Chapter Two

"Do you really think there's ghosts in here?" Aimes asked curiously, walking over to a nearby door and opening it up. It was a broom closet, and there were no ghosts inside. So she tried the next one.

"Oh absolutely," Pawson encouraged, knowing full well that there was no such thing as ghosts. Lying to Aimes wasn’t a habit of his, but she had been teasing him all day. And besides, Aimes had to be afraid of something. Everyone was afraid of something! The sooner Aimes learned to set aside her pride, the safer she would be.

As Aimes struggled with a locked cabinet, Pawson fiddled with the flashlight and leaned back against the wall, but he leaned too far and fell flat on his back with a yelp. That’s when he realized that he hadn't missed the wall: the wall moved.

"Oh cool, Pawson!" Aimes said excitedly. "You found a secret passage! How'd you do that?"

"Just lucky I guess." Or unlucky, Pawson thought, because he knew that Aimes would want to follow it. Sure enough...

"Let's see what's in there," Aimes said, pushing past her friend and into the little hole that opened up in the wall.

Pawson shined the flashlight ahead of Aimes. The passageway was a dark and empty corridor. It was low to the ground, like a crawlspace. Aimes quickly fell to her knees and made her way in. Pawson walked behind her diapered butt and his hat only barely grazed the beams above him.

"Did you ever stop to think that we are breaking and entering?" Pawson asked. "This isn't our house."

"Well, we didn't break anything," Aimes challenged. "The door opened all on its own. And we did announce ourselves."

"I don't think shouting up the stairs is the same as announcing yourself," Pawson said, more to himself than to Aimes, who had reached the end of the corridor.

"Shine the light over here," Aimes said. Her teddy bear did as he was told. The wall in front of Aimes looked different. Most of the tunnel was made of plaster and old wooden beams, but this wood was polished and pretty.

Aimes took a moment to think about it, then pushed on the wall. With a soft scraping sound, it slid out of the way. When Aimes climbed out into the new room, she found that the thing she had pushed was the back of a bookshelf. Actually, the room was full of bookshelves!

"It's a hidden library, Pawson! Look at all the books. There's soooo many, but I don’t see any doors out... oh! Oh! Maybe one of these leads to a secret passage." Aimes was giddy with excitement as she walked to one of the bookshelves and pulled down on one of the books.

Nothing happened. At least, nothing happened that Aimes could see. High above her, on the upper shelves, books started to wiggle out of their places. Pawson flashed the light around the room just in time to see one of the books wiggling on the shelf above his companion.

"Aimes, look out!" Pawson shoved Aimes out of the way just as a book fell off the shelf above her.

"Woah, hey! What's that about?" Aimes asked, because the book didn't hit the floor. It spilled open, pages fluttering in the air, and swooped back toward the ceiling. Pawson pointed up at the high ceiling as another book - no, two... no, three... no, four! - fell off the shelves and started flying around the room. Every so often the books would dive down at Aimes or Pawson and they would duck out of the way.

"Run!" Pawson said in a panic.

"Where?" Aimes looked around the room, but there wasn't a way out.

"Then hide!" Pawson said, dodging another book and ducking under the table in the middle of the room. A big book swooped down from the top shelf like a bird and Aimes stepped out of the way. She pressed her back against the bookshelves and watched the books flap their covers.

"Aimes, get under here!" Pawson urged. "You're gonna get hurt!"

"Hold on a sec," Aimes said to her friend, eyeing the books as they circled around the ceiling. "I've seen that before..."

"Seen what?" Pawson asked, just as a book crashed to the ground in front of him. He shined the flashlight on it.

"I dunno. That pattern." Aimes watched as the book on the floor took flight again, catching a glimpse of the cover in the otherwise dark library. A coloring book?

"Aimes!"

"One second!" Aimes was tapping her chin with her finger, working something out. She watched the books flying around, darting from one side of the library to the other. Then, like a little huntress, she waited for a book to get low enough to pounce on top of it. The book landed hard on the floor with an oof! sound and Aimes pinned it in place.

"I got you!"

Pawson looked on in awe, but he was shaken from his stupor when Aimes called: "C'mere, Pawson!"

"Ugh!" Pawson crawled out from under the table and hurried over to her side.

"Get the crayons out of my backpack, okay?"

"Crayons?" Pawson asked. But before Aimes could explain, he was already climbing onto his friend's back and rummaging through her pack. The book thrashed, almost knocking Aimes off a handful of times, but she kept it pinned to the ground until Pawson handed her the box of crayons.

"I need a black one," Aimes said.

"The color is important?" Pawson asked.

"Of course!"

Another book swooped down and Pawson ducked out of the way. He opened up the box of crayons and found the black one in the light of the flashlight. Once he gave it to Aimes, she pulled open the pages of the coloring book and started to fill in the outline of a bat with black crayon. Within seconds, the book settled down. Actually, all the books flying overhead slowly lowered themselves into a pile on the nearby table. Aimes stuck out her tongue in thought, focusing hard to make the bat on the page look as bat-like as possible.

"Wow..." Pawson was impressed. "How'd you figure that out?"

"They were flapping around differently," Aimes told him. "I think some are birds and some are butterflies, but this one was definitely a bat. It was all over the place."

Pawson couldn't argue with that logic, as much as he longed to. And boy did he long to. Instead Pawson said: "These coloring books must have been here for ages."

"I bet they just wanted to be colored in," Aimes said.

"I don't think coloring books have wants," Pawson said.

Aimes rolled her eyes, gestured to the stack of coloring books, and said with sarcasm: "Clearly."