Stock Disposal

The boy groaned in frustration. One vigorous but misaimed kick and his football had flown completely off course, soaring beautifully but unhelpfully over the rear wall of the library. As the library backed onto the park footballs disappearing in this way wasn’t an unusual occurrence, but it was an aggravation that he just didn’t need today. He was already at risk of being late home, and now he was going to have to climb the wall as well. Today was not going well. At all.

Regardless, he was going to have to get the ball back – coming home late AND without his new football was going to be a whole lot more trouble than just coming home late. With a sigh, he gazed up at the full expanse of the wall. It was strangely high: at least as tall as him and his pal, with one standing on the shoulders of the other still not quite able to reach the top of it with their fingertips. Their attempts to retrieve his friend’s previously lost ball had been defeated that way before. But this time he had to make it over. Looking around with a focus driven by the desire to avoid a parental tongue-lashing he spotted an abandoned wheely bin – probably stolen from a neighbouring house as a joke and abandoned in the weeds by the wall when the fun of the joke wore off.

Wrestling it out of its creeping weed covering he dragged it over to the wall and stood it upright against it. Another hunt about in the vicinity was rewarded with the discovery of a cracked old plastic recycling crate, doubtless a victim of wicked winds sending it scudding away into the wilds on some long-past recycling day.

Now ready for his wall expedition, he prepared to climb up his impromptu stairs. He knew that getting back over once he’d got the ball was going to be an issue, but decided that was a future problem, one to be considered once he’d safely completed the initial retrieval phase. Stepping gingerly on the edge of the cracked recycling crate, he carefully grabbed the handles on the top of the wheely bin and pulled himself onto the lid, sprawled across it. A move that got him from his knees to pulled his feet under him got him positioned ready to stand up.

Once upright, delicately balanced on the edges of the wheely bin top, he had an excellent vantage point across most of the library back yard. It was tarmacked and had parking spaces marked on it, and a tall metal gate to the left was locked but showed potential for a future exit route. The ground level was also a little bit higher up than on the park side, which was reassuring as the next stage of the retrieval plan required dropping into the yard. A quick scan of the yard revealed no sign of the football, but it was possible that it lay neatly at the base of the wall, so close that he couldn’t see it. The boy knew he’d have to get himself up onto the full height of the wall, no matter how much it might make his head swim.

Gingerly, he placed his hands on the stonework of the top, giving himself a stern talking to about being brave as he slowly pulled up first one leg and then the other, eventually bringing himself to a sitting position with both legs dangling on the library side of the wall. Taking as good a grip of the wall as he could he very, very carefully leaned forwards to look at the yard area near the base of the wall. No football.

Just as he began trying to figure out where else the football could have gone (a tree? The roof? Had he kicked it that hard?) he heard a noise from the library, a scraping and banging of some sort. Looking over he properly inspected the outside of the building which he’d previously ignored in favour of assuming gravity had dropped his ball straight down onto the ground on the other side of the wall. The back door to the building was open slightly and it was moving in the slightest of breezes, just strong enough to make it scrape slightly open and then back to clatter off the door frame before swinging a little bit open again. The space when it was open was definitely wide enough for it to have allowed a football through. Since it was nowhere to be seen in the yard it looked like his football must have bounced or rolled its way into the library itself, and he was going to have to go in after it. This was not an idea that brought him any joy.

It wasn’t that he disliked libraries – the big one in town was amazing, modern with lots of light and space and he loved going with one or both of his parents to do activities and to borrow all sorts of things, but this library was different. It was old, dark, and all it had was strange old books that nobody ever seemed to borrow. Even the librarian seemed old and faded. And it was also almost never open, just on a few random days a month, so it was really difficult to get into it to borrow the old books, even if you wanted to. He remembered going as small child with his Mum and even she couldn’t bear to spend more than a few minutes in it before rushing him back out, muttering about it being depressing and lifeless, and taking him instead up to the fun library in town. But he needed that football back and if it meant going into the library, that’s just what he was going to have to do, no matter how unpleasant or weird a library it was.

