Chapter One
By:
Linear Ranger
“Thank you, the book will be due back a week from today. Have a nice day.” These were the words he was used to saying each day he checked a book out. He smiled and waved goodbye as the young child, with his mother, walked out of the library. The clock showed that it was fifteen minutes before five o’clock. The man turned to his boss and said, “If you need me I’ll be in my normal place in the back.” His boss didn’t even turn his head away from the newspaper he was reading. As the young man started back to his ‘normal place in the back’ he saw the headline on the newspaper read, “Another account of ghost by local citizen”.
The young man thought to himself, “Ryan you’ve got to get the equipment finished before these cases get any worse.” Ryan then proceeded to the back portion of the library. It was mostly dark and dusty. This was the place where books concerning supernatural events, ghosts, and hauntings were kept. These were just up Ryan’s alley. As he walked pass a bookcase he flicked on a lamp, which emitted just enough light to read the titles of the books. After about five to ten minutes Ryan had picked out six books on the supernatural. Carrying them at his side he left the section of the library, on the way turning the lamp back out.
As he walked back up to the front desk his boss looked up from the paper and said, “Ryan everyday you take some of those books home with you that nobody else reads. Truthfully we have never gotten our moneys worth out of those things, because no one besides you has ever shown interest in them. Well, there was one, but no maybe I’m wrong. Anyway, why don’t you just take all of them home and keep them?”
Ryan’s eyes opened wider and said in surprise, “Really, but Jack there must be at least five hundred dollars in books back there.”
“Yes, five hundred dollars that we have not gotten use of. So go ahead and take them.”
Ryan shrugged his shoulders and said, “Okay you won’t have to twist my arm.” He went over and got a book cart, placed the six books he already had on it, and then preceded back to the dark and unused bookcase. Once again he flicked the lamp on and began placing the rest of the books on the cart. Some of them were very old that the library had gotten from other towns when their libraries closed. Finally, after twenty minutes, Ryan had placed all four hundred books on the cart and went back to the front. By now Jack was long gone and had left a note on the counter simply stating, “Lock the door when you’re done. Jack.”
Ryan went outside with the cart. He walked up to his small red sports car convertible and popped the trunk with the key control device. Once the trunk was open Ryan started placing the books inside. It didn’t take nearly as much time to transfer the books into the car as it did to get them off the shelf. After all the books were in the trunk, Ryan placed the book cart in the backseat of the car. Then he went back inside the library, threw Jack’s letter away, and left his own stating, “I borrowed one of the book carts that I’ll bring back tomorrow. Ryan.” After finishing the note, he walked back toward the door turning the lights out on his way and then locked the door behind him.
The drive home was uneventful as usual. Ryan had put the top down on the sports car so the air was blowing through is hair. He was smiling as he drove and listening to the music, “Frankenstein is grooving. Midnight action! Whoa whoa whoa. Witches are snickering. Midnight action! Whoa whoa whoa.” The traffic wasn’t that bad seeing as how the town of Harbor Hills had small population, though it was just right outside a large city. It only took a few minutes for Ryan to arrive home. As he approached his humble home he looked at it in all its glory.
The building was extremely old. Back in the late 1800s it had been a firehouse. It was three stories tall with an extremely large basement. It had two very tall double doors for the entrance. Though these also had normal sized doors within the large ones. Ryan had bought the structure for a very low price years ago from a man that had tried twice to rebuild it, but lost interest in it after a short time. Since then Ryan had been slowly rebuilding it himself and now had it completely livable.
Ryan backed up near double doors. He pressed the garage door opener on his car’s sun visor and the two large doors swung open missing the back of Ryan’s car by a few feet. He proceeded to back the car into the building. Though he couldn’t back the vehicle up too far because there was already one car inside. An ambulance, though not as we know them today. It was an ambulance from back in the early days when ambulances were first used. Though, like the firehouse, Ryan had rebuilt this with some extra features. It was now white, the fins on the sides were candy apple red, there were many strange devices on the roof, and most of all, there were odd logos on the driver and passenger side doors.
After ten or so minutes Ryan had unloaded the books, placed them back on the cart, put them inside the building, and parked his sports car with the top up next to the building. He went into the house. It was long and at the back there was a fair sized space surrounded by a three-foot tall wood fence to enclose the space as an office. To the right of the overhauled ambulance was a long workbench with car tools on it. On the left side were a row of four wooden lockers and then the staircase plus a fire pole. There were actually two staircases. One that led up to the next floor and then one that led to the basement.
Ryan took the book cart to the main staircase. From there he wrapped ropes around the cart to make sure none of the books would fall off during the ride they were about to encounter. Once the ropes were tied tight, Ryan began slowly dragging the cart up the stairs. Once he reached the second floor, he pushed the cart over to a bookcase that contained about twenty books on the same subject matter as the ones on the cart. He untied the ropes and began placing the books on the bookcase.
After he finished putting the books up, he took the cart back down stairs and put it next to the doors where he would remember it tomorrow when he went to leave. Ryan then went back upstairs to fix some dinner. The second floor held the kitchen, dining room, living room, the continuation of the fire pole, a circular staircase in the center of the room, and small reading area with the bookcase, easy chairs and tall lamps. On the way to kitchen, Ryan turned the television on so that he could hear the news while he fixed dinner. The newscaster was saying, “…the police brought him in without a struggle and he will be in court on Monday. Also, today there were even more accounts of ghosts and hauntings in Tera Canyon and its surrounding cities.” Another newsperson said, “But can we really believe in these ghost stories?” Ryan looked away from his microwave and looked at the TV as talking to that newscaster and said, “You better start believing.”
Then the dinner was finished with the constant beeps of the microwave. Ryan carefully took the food out and placed it on the dining room table along with a can of Coca-Cola and the newspaper he had gotten. He sat down and started eating while reading the headline he had seen at the library.
“…Mrs. Jones says that for the past five nights she has been terrorized by strange occurrences in her house. Lamps being thrown across the room, books floating in mid air, her TV and radio going on and off by themselves. But most shocking of them all is that Mrs. Jones swears that she has seen ghosts in her house. She was quoted as saying, ‘…one of them is blue with three eyes and three claws on each hand. The other one is purple with one eye and four claw arms…” Some people believe that Mrs. Jones accounts are just her old age, though they don’t wish to reveal their names because of Mrs. Jones wealthy standing in the community…”
Ryan finished his dinner and thought to himself. “Old age may sometimes be an excuse, but not in the world we are getting into.” He placed the dirty dish in the dish washer, threw the empty can away, placed the paper on an easy chair that was in the reading area, and then went up to the top floor via the circular staircase.
On the top floor were three rooms. As soon as one got to the top of the circular staircase they were facing the bathroom. To the left was Ryan’s large bedroom and the right was the large laboratory. Ryan went into the laboratory. Inside were tables, bookcases, tools and devices that he had spent many hours working on. He sat down at the main table, picked up a long gun-like device, a few tools and was ready to begin. Before he started he said, “Tonight I’ll finish this stuff and then we’ll see who is telling ghost stories.” With that he began his work.