Tales from the Universe
The first book disappears on a Wednesday.
Not from the library.
From everyone.
Twelve-year-old Eli Mercer knows this because he returned it himself.
The Kingdom Beneath the Orchard.
Green cover.
Gold lettering.
A knight standing underneath an apple tree.
He liked it enough to ask Ms. Voss whether there was a sequel.
“There are three,” the librarian told him.
She wrote the titles on a scrap of paper.
Eli put it in his pocket.
Two days later he returns for the second book.
Ms. Voss looks confused.
“The Kingdom Beneath what?”
“Orchard.”
She searches the computer.
Nothing.
Eli checks the shelf.
Nothing.
“You gave it to me.”
“I don’t think so.”
“I returned it Wednesday.”
Ms. Voss searches his account.
No record.
Eli reaches into his backpack.
The scrap of paper is still there.
Except now it contains only three blank lines.
The Holloway Library is older than the town surrounding it.
That is technically impossible.
Holloway was founded in 1884.
The cornerstone on the library says:
1879.
Nobody seems particularly bothered by this.
Eli asks his father.
“Probably reused the stone.”
His teacher says:
“Maybe they planned the town first.”
Ms. Voss says:
“Dates on old buildings are complicated.”
Three different explanations.
Nobody checks.
Eli does.
The local newspaper archive contains a photograph from the town’s founding ceremony.
Behind the mayor is the library.
Already old.
Already covered in ivy.
Eli shows the photograph to his best friend, June.
She studies it.
“So?”
“The library is older than the town.”
“Cool.”
“And it’s deleting books.”
June lowers the photograph.
“You should have started with that.”
They conduct an experiment.
June selects a book nobody would accidentally remember.
Practical Drainage Systems of Northern Counties, Volume II.
They photograph the cover.
Write down the call number.
Copy the first sentence.
Then Eli checks it out.
They return it the following morning.
Nothing happens.
Saturday.
Still there.
Sunday.
Still there.
Monday morning, Eli calls June.
“What book did we test?”
“The drainage one.”
“Full title?”
Silence.
“I don’t remember.”
They meet at the library.
The shelf contains a gap.
The catalog contains no record.
June checks her phone.
The photograph shows her holding nothing.
Their notebook reads:
TEST BOOK:
Everything after the colon is blank.
Except Eli remembers.
Not perfectly.
But enough.
“Drainage,” he says.
“Northern something.”
“Volume Two.”
June stares at him.
“Why do you remember?”
Eli doesn’t know.
They start hiding records outside the library.
Notes in lockers.
Photographs stored online.
Copies mailed to June’s cousin in another state.
Nothing works.
When a book disappears, evidence of it disappears too.
Usually.
Eli keeps remembering fragments.
A title.
A character.
A blue cover.
A sentence about snow.
Never enough to reconstruct the book.
Just enough to know something is missing.
Then one afternoon he notices an empty space between two shelves.
Not a missing book.
A missing shelf.
The numbering goes:
Shelf 31.
Shelf 32.
Shelf 34.
“June.”
She looks.
“What?”
“What happened to Shelf 33?”
“There isn’t a Shelf 33.”
“How do you know?”
She opens her mouth.
Stops.
“I don’t.”
They search the building plans.
No Shelf 33.
They search old photographs.
Nothing.
Then Eli finds a library map printed in 1952.
Between 32 and 34 is a rectangle.
Someone has scratched through it so violently that the paper has torn.
Underneath the damage, one number remains.
33.
They wait until closing.
This is June’s idea.
Eli would like that entered into the record.
At 8:00, Ms. Voss locks the front doors.
At 8:15, the lights go out.
The children remain hidden behind the local-history shelves.
At 8:43, they hear wheels.
A cart.
Someone is moving through the library.
They peek around the shelf.
Ms. Voss.
She is pushing an empty book cart.
She stops beside History.
Removes one book.
Looks at its cover for a long time.
Then whispers:
“I’m sorry.”
She pushes the book into the empty space between Shelves 32 and 34.
It disappears.
Not falls.
Disappears.
The shelf behind it ripples like water.
Eli gasps.
Ms. Voss turns.
For one second, nobody moves.
Then she says:
“You shouldn’t remember this.”
Ms. Voss does not call their parents.
That frightens Eli considerably more than if she had.
Instead she takes them into her office.
“How many books do you remember?”
Eli begins listing fragments.
The orchard kingdom.
Drainage.
A blue book about winter.
Something involving a ship.
Ms. Voss becomes paler with each one.
June asks:
“Where do they go?”
