The Library Of The Past

By Prithvi Sharma

It was pouring cats and dogs the day Andrew Blake was returning home from his office. He just exited the underground subway and was on his way home when the sky gods started weeping their tears. Andrew, unfortunately, was not carrying an umbrella and was getting drenched in the great downpour.

He held his briefcase on his head to prevent his hair from getting wet. Soon enough, he reached some sort of store which he used to protect himself from the rain. He stood in front of the gate, watching the tiny drops fall to the ground. 

Looks like I’m gonna be here for quite some time. He thought about what to do now when he heard a weak but mature voice coming from behind.

“Get inside! Honey!” Said the voice, “you’ll get even wet if you stay out there.” Andrew turned around to find a lady, who seemed to be in her fifties, calling from the reception desk from inside. He didn’t plan on getting a free shower, so he decided it was best to listen to the woman and go inside.

He entered the store, water dripping from his freshly drenched trench coat. “You would’ve gotten sick if you stayed out there!” the woman scolded Andrew, “hang your coat on the hooks near the door over there.” She waved her hand at the wall next to the door, with five hooks attached to it.

“Thank you so much, ma’am,” said Andrew as he slid his arms out of the trench coat, “I probably would’ve gotten sick if it weren’t for your shop.”

“Oh, don’t call it a shop,” she protested, wearing a blue tunic-length top and white pants with round glasses resting on her nose, “I made this place twenty-seven years ago with the motive of creating a library, but you youngsters keep calling it a bookstore.”

Andrew chuckled, “Oh, I’m sorry. I probably would’ve gotten sick if it wasn’t for your library.”

The lady gave him a faint smile. He looked around, and it sure did look like a library. Almirahs piled with books were aligned to the walls, long tables took up the space between the almirahs with chairs placed next to them. Andrew was quite interested in books and he needed to cut some time until the rain stopped.

“Do you mind if I take a look at these books?” asked Andrew

“Oh please do,” the lady approved, “I don’t usually get customers nowadays, so I’d be delighted if these babies can get some exercise.” They both laughed and Andrew went on to hunt for a nice book. He walked through the fiction, sci-fi, non-fiction and comic sections but couldn’t find anything interesting. As he was walking, his eyes caught something kept on the table.

He found a hard-cover book, titled The Unknown Life of Kaleb Darwen. Its cover page was blank, just a black coloured leather with the title imprinted in golden. Being too lazy to look for something from the almirahs, he took a seat and opened the old piece of print.

There was no index, no introduction of the author, not even chapters. It just started. Andrew flipped through the pages to see if there were any gaps, but all he found was just continuous writings. However, at one point there was a space between the texts, but he didn’t read it from that part and started reading from the beginning. The book began like this-

Hello readers, what you see in front of you right now are the events that took place in the life of Kaleb Darven, that is me. Whatever you read now is completely true and has happened to me in my life. Hope you enjoy it.

The beginning of my adventure in this world was marked by a great loss. My mother lost her life trying to give birth to me. Since then, I grew up with my father.

“Huh,” Andrew thought, “this guy’s just like me, losing our mother the day we were born.”

His story went on about how he was always lonely as a child. His father was supportive, but he was mostly busy trying to earn money to feed himself and his child. Andrew was now getting teared up. Kaleb’s life was exactly like his own. 

It was not until kindergarten when I finally found a mother-like figure in my life. My father married another woman, who became my step-mother. She was a loving person, she cared about me and gave me the love a real mother would give someone. 

Andrew had to wipe his eyes with his handkerchief now. His life story was the same, he still remembered the day he met his step-mother for the first time when he came back home from kindergarten. 

Kindergarten was the first time I made friends as well. One of them was a girl named Alice. That girl is really special as we remained friends for our entire life and we even got married to each other at the age of twenty four.

Andrew would’ve wept even more if it weren’t for something that clicked in his mind. Kaleb met a girl in kindergarten and remained friends with her ever since. That was exactly the same case with Andrew, who met a girl named Celia in kindergarten and ended up marrying her at the age twenty-four, just like Kaleb.

Something felt fishy with this book now, the events of Kaleb Darwen’s life were a bit too similar to Andrew’s life. However, he kept reading to see if everything was just a coincidence or if it actually meant something. He read stuff that wasn’t very important which occurred in Kaleb’s life. However, all of those happenings took place in Andrew’s life at the same time as well.

My life was pretty normal and nothing special happened, until I was in ninth grade. It was a fine day, my dad picked me up from school and was driving us home when a giant truck ran us over, blowing up our car.

There was the space which Andrew noticed before, and he knew why it was so. In his life, after the accident he faced in ninth grade, he fell into a coma for five months. The gap was probably to show the time was to represent the time when he was unconscious.

It didn’t specify the coma, but the scene after that space confirmed his suspicions.

