The Nightmarys - By Dan Poblocki Page 0,44

I’d do a little exploring, and what do I find?” The man smiled, revealing crooked yellow teeth. “Trespassers.”

“Um, sir?” Timothy raised his hand. “Technically, we’re not trespassing. There wasn’t a keep-out sign on the door.”

“I guess common sense is a difficult concept for today’s youth,” said the man. “Come on. Time to go.”

“We’re wicked sorry,” said Timothy, heading toward the door. “We didn’t mean any harm.”

“Yeah, totally no harm meant,” Abigail whispered, trailing behind him.

When they reached the door, the man stopped Abigail. “What’s this?” he said, glancing at the framed baseball cards.

“Oh, that’s, um …,” said Abigail, but she wasn’t quick enough.

The man took the frame from her. “I recall these sitting in front of the safe on that bookshelf over there. At least, that’s where they were the last time I checked.”

The safe? thought Timothy. What safe? He glanced at Abigail. She looked as shocked as he was. The man brushed past them, crossed through the room, and slid open a small wood panel in the bookshelf. Inside the cupboard was a metal door, a combination lock plugged into its center. “Locked,” said the man, closing the door and replacing the frame. “Strange, if you ask me,” he continued, “but then again, in my opinion, this whole situation is strange. Beyond strange.” The man ushered Timothy and Abigail out the door, past the plastic curtain, and onto the landing. “You’d think after almost fifty years, the college would have left this room alone,” said the man. “They were the ones who put up this wall in the first place. But no. Now we need space. Space! We cannot waste the space! And I have to deal with the mess.”

“You mean,” Abigail said, following the man down the stairs, “the college put up that wall?”

“One of the old librarians asked them to,” said the man. “Sealed that office right up.”

“But why?” said Timothy.

Once they reached the bottom of the stairs, the man stopped and turned around. “And I’d be telling you for what reason?” He squinted at them.

“Actually,” said Abigail, “it’s kind of weird, but we’re here doing research about the man who used that office.”

“Dr. Hesselius?” said the man. Surprised, the kids nodded. Abigail pulled the microfiche pages from under her arm and handed them to him. The man flipped through them with a curious expression. “Why would you want to know about him?”

A few minutes later, Timothy and Abigail were behind the front desk, helping the man, who’d introduced himself as Gavin Engstrom, load heavy books onto a wobbly cart. Abigail had convinced Gavin to tell them the history of Hesselius’s strange office in exchange for a round of reshelving. He’d sent the blond assistant away for the moment.

Gavin leaned against the desk and folded his arms. “The plans began last year when someone up in the admissions building noticed the window anomaly.” Both Abigail and Timothy stared at him. “There were more windows outside than we could account for on the inside,” Gavin continued. “The Office of Building and Development soon rediscovered the room at the top of the stairs. As I was saying, space is quite a commodity at this institution. Of course, I’ve been fully aware of the room ever since I started here. After the library erected the wall, the abandoned office was secret staff knowledge, passed down through these last few generations, like an heirloom. I had come to the conclusion that the room had actually become invisible.”

Timothy snickered. “Well, that’s just…,” he began. Just what? Silly? A moment later, Timothy realized it wasn’t silly. After everything he’d just learned, it was actually really creepy.

“I’m assuming you know a bit about the former occupant,” Gavin went on, nodding at the pages Abigail had stacked on the book cart. “Scary story, right?” Abigail and Timothy nodded. “Supposedly, the librarians at the time knew Hesselius pretty well. They liked him. Early on, during the trial, there had been talk about whether or not Hesselius might return, so they saved his office for him, just the way he left it. But after the government put him away, no one wanted to go in there. With all the talk, people didn’t know what to believe. I think it was … Percival Ankh, the head librarian at the time, who locked up the office. And so it remained, for several years, a closed door,” said Gavin. “Hesselius died. People said they heard noises in there. Rumors of voices. Cults. Dark magic. No one even used that staircase