I am the Library Ghost.
Surely you think I’m talking nonsense, but if it’s coming from the mouth of the man himself, it must be true. I dwell within the historic library built by Marquess Bernstein. Between the old, musty air just to my liking and the eerie splotches of darkness that dot the grounds, it’s the ideal haunt for any specter.
For the record, I’m a ghost with no connection whatsoever to House Bernstein, one who just so happened to settle down here because it made for a comfortable abode. Sometimes people will see me on a rainy day or an overcast twilight, unleashing the most satisfying of screams at the sight. Some even faint from the shock.
None have ever been a match for me. That is, until now.
“Goodbye, milady. I’ll be back to pick you up in the evening. Promise me you won’t leave the library.”
A certain child responded to her servant’s directions with an expressionless nod. She had fluffy, flaxen hair and grayish-blue eyes, and her features were almost doll-like.
Noting that she was back again, I shot the girl a vicious glare. As things stood, this little lass was my archnemesis. She had been frequenting the library for some time now, but whether I stood in the darkness, where it was easier to see me, or right in front of her nose, she never seemed to notice me. I tried a few different strategies, like accentuating my footsteps or placing a pale hand on her tiny shoulder, but nothing ever worked.
Meanwhile, the servants who came to fetch her would always capture me in their sights and let out an earsplitting shriek.
Kids these days just had no respect for the dead. Ghosts were meant to be seen and feared.
Gradually, I was consumed with a ghostly sense of mission. I had to show this girl just how frightening I was. My honor—no, my very dignity as a spirit—depended on it!
So it was that, one day, I was contemplating what I could do to let her know of my existence. Instead of going to her usual reading room, she sat down on the rung of a ladder with her book of choice. And then...wait for it...beyond a shadow of a doubt, she laid eyes on me!
“It can’t be...”
Her tiny lips uttered a rare cry of surprise, and I felt a surge of emotion.
Oho! So the day has finally come.
It made me almost teary-eyed to think back on all the hardship I’d endured to this point, and never had I felt the adage that “hard work pays off” so well exemplified.
Come, child! Cower to your heart’s content!
I grinned darkly, arranging my face into the spine-chilling expression I’d worked day in and day out to perfect, then I waited for the characteristic scream of a child to follow.
“Dr. McDuckert’s medical texts!”
The thing she’d actually pounced on was a tome on the bookshelf behind me. Alas, she’d cut me dead. Pun intended.
Ha... Oh dear. I was so shocked I started cracking outdated jokes.
“What are these doing here?”
She sounded so enraptured that it was a little off-putting coming from a child her age. As she opened the tome with all the bashfulness of a girl meeting the man of her dreams, I was racked with bitterness. Only the most disrespectful kids would pay more attention to a book than a ghost like me.
Stifling my chagrin, I huffily peered over from beside her, wondering what sort of book could bring such a sparkle to her eyes. The next instant, I all but toppled over in surprise. What leaped out at me from the page she had turned to was an illustration of a half-skinned human body, its structure depicted in great detail.
I could have sworn she was gawking at me for a moment there... N-No. It must have been my imagination. That’s impossible. Now then, you’ve got some nerve scaring a ghost like me, you accursed book!
After wiping the nonexistent sweat from my forehead, I wandered off elsewhere for a change of pace, a touch unsettled by the girl concentrating single-mindedly on her books with a flush on her cheeks.
It was then that I overheard a conversation among the library staff.
“Say, isn’t that girl kind of creepy?”
Someone else shushed him, lowering their own voice in reproach. “That’s the regional lord’s daughter! You’ll be in trouble if anyone hears you.”
“Fair point. But, c’mon, she just doesn’t act like a kid. Guess what book she asked me to find for her a while back? Punnett’s Theory of Mathematics! I asked her who she was getting it for, and she told me she wanted to read it herself. Most kids her age are reading picture books or fairy tales. And I saw her actually reading the thing too. She’s so peculiar it’s downright freaky, don’t you think?”
“It must be the Bernstein blood...but you have a point that she’s not very childlike. I guess that’s how a girl turns out when she doesn’t have a mother around.”
I cast a disdainful glance at the staff as they carried on with their conversation, growing even more disgruntled than I already was. It was true that she was an odd child, but that had nothing to do with whether she had a mother.