Pulling his feet back up onto the top of the wall he very, very carefully turned until he was kneeling, facing back out onto the park. Through the trees he saw people hurrying along the nearest path, trying to get home before the gathering dusk became full night. He knew he had to hurry – as long as he was home by dark he should be able to get away with being a wee bit late. Shuffling backwards while being careful not to add jeans ripped by the stones of the wall to his list of potential sins, he inched his body over the edge of the wall into the yard, holding tightly by his fingertips until the very last moment. Letting go, he dropped into the yard – the ground being a little bit higher up on that side meaning that he had less height to deal with than he’d had to climb on the other side. Right: that was the worst of the process over with.

He brushed off the remnants of moss and lichen he’d gathered on his clothes from his move over the top of the wall and set off across the yard for the back door of the library. The door was still moving back and forth slightly as he walked towards it, and for a tiny second he glimpsed what looked like the shape of his ball just inside. It looked like it was quite far in – it must have landed in the yard and rolled straight in the door and along the corridor he could see behind the door. Coming up to the door he paused to push it open, and as he did so he was sure that he saw his football just drop away into nothing at the far end of the corridor, with a small ‘dunk’ sound as it hit the step. Was there a set of stairs there that it had fallen onto? It was hard to be sure because it was so dark in there but where else could it have gone? He stepped into the corridor and the door swung gently closed behind him. Then it clicked, solidly. The boy didn’t hear, intent as he was on finding his football.

Moving along the corridor, the boys eyes started to adjust to the darkness. He didn’t want to risk turning on a light in case someone saw it and came to investigate, so he was condemned to do this in the darkness. He could see the corridor continued ahead, with a closed door on the left and a lighter darkness beyond them. Walking with the careful tread of someone who knows he’s someplace he’s not meant to be, he crept past the door and came to the area where he thought he’d seen his ball. Peering at the space as he approached he could now see it was eerily illuminated by an atrium that was allowing access to the low silvery light of looming clouds and gathering the encroaching darkness of early evening. He felt a moment of victory as he was able to see that it was indeed a set of stairs at his feet, although there was no sign of his football. He was looking dubiously at the stairs leading into deeper darkness below and wondering if just facing the wrath of his parents for being out beyond his curfew was a less daunting prosect than taking the stairs down, when he heard a distinct ‘dunk’ noise coming from below. It sounded like his football had just dropped off the edge of a stair lower down. That meant it could probably be retrieved in only a few seconds, and he’d still have enough time to make it home only fashionably late rather than ‘parental wrath’ late.

He tentatively took a step down onto the first stair, stopping to listen intently for any signs of anyone else in the building. The silence confirmed that the lower corridor seemed to be deserted, so he inched his way down the stairs, arriving in the gloom at the foot within a few seconds.

It was fairly dark down there, but some emergency lights at either end of the corridor gave enough light to see well enough once his eyes adjusted a bit. Eager to be gone he peered around the foot of the stairs in the hope of spotting the escapee football but to no avail: it was nowhere to be seen. Frustrated and angry at himself for having wandered so far into a strange building just for a ball he turned and was about to retreat up the stairs when he heard the loud squeak of a door opening from the corridor above that he’d just sneaked along.

Panicking, he turned back toward the lower corridor, looking left and right and quickly choosing to go left as it seemed darker and might have more hiding places for him. As he hurried along he saw a door on his right with a glass panel, and a small sign saying ‘stock disposals’. It was slightly ajar so he quickly darted into the darkness of the room, which was filled with shadowy shapes only vaguely lit by the tiniest amount of light coming in from the corridor emergency lighting.

As he fumbled his way quietly along the wall towards what seemed to perhaps be an area of greater darkness that would hide him best his foot knocked into what definitely felt like his ball. Success, even in this moment of terrible anxiety! He carefully leaned down and managed to scoop it up, holding it tightly to his chest as he continued to work his way on towards the corner furthest away from the door.

He was too busy trying to feel a way to a safe hiding place to pay attention when the door quietly click closed.

The boy took a final careful step before settling into his hiding place, but as he put his foot down he realised that the ground was somehow no longer there. Throwing his arms out wide in a futile attempt to find support, his ball was propelled into the darkness of the room, while the boy seemed to disappear into the yawning hole in the floor with only a brief yelp of confusion.

For a few moments, there was silence. Then, the door swung slightly open again.

Outside in the corridor, the librarian looked down through the gap at the football sitting in the darkness inside the room, then turned away, smiling.

She knew the truth about the building.

The library needs to feed.