The Stolen Child(116)

fiction. Nobody wrote accurately about their habits and customs, how they lived in darkness, spying on

human children, looking for the right person with whom to make the change. There was not one single

word about how to get rid of unwanted visitors. Or how to protect your child from every chance and

danger. Lost in these fairy tales, I became hypersensitive to the stillness of my surroundings, jarred by the

sounds I that penetrated the silence. At first the noises appeared to be the random shufflings of another

patron languidly turning pages, or one of the librarians, bored out of her mind, pacing the corridors or

sneaking outside for a smoke. Soon every minute sound intensified in the mind-numbing quiet.

Someone breathed deeply and regularly, as if asleep, the noise emanating from an indeterminate

direction. Later I heard a rasping in the walls, and when I asked the cute librarian, she said it was only

mice, but the scrabbling was scratchier, like a fountain pen racing across a pad of paper. That evening,

someone began singing tunelessly to himself from the lower depths. I fol-lowed the melody to a spot in

the children's section. Not a soul around, I lay down, pressed my ear to the floor, and ran my fingers

along the ancient carpet, catching my thumb on a hard bump, like a hinge or a bent nail. Carefully cut and

nearly indiscernible, a carpet square had been glued to the spot, covering a panel or hatch below, and I

would have pried it open, but the passing librar-ian startled me by clearing her throat. With a sheepish

grin, I stood up, mum-bled an apology, and went back to my corner. Convinced that something lived

beneath the building, I brooded over how to catch him and make him talk.

Next morning, my books were in disarray, titles scrambled out of alpha-betical order and all my

bookmarks missing. They had been spying on me again. For the rest of the day I pretended to read,

while actually listening for any noises from below, and once I wandered back to the children's section.

The carpet square had been slightly raised above the surface. On my hands and knees, I tapped on the

panel and realized that a hollow space existed be-neath the floorboards. Maybe one or more of the

fiends toiled below, hatching plots and tricks to further savage my life. A slight red-haired boy whistled

behind my back, and I quickly stood, stamped down on the lid, and went away without a word.

That boy made me anxious, so I went out and stayed on the playground until the library closed. The

young librarian noticed me on the swing set, but she turned away and pretended not to care. Alone

again, I searched the grounds for evidence. If they had followed me to the library, they must have dug a

hole or found a secret entranceway into the building. On my third trip around the building, in the shadows

of the sun, I saw him. Behind the back stairs, he squeezed out through a crack in the foundation like a

baby being born and stood there for a moment, blinking in the fading light. Afraid that he might attack

me, I looked left and right for an escape route. He ran directly at me, as if to seize my throat in his jaws,

and then darted away as quickly as a bird in flight, too fast for me to see him clearly, but there is no

doubt who it was. A hobgoblin. When the danger passed, I could not keep from laughing.

Nervous for hours, I drove around and found myself at my mother’s place near midnight. While she

slept upstairs, I crept through the house gathering supplies: a carpet knife, an iron crowbar, and a coil of

strong rope. From the old barn, I stole my father's ancient kerosene camping lamp, its wire han-dle dusty

and cold to the touch. The wick sputtered when I tried to light the lamp, but it came to life and suffused

the long-neglected corner with an unearthly glow.

Insomnia gripped me those last few hours, my mind and body p fusing rest until the deed was done.

In the predawn gloom, I went back and memorized the layout of the building, figuring out step by step

what I was going to do. Patience nearly deserted me. The goblin might have been spooked, so I went

about my business as if nothing had ever happened. I spent the day reading a book about remarkable

children, gifted savants whose minds were damaged in such a way that they could see the world only

through a sole window of sound or mathematics or another abstract system. I would press the hobgoblin

for the story of what had really happened to Gustav Ungerland and to me.

But more than any explanation, I simply and desperately wanted my symphony back, for I could

not write a note knowing it was gone. Nothing would stop me from making him return the score. I would

reason if I could beg if I must, or steal it back if need be. By now, I was no longer something wild and

dangerous, but I was committed to restoring my life.

Unmistakable noises stirred beneath the floor all day. He was back. As the library emptied, I