When I found my way back to the girl, I was unsurprised to see her still absorbed in reading.
Well...perhaps it is for the best that she rectifies her reading choices, but still. Children do have the tendency to lose themselves in whatever they love.
Struck with a pang of sympathy for the unendearing child, I reached out to pat her little head. All of a sudden, her gray-blue gaze snapped up. I could have sworn our eyes met.
Why? Because she broke into a seldom-seen smile.
Don’t tell me...she can see me?
A crow cawed as it flew past the window, and she turned her attention back to her book. Most likely, it was the sound of the bird that had gotten her to look up in the first place. There wasn’t a soul in the world who wouldn’t scream upon seeing me.
Probably. I think.
Needless to say, I spent the days that followed developing an even more ghastly visage.
~.~.~.~
It was a damp day that foreshadowed the start of the rainy season. I was all alone, looking as pensive as a nobleman lost in thought as I gazed out the rain-soaked window at the landscape beyond the library.
How long has it been since I began to wander the earth once more as a spirit? I’ve forgotten my own name, even the home where I was born and raised, and spent many months and years drifting along the current... Hmph. What’s that? Did someone just call me a senile old sleepwalker? Oh, never mind. Now, I’m the Library Ghost that dwells in the Bernstein Domain. That’s all that matters.
With the pitter-patter of the rain in my ears, I set off to patrol my turf—the grounds of the library.
The air had that damp quality peculiar to the rainy season. Moisture accumulated in every nook and cranny. The ancient books added to the oppressive atmosphere, and the gloom hanging over the premises felt positively refreshing to a ghost.
Surely playing the melancholy nobleman beset by shadows would suit me in this moment. No, wait. Maybe I’d be better off as the nihilistic outlaw with a grass whistle to his lips. Mm. Why, I can almost hear the music swirling in the background.
Just as I had started humming a tune, euphoric over what a perfect fit I was for the role, I heard a woman’s exaggerated scream from the direction I was headed, followed by the jeers of children echoing through the silent library.
“We did it! Now run for it!”
I recognized the child giving the instructions. But before I could put my finger on who he was, the group of naughty ten-year-olds made a break for it.
Amid all the restless excitement, a girl suddenly emerged from among the bookshelves. Her hair was wispy, and she had a doll-like, expressionless face. My archnemesis.
When she heard the patrons buzzing around her and saw the staff approaching her to ask what had happened, she took a startled step backward, only to bow silently, hold up the front of her skirt like a bag, and flee the building. As she passed by, I caught a glimpse of a two-legged tadpole and an adult frog threatening to leap out from her tiny skirt. Apparently, it was one of the maids attending her who had screamed.
As I watched the girl wearing a frog in her fluffy hair like a barrette run off, I rubbed my (imaginary) five-o’clock shadow, chewed on my (allegedly) bitter grass whistle in spirit, and recalled a scene from a few days earlier.
As usual, my archnemesis had been reading a book near an abandoned bookshelf. When I heard the sound of a boy’s voice getting louder and louder, I poked my head over to have a look. There, I saw a boy of about ten years old, the same age as my archnemesis, calling out to her with all his might.
Though it wasn’t any of my business, I almost stepped in to intervene. Whenever that little girl was absorbed in her reading, she rarely ever registered anyone else’s voice. Yet before I could reveal myself, the girl finally noticed, looked up, and blinked up at the boy, whose face was as red as an apple.
The boy, who still had all the mischief of any boy from these parts, seemed embarrassed that he’d spent so long trying to get her attention. Red with breathlessness, his face twisted in anger as he shouted, “Ugly cow!”
It was with a touch of awkwardness that I watched as the boy ran off and the girl blinked her big, round eyes in bemusement. I got the feeling that I’d stumbled upon the bittersweet beginnings of a romance. The reason for this was that I’d spotted a ribbon the girl had worn a couple days earlier in the boy’s hand, and I sympathized with his attempt to return the lost item to its owner.
From then on, this sort of thing became a daily routine for the contrarian little boy. He’d regularly put bugs in her hair to get her attention or drop insect carcasses on her books while she was reading, and just recently, a bat weakened by an extermination had even been dropped right in front of her...though that last one had to be a coincidence.