Prospero's Ghost: (A Cautionary Short Story)

by Mark Leslie

  He was just about to write a note to Patricia Irving, explaining the missing texts, when he heard the distinct sound of shuffling through the book stacks. He frowned, paused in his movement, listened for the sound again. When nothing came, he shrugged it off. He knew he was in the store alone. Had been for hours.

  He picked up the pen again, and heard the noise, this time closer.

  “Hello?” he called out, turning from the machine, pen still in hand.

  No reply. No noise.

  He chuckled at his own ridiculous behaviour. He really had to stop reading those horror novels before bed. He stopped when the noise came again.

  This time, he didn’t call out, but moved, walking slowly towards the sound.

  Alan turned the corner, struck by the sight of an older man, slim and gangly looking in his grey trousers and dark tweed blazer.

  “Excuse me sir, how did you get in here?” Alan asked, surprised at the steadiness of his own voice despite the rapid thudding of his heart.

  The man turned, revealing a haughty facial expression dominated by dark blazing eyes behind silver rimmed glasses.

  “He that dies, pays all debts,” he said in an even voice.

  Alan frowned. “Sir?” he asked. “Do you know where you are?”

  “In the company of the Bard,” came the reply.

  The bookstore employee looked at the sign above the closest bookshelf and realized they were indeed standing in the Shakespeare section of the store.

  He thought about it. While the store was cleared out by the closing staff, it was entirely possible for them to have missed one person, quietly loitering in an out of the way section such as this. Hidden away among the stacks, the poor man could have been locked in all night.

  “We’ve been closed for quite some time, sir. Is there someone I can call to come and get you?”

  “Hell is empty and all the devils are here.”

  Alan frowned again. It was obvious the man was quoting Shakespeare, but he couldn’t remember which one of the plays the words came from. Despite his theatre background, the Bard had never been his strong suit.

  Deep in thought, he didn’t notice the older man’s approach until he was close enough to touch. Alan started, dropping his pen on the floor, suddenly frozen with the chill of the air around him.

  The man bent down with a rickety grace. Where he would have brushed the younger man’s legs, there was only a cool breeze. He was speaking as he rose up.

  “You taught me language; and my profit on’t is I know how to curse . . .”

  Alan, wide eyed and shocked, groped blindly for the source of the pain in his neck. His hand rested on his pen, thrust into his throat by a man that seemed like he had barely enough strength to stand. He tried to pull it out, but the flow of blood was too swift, and he felt the power and will drain from his own body. He slid to the floor, his last sight and sound coming from the old man, his figure shimmering with his last words.

  “. . . the red plague rid you for learning me your language.”

   

  #

   

  Patricia Irving yawned as she pushed the big blue cart laden with texts down the deserted hallway. Despite the fact that she wasn’t a morning person, she had to admit to herself that this was the best part of her day. The university was largely deserted at eight am, only the occasional groggy student shuffling to class met her in the hall.

  She reached for the Tim Horton’s cup on the cart, taking a careful sip as she walked. Usually that was all she needed – a coffee and a cigarette to face the day. This morning was different, however, having just finished her fourth cigarette and was now on her third extra large double double. Her husband would have a fit if he knew, but luckily she had left him to watch Nancy and drove herself into work that morning. What he didn’t know wouldn’t kill him.

  She cringed at her involuntary choice of words. Poor Nancy. Normally her sister was someone who had a flair for melodrama, but last night her inconsolable fear and grief was genuine after finding that unfortunate Phillips boy. Patricia loved books, especially a good thriller, but after having heard the details of an incident so close to home in all their chilling glory, she was looking forward to shelving the business books rattling on her cart.

  The elevator’s final stop boomed, echoing into the high ceilings of the auxiliary bookstore commonly referred to as The Tank. It was a large space in the sub basement of one of the Arts buildings, once a water reservoir before the bookstore took possession of it in the late seventies. Cold and sterile, it had become Patricia’s second home since she became textbook buyer in the early eighties. It was humid in the summer and cold in the winter, murals of sea life painted on the walls making it no less gloomy. Dust bunnies conspired in every corner and the fluorescent lights hummed overhead constantly. Still she loved it at this time of the day. Quiet and deserted, with only half the lights lit.

  She left the lights as they were, knowing the cashier would turn them all on when she came down in a half an hour and another sales day would begin. Until then it would be her and the books, exactly the way she liked it.

  Patricia flicked on the radio as she put her purse and coffee down on the text desk at the back of the store. Coffee alone wasn’t going to keep her awake this morning after a night of soothing her excitable sister. The station sputtered through static before the tinny refrain of a song came through the speakers. It was the oldies station and Patricia smiled and hummed along as the music took her back to her youth.

  In this manner, the business books came off the cart in no time. Accessing the computer, Patricia punched in the ISBN of the smaller paperback stacked on the bottom shelf of the cart. She frowned when she realized it was a Print On Demand book ordered for a course and half that order was missing.

