The Writer's Lodge

The marble flooring of the bank had such a glossy sheen you could almost examine the tinier pores on your nose by looking down at it. It was the type of floor that would protest with a loud screech if you scuffed your shoe. And it seemed to Leila that it was the type of bank that would not take kindly to shoe-scuffers.

Rounds of hushed bank-chatter bounced timidly off the roof and the clock clock of purposeful footsteps snuck out from behind giant columns. She was in the middle of mustering up some determination when an unapologetic businessman bumped her from behind as he passed. She stared after the rude man, burning holes in the back of his head. He was now about twenty paces away, but she started after him; knowing that she was only trying to distract herself from why she was really there.

To her surprise, the man stole a furtive glance back at her and hurried his pace.

Leila quickly looked over to the lengthy bank-teller queues and then back in the direction the businessman had taken. A moment later she was in hot pursuit.

Many pairs of eyes flicked to her as she darted around a column and up a broad flight of stairs. But she never warranted more attention than a once-over. Her sneakers, skinny jeans and hooded sweatshirt set her apart from the overcoat-wearing, briefcase-carrying crowd. She rounded another corner and slowed her pace. The large room into which she’d entered was deserted.

She reached the centre of the room and stopped. Sunlight poured in through a giant solitary window on one side of the building, but it didn’t reach the walls on either side of her. It almost felt like the darkness didn’t want to be penetrated.

Leila peered into gloom uneasily, beginning to wonder whether this had been a good idea. Then she remembered the alternative.

‘Anybody home?’

The room darkened and Leila quickly looked back towards the window. It was just the sun going behind some clouds.

‘Hello?’

Something vibrated in pocket – her phone. But it was something else that she withdrew: she looked down at her hip uncertainly at a small piece of folded paper.

She stood very still. The strange businessman, it had to be his doing – he must have slipped it in when he had bumped her. She bit the tip of her thumb nervously.

A shuffle of footsteps from within the darkness made her jump. She tried to keep the nerves out of her voice, ‘Look, I know you’re there… Just give it up already.’

Nothing.

I should just go. she told herself. But somehow, inexplicably, she knew that something was keeping her there.

The piece of folded paper looked old; the edges slightly tattered and yellow. It felt like what she imagined papyrus would feel like – really old papyrus. Trembling ever so slightly, she unfolded the note.

Huh?

She turned the paper over and over in her hands – it was blank.

…Until she inched ever so slightly to her left, when, before her eyes, words shimmered to life on the page one by one. Leila blinked, hard, several times. There were now three lines, but only the first seemed to be in English: “Stay inside the sun.”

Leila looked to the muted sunlight coming from the window behind her and then to the impenetrable shadows again. ‘Inside the sun…’ she said quietly, mulling it over. ‘It doesn’t say sunlight. But how could someone be inside the sun?’ She scratched her head and flicked her eyes around the room again. A presence was lurking in the shadows, she could definitely feel it.

‘Wait, “Stay”? Am I already—’ Leila’s eyes widened as she looked down at the floor. She was standing dead in the centre of a large pattern on the tiles: a depiction of an Aztec sun stone.

‘No way…’ she marvelled, stumbling back to get a better look.

A deafening, labouring groan shook the room. The force of it knocked Leila to the ground. Panicked, she watched as the darkness from either side of the room started to close in on her; the light coming through the window progressively and quickly narrowing.

She scrambled to her feet only to be buffeted over once more by a powerful blast of wind from within the encroaching walls of shadow. The paper in her hand seemed almost to glow. “Stay inside the sun.” it urged her.

Leila desperately crawled along the floor towards the Aztec sun stone. She was only a few metres away, but so was the darkness either side of her. She thought she could hear whispers carried by each gust of wind, imploring her to succumb to the inevitable.

The wind was too strong, she wasn’t going to make it in time - the whispers on the wind told her so, and she was starting to believe it. As the doubt swelled up inside her, so did the painful memory of why she was here: Stella’s deposit box.

Anger and yearning fuelled Leila as she made a final lunge for the sun. Just as she pushed off the floor she felt something propel her forward much further than she could have jumped by herself. Someone had pushed her. She landed just shy of the sun stone pattern but commando-rolled onto it. She spun around just in time to see the rude businessman smile kindly and incline his head to her before the darkness enveloped him and he was gone.

