Ghost Stories of a Librarian: Lost Hearts.

My version of "Lost Hearts" -- one of the scariest yarns Grampa ever penned and a personal favorite.

“…the boy, a thin shape, with black hair and ragged clothing, raised his arms in the air with an appearance of menace and of unappeasable hunger and longing. The moon shone on his almost transparent hands, and Stephen saw that the nails were fearfully long and that the light shone through them. As he stood with his arms thus raised, he disclosed a terrifying spectacle. On the left side of his chest there opened a black and gaping rent; and there fell upon Stephen’s brain, rather than upon his ear, the impression of one of those hungry and desolate cries that he had heard resounding over the woods of Answarby all that evening…”

Steve doesn’t much like libraries anymore; he won’t even go into a bookstore, if he can help it.

It wasn’t always this way; before he was sixteen, Steve liked to hang out at this neighborhood branch, looking through the books and magazines or playing games on the computers (sometimes even doing homework). And when he got his very first job as night cleaner at that very library, he was really pumped.

Not that there weren’t any snags. For starters, the job paid only a little more than minimum wage and it wasn’t full time. The hours weren’t great either, as he wasn’t allowed to start until the library was closed; after 6 most nights, sometimes after 9. He was usually alone, working by himself in a darkened building, but even that would have been okay, except for the last snag.

The librarian.

The truth was, Mr. Answarby creeped him out. He was nice enough – on the surface – but Steve felt he was always staring at him from beneath his bushy eyebrows, as if he was trying to read his mind.

“Is this your first job,” he asked, pleasantly enough. Fair question and Steve had answered politely, but then the librarian had said “So, you’ve just turned sixteen, have you?” This seemed a little strange, but again Steve answered, figuring the guy was probably just trying to make conversation.

“I’m sometimes in the building after hours, working; I hope that won’t disturb you in your cleaning?”

Steve reassured him that it was no problem, but in reality, he didn’t like it. Mr. Answarby was usually in his office, not out wandering in the book stacks, but Steve still felt like he was watching him. Not that he was a slacker, but he didn’t like the idea of anyone spying on him – and who knew if Mr. Answarby was simply checking up on his work.

But there were other times, Steve was happy for a little company.

A library can be a strange place in semi-darkness. Steve sometimes heard strange noises and sometimes saw things out of the corner of your eye, things that aren’t there when he looked at them directly.  Above all, Steve wrestled with the sense of being watched, even when he knew the librarian was not in the building.

And then there was the thing with the books. He would be vacuuming in one area of the stacks, when he’d hear loud thuds coming from another part of the shelves. It sounded like falling books – and that’s exactly what it was – for upon investigation, Steve would always find a pile of materials on the carpet, as if someone had taken an invisible hand and cleared the deck.

Strangely, this cascade of books always happened when Steve was alone in the building and (which was even worse) always in the same Dewy section: 364.1523 – the murder books.

.

The only logical explanation was some flaw in how the shelf was installed, so the next time Steve saw Mr. Answarby, he felt obligated to tell him about it.

Mr. Answarby’s interest was piqued. ‘And you say this always transpires in the 364.1523s, eh?”

“Yeah, you know, books about serial killers, stuff like that.”

“How very curious. I’ll just have to make a note in my book – so I’ll remember to tell maintenance to check the installation.”

But whether maintenance checked or not, the books continued to fall when Steve was by himself.

SCP-087: Source SCP Foundation

But the worst things were the voices. Steve had to clean several corridors in the basement and even time he went down, he could hear whispering, as if some group was holding a clandestine conversation. The first time he made a point of checking all the rooms; he found no one, but noticed that the sounds had stopped while he was exploring – and started up again as soon as he went back to work. Sometimes he’d stop dead and listen to the murmurs, trying to make out what they were saying, but the actual words remained indistinct, unknown. Eventually, he gave up trying, but always made a point of cleaning the downstairs area as soon as he started his shift.

It was mid-summer when Steve had the nightmare.

In his dream, Steve saw himself inside the darkened library; none of the lights were on, the only illumination coming from the rays of the full moon, pouring through the skylight.  But in spite of the gathering gloom, he was vacuuming in the stacks. Once more, he heard the thud of falling books, but this time when he hurried over to the 364.1523s, he found more than a pile of hardcovers and paperbacks.

A girl stood there, looking at him. Steve’s impression was that she was blond, but the thin figure was so gray, so faded and insubstantial, he couldn’t be sure. He was about to speak when he heard a strange, ethereal moaning, which he realized must be coming from this apparition.

And then she was gone, flitting madly through the stacks, as if…she could pass right through them. Steve attempted to follow her, only to find she had completely disappeared.

And then he heard the moaning again, coming from the basement. Steve went to the head of the stairs leading down to the lower level and, without pausing to think, though open the door.

The girl was standing on one of the lower steps. She was dead; she was clad only in a thin, white shirt with a large, blood-encrusted rent, revealing the jagged hole where her heart was before it had been carved out of her body. Fixing him with her dead eyes, she raised her gaunt arms but instead of moaning, she vomited forth a blood curdling shriek…

And that’s when Steve woke up…and found himself standing outside the entrance to the library.

