A week later, Timi was standing in front of the locked-up entrance of the library. He didn’t know if it was really haunted, but he still felt scared about going in there. He knew it wasn’t the right thing to do, even though Abi said that she knew that it was safe because she’d heard her mum talking about it.
‘They’re going to pull it down and make flats here, Mum says,’ Abi said. ‘There was a protest but Mum said people don’t care enough.’ 20
The front door of the library looked tall and black like a shadow. Mo and Abi led everyone round to the back of the building to a smaller door. As Timi passed the bricks that had the patch of the ghostly green lichen, he reached out to stroke it ever so gently. There were a few of the kids from the after-school club and some others that Timi hadn’t seen before so he stayed near the back of the group.
21He wasn’t really sure what they were going to do when they got in but, despite his worries, he felt drawn to being there. Whether it was because he wanted to be with Abi and Mo or that he wanted to prove that he wasn’t afraid (of anything), he wasn’t sure.
It was easier getting away now that he was staying with his auntie too. If he’d been at home with Mum then she wouldn’t have let him come out by himself. But his mum was still in hospital. The baby had come early, too early. She was strong, his mum told him on the phone, but she needed help to do all the things that you can normally do on your own – like keeping warm and eating - and so he needed to stay with his auntie until the baby could come home. 22
Timi hadn’t been sure that he would be able to get away to meet Abi and Mo, but it turned out not to be a problem. It was the weekend and he went with his older cousins to the shops. He told them that he was going to meet some friends and they let him slip away. It was almost too easy.
Abi punched the buttons of the silver keypad on the door. Timi was standing close enough to see her do it, and saw that the code made a pattern like a zig-zag line going downwards.
The door opened soundlessly.
Inside, it looked murky and still.
‘Who’s first?’ Mo said.
There was a moment when no one spoke or moved. Even Abi didn’t step forward.
‘You first,’ said Abi to the big-eyed boy who had come along in the end, although 23Timi thought he looked like he really didn’t want to be there. He kept twisting his hands together and looking all around him.
‘I don’t know,’ the big-eyed boy said.
‘You said that you would go in,’ said Mo.
The boy peered into the open door of the library. Timi looked round him. There was a shadowy corridor, and a stale smell in the air.
‘I – I …’ the boy said.
‘I’ll go in,’ Timi said and, before anyone could stop him, he stepped around the boy and walked down the corridor.
He thought that the others would follow him but, as he made his way to the main room of the building, where the books would be, he realised that he was alone.
The library was silence and dust. The shelves were bare, apart from a few books 24that had been left behind in wonky piles. Some other things had not been tidied away – a little box of coloured strips of paper, some flyers for something Timi couldn’t make out - but mostly the room had been emptied.
The curtains were closed, but there was a small gap where they hadn’t been pulled together properly. Through the gap, a ray 25of afternoon sunlight poured in.
Timi overheard Mo say something that he couldn’t quite hear. Then there was a scuffle, a burst of voices and suddenly the door slammed shut. Timi heard footsteps and then, someone shouting.
The door opened again. Timi shrank behind one of the bookcases as he saw a man, that was definitely not Abi or Mo or the big-eyed boy, looking round the library. He took a few steps in. Timi held his breath and tried not to make even the smallest of sounds.
Then the man turned away and went back through the door and out into the sunshine.
The door slammed shut.
Timi looked around him. He knew he shouldn’t be in there and wanted to leave 26but, while the man was still close by, he thought that he should wait for a little while to be sure that he had gone.
There was another part of him too, that didn’t want to go back to a place that was not his home. He had not spoken to his mum that day and he wondered how his little sister was, who he had never met.
The ray of light through the curtain had grown stronger in the time that Timi had been there. The criss-cross pattern of the wooden floor was almost glowing from the light shining in.
If Timi had been any other boy in the world, then he would almost certainly not have spotted it.
In the light, in the narrow gap between the floorboards, a tiny, green seedling was surging up. 27
