Ghost Story

This week's entry for the Sleep is for the Weak Writing Workshop.

I was a late reader. I learnt to read when I was 6, like everyone else and liked it instantly. But by the age of 10, I was more interested in real life and I put the books away. I only picked them again when I was 14, so that’s a whole 4 years without reading much.

The book that got me back on the reading train was Stephen King’s It. It scared the hell out of me and made me realize books were actually as cool as life, sometimes even better. I haven’t stop reading since, but I gave up King pretty quickly ;) Anyway, he'd given me a taste for horror stories and I was secretly hoping something creepy would happen to me one day.

It happened when I was visiting friends in the States, near New York. One of them was a librarian and I was waiting for him to end his shift.

I decided to wait in a reading room, upstairs. I climbed the stairs, looked around the three rooms on that floor and settled for the empty one as I figured I wouldn’t be disturbing anyone there. So I sat, picked up a book and started reading – I know, so original in a library. After a couple of minutes, I started feeling bored. I got up, walked to the window, but felt compelled to go back to my seat. I returned to the chair, going all around the big table instead of heading straight back. I was feeling dizzy, cold and very hot at the same time. When I sat again, I couldn’t remember exactly what had just happened, but I felt something wasn’t right. My hands shaking slightly, my legs wobbling, I went down the stairs and as I was going down, I was starting to feel better. I was still under the impression that something was forcing me to move, that I wasn’t in control any more.

I didn’t mention it to my friend right away. His shift had ended, we went out for a smoke and then I told him all about it. He stared for a while and then said : « I cannot believe this. I’ve been working here five whole years, going to that room nearly every day hoping something would happen to me and you get ghost vibes the minute you get there » . He then explained that the library was known to be haunted and that several people had experienced weird things over the years. He said how they had described exactly what I had just told him, sharing the same disturbing feelings. At that precise moment, I looked up to the room and I SWEAR I saw someone smile. Just a smile, actually, the someone didn’t really seem to be there. You know, like the Cheshire cat. I told my friend but by the time he looked, the smile was gone. He wanted to go back there with me but I begged him to take me home.

Creepy, huh ?