Books of the Dead (32 page)

“I will always be grateful to you for this, Merly. This might hurt you a little, but remember, it is your choice. Are you ready?” Rosemary asked the final time.

“Merly, whatever you are doing be careful. You are talking in thin air and with whom? You are sick, Merly, and I am warning you,” Mr. Keaton yelled from the side.

“I am not sick, Mr. Keaton. I know this is what we both want. This will put an end to my misery as well. This is the best that I can do right now. You have to trust me,” Merly said and then she rubbed the final tear from her eye.

A faint voice whispered in her ears, “Merly, hold Gregory’s hand and hold the other to mine.” Rosemary was shining bright and her eyes were emerald. Merly couldn’t bear looking at them. She reached out her hand and clasped Mr. Keaton’s hand and tried placing her other hand on to Rosemary’s. Although she didn’t feel anything, Rosemary assured that she was in fact holding on to her hand tight. Mr. Keaton surprisingly didn’t protest at all, and he latched on to her hand tightly.

Merly heard the force of the prayers hitting her head constantly, the surge of which shook her, but she didn’t let go of the hands. Her hands started feeling a burning sensation and nausea rose up. It was a feeling that she never had before and oddly she thought she would faint. “This is what death feels like, I suppose,” was one of her last train of thoughts, but she couldn’t figure out why when her brain started to think something, the noise of the chanting grew louder. However, the brain has a mind of its own and it has a never ending strength to not give up.

In her last moments of possessing her own physical form, there were several faces that popped up in her mind. First, it was Mr. Stevenson oddly, then came Nora followed by her parents and Natalie, Sandra, Mrs. Nigela, Zoë and Camille at last. Mr. Keaton and Rosemary never made an appearance. There were some shadowy figures trying to cage her mind and Merly felt her eyes were burning with these horrific images in her mind. “Stop!” she cried out like one previous time her voice got lost even before coming out.

Merly couldn’t even open her eyes now although hard she tried. She realized that Mr. Keaton was holding her hand in a tight grip and there was no way that she could break free from it.

Then the shivering began. “This is what it feels to get hurt. I haven’t gotten physically hurt before then,” Merly thought. Physical pain took over her mental agony. She thought she might collapse.

“This isn’t happening. Is this real? This can’t be real, I was supposed to go to my class today. Mrs. Nigela, can you bake me a cookie? Nora, please don’t set your alarm at 6:00 a.m., because you are never able to get up on time. Hello, Mr. Stevenson, how are you today? I just came by to have a quick read. Zoë, why are you never on time? We were supposed to work on this assignment together. It is due tomorrow. You were supposed to be here on time. Mother, I want to go back home, it is scary in here. Father, we should have never went to that vacation. Now look what happened. What will we do now? Natalie, why do you always stand by the balcony? Yes, I did promise I will trust you, but this is something that I have to do on my own. Nora, why did you leave without telling me anything. You know I waited for you. I was so worried for you, but I am setting everything right. Yes, yes, I made a new friend. Yes, Natalie is a fine person and I like her immensely. Mother, why didn’t you call me? Mr. Stevenson, I know that you don’t talk on your own. Hey, Sandra, thank you so much for assisting with my assignment the other day, I promise to go back being the student that I used to be. Natalie, I asked you not to follow me, I can take care of my own. I surely can. Nora, Natalie, Mother, Mrs. Nigela, where are you all going? Don’t leave me please, wait, don’t go! Pleae stay here. I will be coming back.”

Random and incoherent thoughts clouded Merly’s mind. So many people and so much to say and even less time. “What if I don’t make it? Nora, no, do go wait for me.” There was no escape, no recluse, no serenity for Merly, only the pit of something unknown. She could only see the darkness, and nothing else. Merly couldn’t identify anything. There was not a single face she could see, but she just hears the things she had to say to them and then everything went blank. It was the darkest color of black that that she had ever seen. It was so black that she could even read her own train of thoughts.

