The Library

As soon as I crossed the door, all that atmosphere from before, the closed corridor with the smell of rust, the difficulty breathing, and the feeling of claustrophobia gave way to the smell of old paper and aged wood.

A faint yellowish light came from several vintage lanterns spread around the place. Those lights were hypnotizing.

There was something that pulled my attention to that place.

It didn’t seem like anything special.

I took a deep breath. The room was cozy.

For the first time since I had woken up in that place… I didn’t want to leave.

Several dark wooden shelves, packed with books with colorful covers, were against the wall.

In the center of the room, there was a square opening. A simple wooden railing was all that separated me from the fall.

I leaned near the wooden protection.

Looking down, I saw one, two, three, and then I lost count of how many floors went down. All of them seemed to have the same configuration.

I checked the books. They all had hardcover bindings in very dark colors. Some were worn down. Many had no names.

I picked up some blue-covered books and flipped through them. Then some green-covered ones.

Mathematics.

Biology.

History.

Are they all schoolbooks?

Everything was so organized.

Who kept this place like this?

I tried looking in another section on the opposite side. I found several entertainment books. Others were self-help.

Nothing out of the ordinary.

I spent a good while looking at book after book that I found.

“I could have been trapped here instead of in a boring white room with nothing to do. This way, I could stay here forever.”

I heard the echo of my voice say “forever” as it traveled a long way down to the lower floors and came back up.

I regretted saying it. I swallowed dry.

Bored with the books, I saw a discreet staircase at the back of the room.

I went down and checked the shelves on the floor below. This time, even though the contents were different, it didn’t change much from what I had seen on the previous floor.

I went down a few floors, doing the same process, checking some books before moving on to the next floor.

And each room seemed to be getting larger on the outside.

The knowledge in the books was getting more advanced. A lot of university-level material.

Some contents were familiar to me.

Palliative treatments.

Disease progression.

Terminal care.

I looked away with disgust at myself, put the book back quickly, and ran to the next floor.

On that one, it was undeniable that the room was larger than the others. After all, there were shelves in the middle of the path instead of attached to the walls.

I heard something like very low birdsong or buzzing. It was almost completely continuous, but it was clear that there were small pauses, almost imperceptible. The sound came from all sides.

Too-detailed anatomy.

Invasive procedures.

Amputation techniques.

I kept flipping through the pages.

The subjects started getting strange.

How to assemble homemade explosives.

How to make poisons.

How to make a body disappear.

A black-covered book caught my attention. Until then, I had only seen books with colorful covers.

The sound I had been hearing before seemed to be coming much louder from that book.

When I held it in my hands, the cover had texture.

It didn’t feel like paper.

I flipped through it and was immediately surprised by the description of the white room, with two dark wooden doors and a dark green sink.

It was the room!

I kept reading the account until I realized that some of the rooms he had passed through were completely different from my experience.

He died. Several times.

I turned the page, only to read another detailed and horrible death he had suffered.

If something like this exists in this place, there might be some clue. Someone might have managed to get out. I needed to find another one.

I was stopped from going down to the next floor by a mountain of papers scattered across the stairs, as if they had been thrown there, dirty with ink, with some words written on them.

They all said the same thing.

Stop reading.

Stop reading.

Stop reading.

I continued down the stairs.

I can’t stop reading. The books have the answer. They’re the only way out.

The sounds from before got louder.

Now I could understand. They were voices. Whispers.

I understood some words.

None of them made sense.

It was too repetitive.

I needed to resist and look for the black books.

I searched through the shelves. It was much more common to find them now. There were several spread around the room.

Some were even thrown on the floor.

I gathered as many black books as I could on a table with a chair, surrounded by many bookshelves.

I sat down and started reading.

I read one and grabbed the next as soon as I finished.

There was information at the beginning that seemed important, but since each room was different, it was useless.

I could feel fear coming from the crooked lines that formed the words. But I was apathetic.

Those rooms, or rather, those fears, didn’t resonate with me.

What interested me was the exit.

Some accounts spoke of the chained door as a prison. Others said it hid something worse than all the previous rooms combined.

In several of them, no one described what was behind it.

They just stopped writing.

Some books ended abruptly.

Others had pages ripped out.

In one of them, I found only one scribbled sentence:

“Do not open the final chain.”

Another said:

“Death is better than continuing.”

The fears might not affect me.

But those things did.

Something bad grew inside me.

Was I giving up?

It was better to stop reading those books.

They weren’t an exit. They were something evil.

I tried to stand up.

I couldn’t.

Suddenly, my hand turned the page by itself.

I hadn’t decided to do that.

I didn’t even know what I was reading anymore.

But I needed to continue.

The voices were so loud that it was hard to concentrate, but as soon as I started reading, it was hard to stop, and I was so focused that I couldn’t hear anything anymore.

When I reached the end of the book.

I became desperate hearing the whispers.

And I needed to find another one to read.

When I realized it, I had lost control of my body.

I need to stop.

My vision was getting darker and darker.

I couldn’t stop.

My mind was being taken away.

Just stop.

Please!

I don’t want to be trapped here.

Everything went black.

The sound of a ringtone.

The light of a cell phone appeared.

Suddenly, I was in my old room. It was nostalgic.

From the time when I was studying for the exam.

I remember that unhappy night, and I don’t want to see the rest.

The smell of rain coming through the window.

I was sitting at my desk with a mountain of medical books.

Reading book after book, trying to memorize the content.

I was studying without stopping.

The cell phone started ringing, and I got annoyed with it.

I picked it up and saw it was an unknown number.

I hung up.

“If I don’t know the number, why would I answer?”

Page after page.

Enchanted by the content, I kept reading endlessly.

The cell phone rang again. I didn’t answer.

And it rang again.

I hung up and put it on silent, then continued studying.

My movements were being guided almost by instinct. But there was something inside me screaming with all its strength.

Answer the phone!

And louder.

Forget the book!

And with each page, the voice grew stronger inside me.

Don’t repeat the same mistake!

And the cell phone, even on silent, still seemed to make a completely irritating sound.

ANSWER THE PHONE!

Each page I turned wasn’t enough to push away that growing feeling.

The cell phone was in my hand and against my ear.

“Hello, Gabriel?”

“Yes.”

“I have some news…”

“…your grandmother was taken to the hospital.”

Silence.

“She didn’t make it.”

Nothing changed…

Little by little, my room, the objects, and everything around me started melting. Dripping like the rain falling outside.

My eyes were tearing up.

My tears blurred the book I was reading.

When I came back to myself…

I was back in the library.

One hand on the pages and the other on my ear.

I threw the book away.

The voices spoke louder and louder inside my head.

I wanted to go back to reading.

My hands were shaking.

My mouth was opening and closing.

I put my hands over my mouth to try to stop it.

I raised my gaze.

I wasn’t alone.

People.

Sitting.

Standing.

Leaning against the shelves.

All of them reading.

None of them blinking.

All of them whispering words from the content they were reading.

On top of the table, I saw something shining intensely.

The key was there.

It had always been there.

No one took it.

No one saw it.

I tried to move away from the books while taking the key.

I can’t leave these people here.

“Hey, you!”

I tried to move one of them, and they didn’t stop reading.

“Wake up!”

I pulled.

Pushed.

Shouted.

No one reacted.

I couldn’t save them.

And that meant one thing…

…

…I could only leave alone.

I saw a door at the end of the corridor.

I entered.

I don’t remember what happened when I changed rooms.

I had the feeling that I blinked, and I was back in the middle of the corridor of doors.

With the key in my hands.