Roni’s teeth chattered together. Part of her wanted to race upstairs and ring for Gram. This was her room, after all. She should know that somebody had broken in. But another part of Roni feared what Gram might think.
Would she assume Roni had taken this man downstairs for a private fling? Of course, she would. Gram had many great qualities, but she also rushed to judgment, and her judgment could be harsh.
Once when she was eight, Roni wanted to help shelve the latest acquisitions. She didn’t know one book from the other, so she picked up the first to catch her eye — a first edition of Tropic of Cancer. She never bothered to open the book, but merely started looking for a place to shelve it. When Gram saw her walking off with the book, she assumed her granddaughter wanted to read some dirty words. Gram snatched the book away and punished Roni with three weeks of cleaning the restrooms.
Standing at that open door in the basement, Roni wondered what Gram would do to her this time. After all, this room had been marked off limits all of Roni’s life. But if she could get Darin out of there without disturbing anything, maybe Gram would never know.
In her quietest voice yet, Roni said, “Darin?”
No answer. Of course.
With small steps, she entered the room. At first, it appeared to be a bunker for books — a metal box of a room with metal shelves lined with numerous old leather-bound volumes. Fluorescent lights hung from the tiled ceiling.
As Roni walked deeper into the room, she noticed that the air grew colder with each step. The only sound — the tentative click of her heels. She stopped twice to listen for Darin but heard nothing. When she reached the back end of the room, she understood why.
A large hole in the wall opened into a cavern. A cavern? But that was the only word for it that Roni could think of. Stone walls carved out by millions of years of underground rivers and lakes. Dirt and rock stubbled the uneven ground. Stalactites hung from the ceiling, and a twisty path led downward and away.
Cool air wafted over her as she gazed out with her mouth agape. The steady trickle of water echoed off the curving walls. And in the walls, somebody had wired lights and carved bookshelves.
But as Roni followed the maze of turns further into the cavern, she noticed that the books were even stranger than their location. They were all extremely old, hardbacked, many bound in leather and a few in metal. For a while, none of them had titles — merely colored diamond shapes as if that were information enough. However, after a few minutes of walking, she came upon a new section of books unlike the others.
The cavern walls had narrowed to the width of a typical library aisle. On one side, she saw books with strange symbols on the spines and covers. Not occult symbols or New Age symbols or anything she had encountered before. Rather, these looked like symbols of a unfamiliar language, like Tolkien’s elvish, one created by a single mind and not a system evolved over centuries of a civilization. On the other side, she saw similar books, except these had chains attached to the spines that stretched to rings embedded into the stone walls as if the books were held prisoner with no hope of escape.
Roni’s curiosity could not stop her churning stomach. Coupling Gram’s desire to keep this place secret with the chained books spelled danger in bold red letters. Roni backed up several steps. She should hurry up to Gram’s apartment, wake the old lady, and get her down here. Gram would know the fastest way to find Darin and she would know which books to stay away from.
Before Roni could head up toward the bookshop, however, a loud whoosh came from further below followed by the unmistakable sound of a man groaning.
“Darin?” she called out. No response. “Darin, let me know you’re okay. I’m not mad at you. I just want to make sure you aren’t hurt.”
The groan returned — drawn out and muddy.
She hastened her pace downward. Gram would have to wait. Darin’s groans suggested he had fallen and needed help. Plus — and Roni felt a twinge of guilt for this thought — there was still the possibility of finding Darin and getting him out of the basement before Gram ever found out.
As she rounded a wide bend, she saw tall stone pillars reaching into the darkness of the high ceiling. Books spiraled up along the pillars, some so high nobody could ever reach them without a fireman’s ladder or sturdy scaffolding. Other books were higher still.
The groans continued and their echoes brought back a ghostly sound. She continued on, the periodic sconces her only light source. As the ground leveled out, she came upon a door nestled into the stone. It stood open.
She entered a reading room with two long tables for research and study as well as four overstuffed chairs for more casual reading. Next to each chair stood a tall reading lamp and two smaller desk lamps provided light for those at the tables. Darin sat at the furthest table, a thick volume placed right in front of him.
“Darin? Are you okay?”
With his eyes closed, he said, “Better than okay. After all the searching, after the countless times I doubted this place even existed, I’m finally here.”
“I don’t understand what any of this is, but we need to go back upstairs.”
“Let me show you.”
He lifted the cover of the book before him and it slammed out of his hands and flattened, fully open, on the table. A bright blue light burst from the pages. The whooshing sound from earlier filled the room. As if a door on a jet plane opened at twenty thousand feet, the room depressurized and the book sucked everything towards it.
