A Library Halloween

She squeezed her coffee mug against her body, trying to keep her book bag on her shoulder as she twisted the key in the lock. The door had its own secret combination; push the key in while turning and simultaneously pulling the door toward you. It took two hands, but she didn’t want to set everything down on the wet step, so she balanced mug, lunch bag, and book bag against her body while turning the key. The coffee sloshed in the mug, as she struggled with the door, but miraculously kept from coming out and spilling down her nice yellow sweater. The door popped open. Taking her mug firmly in her hand, she walked through the door and kicked it closed behind her.

The library was totally empty and quiet. She smiled her shoulders relaxing. This was her favorite time of day, when she stood here all alone, just her and the books. They had the place all to themselves for these few hours before the library opened for business.

She walked into her office, set down the mug and book bag and clicked on her computer. The little fan inside the computer began to hum, like 1000 bees warming up for the day. She looked down at the payroll tax forms lying on her desk and sighed. Her least favorite job in the whole library, but there was no putting it off any longer. She sat down, now that the place was quiet and she had it all to herself, to get the job out of the way. She could think of a hundred jobs she’d rather be doing: purchasing books, processing books, planning programs, writing the newsletter, even shelving books, or straightening the continually messy and out of order shelves. Anything but the tax forms, the figures that needed to be done over and over, rechecked and recalculated till she had assured herself they were done right and ready to send in.

A clatter came from down in the basement. She turned her head toward the basement stairs and listened for a moment, cocking her head. When she first started working here, she’d go and investigate every bump and thump in the building. It was an eerie old building to be alone in. She’d open every closet, look in every storage area, checking to make sure she was totally alone. She’d gotten use to the old building with it’s creaks and thumps and now just stopped a minute to assure herself there was nothing unusually going on downstairs.

The elevator began to rumble and she could hear the mechanics of the machine gearing up down below the basement. It rumbled up from the downstairs, giving its characteristic ding, just before the elevator door opened outside her office. No one was inside, and the doors slowly closed again as the elevator rumbled back down. She’d been freaked out when she first started working in the building and had discovered how the elevator wandered the floors of the library of its own accord. Now it was just another quirk of the old building; regular and reassuring. She figured the machine had to get itself warmed up and moving in the morning, much like she did.

She turned back to the tax forms, but the sound of wheels rolling across the main reading room’s bare wood floor interrupted her. Now, that was decidedly not a normal sound. She pushed her chair back to investigate.

As she came into the room, she could see the handles of the book truck, over the top of the circulation desk. It was definitely rolling across the floor, but there was no one moving it.

She moved very slowly and quietly around the desk, hiding behind one of the pillars. She peeked around the corner at the rolling book cart. It seemed to be rolling by itself and then she saw him. He was about as big as the palm of her hand and he was giving the cart a push and then jumping on the leg to ride along until it ran out of momentum. His ears were long and flopped over like a dog’s. His face was a human’s in miniature. As he grinned, large pointy canines stuck out. He wore brown pants that were frayed around the bottoms, and a dirty shirt that seemed to be covered with dust.

She shook her head trying to clear her vision. The kobold caught sight of her and stared back. He grabbed a book off the cart and, carrying the book that was at least 5 times his size over his head, ran toward the New Books shelf. He started to slide the book between the others.

“Don’t do that,” she yelled racing toward the kobold. “It needs to be checked in first.” He might be a eird mythical creature, but this was her library and no one re-shelved books without checking them in!

The kobold laughed a high-pitched squeal and dropped the book, racing off toward another shelf. She picked up the book, and turned to see the tiny creature, grabbing books off the shelf and randomly placing them on the next shelf.

“No,” she said, racing after him, but he just laughed and darted away.

“Kobolds,” a chilly voice said from behind the desk, “the bane of every librarians’ existence; the source of all the missing, misshelved, and ‘re-shelved without being checked in’ books.”

She was the only person in the library. There shouldn’t be anyone standing behind her. So who was that talking? The kobold stared in the direction of the voice. He did not look happy. She wasn’t sure she wanted to come face to face with whoever could put that expression on the kobold’s face.

She turned slowly and gawked at the woman standing at the circulation desk. Her hair was in a bun, with a pencil sticking in the knot of hair. The pencil had a date stamper attached to the end, like libraries had used thirty years ago. The woman wore a high-necked white shirt, buttoned up the front, tucked neatly into a black skirt that reached midway down her calves. And she was decidedly translucent. The books on the shelf behind her were visible through her shirtwaist. A gray fog twirled and swirled within the woman’s silver outline. The ghost of librarians past looked down her nose at the kobold with obvious disdain.

“I’m amazed with all this technology,” the sweep of her hand took in the computers, DVDs, books on CD, “that you haven’t found a cure yet for Book Shelf Kobolds.”

The ghost turned at looked at the librarian. “I’m Miss Baldwin,” the ghost said, “what’s your name dear?”

Staring at the ghost, she caught a flash of color out of the corner of her eye. Something was rappelling down the bookshelf. The little figure landed on the floor near the kobold, who was still watching the ghost warily, books scattered on the floor around him. The new arrival was the same size as the kobold, dressed in brown pants, with a green tunic, and wide leather belt around his waist. He wore a red stocking cap on his head, and had pointed ears reminiscent of Orlando Bloom in “Lord of the Rings.”

“Ah, the library gnome,” the ghost murmured. “At least you haven’t lost him. I can’t imagine what your shelves would look like, if he wasn’t here.” She gave a little sniff as she ran her fingers along a row of books, checking their spine labels to see if they were in order. Her finger stopped as she pulled a book free and repositioned it on the shelf below.

