My Linden's Libaray

It’s been a week since Alice’s parent’s died. If only the car brakes were working she wouldn’t be going to her only Uncle’s house. Her Uncle, Jeffery Linden, was a very social librarian in Santa Carla. But Alice didn’t worry about her Uncle, like most kids would. It was Santa Carla it’s self that she worried about. It has been named: Murder Capital of the world. Every day kids go missing and never come home. Bodies have been known to show up without limbs.
Alice was driven into Santa Carla by a Social Worker by the name of Rachel. Rachel was one of those people who take on pity on people when they don’t need it. So Alice and Rachel didn’t get along very well. Rachel pulled up in a front of an old, creaky looking house. You could tell that the house was a fixer- upper just by the way it smelled. Alice slowly inched out of the car. Her heart was pounding in her chest. Rachel knocked on the door. She would come to regret it soon enough. The door creaked open, and there was standing was a man: Uncle Jeffery Linden. Uncle Jeff was a man of nerdy looks who couldn’t keep his nose out of a book. With sandy brown hair and thick glasses and faint stubble on his chin, Alice didn’t need to wonder why her mother never talked about him. He looked at Alice then at Rachel, smiling. “You must be Alice?” Uncle Jeffery asked, excitedly. “Boy you sure have grown since the last time I saw you!” Uncle Jeff led them inside. The house looked a lot like a storybook house, but with books everywhere. Books were where books don’t usually belong.
Rachel looked around and stated, “It looks like a good home for Alice.” They bid fear well and she left. Uncle Jeff looked nervous. He never had a teenage girl before to rise. He led her up to her new bed room that had her old furniture and was a lot bigger than the one back home. He left so she could unpack her things. “One good thing about him: he doesn’t hover,” she thought. After a few days of living with Uncle Jeff, he only got one visitor. A dark, dreary man that looked as if he was hit by a car and was beaten up. Unfortunaly Alice was the one who opened the door. She remembered a picture from a book she read the day before about the prisoners of the famous prison, Arcata. The picture if the inmate was clear in her mind as if it was stamped onto her brain. It was Henri Young. He was an inmate for manslaughter and killed another inmate, Rufus McCain. But that was back in 1942. Henri couldn’t of stayed young for 70 years and their was no record of any kids. Alice couldn’t speak.
Jeff yelled from behind her, “Who’s at the door, Alice?” But when he came to the door, he looked as if he wanted to run far away and never come back. He stumbled over his words of hello. Henri smiled at Alice. Her insides churned.
“So this must be Alice.” he laughed with a hint of sick amusement in his voice. “She doesn’t look older than 13.”
“I’m 15,” Alice stated bravely.
“And why is she here again?” he asked.
“My sister and her husband died in a car crash,” whispered Jeff. Henri smiled like he knew something about the crash more than Alice did. How strange. Henri pushed past Alice and Jeff was already out of his way. He acted as if he owned the house. Uncle Jeff held her back and whispered, “Go to your room and don’t come down until I say so.” Alice looked at him and nodded. She ran to her room with her heart pounding in her chest. She got half way up the stairs when Henri stopped her as he was coming down, but Alice knew for a fact that he was in the Dinning Room with Uncle Jeff.
“Well isn’t it lovely upstairs. I really like what he’s done to the place,” he mocked Alice couldn’t move.” You know with the one thing about books?” Henri asked. “You don’t know what can happen.” It’s like that saying, ‘Curiosity killed the cat.’” Henri smiled and walked down the rest of the stairs. A shiver ran down her spine. Alice rushed up to her bed, got into her pj’s and sat on her bed and noticed a new book on her dresser. It was thick, leather-bound, hard-cover that she never saw before. Alice wondered what the book about. But then she hared Henri’s words in her head. Trying to ignore the book, she pulled out another story, but she couldn’t read with out thinking about the hard-cover. She gave up, picked up the book, and read. It was about how they killed the Alcatraz prisoners back in 1942. But when she got to the middle of the book, the pages got lumpy. It was a page on Moonseed. They used to threaten prisoners with it to get them to speak. Pressed between the pages was a Moonseed vine with leaves, and a letter addressed to Alice. Only one sentence was written. “I know what really happened the night your parents died.” Her heart was pounding in her chest so hard it felt like it was about to burst out of her body. She flipped back to the Moonseed (still not knowing what it does.) and plays with it between her fingers. Parts of her body lost feeling as they started to paralyse. Then her brain went fuzzy. She tried to yell for help but no sound came out. Breathing got harder as time went on. Slow and painful isn’t the best way to die. Downstairs Uncle Jeff realized that a slit throat isn’t easy to die from. By the time Rachel could I.D. the bodies, Henri Young had left Santa Carla for some Canadian landscape. He had warned her about the book. Now it’s too late.