The big chairs slid towards the book. The desk lamps sparked as the cords wrenched free from their power source and then tumbled into the book. Straight into the pages — through them — as if the book was a deep pit.
Roni stumbled forward a few steps. The wind grew stronger. She leaned away, reaching for the door as if caught in a sudden squall.
Darin’s satisfied smile dropped into horror. He gripped the edge of the table and leaned away from the open vacuum of the book.
Roni clung to the door jamb. She yelped as her legs lifted off the ground. She heard Darin scream and his head went in first. As his shoulders sunk into the pages, his white knuckled hands kept their lock on the table — the only thing saving him.
With Darin’s body blocking much of the book, Roni’s legs settled onto the floor. The wind was still strong, but she could stand on her own. Part of her screamed to run, get safe, and ignore everything else. But she searched for some way to help Darin. Except if she moved in close to that book and freed him, the hurricane would resume and she would be swept into those pages.
Maybe she could use a rock to dislodge the cover and force it closed. The idea seemed far-fetched, but nothing else came to mind. Tears welled in her eyes. If he died, she would be partly to blame. Straining towards the door, she tried to recall what rocks she had seen on her walk to this bizarre room.
Everything changed when she reached the door — Gram, Elliot, and Sully stood in the way.
“Gram, I’m so sorry,” Roni cried out, but Gram did not pay her any attention. The old woman’s eyes locked onto Darin.
She stepped forward and opened one hand. A long chain dropped loose from her sleeve. As she twirled the chain at her side, Sully scooted over to Roni.
He pushed her towards the wall and pressed an arm on either side of her. “It’ll be okay,” he said and lowered his head as if he tried to move the wall.
Looking over his shoulder, Roni watched as Gram whipped the chain across the room. It latched onto the spine of the book like a giant magnet. Jerking the chain, she pulled it clear off the table, leaving Darin behind. The massive winds returned.
Roni fell forward and would have toppled over into the book if not for Sully blocking the way. He remained motionless like a stone statue, his feet firmly planted in the floor. Gram did not slide toward the open pages either. Instead, she leaned back as if in a tug-o-war with the book. Elliot held onto the chain with one hand and his cane with the other. He wore a tall-collared cape that fluttered and snapped in the harsh winds.
Darin did not fare so well. He shrieked as his grip on the table’s edge slipped. The howling air continued to pull him in. Tears streamed out of his eyes and into the book, never getting the chance to touch his cheeks.
Yelling above the cacophony of wind, Elliot said, “Hold on, young man! Do not give up!”
With stuttering steps, Elliot worked his way along the chain. Once he reached as close as he dared, he locked his arm around the chain and with his free arm, he stretched toward the book with his cane. The end of the cane bumped the cover. Elliot tried to work the cane underneath to close the book, but he needed to get closer.
“Forget it,” Gram yelled, the strain in her voice matching that of her entire body as she leaned further back. “Get the boy.”
Elliot shifted his body toward Darin. He pressed his feet into the floor and reached out with the cane. “Grab hold,” he said.
Darin stared at the cane, a lifeline dangling before him. But Roni could see the way his arms trembled. To reach for the cane meant letting go. If he missed ...
“You can do it,” Elliot said.
Darin shook his head and buried his face into the table.
“Come on, now. Grab the cane.”
Roni shouted, “Darin, do it!”
He gazed up at her. His eyes glistened. Everything she saw in his face screamed of his doubt. Even before he made his half-hearted attempt, she knew he had given up. Fumbling his hands free, he flapped his arms about, bumped the cane, but had no control.
Elliot lunged along the chain. But when he reached the book, Darin had already fallen in. Elliot had only time enough to pry his cane beneath the book and slam the cover closed. Any longer, and he would have joined Darin.
The wind died instantly. Sully straightened, as much as he could, and placed his hands on Roni’s shoulders. “All over now.”
Gram rushed forward. She stepped by Elliot without any notice of him and grabbed the book. With furious energy, she wrapped the chain around the book seven times before tucking the end underneath. Only then did she look at the others.
“Everybody okay?”
Elliot said, “I think so. Though my arthritis is going to flare up in the morning.”
“You think you’ve got it bad? You can take a pill for your pain,” Sully said. “I had finally gotten to sleep right when all this went off. Fat chance I’ll be getting back to sleep tonight.”
“There are pills for that, as well. Besides which, a little insomnia is nothing compared to my aches.”
Gram set the book on the table and sighed. “Enough bickering. You both did a good job. Thank you. What about you, Roni? Are you okay?”
Roni stared at Gram, then Elliot, then Sully. Everything that had transpired bubbled up her throat and in a booming voice, she said, “What the fuck just happened?”