The Book That Returned With A Vengeance
The year was 1858, and the house on the cliff edge of Kiama stood as a sentinel of the new colony, a structure of rough-hewn sandstone and timber that breathed the damp air of the ocean. Jack Huxtable, a retired clerk whose eyes had grown weary from ledger lines, had taken the room that faced the garden. He was a man of quiet habits, his days measured not by the clock but by the turning of pages. His sanctuary was filled with the scent of tobacco and moth balls, for he spent his remaining days on borrowed wisdom.
Among his selections was a volume of singular weight and grandeur: “The Antiquities of Athens and Other Monuments of Greece,” by James Stuart and Nicholas Revett (third edition), a tome that one did not merely read, but which demanded close attention. The book was a groundbreaking document of the marble perfection of the Acropolis, containing seventy-one plates of precise measurements, friezes, memorializing the geometric purity of the Parthenon. For Jack, it was a consolation in his twilight years, a reminder that while his own world was rough and new, the world of the ancients was set in stone and memory.
Then came the dark day. Jack Huxtable, worn down by an ailment that had slowly drained his vitality, passed away in his sleep. The room was cleared and the bed stripped by Millicent, the owner of the house, a woman of practical mind but fragile nerves. When the library notice arrived, demanding the return of the book or the payment of a replacement fee, Millicent panicked. The fine was a sum she could not spare, and the idea of admitting to a debt for a dead man's reading was an injustice she could not admit.
In a moment of irrational fear, she clutched the massive volume, wrapped it in oilcloth, and placed it within a tea crate. With trembling hand, she shoved the crate behind the fireplace, sealing the opening with loose bricks and a layer of plaster. The book was gone, buried in the wall, a secret of the house. The notice was crumpled and thrown into the fire. The debt remained unpaid, the book unreturned, and the silence of the house deepened. Sixteen decades would pass before the wall would reveal its secret.
The house stood for generations, its clapboard cladding weathering the coastal storms, until it fell to the ownership of Jack Greber, an architect whose passion was restoration of the old house. He was a man of t-squares and vellum, a dedicated professional who saw the world in terms of load-bearing walls and hidden joists. When he bought the Kiama property, he saw not a ruin, but a destiny. He spent his days stripping back layers of paint, revealing the past in stages, and his nights studying archival photos of the Victorian era, dreaming of the house’s original glory.
But the house had a secret, and it was not one of the physical world. It began with a sound, or, was it all in his head?
It all started as a soft, rhythmic beat, emanating from the wall. Thump (pause) thump (pause) thump (pause) thump. It was the sound of a lame leg, the solid drop of a footstep on floorboards, followed by a pause as the other foot made no sound. A man of structure and reason, Jack dismissed it at first as the settling of the house, the expansion of timber in the weather. But the sound persisted. It wasn't the random creak of a house; it was deliberate, a haunting rhythm.
He spoke of it to a neighbor, a resident for many years. "Do you hear it?" Jack asked, his voice low. The neighbor listened politely, but only offered, "Just the wind in the eaves.” But the sound persisted despite attempts to deny it. Jack finally gave in; the sound was a ghost, a doppelganger of a person who had died in that room, a restless spirit returning to demand his attention.
The thump...thump...thump...thumping sound seemed to become increasingly insistent, until he could bear it no longer. It was as if someone was walking up-and-down the floor of an upstairs that did not exist, pacing the room, waiting. Exasperated and exhausted, Jack decided to investigate. He called upon a reputable building contractor, well-known in town, a man with a keen eye for hidden faults. Together, they examined the room where the sound was heard. The contractor, probing the plaster, found a soft patch, a section of the wall that gave way to the touch.
With a flurry of dust, the wall crumbled, revealing a hidden cavity behind. Inside, wrapped in oilcloth and protected from must, was an ancient tea crate, a brand long out of business. Jack Greber opened it, and within lay the book, “The Antiquities of Athens and Other Monuments of Greece.” The book was in good condition, its pages yellowed but whole, the seventy-one plates of Greek architecture restored as if excavated from the ruins.
The ghost had spoken. The book had to be returned.
Jack took the volume to the Kiama Library, where the staff, stunned by the discovery, accepted it, canceling the overdue fine. It would become a part of the non-lending collection, for reference only, thereafter. Lost for 168 years, it had finally found its way home.
And as Jack Greber lay down to sleep that night, the room was, once again, quiet. The thump...thump...thumping had ceased. The ghost, satisfied, had vanished into the other world, leaving the house at rest.
The story of the book and the ghost would become a local legend, a tale of returning, and a warning.