Jade's Fiction » Library Diaries » Entry #01

Entry #01

It’s a tragedy when a library closes its doors. The community loses a beloved space, and more often than not, it happens because nobody who cares is important enough to do anything about it.

More tragic still, shelves of books are left to rot; only the “valuable” ones are given homes in other libraries or on collectors’ shelves.

But the biggest tragedy of all? It’s the ones who care about the library who wind up being the ones to find a way inside after fruitless months or years of haranguing the city to let them in.

They mean well. I know they do. But every ounce of enthusiasm comes with an ample supply of “Acting Without Thinking.” And because the powers that be would rather pretend their library problem doesn’t exist, there are few (if any) public service announcements about the dangers of entering neglected libraries. It’s simply not common knowledge.

Sure, everyone knows to stay away from the big, sprawling ones going on decades or even a century old. But a library without a remediation budget can start showing signs of starvation damage after a closure as short as one or two weeks, and librarians have to bring in something new for the catalogue just to make up for the neglect. Any longer, and the city has to pay an agency to handle re-opening procedures. Remediation, as it’s known in the biz.

Do you see where I’m going with this?

A neglected library should only be handled by an expert or team of experts. The general book-loving public should stay far away. But they don’t know that, so well-meaning Friends Of the Library activist groups go in. I assume they get confused because the interior no longer looks like it used to, and that’s all they have time to think before The Library itself gets involved.

The results are messy. Too often, librarial neglect continues because now there’s nobody left to care.

There are two kinds of groups to whom I offer my services pro bono: Friends of the Library-type clubs who actually do enough research to find me in the first place, and universities facing funding cuts of their own. I have been known to take a nominal fee from small towns, the grieving children of eccentric collectors, and, in one case, a library itself.

The last instance came in the form of a book being spat through a returns slot, a twenty tucked into its pages like a bookmark. It landed at my feet as I was walking by—I was off work due to an injury at the time, and hadn’t even realized the old library had grown so much from its home building at the other end of the block.

By the time I emerged the next morning, sneezing and dusty and only a little worse for wear, the library was a library no more.

Okay, people who think the physical book itself is some kind of sacred relic, there’s no need to clutch your pearls. My work is entirely humane: I take the “essence” of the library and disperse it. Salvageable books, if there are any, are taken to my agency’s redistribution centre. The records, preserved in our database. We even archive the ephemera, like flyers for readings and such, if such ephemera exists. Once there is no longer a library, there is also nothing to starve, and nothing to pose a danger to intrepid bibliophiles.

You see? Preservation and eradication all at once. Simple.

Small agencies, like mine was when I started it, usually limit themselves to small jobs. Certain situations call for a well-coordinated team of specialists, while others, a solo agent can handle in an afternoon.

I’m probably giving you the impression that my colleagues and I are like spies or something. A more accurate picture would be “exterminator meets flood remediation technician meets librarian.” If you wanna toss in some Ghostbusters imagery too, I won’t stop you.

(And, yes, many of us are former librarians and all of us have degrees in library science. You would not believe how handy the Dewey Decimal system is in this line of work.)

That said, our clients usually have no idea what kind of agency they need. I’ve sent my fair share of potential clients to the big guys, and they’ve sent small-time clients to me. I’m normally pretty good at sussing out what kind of job it’ll be even before I get to the site, and anything that sneaks past my questionnaire or client interview typically gets caught during pre-inspection.

Notice my use of words like ‘usually’ and ‘normally’ and ‘typically.’ I can’t afford to deal in absolutes. Learned that one the hard way.

It was my first big-girl job after my internship. I’d landed a—frankly—pretty sweet position at a medium–large agency as a junior agent, and I was eager to impress.

The agency had a rule: no matter an agent’s experience level, if a job’s scope reached a certain size, everyone working solo had to call in backup.

After a few partnered expeditions into mostly tame libraries, the agency sent me on my first real solo job. They paid for my flight, gave me meal vouchers, and set me up in a nice hotel on their dime—room service included.

I was excited. I was nervous. I panicked a little, then a lot, and then looped back to being excited again. My rideshare took me straight to the old library from the airport, passing the new public library on the way.

