Nick arrived at the house and found the estate agent waiting for him. She didn’t look too happy to see him, and he couldn’t blame her. How many properties had she shown him now – twenty? Thirty? Each of them had matched his requirements in terms of price, location and number of rooms, but he had turned them all down. There was only ever one real requirement: a room he could use as a study. The space for a study was there in the houses he’d seen, but none of the rooms had inspired him. He needed a haven where he could do his research, his creating, his thinking, and any old room just wouldn’t do. It had to have a certain something. The trouble was he had no idea what that was.

“This is the last property I can show you, unless you go up in price,” the agent said. The house looked ordinary enough from the outside which didn’t fill him with much hope. He followed her in and traipsed along behind her as she pointed out bathroom fittings and other irrelevancies. Another waste of time, he thought. It was a perfectly nice house, again – the nicest one of the lot, in fact. The first floor had two enormous bedrooms and a big luxurious bathroom. The ground floor had a cosy living room and a compact but well presented kitchen. It occurred to him that there was a rather big size discrepancy between the first floor and the ground floor. He was about to ask her about it when she stopped in front of a door he hadn’t noticed when they’d first come in.

“Through here is some sort of library,” said the agent, ushering him in. He found himself in a large, windowless space. An unassuming chandelier sent soft waves of light through the whole room, and he looked around in awe. He was surrounded by wall-to-wall, ceiling-to-floor bookshelves, all made from beautiful, dark wood. The floor, also wooden, showed markings in the middle of the room where a large desk must have stood for years. In one of the corners were more markings; an armchair, most likely. Nick pictured a big desk with a green desk lamp and a plush leather armchair. He then pictured himself in that armchair, a large tome opened across his lap, and nearly gave the estate agent a heart attack.
“I’ll take it,” he said.

With the exception of the library, the house was furnished, so Nick was able to move in almost immediately. It would be a week until the storage company were able to ship the majority of his things, but living out of a couple of suitcases for a few days was the least of his worries. His first priority was to furnish the library. It would be a crime to let such a majestic space lie empty any longer. He decided to lose no time, and head off into town straight away to look for second hand furniture. It would have to be antiques, of course – modern, minimalist furniture had no place in a room like this. Before he set off, he lingered in the doorway, thinking how forlorn the shelves looked, devoid of the books they had been created to house. He reached into his backpack and fished out the only book he had on him, the one he was currently reading. Gently, almost reverently, he placed it onto a nearby shelf and took a step back to admire his no longer empty library.

Nick turned to leave and was about to shut the door behind him when he heard a faint creaking sound. He peered into the room and felt a little dizzy. It seemed like the library was a little wider than he had thought. Then there was more creaking, no louder than a whisper, and the room was back to how he had initially thought it was. All this empty space is playing tricks on my mind, he thought. The sooner I get it filled, the better.

It took some searching but after a couple of hours he found an antique store that not only had the perfect items for him but could also deliver them the following morning. Pleased with his purchases, he wandered along the high street for a little longer, picking up bits and pieces that he needed. When he passed by a second hand bookstore advertising lucky dip boxes of books for a tenner, he knew exactly what he had to do. He bought one and got a taxi home with it straight away.

He didn’t even bother unpacking any of his shopping before he had placed the lucky dip books on the library’s shelves. Nick smiled; the library still looked sparse, but he could now see just how perfect it would look once his hundreds of books that were in storage were added to the collection. He was about to leave the room when the creaking sounds started again. They were louder than before, and there were more of them. With them, the walls of the room seemed to move; out, then in. Out, then in. There was no rhythm to it – a few creaks, then nothing, then a few more – and the movement of the walls was not smooth but shuddering and somewhat laboured. Nick felt his breathing quicken, then slow, in alignment with the bookshelves around him. His eyes widened as he realised the significance of this.

He checked the time; the shops would only be open for another hour or so. There was no time to lose. He took a taxi to the second hand bookstore, asked the driver to wait for him, then bought as many boxes of books as he thought would fit in the car. Once he was home, he set about to emptying the boxes, not caring where he placed the books, only about getting them onto shelves as quickly as possible. As a few shelves started filling up, the creaking and wall movement seemed to steady themselves and take on a cadence which was getting gentler with each book placed. Once all the boxes were empty, Nick sat on the floor in the middle of the room, taking in the rhythm of the library and breathing in and out along with it. After a while of this, he took a notebook out of his backpack and began to write. Nick heard another sound, faint but getting louder, coming from somewhere to the left above his head.

Thump thump.
Thump thump.
Thump thump.

Related Posts:

• Nine Lives
• Viral
• Sirens

Tags: Flash Fiction, fridayflash, library, Writing

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 6th, 2014 at 7:35 PM and is filed under Fiction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.