The Cornerstone (3 page)

Books as doorways?

What the hell was a ‘Cornerstone’ book and how could it make a sound?

He re-read the last lines of the note:

Please help me. Please help us. I’m so scared.

Max felt another shiver run down his back. 

It occurred to him that if this actually was a practical joke, then the instigator may have added copies of the message to other books, raising the chances of some poor sap finding it and falling for the gag.

He stood up and pulled out novels closest to where Clive Bonnet’s had been, holding the books by the cover and flapping them around in the air.

He gave up after five, when no other notes had fluttered out.

The idea of going through every book in the library was crazy – it’d take him all day – so he decided to treat the message as a one-off, until evidence came to light suggesting otherwise.

Having settled that, it was now a question of what to do next.

He could just tuck the paper back into Read Me If You’re Bored, put the book back, leave the library and forget this weird episode ever happened. That would just plunge him back into the depths of abject boredom though, which was to be avoided at all costs.

The next choice was to take the note to the librarian at the front counter.

Max could imagine handing it over and the sour look she’d give him. He could further imagine the note being torn up, as she told him it was a silly joke – a prank perpetrated by one of his fellow enthusiastic teenagers, no doubt.

A part of Max spoke up to point out that the librarian was probably right and this was indeed a silly joke.

Another part of him couldn’t stop turning the message over in his head however, convinced it was a genuine cry for help.

He was determined to get to the bottom of it.

Wherever the bottom of it was.

…or the top for that matter.

The best place to start would be with this Cornerstone thing.

As far as Max was aware, a cornerstone was a foundation block in a building and not a book… so no help there, then. 

Also, what did the message writer mean by the sound it made?

The sound a book made when you dropped it on the floor?

That was just
thud
, wasn’t it?

Last birthday, Max had received one of those novelty cards from his best mate Steve Figson. It played a tune when you opened it: a tinny version of Baby Got Back by Sir Mix-a-Lot. Figgy had loved it.

Maybe that’s what the cryptic message meant? You opened the book and it warbled a tune at you.

Opening countless library books, listening for one playing a melody, was as ridiculous as hunting for non-existent notes, so he dismissed the idea immediately.

Therefore, with no other clues to follow, Max had this:

There’s a book somewhere in this library that makes a noise and it might be a doorway of some kind.

The cogs were whirring in his head so loud you could almost hear them.

Maybe the book isn’t a doorway itself, just
close
to one...

He looked around.

There were two doors in sight. One was a fire exit to his right. The other was a door to the left with big black letters printed on it saying: Private – Staff Only.

Max listened to what the door had to say and walked over to the fire exit instead to get a better look.

It was flanked by bookcases on both sides. These looked extremely normal, with no discernable cornerstone-ish quality to either.

Feeling foolish, he put his right ear to one shelf, straining to hear something over the low rattle of the air conditioning. This yielded nothing other than slight neck strain.

The fire exit stood at the end of an L shape, created by the aisle Max was in and another at right angles to it. An elderly lady was sat halfway down the other, giving Max a strange look. He offered her a sheepish smile, backed out of her line of sight and went back to the library chair, the de facto base camp for his investigations.

The staff door was now the only other option, so he walked over to it, praying nobody would come out while he stood there like an idiot with his ear to the bookshelf.

This proved just as fruitless an experiment here as it had at the fire exit.

His door options were now severely limited to the front entrance – no books there – and the one leading to the second floor, which housed the local branch of the Citizen’s Advice Bureau.

Max thought he could use a bit of advice right now, but doubted the earnest volunteers upstairs would be up to speed on mysterious messages left in random books that gave you the creeping heebie-jeebies.

So what now, genius?

He looked at the crumpled note again, hoping new instructions had magically appeared on it.

They hadn’t.

Standing there in the humid library, Max finally realised what he was doing and his brain piped up:

‘You do realise you’ve become obsessed about a scribbled note you found in a stupid book, don’t you?’

At this point, the futility of the whole exercise hit him like a sack of bricks and all at once he felt like a prize berk.

Here he was, wasting perfectly good video gaming time in a library, trying to decipher a message that could have been written years ago, and looking like a right idiot listening to bookcases.

With an angry grunt, he screwed the note up, stuffed it in his pocket and walked off in the direction of the exit.

Imelda Warrington saw him coming and had a small, guilty feeling of pleasure that the teenager was leaving. Still, she was a professional and had a job to do: ‘Goodbye young man, your library card will be in the post. Please come again soon!’

She was treated to the stoniest of glares.

‘Don’t count on it,’ Max muttered as he marched past.

By the time he got back to his bike, Max was thoroughly cold and wet from the drizzle. Add this to how stupid he felt and his mood could be described as just this side of apoplectic.

Max has many endearing character traits. His bad temper is
not
one of them. His eleven year old sister would attest to this.

About four years ago, when she was seven and he was thirteen, Monica Bloom – or Moan-ica, as he referred to her – while performing her
bestest
Britney Spears impression, had stepped on Max’s favourite video game by accident, breaking the disc in two.

In retribution he’d punched her on the arm hard enough to leave a bruise that lasted three weeks and kicked a hole through the plastering in the hallway.

Given this, when Max bent down to unlock the bike and discovered that his keys had fallen out of his pocket, his mood could be described as just the
other
side of apoplectic.

He let out a howl of rage and started to kick the bike, which was a completely innocent bystander in this escapade and really didn’t deserve the heartless beating it now received.

This childish display of temper went on for a good couple of minutes before rationality reasserted itself, having initially run away in mortal terror.

Still incensed, but now in control of his motor functions, Max glared at the bike’s lock as if willing it to pop open by sheer force of will.

It failed to do so.

