The Lost Town Journal

 

 

“Ace, you sleeping again?” I woke up to the sound of Sam calling out my name from the geographical section of books in the library. “No, just dozed off for a while. How far are we?”

“Quite far from what we need,” Sam replied.

 

Winter was just setting in, and just like all other schools, ours too had burdened us with a group project and bid us farewell into our winter vacations. Luckily, they let us pick a partner of our choice, which in my case happens to be my best friend Sam. The topics were randomized for each group, so the topic assigned to us was, “Write something unique about your town.”

 

One week into our vacation, we had searched everything—every website, every book, every newspaper—we even visited the town library, but to no good. Old parks, museums, lakes, and forests—but nothing quite special or appealing enough to write about for the assignment. We needed something, something unique enough to grab the attention of the teachers and students during the presentation of the assignment. But it seemed that we were out of luck. The only book left to read in the entire library was the town journal.

 

The day before, we searched through the entire library looking for information about our town. We went through all the books in the library we thought could reveal something special, something unique about our town, but to no good. I was least expecting to turn a section and find a book that revealed witch trials taking place in our town during the early 1600s, but there weren’t any. Just as me and Sam were leaving the library, the librarian stopped us and asked, “Now why the long faces?  didn’t get what you were looking for, I suppose.”

“Is there really nothing special about our town?” Sam asked.

“Special, you say, then you might want to look into the history section; who knows, you might find the Town Journal,” the librarian replied with a smile.

“The town journal is said to have records of events of the town that are not commonly known to the townspeople,” said the librarian.

Sam’s eyes sparked. “Let’s go!”

 

Sam then rushed to the history section, with me following closely behind. While we were leaving, I turned back and looked at the librarian, who now had a wide grin on his face. In a moment, we were at the history section. We searched the entire section but couldn’t find the journal. I told Sam to keep looking while I returned to the librarian to tell him that the journal was missing.

The librarian then checked the records, and indeed the journal was missing. “I guess it has been missing for a while; somebody might have misplaced it or, in the worst case, stolen it,” said the librarian.

“Any idea who might have taken it?” asked Sam, walking back from the history section after thoroughly searching it.

“No, but here’s a description of the book. You two can go look for it, and if you do find it, keep it or return it,” said the librarian.

 

We slowly walked out of the library.

“Isn’t that librarian a bit strange?” asked Sam.

“Yeah, I guess,” I replied.

We had worked enough for the day and decided to head home. Just when we were about to go our separate ways, Sam called out to me, “Hey, what’s happening over there?”

I looked up and noticed that a huge crowd had gathered near an old tree that stood at the center of our town. That tree was said to have great history and was rumored to be there even before the town was.

 

We joined into the crowd to see what was going on. There was this lady sitting close to the tree holding a book and reading out from it. She said that it was the book of prophecies and that she had found it in the dark hallways of the “Castle of Knowledge.” Her words were unclear, but it seemed that whatever she was doing, she was serious about it, and from what it looked like, the crowd watching her was too.

Right then, Sam pointed out, “Isn’t that the town journal she’s holding?” I looked a little bit closely, and indeed it was the journal.

It matched the description of the journal the librarian had given us. We had found the journal; now the only thing left for us was to get our hands on it. I and Sam returned home and decided to meetup in the evening at my home, from where we would sneak into the lady’s home at night and get the journal.

 

Night came. Sam and I were ready and outside the lady’s house with our heist masks on, although this wasn’t a heist, but just for the sake of the story, we called it one. We waited outside till the lights in her bedroom went off, indicating that she had fallen asleep, meaning it would be the right time to go in.

Just a moment later, the lights went out, and Sam and I went in.

We started our search from the living room. Her house was quite a mess; finding the journal won’t be easy, but Sam and I were prepared, and we weren’t about to return home empty-handed. After a long search, we found the journal. It was under an antique table. 

Sam picked it up. Under the journal was a pair of glasses that had been shattered. We left with the journal. Feeling quite content with ourselves.

 

While returning home out of curiosity, we decided to take a look at it. It was quite dusty. After turning a few pages, we realized something. The town journal that the librarian had said held secrets of our town turned out to be nothing but a book filled with kids fairy tales. I then turned the book and checked the name of the author, and there it was the name of the librarian written on it.

Sam snatched the book off my hand and began to rummage through the pages. For a moment, we both didn’t know what to say.

But then we began to laugh.

The old lady did say she found this journal in a “Castle of Knowledge.”

“Yeah, if only she had her glasses on,” Sam said.