there he stood in his uniform, grinning wildly with infinitesimal glances at his grandfather every few seconds.

Elaine decided that she would not feel sad. She would be happy for Jimmy and proud of him for seamlessly doing something she knew he didn’t want to do. He was going to do great things at Williamson Academy, she just knew it. She would ignore the loneliness. So, as she hugged him goodbye with the knowledge that they wouldn’t see each other for another nine months, she dared to ask him the question one more time.

“And he still hasn’t told you about the library, has he?”

Jimmy’s body tensed. “No, he hasn’t.” This time, the answer came harsher than the former air of apathy from two years before. Their embrace, for the first time in their lifelong friendship, suddenly felt awkward.

“Oh,” she said. “Why not?”

“I guess I never got around to asking.”

Once more, for the first time in their lifelong friendship, Elaine knew that Jimmy was lying to her. Just as a cloud cannot deny its own rain in a downpour, Jimmy was raining lies, and there was no denying its apparent essence as she was suddenly drenched in the reality of his dishonesty. She didn’t know what to do, so she numbly hugged him again and wished him well. Their Cadillac disappeared down the paved way, and Elaine would not see him for what would feel like a lifetime.

As a result, the girl became a victim of the unforgiving claws of boredom. One cannot so much as judge those who are afflicted with its nature, which is why it is imperative that you do not judge Elaine for going against the nature of her universe. On a foreboding October evening, Elaine was pacing outside of the library, missing Jimmy terribly and trying not to feel left behind. How angry he seemed when she asked him about the stupid room, but she was equally angry with him for lying.

Suddenly, opening the door seemed to be the key to making everything right. She would discover its secrets and unearth its unnatural hold it had on her. She would tell Jimmy everything and he would be happy again. She would discover why he lied.

It wasn’t her that did it. No, rather something unhinged and carnal that was deeply rooted in the nature of humanity. With a firm hand, she gripped the library’s bronze doorknob and twisted it. The doors moaned in protest, opening still, but nonetheless unsettling the nerves that were steadily replacing her adrenaline. Dust trickled from the twenty–foot barrier like flakes of snow on Christmas Eve. If she wasn’t so nervous, she might have smiled and spun in the midst of her imagination.

It wasn’t anything special, dark and dank and somewhat old, just as she imagined it. Ladders climbed to lofts that led to unnaturally thick, dusty books that she knew she would never be able to read. The stank of mildew overwhelmed her nose, to the point where she could almost taste the moldy essence in her mouth. And there, in the corner of the loft, stood a familiar shadow that made her heart leap from her ribcage.

“Elaine,” said Mr. Linden in mild surprise, still concealed in the darkness. Her tongue suddenly seemed too large for her mouth.

“I’m sorry,” she tried to say, but stuttering replaced her vocal cords.

“You’re here. In this library. Even though I expressly forbade it in all my years of living here.” He seemed to think for a moment. “No one has dared to disobey my one, simple command. No maids, no insistent houseguests, no one.”

She was anticipating the rage, bracing herself for the shouting, for her death. But he stood there like a phantom in a cage, simply contemplating the child before him.

“How great your curiosity must have been. How great your fearlessness. My wrath does not concern you, does it?”

Despite the terror that infected her every limb, the intense sadness about Jimmy’s lie ultimately subdued her. For once the raging storm of fear had calmed, there would be nothing but a stone–cold, gray, ocean floor of numbness that consumed her once more. It was but momentary adrenaline soon to burn out.

“No,” she said at last. She needed something to snap her out of this dreamlike scenario. This wasn’t real. It couldn’t be.

He was silent for an eternity. “Very well,” he said when she had forgotten what voices sounded like, “I will allow you to enter this library whenever you please.” She blanched. This wasn’t exactly the outcome she was hoping for. “But you cannot touch the book behind the glass, do you understand?”

In the middle of the room lay the most faded book of all, secluded by a thin shield of glass that somehow shimmered in the shadows. It disgusted her, the dust, the drab appearance of it all. She had no desire whatsoever to even graze a finger upon the thing.

“I understand,” she said.

He accepted this. “Oh, and. . .” he paused, “don’t tell Jimmy.”

To this, she said nothing and left.

Jimmy was furious when he discovered Elaine’s secret the following summer. “All those letters,” he raged, “and not a single one mentioning the library?”

“I was scared you would act like this and not write to me again,” she insisted a bit too harshly. “And I was right, wasn’t I?”

“We tell each other everything, Elaine. Everything.”

“This isn’t just something you can write in a letter!” she tried to explain. “Besides, I thought you didn’t even care about any of it. ‘What do a few books matter, anyway?’ you said.”

He shook his head, refusing to concede. “You lied to me.”

That was all it took for her to snap. “Just like how you lied to me last summer?” She didn’t mean to say it but felt as though a million pounds had been lifted from her shoulders.

Jimmy paled, looking aghast. “What do you mean?” he stammered, fearing the worst.

“When you said you had never asked about the library. I could tell you were lying to me. All this time I’ve wondered why you would keep something like that from me.”

Jimmy looked furious as he searched for words. “Did you ever consider that it might have been because I didn’t trust you?”

She had, in fact, several times. Tears welled in her eyes as she recalled the years of innocence before Williamson Academy. There couldn’t have been anything before then that would have tried their friendship or his trust in her. Had he been carrying this hardness in his heart all this time? Her soul shattered.

Rage, sorrow, regret, loss. They’re all powerful motivators; more than Elaine was prepared to acknowledge as she trudged toward the library in determination. She threw open the door and towed straight to the book behind the case. It shattered easily behind her angered fist, and she ignored the blood that ran down her wrist as she toggled the dusty book open. She did not think that perhaps Jimmy was jealous of her and envied her privilege in his grandfather’s eyes. After all, he was the one altering his life to appease the old man, and what was he receiving in return? She did not think that he was only fifteen, that he had the rest of his life to navigate his emotions. She did not think that there would be time for him to apologize. In fact, she thought nothing as darkness spread from the book’s pages and consumed her whole.