(If you haven’t already, please make sure you read Chapter One first. And yes, not only do these chapters take place one year apart from each other, but also I got busy/lazy and wrote them about one year apart. My bad. Hopefully the next chapters will come a little bit faster. #ButDontGetYourHopesUp)
CHAPTER TWO: The Ghost in the Library
One Year Later
(AKA 2010)
Sarah sat at the school head librarian’s desk. She hated it here. If she had wanted to be a librarian, she would have become a librarian. But did that matter to her boss? Apparently not! Mrs. Wright was out sick today and someone needed to supervise the 6th hour study hall in the library. Sarah had drawn the short straw.
At least the students were keeping to themselves and not fighting today.
The past couple of years had been interesting, to say the least. Never in all her years as a teacher had she seen two students so universally hated. The two boys, known as “The Taylors,” had once been mostly regular kids. They weren’t exactly popular kids, but other than with a few bullies, they had always seemed to get along with most everyone.
Until two years ago when they locked another student in the trunk of a car, knocked out the band director with a punch to the face, ruined the school’s Sadie Hawkins Dance with horribly inexperienced DJing, and then came to school the next day pretending to be oblivious to anything from the night before. If she recalled correctly, they were more concerned with telling everyone how heat lightning had frozen their video game’s clock right at 12:34 AM (which was apparently a big deal, for some reason).
After that day, it seemed almost no one was friends with the Taylors anymore. They continually got into fights with other students, some of which had been their friends before. On more than one occasion, Sarah, herself, had stepped in to save the Taylors from getting their tails whooped in the hallway between classes. She didn’t understand why a few pranks and unfortunate decisions had made the boys so universally hated, and so she took pity on them. She even went so far as to fudge the numbers a bit to allow one of the Taylors, who had been failing her class, to pass so that he could hopefully graduate on time, which he eventually did.
Unfortunately, that left the other Taylor, who was a year younger, all alone for his Senior year. Now, with no friends at all, he had to endure twice the beatings and harassments. Sarah felt bad for him, but not bad enough to do anything. He would be fine…probably.
“Mrs. Marsaglia?” one of the students asked, snapping Sarah out of her inner monologue. I suppose that’s enough exposition this chapter anyway… Sarah thought, slightly annoyed.
“What do you want?”
“Can I go to the bathroom?”
“Sure…whatever.” Sarah snapped and turned back to the desk in front of her. There was a stack of books in the “Returned” box. Bored, she thought, Might as well put these back on the shelves.
She walked passed the card catalogue to the shelves and began to put the books away. As she passed, one of the drawers silently slid open behind her and hundreds of index cards started popping out and flying into the air. Sarah continued her work, completely oblivious to the strange phenomenon.
Faintly at first, then growing louder, a single eerie musical tone rang out into the room.
“Hello?” Sarah asked aloud, puzzled. “Is anybody there?”
She turned to look behind her, but before she had turned completely, the drawer quickly slid shut and the eerie tone faded.
“Hmmm…must have been the bell,” she went back to putting the books away.
As she walked down the aisle, the eerie tone returned and some of the books shot off the shelf behind her. She turned, quickly this time, and saw the fallen books.
Somewhat frightened, she walked slowly to the end of the aisle and slowly peeked around the corner. No one there. Hmmm…What the bogg is going on in here?
Suddenly a dozen books flew off the shelf right in front of her and fell to the floor.
“Alright, that’s it!” She called, loudly, “Who’s there? Mr. Roberts? Is that you?”
She waited for a response. None came. It was silent, except for the tone, which rang continuously. She quickly ran down the aisle and around the next corner.
“Aha!”
She froze. Her eyes went very wide and her mouth dropped open in horror.
She screamed.
THE STORY CONTINUES IN CHAPTER THREE.