Ms. Voss looks toward the library.
“We don’t know.”
“Then why are you putting them there?”
“Because sometimes books become dangerous.”
June laughs once.
Nobody joins her.
Ms. Voss opens a locked cabinet.
Inside are handwritten ledgers.
Thousands of titles.
Some crossed out.
Some circled.
Some accompanied by names.
“The library has always removed certain books.”
“Banned books?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
Ms. Voss hesitates.
“Books that begin changing.”
She shows them one.
A children’s story published in 1946.
Thomas and the Red Kite.
The ledger contains several summaries written years apart.
1946:
Thomas loses his kite and finds it in a tree.
1963:
Thomas follows his kite into the forest.
1981:
Thomas follows his kite into the forest and meets a woman named Eleanor.
June points.
“Stories get revised.”
“Not after printing.”
Ms. Voss turns the page.
1997:
Thomas follows his kite into the forest. Eleanor warns him about the fire at Holloway Mill.
The mill fire occurred in 2003.
Eli reads the date twice.
“The book predicted it?”
“We thought so.”
“What do you think now?”
Ms. Voss closes the ledger.
“We think it remembered it early.”
The changing books are placed on Shelf 33.
Then the library forgets them.
The town forgets.
Records alter.
Photographs change.
Eventually even the librarian who removed the book forgets why.
Only the ledgers remain because every librarian copies them by hand using ink stored in a locked room beneath the building.
“Why does handwriting work?”
“We don’t know.”
Eli hates how often that answer appears in serious investigations.
Then he asks the important question.
“If everybody forgets the books, how do you know Shelf 33 is doing something good?”
Ms. Voss says nothing.
June looks at Eli.
There it is.
The assumption underneath the entire library.
Books change.
Books are placed on Shelf 33.
People forget them.
Therefore dangerous books have been safely removed.
But nobody remembers enough afterward to verify the conclusion.
“What if the shelf isn’t protecting us from the books?” Eli asks.
Ms. Voss looks toward the dark library.
“What else would it be doing?”
“Eating them.”
They return to the ledgers.
This time they stop reading the librarians’ conclusions.
They look only at observations.
Dates.
Titles.
Changes.
Disappearances.
A pattern appears.
The books do not become strange randomly.
Each begins changing after someone checks it out.
Usually the same person repeatedly.
Eli follows the names.
One appears dozens of times.
Margaret Holloway.
Founder of the library.
Another:
Samuel Voss.
Ms. Voss goes still.
“My grandfather.”
Another:
Eleanor Mercer.
Eli’s stomach drops.
“My grandmother.”
He barely remembers her.
She died when he was four.
The changing books were not predicting events.
They were changing around particular readers.
Or particular readers were changing around them.
Nobody knows which.
Then June finds something worse.
The most recent ledger entry.
No title.
No date.
Only a name.
Eli Mercer.
Behind them comes a sound.
Wood sliding against wood.
They leave the office.
Shelf 32 stands where it always has.
Shelf 34 beside it.
Between them is something new.
A narrow wooden bookcase.
Shelf 33.
It is filled with books.
Hundreds.
Maybe thousands.
Books nobody remembers.
Green.
Blue.
Red.
Leather.
Cloth.
Paper.
Some ancient.
Some new.
Eli recognizes one immediately.
The Kingdom Beneath the Orchard.
He reaches for it.
Ms. Voss grabs his wrist.
“Don’t.”
“Why?”
“We don’t know what happens if you take something back.”
Eli looks at her hand.
Then at the shelf.
There are books here that people deliberately removed for more than a century.
Maybe for good reasons.
Maybe terrible ones.
Maybe reasons nobody can remember anymore.
Then June points toward the bottom shelf.
There is a book lying horizontally.
Unlike the others, it has no title.
Eli pulls away from Ms. Voss and kneels.
A name slowly appears across the cover.
ELI MERCER
Below it:
THE BOY WHO REMEMBERED
The book opens by itself.
The first page contains one sentence.
Eli Mercer stood before Shelf 33 and tried to decide whether forgotten things were forgotten because they were dangerous—or dangerous because they had been forgotten.
Eli reads it twice.
Then the second sentence begins writing itself.
It describes him reading the first.
June whispers:
“Close it.”
Eli reaches for the cover.
The book writes:
June told him to close it.
Nobody moves.
From somewhere deep inside Shelf 33 comes the sound of hundreds of pages turning at once.
And for the first time, Eli wonders whether the library has been forgetting books at all.
Perhaps the books have been remembering them.
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