The circular sun stone pattern was staving off the dark, leaving Leila trapped inside a cylinder of light. Leila could hear the light buzzing, as though vibrating at a high frequency. It seemed to be getting louder, and the light brighter. She was curious about it, and the businessman, but couldn’t help but wish that this wasn’t happening to her. This wasn’t what she needed right now. Whatever it was.

The light became so bright that Leila had to close her eyes. There came a series of flashes, each happening more quickly than the last. With each flash came a different memory of Stella.

After a while, she felt an odd sensation, and then disappeared entirely.

Brandon adjusted the brown messenger bag on his shoulder, and pushed the revolving door with a little effort to get it moving. Through to the other side, he was at once buffeted by the dry, musty air libraries seem to order by the canister.

He stepped into the silent space, the muted echo of a chair scraping the polished wooden floor, and a muffled cough from behind aisles of dewey-decimalized tomes reminded him somehow of an old monastery, or perhaps a new monastery built to look like an old one, like, for a movie set, or maybe just so that old people could -

- he was distracting himself. Letting his thoughts run off would only make him more nervous when it came time to do what he had to do. He had to remain focused.

A deep breath did the trick.

Looking then at the near-intelligible scrap of paper in his hand, he saw where he needed to go, and approached awkwardly, running into a table on the way and causing his own, not so muted echo.

A lady sat there at his destination, a stamp in her hand frozen mid-action, her nose scrunched and head tilted up in order to peer at him through small, overly magnified spectacles. She must be at least three-hundred years old … he said to himself inwardly.

"Sixty-three." she replied.

Not so inwardly.

Blushing, Brandon approached the desk, and slid a letter across to her. 

"My n-name is B-B-Brandon." He stuttered. Not out of nerves, mind you, he just had a stutter.

"That's nice." She said, peering around him. "Sixty-three?" She said again.

A young man approached the desk and Brandon suddenly realised she had called sixty-three for a reason other than psychically hearing him. 

After helping the man with a question about some word Brandon hadn't heard before, the lady finally turned to him.

"Mmhmm?"

Managing a smile, he continued where he had left off, as she regarded the letter the same way she had him, "I'm the new staff member."

"I see." She said, placing the letter in the bin by the forefingers and dusting off her hands, then went on "When are you scheduled to begin?"

"I'm … not sure. I wasn't t-told." he replied.

The woman sighed. "Well, you'll begin now then." she said, attempting a warm smile, though unfortunately it simply looked as though she was bearing her teeth.

"G-great!" Brandon said, and realising how silent it had just become, leaned forward and returned to a whisper, "What can I do?"

"God only knows." Was the answer there. "But firstly, allow me to give you 'The Tour'." she went on, a strange sense of importance placed on those last two words, and after a few seconds she managed to lift herself out of her leather seat (on which an imprint remained that spoke of many years of not leaving that chair). Brandon hadn't time to get lost thinking again however, as she was suddenly off at a surprising speed and vanished into one of the uncountable aisles of books. He made haste grabbing his messenger bag to follow her.

"The Regeric Unfeld Private Library is unlike most other libraries firstly in that it is owned, and has been owned, by the same family ever since it was created." the woman explained in a tourguide-ish way, rushing down one aisle, then cutting to the left and into another at breakneck speed. A young girl sitting on a stack of books missed her entirely as her hair was caught in the tailwind and though she glanced up from her volume she was unable to see the cause.

"The building itself was an old castle purchased by Regeric II in 1633" she went on, "and has been kept in its original state since then. It is one of the largest libraries in the world, having over six floors of books in the main section, most of them pertaining to Metaphysics and Phenomenology, among many other more 'specialized' subjects…"

Not only did Brandon have no idea what she was talking about, he also just now realised that working in this library would mean that he had to know what lay in the space between where they now were, and the front desk. Not to mention the … how many other floors was it?

Either way, it was a lot of books.

He followed the woman to the left once more, where it seemed they were now following the room's perimeter. Large, dark stone walls made of granite or some such material towered above them, illuminated by gaudy mini-chandelliers hanging from the somewhere above at regular intervals.

They rushed past another, single corridor which branched off to the right.

"Don't worry about that corridor." She said to him, as if she knew he would stop to take a closer look, "you'll be getting very well acquainted with that later."

That sounded ominous. He thought.

Finally, they arrived at another desk. A large, mahogany or teak bench set in the corner against the wall, which - as Brandon noted - had taken a few minutes to arrive at. It looked more for official use than for library guests, being littered with stacks of papers, stamps and ink-pads, and pens, and lit with a very fine-looking gold lamp upon which hung a delicate green-glass lampshade.

