Underground Rivers (7 page)

Words

by Muriel Nicola Waldt

It is not unusual to see random books in odd places in the library where I work but when I reach out to pick this particular book up it slowly opens, all on its own, right in front of my eyes. Now some books do this. Paperbacks tend to have a mind of their own, especially when they have only been read a few times. The lovely pristine pages open up like curtains on a stage offering all manner of wonderful words that dance across the page like eager young ballerinas waiting for praise. But not hardbacks. Despite having as many delights hidden between their cardboard covers, they remain firmly shut, relying only on the tantalising words and pictures splashed across their covers to tempt the waiting public.

So, it is fair to say that when the book in question settles on pages 128 and 129, I find myself staring at it in disbelief and feel my heart go into a frenzy of wild thumping. Halfway down page 129 the words ‘help me' are outlined in a browny red colour, which is definitely not biro. Even though I remind myself that this is not the first time I have seen words circled in books (admittedly usually in pencil) I find that this smudge of colour sends a bizarre scenario rushing through my head of blood seeping from a wound to be used as ink. I think I might faint so taking a deep breath I gather my absent wits, grab the book and make my way back behind the counter. This is the latest in a string of strange incidents involving books and my colleagues just humour me and tell me I am going mad.

At the enquiry desk I scan the item number to check the last borrower. Her name is Joan Fredericks, a woman in her mid fifties. She lives in Maple Road; a stretch of old terraced houses just round the corner. The address seems familiar but for now I cannot think why. I am unable to bring her to mind at the moment but then out of all the hundreds of people that come through the door each week this is hardly surprising, I know most of our customers by sight only. I see that she has ten books out, all junior fiction and her records tell me that she takes ten out on a regular basis every three weeks. Her books are due back tomorrow. I am sure I will recognise her when I see her. I take another look at the book; it is junior fiction about a lost dog and when I check page 129 again I convince myself that the strange colour circling ‘help me' is definitely dried blood.

When Joan comes in the next day I do indeed recognise her. I remember that she has hardly ever said a word to any of us, simply putting the books on the return desk then making her way to the junior fiction and picking another ten books almost at random. A busy library, we often do not have time to make conversation with all of the customers, but I make time today and comment on the awful weather. She mumbles something, possibly in agreement, grabs her books and practically runs out of the door.

After work I go home to my own small terraced cottage not far away in a road parallel to Maple Road. The houses are identical, built at the turn of the century over a hundred years ago. The niggle I feel that there is something relevant about her house eludes me until the early hours of the next morning when I wake, as you do, and instantly remember. The house next to hers was the subject of news coverage only a year ago. Archie Meadows, the ten year old son of Joan Frederick's next door neighbour, disappeared while running an errand for his mother. He left the house to walk to the corner shop, a few hundred yards away and was never seen again. The story shocked the nation as these terrible stories tend to do and his mother, Lucy, who brings her other children into the library, has never lost that haunted, translucent look. My heart literally hurts whenever I see her.

My mind wanders back to the books and it occurs to me that there may be another message in one of the other books Joan brought back yesterday. When I get to work in the morning I look up her previous books using the excuse of doing some junior shelving, a job we all put off until the return trolley is nearly toppling over, to find them. I quickly skim through them all.

Nothing.

What did I expect?

I'm not sure, maybe an SOS from young Archie who has been kidnapped by Joan Fredericks and is being held in her cellar; a mirror image of the one I have, dark and sound proof, under my house.

I can't believe I am thinking this. I have to suppress a surge of envy for Joan when a colleague tells me she actually borrows the books for her grandson who has some sort of disability and rarely leaves the house. The disappointment many years ago in not producing boys was compounded when my twin girls announced in their late teens that they were gay so the chances of me having a grandson, able bodied or not is unlikely to happen. My job here at the library gives me lots of opportunities to mingle with children, which in some way compensates.

I push away these unwelcome thoughts and think back to a year ago when I first experienced a strange incident at work. A book jumped off a tightly packed shelf in the junior section and at the time I laughed it off as just one of those things. When this started happening on a regular basis I looked inside the books and discovered pencil circling some of the words. Now anyone who works in a library will tell you that there is nothing more annoying than a book being returned with scribble in it but as there is no way to prove who committed this pointless act, you are left only with the feeble satisfaction of rubbing it out.

I soon found that I was doing a lot of rubbing out.

It took a while for me to see that there was a pattern to these strange messages and they actually meant something and for that I was led to my favourite book: my Thesaurus, with its derivations bursting out like bubbles from a single word. After a rough count I estimated at least 82 different meanings for the word free, 80 for escape and 48 for help. Were the circled words telling me something? Could it be some dubious crime committed years ago or something more recent; it seemed odd that it was always me that found them?

I wonder now if I can find some answers in the old books we keep in the office and make a start by looking up the history of the building. It is common knowledge that it was originally an orphanage built in the early eighteenth century. Over the centuries it has mellowed like a beautiful old lady standing alone and graceful in a peaceful garden. Unusually, for a building from that era, it has large windows on each of the high walls which let in floods of sunlight. It seems an unlikely place for an orphanage; images of dark, old houses normally come to mind, grafted there from watching too many horror films. But the library I work in is a happy place and seems to welcome all. Never once have I felt any sort of foreboding, until now when these old sepia photos show a different picture to the reality of today. It looks dark and depressing and I feel a distinct chill as a further search brings up the original plans. I inspect them thoroughly before seeing to my surprise that there is a cellar beneath it all, but I have no idea where the entrance is and neither, it seems does Kate, the library manager. Up until now my colleagues have treated my tales of books telling me things with amused indifference, but suddenly they are alert and interested and an eager hunt starts for the elusive door to the cellar. According to the plans it is in the vicinity of the boiler room, somewhere we rarely go and there it is, behind a pile of old shelving, a door, locked of course.