Merly opened her eyes slowly and looked around. It took her some time to make sense of her surroundings. She felt a heavy sensation on the back of her head and tried soothing it out. The pain was persistent. “Try to relax, Merly, it will not go out otherwise. Try to stay still for a while. It will go away. Stay still and don’t think about anything.” Merly knew it was Rosemary who was speaking, but the voice was not her. It sounded oddly similar; it was of someone she had heard before.

“So, it didn’t work did it?” Merly asked, but got no reply in return.

When the pain eased a little, Merly attained a more relaxing position. She slowly reclined to where she was sitting and remained like that without opening her eyes. Much later, Merly thought about an hour had passed, did she open her eyes. She felt more relaxed and saw two figures beside her smiling at her. It was Mr. Keaton and herself. Finally, the realization dawned on her what had happened. “Is this true?” she said.

“Every bit of this,” Mr. Keaton said smilingly.

“Are you happy, Mr. Keaton? You do believe me now, don’t you?” Merly asked hopefully or what was left of her.

“I can’t complain, and I thought this is not how my kid sister looked. I am happy that it is her and I have just you to thank for this. Please accept my sincere gratitude,” Mr. Keaton said, and no matter how sincere it sounded, Merly didn’t feel the whole of it.

Merly looked to her physical form and said, “Rosemary, now you can convince your brother all you want to not take the library down. I did it, didn’t I?” Merly said steadily. She was happy that she was able to achieve something that if she asked herself about it a few days back, then her legs would have given in.

Rosmary looked oddly at her brother, then looked back at Merly’s spiritual state. “Yes, I intend to do that, but then I will have the rest of my life to convince him of that.” Her words sounded selfish and rude.

“What are you talking about, Rosemary? I don’t seem to understand,” Merly said confused.

“Oh, don’t call me by that name, Merly. I will not be known as Rosemary, I will be called Merly, and Gregory, he can always see me in class and not just in the corner of this sick library,” she said menacingly.

Merly couldn’t believe her ears. “What are you saying, Rosemary? Please don’t scare me. I trust that you won’t. I trusted you and we agreed that we will do this to convince Mr. Keaton, and now this is done, so I need my physical appearance back,” Merly demanded, but her mind said that it was already a lost battle.

“Oh, Merly, don’t be so petty, I just took it from you and you can’t expect it back. Then I have my classes to complete, make friends and go back to my old room. I have all the time in the world.” Rosemary’s tone was cynical and cruel.

“This is not right. I trusted you with my life, Rosemary, and you cannot take it away from me!” Merly begged.

“I just did, Merly, and know that I am truly sorry, but I can’t give this back to you,” Rosemary said while pointing to herself.

Then Mr. Keaton and Rosemary looked at each other and laughed a kind laugh, “Oh, Sister, I have waited so long for this. You left too early, too soon, and you had so much potential and so much to achieve, but now you can do everything all over again.

Merly was at a loss of words. She looked at her self in a spiritual state, white and dead, dull and weary. She couldn’t even feel her existence.

“Mr. Keaton, Nora was right all along. You were in this, both of you tricked me.”

“We could ignore you now if we want, and nobody would have to know a thing,” both of them said simultaneously.

“Why did you do this to me? After all, I trusted you!” Merly cried.

“Remember you wanted this. You can’t complain,” Rosemary said.

“Please don’t leave without answering me first. Why you did this to me?” Merly asked when she saw them leaving.

Mr. Keaton must have felt pity for her, so he came back and urged his sister to come and join him, and then he began, “We are extremely sorry, Merly, but sometimes things need to be done, and we did what we had to. I really liked you. You are just like Rose, smart and intelligent and I couldn’t see my sister rot in the pit of this library and the university campus, so I had to get her out of here.”

“You used me, Mr. Keaton. I really respected you.”