Towering anger gave way to icy panic as he realised he could be in real trouble here. The bike was expensive. He could just imagine his mother’s face when he told her it was now a permanent street ornament outside WH Smiths.

Max went through the time honoured ritual of patting every pocket twice to check if the keys were there, with no luck.

He tried to remember where he might have lost them.

Visions of flopping down into the library chair swam through his mind and he let out a long, low groan.

Sure… that’s what had happened.

He’d sat down way too hard and the keys had jumped out of his pocket in a successful bid for freedom.

He could see them now in his mind’s eye: lying somewhere behind the chair under the book shelf.

Lacking the ability to telekinetically convey objects across a great distance, Max heaved another leaden sigh and trudged his way back to the library.

- 4 -

Max walked in, brushing rain from his hair.

Imelda Warrington hadn’t moved and regarded him once more with a profound look of distrust.

Still, professionalism and all that: ‘Back so soon, young man? Was there something you needed help with?’

‘Er… no, that’s alright. I only came back because I think I dropped my keys over by the B section.’

Imelda looked disappointed.

Even though Max was a teenager, it’d been a dull day and she could have done with providing a bit more customer service to break up the monotony. ‘Oh. Well, I hope you find them. If you do need any assistance, don’t hesitate to ask.’

‘Thanks, I will.’ Max replied with genuine gratitude.

With this cordial exchange out the way, he made his way back to the bookshelf with fingers crossed.

Happily for all concerned, the keys were indeed under the leatherette chair. Max scooped them up with relief and turned to leave the library for the second and final time that day.

Max wasn’t the type of boy who scared easily, but the sudden loud noise that shattered the library’s silence would have been enough to make anyone recoil in terror and worry for the condition of their underwear.

The sound was incredible - like a billion people in an enormous celestial choir shouting
aaaahhh
at an absurdly high volume.

Max made a strange high pitched
eeeep
noise at the back of his throat.

His knees buckled and he dropped to the floor. The noise vibrated through his whole body and seemed to shake the library to its very foundations.

Tears streamed from Max’s eyes as the choir’s song enveloped him, driving out all coherent thought. It struck his nerve centres in such a profound way that every fibre of his being was paralysed.

It was like drowning in an ocean of sound.

Mercifully, the choir stopped as abruptly as it had started.

Max let out a whimper and sat down heavily on the floor, biting his tongue in the process. The sharp pain helped to clear his head.

With the unpleasant coppery taste of blood in his mouth, he groped his way to the chair and sat, putting his head in his hands.

After a few minutes of recovery time he looked up, searching for the source of the crippling sound. He felt drained and incredibly tired, but needed to know where it’d come from, so forced his way to his feet in order to search.

On wobbly legs, Max made his way along the aisle, holding the shelves for support, wondering how everyone else had been affected by the bombardment.

He reached the fire exit and looked down the other aisle.

Sure enough, the old woman who’d given him the funny look was still there. Max supposed she might be quite deaf – being in her seventies at least – but thought even she would have noticed a million people shouting
aaaahhh
at a volume usually reserved for thrash metal concerts.

The pensioner looked quite serene however, sitting in her chair munching a scone. She’d obviously heard and felt nothing.

Great. I’ve gone mad… or had a seizure of some kind.

That sounded plausible.

Just like Pete Schlitz, the German exchange student he’d known at school. Pete was epileptic and they’d all been told about the condition by their tutor, in case he threw a fit and needed help. Schlit-head – as he was affectionately known – had never done this in front of Max, but he could imagine what had just happened was similar to the type of thing Schlit-head experienced.

Despite the idea of suffering something as serious as a seizure, Max actually felt a little better. The enormous noise was otherwise inexplicable – and he liked his world to be nice and
explicable
, thank you very much.

Resolving to tell his mother and pay a visit to the doctors at the first opportunity, Max hobbled towards the exit.

The noise started again.  Only this time it wasn’t loud enough to melt concrete.

Instead it was now a soft, quiet sound that retained its unearthly quality, despite the drop in volume.

Max didn’t know where his hackles were, but was sure they were now raised. He stopped in his tracks and listened, able to analyse the song now it wasn’t pounding his nervous system to a pulp.

It was, in actual fact, quite beautiful.

The million voices came from men and women of all ages. There were definite vocal ranges he could make out, from a low male bass to a high female soprano.

He moved forward and the choir grew louder, indicating he was moving closer to its source.

So much for it being a seizure… maybe I am going mad.

If he was, it didn’t feel that unpleasant. The choir’s song filled him with a sense of drowsy well-being as he walked – or rather floated – along the aisles with an awestruck expression on his face.

The library was pretty much empty, so nobody noticed the spaced-out seventeen year old boy wafting through the stacks like a dope fiend in a pair of helium trousers.

The choir grew louder and Max’s hackles rose even higher.

As did his testicles, which retreated as far up as they could go, knowing a potentially dangerous situation when they saw one.

The volume continued to escalate and pressure mounted across his chest. The sense of well-being faded, replaced with considerable discomfort.

He was being pulled along now, unable to break free of this strange siren song.

Gasping for breath and going an alarming shade of blue, Max stumbled towards the saddest, oldest and tattiest looking bookshelf in the whole library.

It was about four feet high and sulked in one corner near the children’s section, against a wall covered in brown hessian.

A sign was hung above it on a drawing pin. In Imelda’s Warrington’s careful hand-writing it said:

Books for sale.50p each. All money donated to local hospice.

On the shelf sat a collection of second hand books, filed in no discernable order. Among the treats on offer was a book about carp fishing circa 1976, a copy of The Complete Works of Shakespeare - which looked anything but, two boy’s own World War 2 novels featuring hyperbolic titles and scant attention to historical accuracy, and a beginners guide to taxidermy called ‘Stuff It’.