Later that night after we have closed the library for the day Kate hovers nervously by the cellar door fiddling with the key we found in the safe.

“Hold on a minute girls,” she says. I feel a surge of frustration well up inside me, guessing what her next words will be.

“Maybe this is not such a good idea,” I close my eyes and suppress the urge to scream as she continues in her best library manager's voice; “we have to think about health and safety. The stairs may be unsafe and heaven only knows what other hazards there will be. If anything were to happen to us I would be in deep shit.”

With an admirable pretence at patience I calmly take the key from her and talk to her as if she were a small child.

“Kate, as much as I respect your position as manager of this library I am not prepared to wade through weeks of red tape just to open a sodding door. I will take full responsibility if anything disastrous happens.” Not giving her a chance to reply I open the door. A waft of dank air rushes past us and an image of Howard Carter slips into my head followed by visions of angry spores and eager bacteria gleefully feeding on our waiting bodies.

For God's sake get a grip I tell myself.

By now all three of us are standing on the top step peering into the darkness.

“No way am I going down there,” says Fiona.

“Me neither,” says Kate, no longer the confident boss, “you are on your own from here.” Without a thought for health and safety she gives me a gentle shove and I step into the soft light my torch is throwing down the stairs

At the bottom, I survey the contents of the dark room. No bigger than an average double bedroom it contains only a small table with a pile of old books on it and a metal framed, child sized single bed. The decaying mattress, home now to generations of mice, adorns it like froths of lace; if it wasn't so awful it would be beautiful.

What on earth is a bed doing down here?

The only possible answer takes my breath away. What would it be like to be incarcerated in this windowless cellar? How terrified would a small child be? How it would long to be free, to escape, cry for help. A wave of claustrophobia washes over me and I grab the pile of books and dash up the stairs pushing past Kate and Fiona and out into the calming welcome of the library where I endeavour to slow the erratic beating of my heart. Later as we sit with a comforting cuppa, I tell them what was there, or was not there as the case may be.

“What freaked me out was seeing that little bed.” A perfect picture of the cellar and its contents sits smugly behind my eyes and I shake my head trying to dispel the image. I find that I am still clutching the musty smelling books and Fiona takes one from me and flips through it.

“Yuck, this stinks,” she says and thrusts it back at me. “Are you going to look at them now?”

I am suddenly overcome with tiredness after a full day's work and my loss of control in the cellar, so I ask if I can come in tomorrow when the library is closed and go through them with a clear head.

Sitting in the comforting warmth of the office the next day it is difficult to imagine the children incarcerated here all those years ago and for a moment I am reluctant to open up the first book. The title page tells me that these books were published in 1850 and look as if they have never been opened. It occurs to me that they may have been down here for all those years, untouched.

The pages are fragile and faded but the beautiful copperplate handwriting comes alive as I gently turn the pages and enter the past. Intricate details of accounts, menus, servants, employees and at last the children who ended up here, abandoned for various distressing reasons.

It makes for heartbreaking reading.

It is not until I am on the third book that I find the treasure I am looking for; copies of tiny pieces of paper with almost illegible writing on them. It must have been nothing short of a miracle for a child in such reduced circumstances to be able to read and write and the evidence here is of a very rudimentary education. A desperate child had cried for help by scribbling on scraps of paper and then somehow smuggling them out of this cellar, below me now, where he or she was being held captive. My fingers tremble as I turn another page and read the story of the woman who kept this boy, Charlie, a prisoner for almost a year.

Martha Brown, the childless wife of William, the owner of the orphanage, had longed for a child and thought that when they took over running the orphanage she would be able to satisfy her maternal desires by befriending the children. Her despotic husband had other ideas and forbade her to have anything other than the most necessary contact with them. Charlie stole her heart with his eagerness to be loved and above all to learn and she soon found a way to stage his disappearance, then keep him in the cellar which was well hidden and that William knew nothing about. Her desire to help him better himself was her downfall and Charlie, with his newly acquired writing skills, managed to smuggle out messages in his dirty linen, where a laundry maid found them. When it was brought to William's attention, Charlie was released ..
.

The story comes to an abrupt end here so I can only assume that it was quietly covered up at the time and that whoever left the books in the cellar felt it was best to leave the sad tale where it belonged, in the past. I wonder what became of Charlie and Martha. Poor sad Martha, how I feel for her, how I empathise with her and as I close the old books, I accept finally that some psychic force or spirit has been reaching for me across the centuries.

The three words predominant in Charlie's scraps of writing, free, escape and help fidget in my head and as nausea invades my body I see what I have become. An unhealthy cloud lifts from my brain and I feel exhausted and weak with the knowledge that I have been living a lie for far too long.

What I have to do now is let Archie go, listen to the messages he is leaving me in the books I get out for him, written in his own blood. It is time to accept that Archie will never be the boy I longed for, the grandson I will never have and let him out of my own cellar where he has been for the past year, a terrified ten year old, desperate to get back to his mum and far away from this mad woman.