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Return To Me

“I ransack public libraries, and find them full of sunk treasure.” - Virginia Woolf

By Simone SirenPublished 3 years ago 9 min read
1

Angel had spent so much time in the library that she knew exactly how to get herself locked in for the night. It had almost happened twice, in fact, before she decided to do it on purpose.

She tucked herself into the larger reading cubby in the children’s section and waited it out, quiet as a mouse. The kids were always gone by 4 or 5 o’clock, which meant the security guard only gave a cursory glance in that section before locking everything up at 6. Then the librarians tidied up and were gone by 7:30.

At 8pm, she crawled out quietly and stretched, looking around in the gloom.

A streetlight’s rays sifted in through the blinds, casting the empty aisles and desks in a faint, ghostly light. Angel threw up her arms in triumph and walked out into the high-ceilinged main room. There she twirled happily, like a secret library elf—in a Stranger Things shirt and hand-me-down jeans.

The whole place was hers for the night. There was no going home to a tense dinner, then homework with her music cranked to drown out her parents’ fighting. Money was already tight, and her dad had been laid off again.

Of course, there was no dinner here . . . but she just needed some peace.

She pulled out her phone and earbuds. What should she listen to while she wandered freely through her very own library? She decided on The 1975 and bopped around in the aisles for a while, scanning for something new to read. She kicked off her shoes and slid across the floor in her socks; she peeled a “Please Be Quiet” sign off the wall and slapped it back on upside down; she stuck her head inside the men’s bathroom just to see what it looked like.

She had just pulled out Howl’s Moving Castle to read when she heard a loud thump. She froze, pausing the music. No more sounds followed, but she tiptoed toward that direction: the “bookstore” corner where donated books were sold for a dollar.

Something rustled—then fell with a plop on the floor. Worried, Angel peeked around a column. But there was just a book lying on the floor. It was small and black, like a diary, and it was splayed flat. It must have been leaning out precariously and finally just fallen on its own.

Relieved, Angel was about to turn away when the book shuddered.

She gasped. It trembled again and then twisted violently, its black cover flapping. Invisible hands warped it, and suddenly it was gone.

A little black cat appeared in its place, fluffing out its fur indignantly.

Angel yelped and dropped her phone. The cat leapt into the air, startled. Then it shot off into the darkness of the library. She stared after it, shaking, as the moonlight crept in through a skylight overhead.

She had not imagined it. The book had turned into a cat.

She snatched up her phone and scurried after it, her heart pounding. Because nothing in her life had even come close to being that magical, and she couldn’t just let that slip through her fingers.

It wasn’t long before she spotted a cat silhouette near the front doors. It sat there like a little statue, staring out through the tinted glass. Angel crept slowly closer until it fluffed up again and glared at her.

“Okay, okay,” she whispered, raising her hands. “I’ll stay here.”

The cat’s golden eyes gleamed as it glanced back out the door. Its white whiskers and its long tail twitched. As she watched, it batted at the glass with one paw and looked back at her.

“I can’t let you out,” Angel told it. “It’s locked. You have to wait till morning.”

It leapt to a windowsill and pawed at the glass there, throwing her another look.

She shook her head. “Sorry.”

As if it understood, the cat turned and stalked away. Then it began to wend its way down the aisles, investigating books on the bottom shelves or spots on the rug. Angel followed it around for a full hour before it hopped onto a cushioned bench. It proceeded to knead the cushion like any other cat.

“I thought you were going to do something magic,” Angel complained. The creature stretched dramatically and then curled up into a ball.

With a sigh, she set her phone alarm for 5:30 AM, knowing she had to be up before anyone unlocked the door. Then she retrieved her book and nudged the cat over so she could lay down and read.

* * *

Angel woke with a start, her heart pounding in the darkness. She sat up, bewildered by her surroundings. The little cat was on the floor, pacing tightly back and forth. It hissed and shook itself, circling.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, her voice thick with sleep.

The cat spasmed suddenly—and vanished. The black book lay on the floor in its place.

Then Angel’s alarm blasted from her phone and she jumped to her feet, wider awake than she’d ever been. What the hell was going on here?

* * *

She was starving by the time she got out of there. She had spent over an hour hiding in a stall in the women’s bathroom—while the librarians went about their morning routines—thumbing through the cat-book with wide open eyes. It was a journal filled with notes about magic spells. Like a witch’s diary.

The only explanation Angel could think of was that the owner had lost the book, and someone had found it and given it to the library.

The words were scratched across the pages in a slanted, messy script, but she could make out most of it. There were long lists of herbs with measurements crossed out and rewritten. Exclamation points and question marks lurked everywhere, and phrases were circled or underlined.

Turn the branches to face north for energy . . . !

