Pages in the Dark

Slowly, the old woman began to walk about flicking out each of the light switches, one by one. The children were all gone for the night, but the echo of their voices seemed to drip out of the books in the children’s corner. The harrowed college students too were gone from the study cubbies, and yet for some reason the noise of their murmured notes flaked through the air. The library was empty.
With the lights off, the old woman began to move to a tiny desk to the left of the great wooden doors. There she flicked one more switch, setting a small lamp alight.
She sat there, at her desk, taking account for the day’s work, the day’s books.
She had no children, no family waiting at home. She had her books.
And she would always keep the children there, because they had read her books and signed their names to a ledger. And with that act, those children became hers. In each book she held a different mind. In each page a different past, a different soul.
A homeless man who sat in the corner, she kept him in her copy of Les Miserables, Hugo.843.
A young boy who would often hide a used stick of chewing gum beneath the round table by the windows. He was contained in A Tell Tale Heart, Poe.811.
A middle aged woman, who wore her skirts just an inch too short, her tops just a button too few. She was trapped in a tattered copy of The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorn.813.

The woman had her books. She would not let them go.