Scott

Thanks to Wren and his seriously hot body distracting Scott, he was almost ten-minutes late for work. However, when he finally got to the library, being late didn’t stop him from taking a moment to observe the building he worked in. The library was nothing special to look at, just a modern building; an ordinary two-storey structure in the middle of Salisbury town centre that had recently been refurbished from an office building, into a library.

On his first full day of living in Salisbury, walking through the town wondering what type of job he’d go for—he’d had quite a few jobs, considering he was only twenty-three-years-old—Scott saw the ‘HELP WANTED’ sign in the window, and something deep inside of him told him he had to apply.

He’d felt like something had called to him, telling him to work there. He could practically hear the building shouting his name.

“Scott!”

Oh, wait—that’s not the building, that’s my boss!

“Sorry I’m late, Maggie, I forgot my phone; had to turn back home and get it,” Scott lied. He didn’t think his boss would appreciate the truth, that the guy he picked up in a nightclub had made it difficult to leave his bed that morning.

Maggie looked down her glasses at him—given that he was only five-foot-two, most people looked down on him. “You’re working upstairs today, stacking the shelves.”

“Did the order finally come?” Scott asked hopefully. The ground floor was open to the public, but due to the company the library had ordered their books from having transport issues, the second floor had only empty bookshelves.

“It did, but only a partial amount. We should be receiving the rest tonight. I got the delivery men to take the boxes upstairs for you. The check list is on the desk up there; you know what to do.”

Scott knew the drill, cross-referencing the books with what was ordered was one of the first tasks he had when he first started working at the library—most of the office jobs he’d had previously, had similar filing systems, so he’d taken to it quickly.

~*~

Scott

It was getting close to his lunch time when Scott came across a unique looking book; it didn’t look modern like the rest of the books in the box. This book had an aged, dark brown hard cover.

Rifling through the boxes, Scott checked the rest of the books but couldn’t find another like it. He wasn’t too worried that there were no duplicates, there were a few books that the library only had one of. What did worry him though, was that he was sure this book shouldn’t be in their shipment, it was far too old looking in comparison to the rest of the books in the library—it looked like it belonged in the library of a university.

Curious, Scott took the book over to the reception desk near the door leading to the stairs for the ground floor. It hadn’t been on his checklist, so he wondered if it was in the system.

The book was called Randall; the name was written in dark orange, cursive font, scrawled across the front cover. Turning the book in his hand, he found nothing on the back cover, not even a bar code, which was extremely odd.

He checked through his shipment list for all the boxes that had been delivered that morning but found no books with Randall in the title. He then checked the entire system but still came up with nil results. Opening it to the first page, Scott hoped he’d find an author, publisher, anything, but the first few pages were blank.

Confused, Scott flicked through the rest of the pages in the odd book—Was this someone’s diary that was never used? Why the hell was it in this shipment? Did they use invisible ink! Every page was blank…until…he came to the last page. The writing on the page was the same cursive font as the title on the front cover.

“This is not the Beginning,” Scott muttered the only words on the page to himself. “Well, that’s pretty friggen obv—” The book took on a life of its own. It practically glowed in Scott’s hands as the once blank pages became full of handwritten passages. There were also drawings and symbols…Maybe it is a diary.

Scott’s thoughts were cut short when something moved in his peripheral vision, to the right of him. An innate instinct deep inside of him kicked into gear, and for reasons unbeknown to him, he jumped out of his seat and in front of the book—protecting it.

There were two men standing in front of the door that led to the stairs. Both of them were staring at him. After what the book had just been doing—there was no way these men could have missed the glowing, at least—Scott expected the men to run away screaming, call a priest maybe…or…do something.

But they didn’t.

As Scott studied their faces, he was sure he saw…happiness? That can’t be possible, I’ve never met these men before, Scott thought as he stared back at them. He quickly came to the conclusion that the men had not seen what the book had done. Maybe only I could see the glowing…

Squaring his shoulders, Scott aimed a professional smile towards the two of them. “I’m sorry, but this floor is closed to the public, at the moment. If you’re in need of assistance, one of my colleagues downstairs can—”

“Randall.” The man on the left said, cutting into Scott’s spiel.