  After a futile search for a note of explanation, Patricia stood, trying to recall if she saw something on the floor in receiving. She sighed, remembering nothing and silently kicked herself for not making a stop at the EBM desk before picking up the cart and heading to the tank. The books were already being asked for by students eager to begin their studies, so Patricia pushed the cart to the appropriate shelf, making a mental note to send those students who didn’t get a copy fast enough to Alan Lester. Let the store’s Book Manager take the complaints.

  As she maneuvered the cart between the high metal shelves filled with texts, the air seemed to chill. Patricia shivered, frowning as she pushed. It was only early October and while there was an autumn nip in the air that morning, it shouldn’t be this cold, even in the sub basement.

  Methodically, she began to stack the books on the appropriate shelf, trying to convince herself that the air wasn’t getting colder with every text. When the last copy was in her hands, she looked down, her frown deepening as she read the cover. It was a folio edition of the works of Shakespeare.

  From 1861.

  The frown slid from her face as a picture of the original cover popped into her head. A book, worn and withered, grasped in the gnarled fingers of old hands, shoved into her face over forty years before. She remembered the day quite clearly, one of her first as a part time general books employee at the bookstore. She was as green as they come then, full of a passion for books. She never dreamed that she would make a career out of her part time job, and while she didn’t regret her decision to stay, that one day had almost pushed her to the door. That wretched old man.

  And that book.

  The lights flickered, and the chill in the air grew as Patricia Irving stood frozen to the spot, still holding the book.

  She never noticed the pale hand reach out for her shoulder.

  “Morning, Pat,” the cashier said, jumping a little and giggling when the older woman started. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  Patricia forced a smile, the lights on full and the chill in the air gone. “Good morning, Rose. You didn’t scare me.”

  The young woman gave her a strange look. “Are you alright?” she asked.

/>   “Yes. Yes. Just too much coffee this morning.”

  The cashier smiled and walked back to the front of the store, leaving Patricia at the book shelf.

  “No dear,” she said quietly, shelving the remaining text. “You didn’t scare me at all.”

   

   

  McMaster University – 1964

   

  Patricia Irving nervously pushed the cart out from the receiving area onto the brightly lit floor of the new bookstore. Having recently moved into the basement of the newest building on campus, the selection of general books had expanded, opening up part time positions in that department. Patricia, a part-time student cashier, now finishing her second year at McMaster, had been given a chance to prove herself by being offered a position on the general books team.

  A lover of fiction, she was delighted with the opportunity to showcase her knowledge of both the classics as well as modern writers.

  The bright wooden cart, filled with paperbacks from Pan and Penguin, vibrated due to a wobbly front wheel. Patricia frowned and bent low to examine the wheel as she kept moving forward.

  The cart bumped into something soft.

  “My word,” a gruff voice sounded, and Patricia looked up at a dark eyed man with white hair that she immediately recognized as the professor for her class on Victorian literature.

  “Can’t you watch where you’re going with that thing?” he asked.

  “Sorry, Dr. Emerson,” she said in a low voice.

  His dark eyes fell on the cart of books and he let out a loud harrumph. “So this is what passes for literature today, is it? Mass produced pocket books manufactured like so much candy for the mind.”

  Believing she could impress him, Patricia held up the Pan books new release of Ian Fleming’s latest novel, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. “Oh but, sir, this is such a wonderful novel, an utterly compelling read. I couldn’t afford the hardback edition – but here it is, a compact, low cost option. Fleming is the master of the spy thriller.”

  Emerson let out a slow sigh as he glanced at the art on the cover. “A ring in a field of bloody snow? I fail to see how that can be a wonderful novel.

  “The bard was the master of suspense and intrigue. He wrote tales from the richness of history, characters that live and breathe in the minds of readers today. Not like this Fleming hack and his forgettable Bond character.”

  Patricia placed the book back on the cart, her face turning red and her eyes downcast.

  “What other treasures does your cart hold?”

  Feeling she might be able to redeem herself in the professor’s eyes she remembered the series of Shakespeare’s plays on the other side of the cart. She ran her hand along the spines until she found a copy of The Tempest. She pulled it out and held it to show him.

  “Isn’t this beautiful?” she said in a hopeful voice.

  The professor was silent as he stared at the book.

  Carefully, he leaned forward, plucked the book from her hand using the tips of his fingers, as if it were covered in mold or slime and flung it across the floor. Then he fixed his eyes on her.

  “You mock me!” he growled. “Shakespeare was not meant to be published in such a low quality mass produced format.”

  “But sir . . .”

  Emerson thrust the leather-bound Shakespeare book in her face, producing it from thin air.

  “This!” he yelled. “This is fine literature. This is the way it was meant to be presented.” He shook the book in her face. Despite the copy almost blocking her face, she could still feel drops of spittle from his lips land on her cheek.

  “Shakespeare was never, never, meant to be lowered to this sort of mass production.”

  He slammed the fist of his free hand down on the cart, shaking his head, his face and neck turning a dark crimson.

  “Why, oh why must this bookstore, this campus mock me?!”

  He pushed at the uneven cart, the faulty wheel giving way.  The cart tipped over on its side with a loud crash, spilling paperbacks across the tile floor as Emerson stormed out.

