Mr. Linden's Library

Based off of a picture in The Mysteries of Harris Burdick called Mr. Linden's Library, I wrote a dark story to go along with the dark picture. We had to add the quotes that were added to the picture. The words on Mr. Linden's Library said "He had warned her about the book, now it was too late". This picture filled me with ideas. I saw darkness but within it I saw light. I wish I had added parts about what the book did and more about the institute but any more words would have made this piece a book.

Seventeen year old Mila Linden had just walked in on her father’s death. Her scream could be heard through their little town of Vanderville. Her father, Mr. Linden, was, at one point, a highly respected botanist who worked in the Füthermӧrst Institute. It resembled a prison, mostly because of the high amounts of security. People weren’t sure what the Institute did, however, when a luminescent sheep came hurtling down the hill from the institute, no one really questioned it. Mila rushed to her father's side, to take him down from where he hung. He was too heavy for her, but with her endorphins were producing strength into her muscles, she managed it. She wouldn’t leave her father’s side, arms draped over his lifeless body. When the paramedics reached them, she had to be forcefully removed from her father’s side. After talking to authorities with a shiny blanket protecting her from the demonous thoughts that sunk into her brain, she decided to skim her hands over his study. The chair, knocked over to signify the dreadful deed he had done, left a cold feeling in the gargantuan room filled with Hemingway and Darwin. The dark blue hues of the sky cast its way into his study, pushing his dark purple curtains. She had picked out those curtains for him. Purple was her favorite color, it was now used to accentuate the depression lingering in the room. She made her way over to his Ebony desk, filled with manila files from Füthermӧrst. Papers inhabited the ground. His handwriting blended in with the floor, it had become chicken scratch by that time.

On the edge of his desk, sat a Black book, gold etchings reached its was around the book. The title read Little Woods. It wasn’t astonishing for Mr. Linden to have books on forests, he was a botanist after all. However this book was different, the leather had faded, it was a well used book, The author’s name was faded more than every other part of the book. Mila picked up the book, nearly 500 pages long, and opened it to the red silk bookmark. The book was filled with strange characteristics that were neither English nor German, her native languages. With a little flipping through Little Woods she saw marks in her father’s chicken Scratch writing. He seemed to be translating this book before he died. She held the book close to her chest, trying to create the image of her father in her head, a tear run down her face. She opened the book again hoping to find answers. Then, on the inside cover, she saw half of a bright yellow post-it that read “DO NOT READ if you don’t know the power of this bo…” This intrigued Mila. She began to pick up her father’s studies. People assumed she had lost it like her nut of a father. She dropped out of school, disregarding her straight A’s in her senior year. As an orphan at seventeen, there was basically no point for the government to put her into foster care when she had 5 months until she was a legal adult. The Government decided to pay for her house, her family had made large sacrifices for research programs that allowed Germany to be more adept for the biological warfare that had been going on against the Allied powers for six years. Mila often thought about her father’s work for Füthermӧrst, she never liked the idea that he was sending biological data to the German government in order to help aid the evils of war. She also often thought of her father’s death. Something about it was incorrect. She knew her father, she knew his feelings about life, he was always cheery in such a dim world. He brought light to the village with his silly inventions. Although, when her mother died, he did hit rock bottom for a year or two. Searching up remedies to bring her back. Her mother died inside Füthermӧrst in a chemical explosion. Mr. Linden started to lose his skills. But he was never depressed enough to leave Mila alone all by herself in the gigantic, abandoned mansion. Something was not right. She religiously took notes on the symbols left inside the book by an unknown artist. She contacted workers who had left the Füthermӧrst Institute who were not dead. Every man she contacted got extremely paranoid, yelled at her, or threatened to hunt her down to destroy that book. Until one man by the name Hans Vogel who took quick interest in the Little Woods book. He knew Mr. Linden well and actually worked on the book with Mr. Linden. He offered advice on the book after a long conversation about her father, “Don’t read that book, if you have, it’s too late for you.”

After ending that scary phone call, Mila wondered what that meant, but it didn’t defer her from her journey. Later that night, Hans Vogel made his way to Mila’s house. A ring at the door startled her awake, the book sat on her night table next to her bed. She didn’t remember leaving it open, however, there it sat, the odd symbols stretching towards the ceiling. Han Vogel burts through the door with not so much as a “Good Morning” and strut straight into Mr. Linden’s study towards his library. “Where is it?” he shouted, making Mila jump, as she rubbed the sleep out of her eyes. “I don’t have to tell you, get out of my house” “News flash, it’s not YOUR house sweetie, it’s your dads. Now where is he.” He shouted with the patience of the fuse on a bomb. “He’s dead,” Mila said, trying to not let her voice break as she stood in one spot, refusing to move.” “What!” Vogel shouted. “Now get out of my house!” she said, shaking. He lowered his head, and left her house. Mila went back to her bed to analyse the next page of Little Woods. With the limited sleep the young girl had been getting, she fell back asleep with the book next to her arm. Plants started to grow with fast pace as it started to wrap around the girls arm, and shoulder. The muffled screams echoed from the house as Vogel stood outside the house, smirking. He had warned her about the book. Now it was too late.