“Nora was right about me. She was right about my identity, so I confronted her, but old Mr. Stevenson was in my debt, so I had to shut him up. Those books to your place were sent by me. I knew that you never believed in any of this stuff and this switch required you to believe in it, so necessary arrangements were made accordingly,” he said calmly, Rosemary merely looked on.

“You tricked me in believing that I was losing my mind,” Merly concluded.

“I only triggered it; the old librarian you saw was there to warn you. She was always the helpful one, but that in turn proved to be an advantage for us. You didn’t believe that any of this existed, but slowly you started believing in them. You made some wrong moves and your kind friend, Camille, helped you immensely in making the wrong move. Sadly, she is not with us on this.” Every word that came out of Mr. Keaton’s mouth stabbed Merly over and over again.

“Why did you do this? What did Nora find in your hometown?”

“I knew Nora was on me. She followed me and went to my hometown and I knew those were the records I couldn’t hide. There are people who knew about us. I changed my name and my looks. I know what Nora found over there about us. Do you want to tell me that or you want to find it out on your own?” Mr. Keaton said menacingly.

“What about the library? It is not being taken down?”

“No, of course, it was not going to be taken down. It was going to be refurbished. We made you believe it. Sweet Rosemary made up a story and you believed it. Don’t tell me that she didn’t warn you.”

“Who was on this with you, Mr. Keaton? Mr. Stevenson was in debt, but who were the other ones?”

“There are a couple of other people and most of them in our debt. We pulled a few strings and they had to keep quiet”.

“I felt someone warning me in that abandoned room where Camille took me and then once in my room as well. Who was that then?” Merly asked although she knew the battle was lost.

“That was me. I wanted you to believe in me, otherwise, this little trick of ours wouldn’t have worked. Sad you fell for it. Remember the boy who saw me, too? He was clever and never fell for it, although it was his sister I wanted to get to. Not everyone is like you. I warned you, Merly. We liked you from the beginning the moment we saw you,” Rosemary replied.

“My questions aren’t answered yet, wait please!” Merly cried.

They were almost out of sight now hands linked and Merly had eternity to suffer. Rosemary came back though, “I will let you in on a secret. You know how these things work, catch hold of someone and we can always be classmates,” Rosemary winked and left.

Merly looked at herself and it hit her. The nightmares she saw before were not nightmares, and that it was the reality which screamed nightmares at her.

1. Epilogue
   

Merly didn’t know which day it was, but she saw Nora coming in and sitting on one of the benches and bowing her head down uttering things to herself. She moved closer and heard her friend say, “Merly, if you are in here, then know that I am sorry that I failed you. I found out the truth, but it was too late. I know the truth about Mr. Summers and his sister, who they were, and what they did, their practices and how they were driven out of town. I know the people who are in on this and people who suffered. I couldn’t do a thing.” Nora paused and then said the last lines and there were suffering in her tone.

“I never went back home. I had an accident and remained unconscious for days in that town. I hallucinated and I know of someone who pulled strings. Pretended to be my mother and called you. I have no proof against anyone, so I failed. I came on the day of the storm, but it was late. Wasn’t it?”

Seeing Nora killed Merly all over again. She laid one ghastly hand on her friend and Nora looked up into the emptiness.

Nothing remained other than the emptiness with her soul traveling through the very books that gave her life one day.

1. Thank You Most Sincerely
   

I hope you enjoyed the book and would love to know what you thought about it. If you have a moment to spare, I would appreciate it if you could leave a review of this book at Amazon. Your opinion goes a long way in helping others decide if a book is right for them.

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Thank you so much.

Morris Fenris

1. About the Author
   

Morris Fenris was born into a poor family in the Fiji Islands. Thanks to his own grit, determination and the support of his loving parents, he was able to embark on a journey that has seen him attain a good education and work in many parts of the World.

Morris has been writing since childhood, drawing on his experiences in life and emulating the styles of his favorite authors.

Morris enjoys reading and writing in a wide range of genres and has plans for many more books. If you’d like to get in touch with this author, please message him on Twitter at @MorrisFenris, or find him on Facebook.