Burn and recite, Within this circle, no harm shall come to you . . . !

Anise works better than agrimony? Need black tourmaline . . .

And then there was this note near the end:

Blood money buried under Oscar Wilde now! Might be a hundred years before some lucky soul finds it?

Buried under Oscar Wilde! There was a statue of him with a cane in Poet’s Park. Angel had sat near it with a picnic lunch many times in kindergarten.

Was there really money buried underneath it? She didn’t know if the note was real, but . . . what if? What if she could bring home a little money and give her parents some peace?

It felt like two whole days before the library finally opened, and then she scrounged enough change from her backpack to buy the book before she bolted out the doors.

The green square of Poet’s Park was quiet when she reached it, empty except for a retired senior, feeding pigeons near the Shakespeare statue. Wilde was streaked with bird poop and the dewy grass around his stone base was overgrown. Angel swung her backpack around and pulled out the book, dropping an old granola bar from deep inside. She snatched it up hungrily. Crunching on the stale snack, she flipped the book to the page about “blood money” and looked for further details.

At that moment, the book spasmed in her hands. She dropped it, astonished. It landed in the grass and pulsed several times.

“No, wait!” she cried out, trying to grab it.

It flapped its cover and hopped once or twice. Then it morphed right back into the cat.

“Aw, come on.” Angel sighed and put her hands on her hips.

The little cat shook itself and glared at her. Then it seemed to realize it was outside, and its golden eyes widened. In a flash, it trotted away across the grass.

Angel watched it go for a moment and then followed. There was no way she could keep up if it started to run, but she wanted a little more proof of this possible buried treasure. And the cat was obviously on a mission, which was intriguing.

She followed the creature across the street and down an alley; she trailed it between houses, glancing anxiously up at the windows. Then the cat slipped through a fence, but she found a spot where she could also pass through. It padded quickly along a back road that she didn’t recognize, leading her deep into an older neighborhood.

Finally, the cat hopped over a wooden gate into a backyard. Angel sighed, assuming that was the end of things. But she tried the latch just in case, and it was unlocked. She peeked inside and saw the cat cross a tangled, herb-choked garden and leap onto the windowsill of a dilapidated house. Then it clawed steadily at the glass.

A figure suddenly appeared in the window and Angel ducked her head. She heard the window scrape open and a voice ring out.

“It’s about time, little book! Where have you been?”

It was not the rasp of a movie witch, but a musical, androgynous voice that was pleasant, despite being annoyed. Angel risked looking up and saw that the speaker and the cat were both gone, the window left open. She stood there and studied the messy garden, wondering how far she should go.

After all, if anything happened, no one knew where she was. But she had noticed that the spells in the book were mostly about protection, and not to seek harm . . .

After a moment, she bit her lip and tiptoed over to the window. The house looked like it had once been painted in different colored stripes, but the paint was faded and cracked now. Peeking in, she could see peeling wallpaper and a clock, ticking away at the wrong time. She could also hear someone humming and the sound of a page turning.

“That ‘Return To Me’ spell should’ve worked faster,” the witch’s voice drifted over. “You must’ve been stuck somewhere, hmm?”

Angel thought of the cat roaming the library and wondered just how many nights it had done that. Then a phone rang close to the window and she ducked her head. It sounded like an old landline phone attached to the wall.

“Yes, hello?” the voice was suspicious first and then relieved. “Oh, it’s you. What timing—I just got it back! Yes!”

There was a short silence as the caller spoke and Angel crouched uncomfortably in the plants under the window. She realized with a start that they looked like white oleander, which she knew was poisonous.

“That’s what I was worried about,” the witch said. “Sister absolutely cannot find it. It’s cursed for her, considering the dark way she got it.”

Angel leaned away from the deadly flowers and winced as a spider crawled over her sneaker. It was probably time to go.

“It wasn’t just that, honey,” the witch said sadly. “I couldn’t handle your fighting all the time! You know that. I had to leave.”

Angel hesitated. There was a pang in those words that she was all too familiar with.

“But anyway, yes. It’s better to keep it buried.”

She tensed, listening.

“20,000!” the witch said, in a lower voice. “It would do someone good, but I couldn’t risk giving it away. Morgan could trace that back to me.”

Angel gasped. 20,000 . . . dollars?

“Yes, I know. I suppose someone could find it one day.”

Angel’s heart leapt into her throat. She disentangled herself as quietly as she could and crept back toward the gate.

$20,000! Buried in Poet’s Park and up for grabs? She had to tell her parents.

Behind her, the witch’s voice carried on, unheard.

“All right. Tell them I love them but I’m not coming back. And please, try to find some peace.”

fact or fiction
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About the Creator

Simone Siren

I write fantasy and urban fantasy in Los Angeles.

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