Lost in the Stacks

Marlene wasn’t sure what she’d actually seen even after it happened.

The book was lying open on a study carrel, abandoned by whoever had taken it off the shelf.  She headed toward it, ready to add the hardback to her reshelving cart, when several of the pages suddenly fluttered up and flipped over as if blown by a breeze.  This would’ve been explainable were there an open window, overhead fan, or air vent in the vicinity, but none of these were nearby nor any other source of wind that she could detect.

“What the hell?”  Marlene muttered and stared at the book where a single word was underlined in black pen on page one-hundred-and-eighty-four.

Garden

She closed the cover and pincered the upper-left corner between her thumb and forefinger, holding the volume away from herself like it was covered in something nasty.  Marlene carefully deposited it into her cart with the front facing forward.  The title, Wings of Paradise, was written in a sinuous cursive script superimposed over an illustration of a muscular, bare-chested man sitting atop a chestnut-colored stallion.  It was typical of popular romance novels, which tended to recycle the same types of images for the seemingly endless amount of releases that came out each year.

Marlene looked down at the top of the spine to see if there was some sort of gizmo embedded in it that would make the pages move, but all she found was the expected thread, glue, and paper.

‘Would’ve been a pretty cool promotional gimmick.’  Marlene thought as she walked the main library floor looking for other strays.