My father passed away in that car accident. The only actual family I had was now gone. With that, a sudden change occurred with my step-mom. From the loving being, she turned into a devilish person. She forced me to get a part-time job and wasn’t caring about me at all now. Turns out, she was only after my father’s money and was nice to me all these years so she can hoard all of his capital.

Sweat ran down Andrew’s neck. This story was now getting too similar for his comfort.

The next few months were complete torture. If I didn’t make money, my step-mother would either kick me out of the house or won’t give me any dinner. It wasn’t till the time when I packed my stuff and ran away from my house and went to live with Alice and her family. Those people were more than kind to let me live with them, my father had kept great connections with them.

Andrew was beginning to panic. How can this man’s life be similar to his? Each and every detail was on point. The book even mentioned the parts of Kaleb graduating from college, his step-mother getting arrested and him marrying Alice. All of them happened at the same time and in the exact same manner as it happened in Andrew’s lifetime. His body was shaking from the fear, but he couldn’t just keep the book down now, he HAD to see how it ended.

My life has been a rollercoaster of strange events. However, the strangest one was the one which took place when I was twenty-seven years old. I was returning from my office when it started raining, I took cover in a library. That’s where I found this book titled…

The text ended there. After that were just blank pages. Andrew kept flipping but all he found were sheets devoid of words. Sweat ran down his face. He was twenty-seven years old today and he entered this library to take cover from the rain.

“Oh, you’re reading a work of mine” said a voice from behind.

Andrew jerked his head to find out the lady who invited him standing behind him.

“What do you mean by that?” Andrew asked her, still in a frightened state.

“Oh, you know,” she replied, “I’ve been writing this story myself about a particular person I knew. I don’t really know how to continue though.”

That was it for Andrew, he picked up his trench coat and decided it was better to leave.

“Are you sure you’re gonna leave now, honey?” she asked politely

“Yes,” Andrew replied in a hurry, “my wife’s waiting for me at home. Can I at least know your name please, ma’am?”

“Oh, it’s Nadia Kaleb,” she replied, “yeah, I named the main character after myself as he is like a son to me.”

Andrew nodded and went off. He reached his home, dripping from head to toe. His wife, Celia, kept asking him where he was but he was too stunned to speak. He quickly went to bed and stayed quiet till morning.

The next day, he explained the entire story to his wife about the library and that woman, Nadia Kaleb. She insisted on going back to the shop to check out what was actually happening. So they went, but upon reaching, in place of the library was a coffee shop and a cobbler’s store.

“Are you sure this is where the library was, Andrew?” Celia asked him

Andrew couldn’t believe his eyes, “I swear it was right here, Celia.”

“You weren’t just drunk and hallucinating, right?” She suspected him.

They kept arguing about it for a while when a policeman, who was on patrol found them. “What’s wrong, ma’am?” he asked, “is this man troubling you?”

“Oh, no, officer,” she replied, “this is my husband, do you have any clue about a library or a bookstore being in place of this coffee shop over here?”

The policeman laughed, “Another one of those, eh?” he amused, “let me enlighten you, we had some cases of people informing us that they saw a library here, but all of those people told different stories with a different person at the reception of the library and a different protagonist for the book they read, so we just assumed they were just drunk and just dreamed about it. Same must’ve happened with you.”

With that said, he waved them goodbye and went back to his work. Andrew looked at Celia, who seemed to be considering Andrew’s story to be true.

“Celia?” Andrew mumbled

“Wait” she said, “different people saw different receptionists and different main characters…

“Tell me the name of the girl that was supposed to be me?”

“Her name was Alice, but how-

“Stop, just answer my questions now, what was that lady’s name?”

“She said it was Nadia Kaleb.”

“Celia and Nadia Kaleb…

She kept staring at the ground for some time. Andrew couldn’t understand what was going on in his wife’s mind

“Celia,” Andrew started, “what are you-

“ANDREW!” she yelled as she jerked her head up with a tint of fear in her eyes, “wasn’t your real mother’s name Diana Blake?” Andrew nodded in agreement.

Celia pulled her hair, “Oh gods, Andrew, If you scramble the letters from those names, Alice turns into Celia and Nadia Kaleb becomes Diana Blake.”

Andrew’s eyes widened, jaw hanging open and completely speechless.

“And what was the guy from the book’s name?” she asked again

“It was Kaleb Darwen, but how does that-

She shushed him off again and began thinking. In a few minutes, she looked up, on the verge of tears. She pulled her husband in a tight hug and wiped her eyes from his shirt.

“CELIA!” he screamed, “what happened? Tell me now!”

“A-A-Andrew,” she tried to say, “If you switch ‘Kaleb’ and ‘Darven’ and make ‘Darven Kaleb’, it converts into Andrew Blake, which is you.”

“W-w-w-wait” Andrew whimpered, “if the woman wrote that book about a man she knew…

“Yes, Andrew,” Celia sobbed, “what you and everyone must’ve read was a book made by their dead mother about the life they lived from the day they were born and the day their mother died.”

By Prithvi Sharma