Spells

Chapter 8: The Library

Arul

"Hurry up, Arul!" Abhimanyu shouted.

"I didn't ask you to come, you know! You just tagged along, and now are making me run." Arul replied, jogging to catch up.

"Well, excuse me for making time in my busy schedule to help my little brother with his homework." Abhimanyu said sarcastically.

"Liar, you just want to check out the library. You can hide it from your friends, but you can't from me. You are a NERRRRD! The greatest of all time!"

Abhimanyu rolled his eyes. "Anyways, I also have lots of pending assignments waiting at home.  So, walk faster!"

Arul stopped, "What the? My legs... They are stuck! I can't move! Carry me, O'big brother..."

"You are asking to get punched." Abhimanyu tried to frown but dissolved into laughter.

They took about ten minutes to reach the library, with Abhimanyu whining about the large and unfair homework he got for eight of them. But Arul took no notice of him, he knew when to ignore him. Instead, Arul observed the town... Everything, it seemed to him, had a touch of decay in Kuldhara. Whether it was a newly re-painted house, which would still have a dull and black blotch on its walls, ones that just ate up light and reflected nothing back. Or the sky, which was never fully bright, with a layer of smoke absorbing all the warmth of the sun. Or the trees, which on a closer inspection, would have a patch of rotting wood. Or the small portion of dead weeds in a garden. He suddenly pictured Kuldhara as an organism... Like an Algae, which continued to suck and engulf whatever it could find. And whatever it ate got marked. And whatever got marked rots.

Will I rot here too?

Arul shuddered, he didn't know what he was thinking, how his mind started wandering along these lines. It was what it was, just an old town.

The library was no different from what he had expected, from the outside anyway. Loudly it declared that it belonged to Kuldhara, with its cracked-up walls and windows, fading paint, and a rusting metallic door. It was old, but like most of the buildings in this town, it was huge, looming over their head and shielding them from the sun.

"I thought people went to a library to actually go inside," Abhimanyu said, visibly irritated by Arul's unsaid insistence on observing even the minute details. "Let's go, snail."

Arul had expected the inside to be bright, large and airy with ample reading space, and was quite disappointed to find that that wasn't the case. Light came in from two large windows on the terrace, which barely filtered down into the rows of ridiculously tall shelves. They were unnecessarily wide too, taking up most of the space, and their disorder made the place look like a complex dark maze. They were crammed with books, some about to fall, some already making their mark on the dusty floor. To make it barely sufficient for reading, dim light bulbs had been installed in a few places. But they were flickering... Slowly. Arul shivered, suddenly remembering his nightmare.

Don't they have proper electrical supply anywhere here?

A graying woman, the librarian perhaps, sat in the corner opposite of the entrance, surrounded by tables, with just a small yellow lamp to brighten her occupying area. Even with the distance between them, Arul could see her mean glare.

"Quickly finish your work. I will check out the fiction center." Abhimanyu murmured.

Arul, though expecting this, acted shocked and raised his hands to cover his gaping mouth. He asked, "What about helping me? Was that all a lie? Have you ever been honest with me?"

Abhimanyu smiled coyly, shrugged, and went towards the fiction section.

It took Arul a couple of minutes to find the history section in the library, and he considered himself a bit lucky to find it so soon in this unmarked labyrinth . For the next half hour or so, Arul remained immersed in books. Every now and then he would get up, change the book and sit down on the cold concrete floor quietly again, jotting down notes in his notebook.

A sudden sharp but low sound interrupted his routine. One couldn't mistake it for an insect, bird, or the groans of a construction machine. It was similar to the sound that a person hears when he swallows water. Just more rhythmic.

His curiosity got the better of him, he closed the book: 'Rulers and Kingdoms-Kuldhara' and got up, leaving his belongings there.

He was able to pinpoint the direction of the sound quickly, but it still took him some time to reach the source. It was on the first floor, only accessible by means of a loudly creaking and utterly battered spiral wooden stairs. This floor surpassed the ground floor in terms of darkness and disorganization. It was more cramped too, carrying almost the same amount of shelves but with only half as much area as the ground floor. Dust and cobwebs filled the space. The books were covered with layers of dirt.

It wasn't wrong to assume that this floor hadn't received its share of visitors in the last few years. Maybe even decades.

The source of the sound was buried deep within the darkness. Arul walked carefully, not wanting to touch anything. The amount of light around him decreased steadily with each step.

The noise stopped. It was sudden, and kind of unexpected. Arul stood there, alone in the darkness, eyes blinking fast while the brain brought the memories back, desperate to find the answer as to why he was standing here.

Did I just follow a noise to a deserted corner on the first floor? Who knows what kind of insects are here? There could even be a snake! It could be the one making the noise.

Panic rose within him and he wanted to get out of there fast. It was too dark to see much, but he remembered where he came from.

He turned to leave, and that's when his eyes caught something peculiar. Something different. It was a book, just like the hundreds of others there, but it was... glowing? A dull dim green light radiated from it.

Is it luminous paint?

His hand reached out automatically, and before he could order them back, they had grabbed the book. Greasy cool leather rubbed against his hand. His muscles strained to keep the book from falling. It was much heavier than it looked. The cover was black, filled with discontinuous dull green cracks.

There was no title on the cover. It was plain.

He opened it, prepared to find unearthly ancient letters crammed together to form indecipherable words filling every empty space of crumbling pages, decayed and yellowed by age. The shiny new pages surprised him. He wasn't completely wrong though, unreadable symbols neatly lined the page, along with a few tiny handwritten scribbles of English here and there.

Maybe it's an old regional language...

The sharp smell hit him unexpectedly. The book reeked!

And I touched it!

He quickly smelled his hand. No stink! He sighed in relief. He again opened the book, using just his fingertips. He sat among the dust bunnies, squinting and waiting for his eyes to adjust, focusing on the topmost scribble. It had an arrow pointing to the first sentence.

Arul held his breath and started reading.