A Haunting Place

Cassandra gently turned back the page on yet another tome of old newspapers she had found roaming around the library reading room. She wasn't quite sure where this volume had been before she found it or why it was in the reading room at all. The stories in the book were ordinary newspaper pages for the island of Jersey, one of the Channel Islands located in the English Channel between England and France. Nothing local – just stories about life right after World War II in the small, distant place. Stories about soldiers returning to their homes after the war, about issues the populace were having to deal with now that the Enemy had been defeated, very typical stories of any place, any time after a war. Except for one story…

"Oh, that's so sad!" she whispered, reading quickly down the small text in the corner.

"What's sad?" Baird's voice called out from across the room. The Library's guardian walked up quietly and perched herself on the sofa beside the petite redhead, eyes the newspaper page the young librarian was holding.

"This" Cassandra replied, pointing to the small story at the bottom of the page. "It's an article about a woman and her two children who were found dead in their home towards the end of the Second World War. It says her servants found them in the morning when they reported for work."

"Servants didn't sleep in?" Baird murmured, reading the small article with a frown.

"I guess not" Cassandra mused. "It doesn't say much about how they died, only that all three were deceased and services were being planned for them."

Baird eyed the page skeptically. "That's a little too sparse for my taste" she said, tapping the page with one finger. "It doesn't really give much detail, does it? Nothing to tell if they had been ill or if it was something more sinister." She sighed. "I guess newspapers after WWII had better stories to concentrate on than the death of one small family." She glanced at the oversized ledger in the librarian's lap quizzically. "Where did this doorstop come from? I don't remember seeing something like this down here before. Not that I would have noticed. There are so many books down here – one more oversized item would look just like another."

"I don't know" Cassandra replied. "It just suddenly was here on the table. I'm sure it wasn't here last night. Maybe one of the guys found it and was reading it."

Baird thought about that for a moment. "Old newspaper articles are not Jones thing. And unless the article had something to do with art or architecture of the area, I do not see Jones doing using real crime stories as "Light reading"."

"What about Flynn?" Cassandra asked.

"Off trying to track down some missing stone box that supposedly contains the bones of a legendary sorcerer. Personally, I think he's just in the mood to go running around for no good reason, so he doesn't have to work on the Library's inventory."

Cassandra stifled a giggle. "You're probably right. What about Jenkins?"

Baird thought for a moment then rose, stretching as she did so. "Well – he'd be the only one around here who MIGHT have knowledge of that place and time. I've never really asked him about his adventures during WWII – maybe this newspaper ties into something he experienced then."

"It isn't something we should be trying to track down – right?" Cassandra looked thoughtfully back at the tome she now closed and laid on the table. "If it were that article would have come up in the Clippings Book for all of us to see."

"Maybe" Baird agreed reluctantly. "But better safe then sorry. Let's take this to Jenkins and see what he can tells us about the Isle of Jersey in the English Channel, circa mid 1940's. And specifically, anything he might know about the death of that woman and her children." She reached across and snatched up the book, tucking it securely under her arm as she walked confidently back towards Jenkins lab with Cassandra in tow. Neither noticed the temperature in the Reading Room dip or the fog start to rise from around the table they had just left. Or the sound of invisible children laughing somewhere in the distance.

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