His first reaction was one of complete bewilderment; he had obviously been sleepwalking, something he had never done before. And then, he remembered the contents of his dream – and was tempted to run home.

Instead, finding his work keys in his pocket, Steve made himself enter the building and marching to the basement stairs, though open the door…and had to stuff his fist in his mouth to keep from screaming.

A figure stood on one of the lower steps, but this one was alive.

Mr. Answarby stared up at Steve and seemed equally shocked; his face was haggard, eyes red and instead of his usual immaculate tweediness, he wore dirty, stained work clothes.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded angrily.

“Well,” Steve stumbled, “I had this dream…”

“Do you know what time it is?”

After a few moments, Mr. Answarby calmed down and Steve had no alternative but to describe his dream in detail. The librarian was clearly impressed and asked a number of questions, especially regarding the description of the spectral girl.

“I’ll have to write this down in my book,” he concluded

.

They searched the library from top to bottom (Mr. Answarby taking the lower levels) but found no trace of the mysterious girl. As they left the building, the librarian asked Steve if his parents knew where we was.

“I doubt it; otherwise Dad would be over here, looking for me.”

“I best give you a ride home then.

”

Steve demurred, not wanting to cause any more trouble, but Mr. Answarby persisted, finally giving up with “Well, be careful walking home; there are some strange people around this time of night.”

All the way home, Steve once again experienced the sensation of being watched and he wondered if the librarian might be following him at a distance in his car. At one point, crossing a large parking area, he saw two figures, a boy and girl, at the far end of the lot. They seemed to be looking towards him and something about the girl reminded him of the figure in his dream, but they were too far away for him to see them clearly. 

Steve arrived home without further incident and was able to sneak into the house without waking his parents. He was just dropping off to sleep for the second time that evening when he suddenly thought, “What was Answarby doing there in the middle of the night?

”

Steve was destined to find out.

One afternoon, Steve was dropped off some books for his mother when the librarian beckoned him into his office.

“Do you like your job, Steven?” Mr. Answarby asked and when the young man answered in the affirmative, the librarian continued “Unfortunately, I’m not sure I like the job you’re doing.”

Steve was thunderstruck, but recovered to ask what it was he was doing wrong.

“I think it would probably be better if I showed you,” Mr. Answarby continued. “You start tonight at nine, correct? Well, I’ll be here and we can go over everything then. I could take this up with the cleaning supervisor, you know, but I don’t wish to get you into any trouble. After nine, then…Good. And Steven – I wouldn’t say anything about this to your parents, your mother – delightful woman – was in here the other day and asking me if you were doing a good job and, well, I didn’t have the heart to tell her the truth. But I wouldn’t want her to think I’d told her an untruth; I’m sure you could understand that.”

And so Steve didn’t tell his parents about the assignation – he told Gino.

“I’m not sure I trust this guy, y’know, so I want you to call me on my cell around 9:15; ask me if everything’s okay and I’ll simply say Okay and then you’ll know everything’s cool.”

“And if this guy wants to know who you were talking to,” Gino said, “just tell him your old friend Gino, who you’re going meet after work – then, if he was planning on trying anything, he’ll realize he’ll have to change his plans.”

“Gino, you’re a genius!”

“Damn right I am,” Gino said modestly, “but what should I do if you don’t answer.”

“Call my folks.”

“Not the cops?”

“My folks.”

But in the end, Gino did in fact call 911.

It was dusk when Steve walked over to the library and the darkness seemed to increase the closer he came to his destination.  Library business was slow on summer nights, so Steve couldn’t see any cars in the rear parking lot – but what he did see were two figures that appeared to be waiting for him: a boy and a girl.

He had seen the girl before, at least in his dreams. The boy was similarly dressed, clad in a torn and blood drenched shirt which failed to hide the dark, puckered hole on the left side of his chest. Both figures were frail, almost ghostly, but they both radiated a menacing sense of hunger, longing and sheer hatred. They both began moaning, the sound so awful that Steve clamped his hands over his ears, even though he realized the noise was strictly in his head.

And then they were gone.

Steve quickly hurried inside – and at 9:15 Gino phoned and got no answer.

He phoned the police; he was afraid to phone Steve’s parents.

The cops found Steve standing in the doorway of the librarian’s office, face frozen with shock.

Answarby was sitting behind his desk, stone dead, a look of mingled terror and agony carved into his features and a cavernous hole in his torso, the left side of his torso.

Answarby’s heart was missing.

It was never found.  Steve was initially charged and might have never have been cleared, but for an interesting discovery made in the dirt floor of the crawlspace underneath the library: two bodies, one male, one female, which we later identified as belonging to a pair of teens who had disappeared during the past five years, a time frame corresponding to Answarby’s reign at the library. 

Both corpses had gaping holes on the left side of their chests; their hearts were not found.

While it was generally assumed that Answarby had killed them, this hypothesis was never tested in court. As for who killed the librarian…Steve told of what he saw – referring to them as ghosts -- and ended up spending three weeks in the psych ward.

So he doesn’t talk about it anymore; nor will he ever set foot in a library or even enter a bookstore.

And be alone in a darkened building at night? – forget about it. 

The moral of the story? Who says librarians are heartless.