“I said your Wraith succeeded in attacking me in my dream again and this time, there was a man beside it.

  “Could it be?” Mrs. Crow thought to herself, slightly pinching her perfectly crafted chin.

  “Could what be?” Joanna asked, studying Crow with her eyes.

  “Don’t worry, it’s nothing,” Mrs. Crow said as she turned around to return to her seat, clouded by doubt.

  At that moment, Annabelle felt intense rage and confusion at the same time. She was so pissed off that her stomach started to hurt. She wanted to speak but held back because she did not want to cause a scene in the library.

  She then walked towards Mrs. Crow, whirled her around and spoke into her ear.

  “When your Wraith finally kills me, I hope you'll find happiness.”

  Mrs. Crow paused for a moment, watching Anna as she walked away.

  “Wait. Come with me,” she said, motioning Anna to follow her as she walked further into the library.

  “Wait, who will stay where the librarian is meant to be?” Joanna asked, looking back.

  “Don’t worry about that,” Mrs. Crow said.

  “Where are you taking us?” Annabelle asked, as she hesitantly followed Mrs. Crow.

  “Don’t worry, if I wanted to kill you or harm you, I would have done it long ago,” Crow replied as a smile crept across her face.

  They kept on walking through the library and finally arrived at the far end of the library, directly opposite the entrance. No one except Crow, Anna and Joanna were there.

  Eyes darting around, Mrs. Crow walked up to a bookshelf and pushed it at a very odd angle. With a CLANK and a soft rumble, the bookshelf shifted to a side, leaving the girls in complete awe.

  “Here, follow me,” Mrs. Crow said, gesturing as she walked into the gap between the shifted shelf and another stationery shelf.

  How does this place even exist? Annabelle thought, as she hesitantly followed Crow.

  With another CLANK and a soft rumble, the shelf assumed its original position the moment all the girls walked through the gap. On entering, they found themselves in a room with no source of light.

  “I knew it. Help! She has brought us here so her Wraith can kill us!” Annabelle exclaimed, her voice echoing all over the dark room. She scrambled through her backpack, squinting as she tried to find her cellphone so she could call the police.

  “Where is it?” She muttered to herself as she squinted her eyes, trying to see the content of her backpack.

  Joanna and Mrs. Crow were the only ones who seemed to remain calm but Annabelle did not understand why her friend was so calm at that moment.

  “Isn’t she scared of dying?” Annabelle said to herself as she got hold of her phone. She pulled it out and switched it on. She was about to dial 911 just when the dark room was lit up and Anna found herself in an old black-walled passageway, the source of light being a flame which gently rested on Mrs. Crow’s palm.

  “Whoa, what is that?!” Annabelle exclaimed. She dropped her phone in shock and she just stood there, with her mouth wide open. She was completely dumbfounded and was not even breathing.

  Then Joanna started to scream, on noticing the flame on Mrs. Crow’s palm. She ran around the passageway and kept on screaming. Annabelle was still standing there in shock, with a lot of questions on her mind.

  How is she holding a flame in her hand? How did she find this secret passageway? How is she still so calm? Her legs trembled as these questions ran through her mind and drops of sweat trickled down her face. The air around felt dry and it got more difficult to breathe with every second that passed by.

  At that moment, it felt like time itself had slowed down and it was all a dream to Anna. She pinched herself just to be sure but she still found herself in the passageway.

  “I guess it’s not a dream,” She whispered as she looked at Joanna who was still running around and screaming.

  “Will you girls calm down and let me explain?!” Mrs. Crow exclaimed. Her voice echoed through the passageway and the very walls shook as she spoke.

  “I know this is all new to you and that you are confused about what you are seeing,” Mrs. Crow said in a calm tone.

  “First of all, I’m not trying to kill any of you and I am not the one who put those visions in your head,” she added.

  “What do you mean by put?” Annabelle asked. She had already snapped out of her stun mode.

  “I can’t explain it here; you have to follow me to the heart of the library,” Crow said, refusing to answer Annabelle’s question.

  “We are not following you anywhere until you explain to us what is going on!” Joanna said, stomping her feet on the ground. Mrs. Crow, who was still holding the flame in her hand, sighed and began walking through the passageway.

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  “Where are you going?!” Anna exclaimed, expecting Mrs. Crow to stop and answer her but she didn’t. The passageway got darker as Mrs. Crow turned around a corner.

  “We better follow her unless we want to be left here in complete darkness,” Joanna said as she ran after Mrs. Crow.

  “Wait for me!” Annabelle added, running too.

  A moment later, the girls appeared in front of a giant pair of silver doors. They were made of metal and on them were two carvings of lion heads. Annabelle walked up to one of the doors and knocked it gently but it made no sound.

  Weird, she thought, as she slowly backed away from the door.

  “Ok girls, I’ll need you to take a few steps back,” Mrs. Crow said, gesturing. Anna and Joanna stepped back and waited, expecting something fantastic to happen.

  Mrs. Crow then walked closer to the doors, rubbed on them with her palms and began muttering something. The two girls looked at each other, and then continued watching Mrs. Crow expectantly. Crow continued muttering with her eyes closed and her palms still on the metal doors.

