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written by B Leong (age 10.5)
for 28 Mar 2008 school assignment, to write a story based on the picture below.
If you asked anyone in Cairo to describe the Al Amin Library, his or her first sentence would be, “It is the quietest and most peaceful place in all of Egypt!” For it was true. There was hardly a sound in the library at all. It was free from the hustle and bustle of the traders and market dealers outside. The Al Amin Library had an excellent reputation as one of the best libraries in the world. Until about two weeks ago.
Two weeks ago, Mohammed Azerbah had borrowed a book about wild cats, written by Phee Lyne. Mohammed had fallen asleep while reading that same book, with the book left open. In the morning, Mohammed was found dead, with a huge orange Bengal tiger prowling around the house. Neighbors said that they had heard a disturbance at midnight.
The police thought that they had heard the last of it. They were wrong. On the day the victim was buried, a ghostly sound emanated from the grave of Mohammed. The sound echoed through the streets until it reached the Al Amin library, then it went in. I know sounds don’t enter or exit, but that was the only way to describe this strange phenomenon.
That was not the end of it. Similar cases were popping up everywhere, the only difference being how the victims died. All the victims had borrowed their books from the Al Amin library, left their book open when they slept. In all the cases the disturbance started exactly at midnight, the victim was always buried on the return date stamped on the book, and the ghostly sound always started at the end of the funeral and went into the library.
The police were baffled. Bengal tigers lived in India, not Cairo. A dead 30-year old man was found drowned in his bedroom, with salt water in his lungs, and Cairo was miles away from the sea. Venomous black tarantulas that were only found in the Amazon rainforest killed a teenager. The strangest part was that the books were always left untouched. In the smoldering remains of the house of a victim who had burnt to death, the book was not even singed. In Mohammed’s case, the book he was holding in his hands didn’t have a single tear, even though his body had been shredded to bits.
Several people tried to find the cause of the murders. One of them was a 13-year-old girl named Hana. She looked at all of the newspaper photos and noticed that in each picture was an open book near the victims. The books were doing it, she thought. She told no one about her hunch. Hana knew that the idea was probably ridiculous, but it was the only reasonable explanation.
She found pictures of the crime scenes on the Internet, downloaded the pictures onto her computer and magnified them. On the picture of the man who had been drowned, there was a picture of the ocean on the open page. Mohammed’s picture had a page about Bengal tigers.
By now Hana was surer than ever that there was probably a connection between the victim’s cause of death and the type of book they had borrowed. She leaned back in her chair and thought…Books, pages, bookstore, library, Al Amin Library… That was it! Hana jumped up and magnified the pictures even further so that she could just about make out the tiny writing on the top of the page that showed each book’s title. The Ultimate Guide to Wild Cats, The Mysterious Ocean Below and All you Need to Know About Spiders were just some of the titles.
Hana memorized the titles of the books and ran to the library. She asked the librarian if she had seen any of the books. The librarian replied that all of the books that Hana had mentioned had been lost. Hana scanned through the librarian’s computer and noticed that the due dates of those books coincided with the funeral dates of the victims. She noticed something else. All of the books were about science. Hana ran to the section of the library about science.
One of the bookshelves had a riddle carved into its side. It went like this,
Do you seek the past of this library?
Your clue is in the bee you see.
Kay is kay or it could be k,
Without this you can’t eat today,
A bird that copies whatever you said,
Some are found on the ocean bed,
That’s the subject of your book,
Take it out and have a look.
Hana’s mind worked frantically to solve the tricky puzzle.
Bee…. you ...see…b…u…c…kay …k…BUCK
Without this you can’t eat…mouth? Tongue? Tooth? Bucktooth!
Parrot copies what you say…Bucktooth Parrot
Ocean bed…sand? Seaweed? Crab? Fish?
Bucktooth Parrotfish? Could that be the answer to the riddle?
Hana searched the library’s catalogue and quickly found the book about the bucktooth parrotfish. The book’s title was The Bucktooth Parrotfish and other Ocean Creatures, by Polly Wanda Cracker. However, when Hana opened the book, the words “The bucktooth parrotfish is a brightly colored tropical marine fish” faded and turned into “In 1808, the Al Amin execution site was built. The first person to be executed there was a woman named Shiva Aljunia, who was accused of being a witch. Shiva’s last words before she died were, ‘Be cursed Al Amin, be cursed all who are here!’”
Hana looked at the book’s cover and discovered that the title had changed to The History of Al Amin. Each page of the book was a year in the history of Al Amin. As she turned the pages, pictures came alive, showing the curse’s effects on the executioner, the people watching Shiva’s execution, and how all the executioners died one month after their first execution.
Hana quickly turned to the year 1908, the year the Al Amin Library was built, “In 1908, the Al Amin Library was built and the curse that had been inflicted on the place since 1808 disappeared. There was a rumour that the curse was lost in its new environment but it would return in a hundred years.” A hundred years after 1908 – that’s 2008, this year, Hana thought, the curse has returned.
She closed the book. She had seen all that she needed to see. All the evidence supported her theory. Now what was left to do was to test it. Hana borrowed a book from the library called Plants and Creepy Crawlies by Venus Von Flytrap. Like the other victims, Hana left her book open when she went to sleep, but she was pretending to sleep.
At midnight, a pale woman rose out of the book. Hana opened her eyes and saw a ghost-like figure moaning something that sounded like, “I shall bring down my curse upon the whole world!”. Suddenly green tendrils slithered out of the book and started creeping up the ghost’s body. Scorpions started scrambling up and down the vines. The ghost’s moaning grew louder.
Hana recognized the ghost from the picture she had seen in the book about the history of Al Amin. It was Shiva Aljunia, the witch who was executed in 1808. Shiva mumbled incantations, summoning the scorpions and vines to attack Hana. The vines crept up Hana’s legs, and wound themselves round her legs tightly. The scorpions scuttled up and down her body.
Hana sat up from her bed and quickly closed the book. The ghost looked shocked to see that Hana was awake. The moment the book was closed, the vines crept back down into the ground and disappeared between the cracks of the tiles. The lifeless scorpions dropped on the ground and turned to dust. The ghost screamed with rage and flew towards Hana.
Hana quickly grabbed the book and threw it into the fireplace. The ghost started to struggle and writhe in agony. It screamed in pain and begged Hana to take the book out of the fire. However, Hana did not pay attention to the ghost’s pleas. The ghost suddenly vanished in a brilliant flash of blue light and all was quiet and peaceful.
From that day on, there were no more strange deaths related to the Al Amin Library. When Hana went back to the library, the riddle on the bookshelf seemed to erase itself even as she looked at it. The words on the bucktooth parrotfish book remained unchanged even after Hana flipped the pages a hundred times. The only reminder of the night was the reminder from the librarian a week later about her overdue book. Months went by and Hana began to wonder if it had all just been a dream.