The woman disappeared behind a stack of the papers, and after hearing some drawers open and close and some papers rustling somewhere, she appeared again.

"Here you are." She said, presenting him with a small badge.

He didn't have time to look at it however, as she was off again back the way they had come. He rushed after her, and soon they found themselves at the entrance to the little hallway he had seen earlier.

"I'd love to have put you to work in the main area straight away," she said, fumbling in her pockets for something, "it would be helpful to have another hand out here, and it would have been good for you to learn more about the library and its contents, but we have a rather urgent request from an old contributor to the collection, and the book he needs is in here."

Then, finding a set of old iron keys, she led him into the arched entrance and down the hall.

It was immediately quieter, as if by stepping through the portal, the air were much closer, thicker. Darkness enveloped them, and the lights hanging from the rooftop above seemed dimmer and less frequent than out in the main area.

"So." The woman finally said, stopping so suddenly at the end of the hall that Brandon almost ran into her, "You'll be working in here for the next little while." and with that, she put the keys into the wall, and with a loud click and a groan, the wall, which turned out to be a giant wooden door, rocked open and the room beyond was revealed.

She walked in first, and Brandon followed meekly. What he saw astounded him.

A towering, cylindrical space, at the top of which tinted windows in a tented roof allowed yellow light to stream down and light the room. Around the inside walls, level upon level of balconies, the walls themselves obscured entirely by countless thousands of books. This was the central tower.

Stairways led up each level, and ladders rested against the shelves allowing access to those unreachable tomes, while here on the lowest level, a fabulous, polished and coloured marble floor sprawled out ahead of them. A number of oddly placed display cases sat in amongst little piles of unsorted books. In the middle, a large platform stood with another pedestal, though this one was hidden under a large velvet throw.

Inside the display cases were odd-looking devices, instruments, art pieces and other non-categorizable curios. The nearest looked like two stone spheres covered in carvings, fused together and sitting atop a golden stand with ornate curls and twists in it.

"I regret that I don't have time to show you around the room myself," the woman said presently, waking Brandon from his musings, "but I have to get back to the front desk, there's a mountain of paperwork and some patrons seeking help, and my other staff member is sick today. You'll meet her soon I suppose."

She took a piece of paper from her pocket, and held it out to him.

"This is what we're looking for." she said, once again trying to smile but seeming to glare at him, "Find it soon, and you'll be my new favourite employee." and she turned for the door.

He looked down quickly, a single book?

"That shouldn't b-be too hard." He said with a relieved smile.

At that, she stopped and hesitated.

"Oh I almost forgot," she said, turning back and handing him the keys, "I should explain things better. The books in this room aren't ordered."

That thought hit him like a freight train. Not ordered?! exploded into his head.

"We close at five thirty, so make sure you're at the front desk by fife-fifteen to sign out. Lock this door after you too, and make sure you don't open any of the display cases." Before Brandon had a chance to register this she continued, "Also, please don't fall off the balconies, try not to touch too many pages with your hands - there are gloves in the box by the entrance, and most importantly, please don't go wandering through any other rooms in here. I don't know what's lying around but I'm sure it's nothing you want to deal with at this early stage."

Then she was heading for the door once again with an innocent, "Alright?"

"Sure… But s-sorry," Brandon stammered after her, "what's your name?"

"Lizebeth." The woman said over her shoulder, and tapped her name-tag before disappearing through the door once again. "You know where to find me if you need anything." he heard her call back from the hall as the door clanked shut.

Then there was just Brandon and the silence of the room.

It was in fact quite beautiful. The yellow light showed every particle of dust floating about, and it gave the room a rather dreamy feel. But the beauty was offset by the horror of locating the needle of a book in this haystack of literature.

He glanced at the paper in his hand. Scrawled in spidery writing were the words: "Locating the sbfistnpl. By Serafino Seumas." Clearly there was a word he couldn't make out there. The lighting wasn't the best and the handwriting was no better, and try as he might it didn't get clearer. Something looked to have been written underneath and it was getting in the way. 

He'd have to get into the light to see it properly. 

He chuckled nervously at the situation and dug his hands into his pockets while gazing up into the tower. The light was on the third level at the moment. He'd have to climb up there to get a clear look at what was written.

It was then that he felt the badge he had been given between his fingers, and took it from his pocket.

Upon it was written his name in pen: "Brandon Amery" as he expected, but then there was something curious below that. In printed letters, it simply said: "Concealer In Training".