The little gnome released himself from his rappelling gear and turned toward the kobold. He placed his fists on his hips and threw back his shoulders, striking a Superman pose, as he began to scold the kobold. He chattered like an angry chipmunk.

Grabbing the nearest book, the gnome checked the spine label and slipped it back onto the shelf. When he reached for the next one, the kobold jumped on him, pushing him away from the book. They rolled across the floor, wrestling with each other, landing on another book. The kobold jumped to his feet and grabbed the book by its cover, dragging it across the floor. The gnome reached for the book, grabbing hold of the back cover. They stood, the open book stretched between them, each tugging it in opposite directions.

“Stop,” she screamed rushing toward them. “Don’t tear the book!”

The kobold released the book, sending the red-capped gnome sliding across the floor. The gnome tossed the book aside and dove for the kobold again, the two tiny creatures tumbling across the floor.

She picked them each up by the scruff of the neck, holding them apart dangling between her thumb and forefinger. They continued to try to grab and kick each other as they dangled in the air, cursing each other with high-pitched screams that made no sense to her.

“Stop it,” she yelled. “No fighting.” Great she thought, staring at the two miscreants in her hands, who now hung dejectedly from her fingers, hanging their heads in what could only be little people embarrassment. I’m really losing it now. I’m breaking up fights between mythical creatures.

The ghost of Miss Baldwin hovered next to her. “They always were fighters those two, even in my day.” She looked around the library, new computers at the computer stations, the online catalog, books on CD lining the shelves, DVDs to check out covering a wall. “ Nothing’s really changed you know, ” the ghost smiled.

“It’s okay really dear, these things happen. It’s part of being a librarian.”

“These things don’t happen” she wanted to yell. “You don’t exist.”

But somehow at the moment, the ghost’s existence seemed more real than all the things she had to do on her to do list. It must be doing the taxes she thought. Or all the kids she had to tell to be quiet everyday. Or tracking down missing books. Or figuring how to squeeze one more program out of an already overloaded budget. Or maybe it was doing yet another craft involving glue and construction paper without gluing herself to everything in sight. She was losing her marbles; breaking up fights between a library gnome and a bookshelf kobold, taking advice from a long dead librarian. A vacation was definitely what she needed.

She turned back to look at the two tiny creatures in her hands, but they had disappeared. She glanced around the empty reading room, looking down each row of stacks, but no silvery ghost glimmered in any corner. She peaked under the circulation desk, but no floppy eared kobold, or pointy hatted gnome hid anywhere. She shook her head, as if clearing the happenings from her mind. Maybe she was hallucinating, but the quiet of the building settled around her. She headed back to her office, but as she walked past the children’s room she remembered story hour was today. She’d better get the craft together. She squared her shoulders and headed into the children’s room.

She wheeled the art cart to one of the small round tables and sat down on the child-sized chair. There was something about sitting in children’s furniture that always felt secure. She pulled a pair of small blunt nosed scissors, designed for children’s hands, some construction paper and glue out of the cart and began to cut out shapes. She was the least crafty person around. A craft needed to be something simple, something she could do without having to go home and take Valium afterwards.

She cut out round circles of paper and began feeling calmer. Construction paper and scissors always had that affect on her. Forget that her end product never really resembled anything. It was the act of creating it that mattered. It soothed her.

She caught movement out of the corner of her eye and without turning her head saw the gnome climb the art cart. He picked up a pair of scissors, bigger than he was, and holding them carefully over his head jumped onto the table. He began to cut out different shapes in an assortment of colors, a few snips of his scissors producing a wide range of forms.

She picked up the glue and began to make her sample. The glue came out in a big glob and ran off the construction paper, falling on the table. She placed the cut out on the center of the paper. Glue squirted out from under the edges getting on her fingers as she patted the circle into place. Covered with glue now, she wiped up the glob of glue from the table with one of her fingers and painted it on a piece of green paper. Her fingers stuck to the paper. She shook her hand, but the paper refused to come loose. Her husband was right. They should have never let her out of kindergarten. Cutting and pasting was beyond her.

The kobold chose that moment to reappear, jumping onto the table and grabbing the scissors from the gnome. The two of them began pulling on the scissors, screaming their high-pitched screams at each other.

“Stop it,” she yelled and even shocked herself with the loudness of her voice echoing through the empty library. The kobold and gnome stood staring at her.

“Now, now dear,” the ghost materialized next to her. “You mustn’t raise your voice in the library.”

She dropped her head into her hands and realized she’d glued her hands to her hair. Pulling her head slowly back, strands of hair stuck to her fingers. Little pieces of construction paper dangled from her bangs, swinging in front of her eyes. Tears began to roll down her face.

The ghost shimmered in front of her. The kobold stood perfectly still, for once neither hiding, running, jumping, or screaming. The gnome walked over to her hand and patted her fingers. Climbing up her arm, he walked across her shoulder and reached up to pat her cheek, his small hand only reaching the underside of her jaw.

The ghost of Miss Baldwin took the pencil out of the bun and in a perfect arch, brought the end that bore the date stamp down onto the pieces of paper scattered across the table. She methodically began stamping the date on the little bits of construction paper.

“I know honey,” she said. “It’s not easy. But you’re the Librarian.” The ghost studied her pencil for a moment and then slipped the cool yellow number two pencil behind the librarian’s ear. “Now put the glue away. Wash your hands. Straighten your cape and get back out there. You’re the Librarian and its Halloween.”