In the end - it was Rembrandt that killed me.
I always said that there should be a law limited the size and weight of books. None of these books that are too big to put on shelves normally. Oh atlases are one thing - they have their own special case. But even art books shouldn’t be so huge.
You see, I’m a library page. Don’t laugh, it’s an actual job title. We do what the librarians and clerks don’t have time to do. Mostly putting books away. Another thing we do is shelf reading. That means making sure the books are in dewy decimal or alphabetical order depending on if they’re fiction or non-fiction. Each page and some of the volunteers are assigned certain areas. For me it was primary room, children’s 700s and adult 700s. The 700s are art, music, sports, and games. Plus other things like knitting, sewing, and how to draw or paint. It’s the art and photography books I hate the most. They’re HUGE. I mean some must be close to a yard long and another two feet wide. It’s stupid how big they are. If people want to see every tiny detail let them go to a museum or use a magnifying glass. Stop punishing library workers with these monstrosities!
Anyway, it was defiantly the Rembrandt book that did me in. Not just it’s size and weight but the way it hit my throat. Talk about your painful paper cuts.
That’s the problem with working in a library in California - sooner or later you’ll be stuck in there during an earthquake.
I’m really getting ahead of myself, aren’t I?
It’s like this - there I was, early morning. I work 8 am - noon four days a week but I always get there a half hour early because there’s lots I have to do. Check in the newspaper, take care of the public computers, put up the flags, all that sort of thing. Plus the ladies love my coffee and I take pride in having it ready for them the second they enter the door. So I get there around 7:30, sometimes a little earlier depending on traffic. It was just going on 8:05 when I started my self reading. The adult 700s are what I hit that day. I’d be alive had I chosen one of the other areas. These ones start at the very end of one row with the art books. I was just putting a 708.5 after a 708.4535 when the quake struck. I tried to get out but one of those heavy books struck me on the head and knocked me down. Now I’m overweight so I don’t move fast - at least I didn’t when I was alive. I was just getting back up while being pelted by books when I slipped on one of the 698s and fell backwards. That’s when the other art books - plus the books on coins and how to draw and all that on the other side - started to strike me. Finally this huge book on Rembrandt came crashing down on my throat. Not only did the heavy cover crush my windpipe but the stiff pages sliced my flesh open from the middle to the juggler.
I don’t know how long I struggled to stay alive but I know I did. Then suddenly I was floating above myself. I looked down at my now lifeless body and realized that one of the women had come in. She was trying to take the books off of me but I think she realized I was gone for she jumped up and ran for the phone. Another came in just then and I heard them panicking. They were saying “Oh my God” and “Poor dear girl” over and over.
“They really love you,” a voice said. It belonged to an angel. I knew it was one before I even turned.
There’s really no describing an angel. Let’s just say that it’s voice is neither male or female and it’s so beautiful that it’s horrifying.
“Well, ready to go?” The angel said.
“No.” I replied, shaking in fear.
“No?” The angel seemed shocked. Maybe it never heard the word no before.
“That’s right,” I said, “I’m too scared to go. While I love God and Jesus I’m scared I’ll be sent to Hell because I didn’t go to church or because I’m bisexual. Why can’t a miracle occur and I live?”
“Because it’s your time to go.” The angel said. “Look, this isn’t murder - God knew this earthquake would hit and said this was the time you’d die. Now come on.”
“But didn’t you hear me? I’m too scared!” I’m nothing if not stubborn. I crossed my ghostly arms and said, “If I am guaranteed a spot in Heaven then I’ll go. Otherwise I’m staying right here.”
If I wasn’t already dead I think the angel would’ve killed me. It vanished in a pop and I floated there. Now people were working on me but I think they knew it was hopeless. A few times I was pulled back in. It was SO painful. You don’t know pain until you felt your soul being torn between two worlds. But I knew it was over when they took my body out and I stayed behind.
The angel returned and sighed. “Boy did you make Him mad.” It shook it’s head. “I haven’t seen God this angry since He saw what bad hosts the people of Sodom and Gomorrah were.”
“Bad hosts? I thought it was because they were homosexuals....” I said.
The angel snorted. “Oh please! Homosexuality is just something God created in order to try and control the earth’s population. Not that it’s worked but He keeps trying. It’s pedophila God hates - that and bad hosts. You weren’t going to Hell - still aren’t, but you won’t be going to Heaven either. Not now.” The angel rubbed what I assumed were it’s temples before continuing. “It’s like this - you’re going to stay here. I mean right here in this library. Until either you do an amazing good deed, there’s no longer a library here, or the Rapture’s begun.” With that it vanished.
