28th February, 2018.

I didn’t expect myself to be here but I guess a lot of life has been unexpected. I used to write extensively until I ran out of words and now I am here, placing them beside each other as if that does not feel like the most alien thing ever. It’s been too long of me being this quiet. I had to start speaking again.

There are a lot of things that have gone unsaid and I don’t know where to start from. Perhaps it is better to leave the past be. God knows there are enough ghosts lingering around here. I’ll write about my day then instead. It started the way days have started for the past twenty days. I woke up at six in the morning, eyes opening as soon as the first rays of the wretched sun entered my house. I made myself breakfast and then read for a bit. The day drifted past me as it has for so long. It's a disconnected sort of tranquillity that lays coldly on me, like I’m underwater. Lately, things have been a little different though. Danger seems to be looming over this island. It’s been tugging at me, this urgency. It’s like my eyes are opening after a long, deep slumber.

I went to the library today. I have admired the library on this island ever since I got here. It took me a really long time to get through everything it had to offer. It was a near-impossible task but then I’ve had nothing but time on my hands for a long time. I still work, mostly with historians and museums on the mainland, but it doesn’t inspire such passion in me as it used to anymore. Nothing does.

I expected the library to be empty, as usual, but I was taken by surprise when I found loud music echoing through its rooms. I followed the sound to the librarian’s office. Jose Pietro sat at his desk flipping manically through old manuscripts and ancient books. His desk was littered with such documents along with old newspapers and other unknown files. Music played loudly from a rusty gramophone behind him. I had seen it before but never ever in use. There were bottles of alcohol strewn across the room carelessly. Drew Smith stood by his desk, rubbing her temples. She looked tired. Both Jose and Drew looked up when they heard me walk to the office. Jose’s eyes were bloodshot and there was a frazzled craziness in them that was unsettling. “You don’t look very well, Jose,” I said quietly and he scoffed at me, returning to his desperate perusing of documents. I had never seen Jose like this before. He and I aren’t friends but I have frequented the library enough for us to have an understanding between us. He has always been the one to answer everything with a laugh first and then actual sentences. His face is textured more with smile lines than with wrinkles. Seeing him torn apart at the seams was jarring.

“He has been at it like this since the funeral,” Drew replied, exhaustion and worry dripping through her voice, “Like going over these old files and these old papers are somehow going to give him the answer to all of this.”

Jose’s head shot up at that. “They will,” he seethed. Drew took a small step back at that. “I know they will. It’s here, it’s all here, in the past, I don’t know how to explain it, how to make sense of it because Callahan went and offed himself but I know the answer has to be here somewhere,” he almost shouted before going back the documents in his hands. Something cold washed over me. I recognised it later as anger, as blinding fury. It is like the numbness that had been resting over me fizzled away in an instant. All my nerve endings were fired up, like every atom in my body could feel even the slightest movement in the air. I would have punched Jose right there but I stopped myself. I took a breath in and then counted back from twenty as I let it out. “He didn’t kill himself,” I said, my voice coming out with a steely breathiness that I hadn’t heard it embody for some time now. “What?” Jose asked, looking up at me again. “Nothing,” I replied, pushing my hands into the pockets of my trousers. I nodded at Drew before walking away and out of the library.

I am back in bed now, more awake than ever. It’s night now and the shadows that the trees are creating on my bedroom floor have an eerie quality today. I look at the empty spot beside me on my bed. Nights like these have started feeling lonelier than ever.

~SJ.