Night Time Story: The Hidden Door in the Library
Twelve-year-old Eliza had read every book in the children’s section of Oakwood Library twice. On a rainy Saturday, Ms. Jenkins, the librarian with silver-rimmed glasses, handed her a special key.
“For the Reference Room,” she whispered. “It’s time you explored the adult section.”
The Reference Room was dusty and silent, with towering shelves that seemed to touch the ceiling. As Eliza ran her fingers along leather-bound spines, she noticed one book jutting out slightly. When she pushed it back in place, a clicking sound echoed through the room.
Behind her, a bookshelf swung open, revealing a narrow doorway glowing with blue light.
Eliza hesitated only a moment before stepping through. The door swung shut behind her.
She stood in an enormous library unlike any she’d seen before. Books floated through the air. Staircases twisted in impossible directions. Readers of all shapes and sizes—some clearly not human—huddled in reading nooks.
“First-timer?” asked a boy about her age, with silver eyes and pointed ears. “I’m Thorne, junior librarian.”
“I’m Eliza. Where am I?”
“The Great Library,” Thorne explained. “It exists between worlds. Every library in every world connects here—if you know how to find the door.”
Suddenly, an alarm blared. Books scattered in panic.
“Word Eaters!” Thorne grabbed Eliza’s hand. “Run!”
Shadowy creatures slithered between shelves, absorbing words right off the pages, leaving books blank and lifeless.
“They consume stories,” Thorne explained as they hid. “If they eat enough, entire worlds fade from memory.”
“How do we stop them?”
“No one knows. They appeared a month ago when someone stole the Library’s Founding Book.”
Eliza remembered something from her favorite mystery novels. “What if we set a trap? Words they can’t resist?”
Together, they created a trail of poetry books—”The most delicious words,” Thorne explained—leading to the main desk. When the Word Eaters followed, the chief librarian, a woman with constellation-like freckles, trapped them in special crystal containers.
“Clever,” she praised. “But we still need the Founding Book to banish them permanently.”
Eliza noticed a familiar-looking cat slinking away. “That cat—it visits my library too!”
They followed the cat to a hidden alcove where a thief from another world was using the stolen book to control the Word Eaters, planning to rewrite all stories to his liking.
While Thorne distracted him, Eliza grabbed the ancient book. The moment she touched it, the book glowed, recognizing a true reader’s love.
The thief was captured, the Word Eaters contained, and the Great Library saved.
“You have the heart of a true librarian,” the chief librarian told Eliza. “You may visit whenever you wish.”
Back in Oakwood Library, Ms. Jenkins smiled knowingly when Eliza returned.
“Find anything interesting?”
Eliza just smiled. From then on, she spent every Saturday exploring the Great Library with Thorne, learning the magic of words that connected countless worlds—all accessible through a hidden door in an ordinary library.
By Alexandria Paige