So that’s how this all began. At 25 I was dead - and haunting a library.
At first it was great. At night I could read all I wanted - I never got tired and noticed I could manipulate the physical world. But that got a little tiring. I always loved music and tv along with books. On Friday evening I really missed my British comedies. Oh for one episode of Are You Being Served? or Keeping Up Appearances! How I miss them.... I’d even settle for the cruddy No, Honestly.
During the day I watched the patrons go in and out. It was Sunday I started to do stuff. See, we have public internet computers for adults and children. Sunday I was just cruising around, invisible, pretending I was a super hero - better then nothing. Death is so boring. Well, it was then that I spotted a teenager using the children’s internet computer - to download porn! Somehow he got around the filters. He and his friends were laughing. I realized I could kind of read minds - not much, mind you, but enough to know that these kids were doing this so the next younger person who used that computer would be bombarded with the pictures. Let me tell you they were really gross. No horse should be put thru that.
Well, I got angry. I don’t like people doing that sort of crap. So I did what any ghost would do.
I gave them all major wedgies.
Should’ve seen those brats jumping up and down when they suddenly found their underwear so far up their butts that it might as well be in their colon.
That got the attention of our children’s librarian. Boy was she mad when she saw what was on the computer screen! All three boys were held for the police. But they were allowed into the men’s room to fix their underwear.
That’s when I started to actually do stuff. You see, without me things weren’t as neat as before. I took pride in how the library looked. But all but one of my fellow pages didn’t. And one page isn’t enough to hold back the tide. I know this from experience for there was a long period I was pretty much the only one there. One older one got promoted and another who was a grandfather decided to retire. Well, anyhow the other two of the current three were just there to earn money and the third couldn’t keep up.
Well, ghosts don’t sleep. The library is closed for a while so except for janitors the library is empty for a long time. So it was only natural. I started by picking up all the loose books lying on tables. More importantly, as a ghost I could get all the “lost” books that had falling behind shelves like in the children’s primary room. The adult fiction was downstairs and unlike a lot of the shelves upstairs most are against walls. And there’s space between the walls and the shelves. There was lots of lost books.
Next I shelf read. Putting everything in perfect order by dawn. Then I shelved everything that was waiting to be put away.
Boy were people shocked come morning.
That’s how it went for awhile. They just couldn’t figure it out. After awhile I had everything so neat I had extra hours. So I started doing the cleaning the janitors wouldn’t do. Well, actually what I did is used my new ghostly powers to pile the dust from under the shelves and window sills and such in the middle of the floor. That freaked the janitors out and it took awhile before their boss calmed them down.
From then on while I still cleared out the dust and put it where it would be vacuumed up I didn’t make piles anymore.
Things got hard for awhile. The ladies were so concerned about the mysterious cleaning up that they actually got a security guard to watch the place. This got me upset. So - I started to haunt in earnest. I moved books in front of him, made spooky sounds, even showed myself as a woman in a flowing white gown.
Boy did he take off.
Course they thought he was drinking or doing drugs. He lost his job, poor guy. I felt so guilty about that. So one morning I made coffee before the ladies got there and left them a note.
“I’m sorry I scared the guard,” it read. “I just wanted some privacy to work. Love, Adeline”
Well, that freaked them out even more. After all, I am dead.
Now most of the women there are Catholic. Some aren’t but most are. So I wasn’t surprised when they brought in their various priests to bless the place. And my old boss brought in a friend who claimed to be a psychic.
So I left them another note.
“Why are you trying to get rid of me? I just want to help. Love, Adeline”
I think that got to them. Or maybe it was having my coffee. I do make a darn fine pot of coffee. Even with the cheap stuff. So I went back to doing my thing. The women started to see the advantage of it. They were no longer stuffing from allergies thanks to my cleaning up and the books had never been easier to find. A couple years past like that. The new ladies (and one man) had trouble getting use to the idea of a ghost page. Especially the man cause he was an atheist. But he sure wasn’t when he left to become a Baptist minister.
If it wasn’t for the fact I couldn’t do anything when patrons were about they wouldn’t need pages at all.
My existence was very hush-hush. Headquarters didn’t want the fact the library was haunted to get out. Even if I was a helpful ghost.