  “Bloody stupid bookstore,” he called out. “You’ll not see me dare set foot in here again!”

  Patricia stared at the books on the floor and began to cry.

   

   

  McMaster University - 1973

   

  Richard Hamill hadn’t entered the library on an April 23rd since that first strange occurrence three years earlier. He’d always feigned illness or booked that week off work, whatever it took to ensure he wasn’t around.

  He knew enough to have determined that the specter he’d seen on the top floor of the library that April night in 1970 was that of Professor Marshall Emerson, Shakespearean scholar. There were enough clues and Hamill was a competent enough researcher to be able to hone in on the quote from The Tempest he’d heard the ghost utter, the significance of the date and the section of the library that had been disturbed.

  But it wasn’t any of the research or clues he’d put together that made him confident in his decision.

  It was that portrait in the archives section of the library, down in the depths of the basement which he’d spotted the next day that clinched it. All those other clues were mere window dressing.

  He barely glanced at the portrait when he walked past the first time. It was hung above a cubicle leading to the back of the archives – but a second after he passed it, he stopped, and the peripheral glance of the man in the photograph was enough to set all his hairs on end and give him a sinking feeling in his gut.

  When he stepped back to look directly at the photo of Marshall Emerson he knew immediately. That had been the man he’d seen the night before on the top floor of the library; a man who had been dead for years.

  Richard knew enough not to mention his suspicion to anyone. But he’d kept his ears open for any disturbing stories or tales, and jotted down anything that was even slightly out of the ordinary, just in case it had something to do with Emerson’s ghost.

  He kept his notes on these matters as well as the tons of research he had done on the man’s life in a secret file that he simply labeled Prospero’s Ghost.

  And he was working on a note within that file on the second night he’d witnessed the apparition. He’d been sitting in the cubicle below Emerson’s portrait, a cubicle he’d become rather fond of over the years despite that heavy feeling in his gut he experienced when he’d first seen it.

  As he was making a quick note about a part-time student who had reported the Shakespeare collection on the top floor having been found strewn about the floor when a distinct chill encompassed the room.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Richard saw a figure standing before him. When he glanced up, nobody was there, but he heard, very clearly, the following words in a gruff deep voice: “Knowing I loved my books, he furnished me from mine own library with volumes that I prize above my dukedom.”

  Richard paused only a moment before responding, almost by rote, since he immediately recognized the line as one the character Prospero said in Act I Scene ii of The Tempest. Once he started studying Marshall Emerson he, in turn, studied the bard’s works in detail, particularly that one play – the swan song of Shakespeare and apparently Emerson as well.

  “Would I might but ever see that man!”

  The response from the gruff voice was immediate. “Sit still and hear the last of our sea sorrow.”

  The chill immediately withdrew from the room and Richard was alone again.

  He didn’t have to make a note about this newly discovered fact.

  Marshall could be pacified with the right words, the right response. Now he only needed to discover what the right response would be to rid the library of Prospero’s Ghost forever.

   

   

  McMaster University - Present Day

   

  Titles Bookstore had only been open for about an hour and was still quiet when Richard rushed over to the Espre
sso Book Machine at the back of the sales floor. Ten minutes earlier, having returned to the Kirtas scanner room, Richard saw on the library’s computer system that the Emerson Shakespeare folio had been uploaded to the bookstore’s server.

  Having been a regular customer for years, Richard was known to many of the full time staff at the store, including Melinda Harvey who was manning the customer service desk that day. He made small talk with the young woman, mentioning an order he had placed with the EBM staff. Might he have a look to see if it was completed? Melinda had seen the librarian plenty of times with Alan Lester and Patricia Irving, playing with the new machine. She smiled and waved him by her desk.

  Richard had observed Alan and Patricia enough to know the basics of how the machine operated. He quickly tabbed through the interface screens to see that the title had been added and had indeed been printed. Fifty-six copies to be exact. The print queue still had forty-four lined up to print.

  The last copy had been printed at 9:20 PM.

  Walking around the back of the machine to see if the books were anywhere nearby, he spotted Alan Lester’s body slumped behind the Espresso Book Machine on a pile of paper boxes, a pen sticking out of his throat.

  The young man lay face down, almost as though he had been dumped behind the machine so as not to be found. There wasn’t a single drop of blood from his wound, yet Richard knew before he bent over to check for a pulse that the man was dead. Prospero had struck again.  

  He sighed as he looked down at the body. Alan had been a good friend. He was young, had a full life ahead of him. Richard offered a silent prayer and took a deep breath, trying to steady his nerves and slow the pounding of his heart as he turned away.

  He knew that nothing could save the book manager now, and it would be useless to create a panic. It was with a surprisingly calm voice that he asked Melinda to call security. Her questioning glance was stilled by his stricken face, but when security picked up, she put her hand over the mouth piece of the phone, and asked:

  “What should I say is the reason?”

  “Tell them Alan Lester is dead. They need to come to the store now.”

  Her look of shock and fear made him step forward, put a slightly shaking hand on her arm.