  A moment later, the walls began to shake. An earthquake?

  The entire passageway vibrated and the doors shook furiously.

  “Aaaaaah, she is going to kill us!” Annabelle screamed as she fell to her knees and covered her head.

  Joanna just stood there panting and sweating, expecting the quaking to stop. A while later, the mouths of the lions which were carved on the metal doors opened up and a bright light emanated from their mouths.

  Annabelle and Joanna shielded their eyes from the blinding light beams and shivered from the cold of the light beams.

  “How does light even make one feel cold?” Annabelle said to Joanna, but her voice was masked by the quaking sounds of the doors and passageways.

  The quaking went on and the cold got even more intense. The passageway was so cold that Anna and Joanna could see their icy breaths. Joanna was about to walk over to Mrs. Crow and stop her due to the piercing cold, just when the lion carvings closed their mouths.

  The cold stopped immediately and Mrs. Crow stopped muttering. It was at that moment that Anna and Joanna noticed that Mrs. Crow was no longer holding the flame in her hand and that there was another source of light which was on the wall of the tunnel.

  “Huh, I didn’t notice that,” Joanna said to herself.

  “So what happens now?” She asked, spreading her arms wide open.

  “Now, we wait for verification,” Mrs. Crow said to Joanna.

  “Verification for wha…….” Annabelle was cut short by a loud clanking sound made by the metal doors. A group of gears and bolts could be heard unwinding and unlocking from the interiors of the thick metal door. A loud final CLANK was heard and the door slowly opened.

  In awe, Anna and her friend watched as the door slowly opened, sounding like a tired machine.

  “Come on,” Mrs. Crow said as she walked through the gap in between the slightly opened doors. Annabelle and Joanna hurriedly followed her. They found themselves in a very large room that had lots of shelves stacked with books.

  The books were very neat and the room looked like it was cleaned daily. The ceilings were at least seventy feet away from the floor, and there was a big lit chandelier that hung from the ceiling.

  “The heart of the library, of course it will have books,” Joanna said sarcastically.

  “What about the door?” Annabelle asked, pointing at the slightly opened metal doors.

  “Oh yes, the doors,” Mrs. Crow said as she snapped her fingers and the doors slowly shut.

  “Are you sure this room wasn’t built for giants?” Anna asked, looking at the ceiling.

  “A room for giants with normal sized books?” Joanna asked as she ran her hands through the books on a shelf.

  “Please don’t touch anything,” Crow said, sitting down.

  “Oh yeah! That reminds me, who are you and how did you hold that flame in your hand? How did you find this place? How did you open those doors? And why do you want to kill us?” Annabelle asked consecutively.

  She and Joanna looked at Mrs. Crow as if they were going to take her kidney away if she didn’t give them a satisfying answer.

  “For the last time, I am not trying to kill you,” Mrs. Crow slowly said, while looking at Annabelle, still seeming to study her.

  “Then why all this?” Annabelle asked.

  “We know you are a magician and that you know something about the visions Anna has been having. Is your name really Mrs. Crow?” Joanna added.

  “Will you calm down and let me explain?” Mrs. Crow said, rubbing her temples.

  “We are seriously missing classes right now, so you better have a good explanation for why you can perform magic and also tell us where we are while you’re at it or else we will reveal this location to the whole school,” Annabelle said, a superior sneer on her face as she pointed her finger at Mrs. Crow.

  Mrs. Crow laughed on hearing the threat Anna had just made. She laughed to the extent that tears poured out of her eyes.

  “Even if you tell the school, you won’t be able to find this place and also, I can easily erase your memory right here, or even kill you,” Mrs. Crow said, slowly standing from her chair.

  “We are not scared of you,” Annabelle said, but her heartbeat was saying something else.

  “I can smell your fear,” Mrs. Crow said, sitting down again.

  “Well, first of all like I said earlier, this is the heart of the library and no one except I know how to get here.”

  “What do you mean by heart of the library?” Annabelle asked, raising her eyebrows in confusion.

  “This is the place that holds the entire library. If you destroy it, you destroy the entire library,” Mrs. Crow replied.

  “And how do you destroy it? What are you even talking about?” Joanna asked almost immediately.

  “With magic. Physical force can’t do anything to this library,” Mrs. Crow replied.

  “So you are a magician?” Annabelle asked, trying not to believe magic existed.

  “Duh, didn’t you see the burning flame on her hand? Also didn’t you see the talisman? Or didn’t you see the way she immobilized us that time in her office and made us not think about it too much?” Joanna asked Annabelle.

  “Yes, and it was also magic that I used to get you to follow me here,” Mrs. Crow said, gently stroking her perfect hair.

  “How come we are not really freaking out?” Joanna asked.

  “Oh, magic,” she replied herself just as Mrs. Crow was about to speak.

  “Your beauty, is it magic too?” Annabelle asked jealously.

  “No, that’s natural,” Mrs. Crow replied laughing.

  Annabelle felt slightly safer knowing that the librarian wasn’t going to kill her.

  “Please continue your explanation,” she added.