Full Moon Fiancé

Moonlit Library

Chief Bernard nodded off very quickly as he drank his tea. He had managed to sit down at one of the bar-style stools that lined the kitchen island, his head in his hands. Diana felt he may have already been quite tired. After all, it was not exactly normal for a man of his age to stay up so late, especially with nothing to do but stand around all night watching a door.

Once she was sure he was soundly asleep, because he didn’t react to her waving her hand in front of him or knocking over his empty cup, she dimmed the lights and crept toward the back hallway.

She couldn’t help but feel a strange tingling sensation as though she was being watched, even though she was alone. The walls themselves seemed to be peering, wide eyed, at her in the hopes of catching any movement. She’d never felt so uncomfortable in the Westerly mansion, not even when she had woken up here, disoriented and confused, just a day ago. She could swear that with every step she heard the walls themselves breathing, watching, waiting.

She sighed in slight relief when she reached the imposing, dark walnut wood door to the library. She had always loved the Westerly library. It was a two story behemoth of a room, with more books than an entire family could ever hope to read in a lifetime. Many were old, and rare, and beautiful.

She breathed in the library air when she entered the room. The Westerlys were particular about their library. The air was maintained by dehumidifiers and rigorous temperature control. The manor staff included a rare books expert who came by twice monthly to check on the library to ensure it was properly maintained.

Once Diana was in the room she realized she had no idea where to look. She glanced around, taking in her surroundings. She also spared a nervous glance over her shoulder, listening with bated breath for the telltale sounds of someone coming to intercede her investigation. She heard nothing.

The library itself was quiet, other than the low hum of the air controls. A desk stood against the outside wall, large and imposing, a traditional desk lamp with a little glass green shade on it. It occurred to Diana that she’d never seen any of the Westerlys use the desk, and yet it was off limits. It was simply not for visitors. That was one of the rules of the manor that she couldn’t quite remember ever learning. It seemed as eternal as the manor itself, solidly there for as long as she could remember.

Even thinking about approaching the desk made her nervous, casting yet another sidelong glance at the door. But still, no signs of anyone coming in could be heard, so Diana took a tentative step toward the desk.

Her steps were muffled on the ornate, pink and green floral carpet that covered most of the floor. She had always thought the rug was somewhat incongruent to the rest of the room, which was decorated in alternating light and dark woods and silver accents. But Anna Westerly had told her once that it was an antique, and had been gifted to a Westerly ancestor years ago by someone quite important. Diana couldn’t remember now if it had been a President, or a celebrity of the era, but she knew it was a highly valued carpet.

She’d always been a little afraid to step on it for that reason. As children, they’d not been forbidden from entering the library, but the strict rules and quiet atmosphere had not made it an inviting place.

“You can do this,” she whispered, to give herself strength. With that, she took several quick, light steps across the room until she stood behind the desk, staring down at it.

Of course, once she was in front of it, it occurred to her that she had no real idea what she was looking for, or what she was expecting to find.

“Hmmm,” she puzzled to herself, biting her cheek as she contemplated the many drawers. “Top down, I guess.”

Without further preamble, she opened the large drawer that was directly under the writing surface of the desk.

“Just pens. And sticky notes,” she murmured, poking the tentatively as if she thought they might leap out of the drawer to attack her for intruding. But they simply lay there, persistently inanimate.

“Next,” she said, closing the drawer and moving slightly to the right to open a side drawer.

The next drawer was boring. It had files and files stacked inside. She hesitated on whether to open them. “I’ll just come back to these if I don’t find anything,” she decided.

The middle drawer on the right hand side, however, held something of interest. At first, staring down into it, she couldn’t figure out why something appeared off. It was a perfectly ordinary drawer, with some loose notepads stacked inside and some bottles of liquid error corrector in a corner. A little stamp of some kind, maybe a notary stamp, was tipped on its side at the very back.

Then it occurred to her. “Why is it so shallow?” she asked herself. She stepped back slightly to examine the outside of the drawer.

“It should be deeper than this.”

With sudden courage, hardly daring to believe she was doing it, she pulled the contents of the drawer out and piled it on the desktop, then ran her fingers along the seams of the wood, pushing into the dark corners.

At first, she felt nothing, and, then, just as she was about to give up, in one corner, she felt a tiny, semi-sharp object poking out of the wood.

“Ouch,” she murmured. But she didn’t withdraw her hand. Instead, she pressed the little metal spike and to her excitement, felt the wood rise under her hand. Then, she could easily pull it up. She tried to do so as quietly as possible, though the false bottom made a rather loud scraping noise, as if in protest.

“What the–” Diana looked into the newly unveiled section of the drawer. It was a book. Just a book.

But it looked ancient. It was bound in leather and had a strange engraving on the cover, with no title. She traced it with a fingertip. The leather felt supple, yet worn. The embossed design seemed to be a tree, and above it a moon, with strange glyphs traced in tiny, fine lines where stars would be.

Taking a deep breath, Diana flipped the book open.

The same glyphs littered the page. She was able to recognize some words, even a few sentences, in English.

“Sacred light of the moon,” she whispered.

Scanning a few pages, she could only find a handful of other words in English, or indeed in any language she had ever seen before. ‘Return to nature,’ one page read. Another said, ‘The tapestry of stars is proof of the love we live under.’

Diana frowned deeply.

Before she could turn another page, a loud noise from the kitchen caused her to jump, nearly tearing a page of the book as she did so.

Hurriedly, she replaced the book in the drawer and shoved the false bottom back into place over it. She stopped hurrying long enough to ensure that the contents of the drawer all appeared to be in place, looking just as she had found them. Then she practically sprinted out of the library.

Yet as fast as moved away from the strange book, her mind moved faster with questions and theories, each more wild and less believable than the one before.