There was a lot of stuff I missed though. My dog for one. Oh how I missed her sleeping on the end of my bed or begging for food.... I missed my music, my computer, my role playing games, and of course tv. But I missed my dog the most.
I didn’t see the angel in all that time. Then one day it appeared again.
“Adeline,” it said, “God wanted you to have a chance to say goodbye....”
A bouncing, squirming bundle of dog soul pounced me and started licking my face. My little girl had died of grief. Oh, she had held on for a couple of years but they were sad years. Even though she was young even for a dog she slowly wasted away until finally she joined me in death. Only she got to go to Heaven.
“She’ll be happy there,” the angel said, “I promise you.”
I said my goodbyes then spent the rest of the day staring out the window. I cried - though I made sure to keep it quiet. We ghosts can do that. We don’t have to be noisy.
It’s hard to do a good deed when you’re a ghost in a library. It isn’t like this place is going to be robbed. Oh, I stopped the guy who kept stealing our DVDs and I scared off a girl writing racist material on the bathroom wall. But that’s not like saving a life.
Except for knowing my dog was dead things went well. I was enjoying it. I had access to all the newest books. I got things running smoothly. In the mornings before opening I even got to chat with the ladies. Two more years past. Pages came and went but I was always there.
Then word got out. Some substitute clerk told someone about me. Before long patrons came in asking where the ghost was. TV people came by. Fake and real psychics. It was the real ones that could sense me of course. I begged them to say nothing and they listened. It was months before the attention died down. Even then people came looking for the ghost. Then one night some teenagers tried to break in.
What could I do? They had just broken the door. Oh sure they’d set off the alarm but they had made me mad! So I showed myself - well, not really me but a huge fire breathing dragon. It was worth the energy expended to see the looks on their faces.
Unfortunately the kids talked and the interest hopped up again. I decided this time I’d give them all a thrill. Right there on tv I showed myself.
“Look,” I said, “this has got to stop! You people are destroying this poor library! And it has problems enough. Look at it. It hasn’t been fixed up since the 1960s. The county refuses to give us a better air conditioning because we’re not totally handicapped accessible. There’s NEVER enough room for all the books. You need to let this go. Now before you ask, yes I am the page that died in the earthquake four years ago. I’m here because I made God upset - yes, people, like it or not there IS a God. So I’m cursed to haunt this place for awhile. Now, I want you all to stop coming here looking for ghosts. You have better things to do.”
I think I got to them cause they left. Now of course more crazy people came along but they pretty much were easy to deal with. What was cool is that I shamed the county into fixing the place up. Suddenly we were bigger, had decent air conditioning, everything was fixed - even things we were unaware about.
But that wasn’t a good deed - or at least not one big enough to get me into Heaven. I was starting to think I’d never get my good deed.
Then one day it happened. A new page was shelving some of the adult art books. I really didn’t like her because she was sloppy and usually late. She just didn’t take her job seriously. She put a 710.98 before a 710.7. I growled. Silently of course. I guess she knew I’d fix it later. I have to admit the newest pages were rather lazy.
Well, anyway that’s when it happened. I felt the tremors before they got strong enough. The quake hit then - hard. People screamed and ducked under tables or ran for the doors. I watched in horror as the page before me began to be pelted with books.
I didn’t think twice as the huge Rembrandt book started to come down. I grabbed her under the armpits and pulled her out of that aisle. Then I started to get the others. Old people, kids, anyone I could find who was in danger. Protecting them as glass shattered. I did it all. For the first time in years I felt exhausted. Deep down exhausted. But I didn’t stop until I was sure everyone was safe.
The angel appeared again. I was shocked. I think the people I just saved were even more shocked. Maybe they thought they were dead anyway.
“Adeline, you’ve done it,” it said. As simple as that. “God is very pleased with you.” It held out it’s hand. “It’s time to go.”
I took a look around. I thought about it. I’d go to Heaven and be with all those who went before me. Grandparents, pets - especially my beloved little dog - even a friend of mine who had been killed in high school. I looked at all those faces - I looked at the women I had worked with for so long - before and after death.
“Tell God thank you - but I have a lot of cleaning up to do.”
I swear the angel smiled. It smiled and nodded - then vanished.
We had a few more months of psychics and psychos then it died down as it always does. One thing good thing that came out of it - I don’t have to miss my British comedies anymore.
And did you know that Heaven allows souls to come back and visit those they love? My little dog has gotten very good at helping me find lost books behind the shelves.
The End
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