The old library building looked fairly nondescript: boarded-up windows just like many other businesses on that street (side note: the uniformity of it all should have been my first indicator something was up); a warning sign on the door saying the building wasn’t safe to enter, which was to avoid lawsuits in case someone thought it was prime squatting real estate; and graffiti on its brick facade. The street, on the other hand, looked like a bomb went off: It was little better than rubble. I’d been on smoother logging roads.

“A gas main blew,” the rideshare driver said. I guess he’d noticed my slack-jawed expression. “Thankfully, the street was already pretty empty and no one got hurt. You said you’re a building inspector?”

I nodded. It was sort of true, and much easier to explain than my actual job.

“Anyone with eyes can see they should just tear it all down. But I guess they gotta keep things official for the paperwork, eh? About time—it’s been sitting like this for years.”

That should have been my second indication that was something up. But, I was brimming with youthful naivete and running on two hours of sleep, so if any alarm bells rang in my head, I staunchly ignored them and charged ahead full speed. (Some free advice for you: Don’t do that. Always go into a dangerous situation well-rested.)

“Years?” I remember saying. Where a seasoned, safety-conscious agent would have seen the need to call for backup right then, I saw an adventure. A chance to test out all these newly acquired skills I’d gone into debt for.

The driver helped cart all my gear to the front door. He probably made a comment about needing so much stuff for a simple inspection, and I probably made a joke about being prepared for anything.

He drove off after I insisted he didn’t need to wait for me, and I entered the building alone. I didn’t even pause at the doorstep. (That would be mistake number three, for those keeping track at home.)

Have you ever felt like you were being watched? The hairs on the back of your neck stand up, maybe you get goosebumps, a sense of dread like a rock in your gut. I’ve become well-acquainted with the sensation in all my years as an agent, but I wasn’t too familiar with it at this stage of my career. I chalked it up to nerves and pressed onward.

Leaving most of my kit at the door, all I had with me as I entered the lobby was my flashlight, my toolbag, and a cheap e-reader filled with titles that had all come out after the library closed. I stopped in front of the checkout desk. It was at this point I realized I had messed up royally.

Many pet owners will know what I mean when I say there’s a big difference between innocuous silence—like when a dog or cat is asleep—and suspicious silence. It’s intuition. Our brains pick up on so many details sub-consciously.

As I swept the beam of light across the abandoned shelves, the building was dead quiet. No groans or creaks. No hum of electricity. No sounds from outside. I couldn’t even hear myself breathe.

The beam wavered as my hand began to shake, and I tried to turn around. My feet wouldn’t budge. I lifted my eyes—and only my eyes, since my head wouldn’t move either—and the air rushed from my lungs.

There was no ceiling. I don’t mean the roof was missing, I mean there was nothing.

Before I was a remediation tech, I was actually pursuing a degree in marine ecology. I know, hell of a career change, right? But one summer, I went on a month-long research trip to the Mariana Trench. They took us over the Challenger Deep, where eleven thousand metres of dark water separated us from the ocean floor, and sent an ROV through those fathoms upon fathoms of darkness all the way to the bottom.

I imagined a sapient species living down there and wondered if they would fear the gloomy distance between them and the surface like we do the depths. I got my answer and then some in that library: How can you worry about something as trivial as distance when you’re staring into the yawning abyss?

And yet some people are drawn to the infinite. I’m one of them—I wanted to be at the bottom of the ocean right alongside that ROV. And maybe that’s why I survived the library.

You’ve heard that Nietzsche quote about staring at the abyss long enough that it stares back? It’s truer than you can imagine. I don’t know what that library saw in me, why I’m still here to tell my story first-hand. A starving library will consume any information it can reach, and what is a human brain but a complex repository of knowledge?

Whatever it found, I’m grateful it did. It let me go. I returned with backup. We did our jobs. The library was—is—no more. Every once in a while, I’ll come across a book that once lived there, as if it’s saying ‘Remember me?’ and I take a moment to be thankful I’m alive.

Especially considering all of the precarious situations I’ve found myself in since then.