Wednesday, March 8th, 1984

     It all started on Saturday. It was Miner’s Day, an actual holiday designed to preserve the town’s history and culture. Did you know that this town was founded by miners? They didn’t have electricity, so the nuns made candles for them. No word on who made them matches.

     I was asked to attend the commemoration of the library that day. According to everyone, the first entrance to the mines was right on that spot and the elevator was actually used by the miners to go down into it. The elevator turned 100 years old this Miner’s Day and everyone was there to mark the occasion.

     I’d never seen the library busier. Easily one hundred people were crammed inside, squished in the aisles and pouring into the main reading area. Every aisle was full except for the literature aisle. I smiled from my spot at the podium as people avoided the aisle with their own stories in it as though it wasn’t even available for standing room.

     That changed about halfway through the ceremony. The whole thing was supposed to last around a half an hour, but that didn’t count getting people arranged inside, or one of the speakers running twenty minutes late. So many bodies meant the library was getting considerably warm despite the cool weather outside. The people were fidgeting, and I wondered if part of the curse for anyone here was claustrophobia.

     Sure enough, as I was delivering my speech on the historical richness of our town, Leroy started making his way towards an empty space, and the crowd spit him out into the literature aisle. I tried not to stop speaking so as not to draw attention to him. He looked surprised as though he didn’t know the aisle existed, but then calmed down and looked ahead at me.

     Once the ceremony was over, about half of the people left for the fair at the church. The nuns held a small one every year to help the sale of their candles, apparently. The rest of us stayed behind to socialize and have lunch. I was in the center of the library, chatting with men who were once kings. Albert Spencer kept pestering Mitchell Herman about his son. Back home, Mitchell had been Cinderella’s father-in-law, but here he was the local cannery tycoon. He was surrounded by wealth but isolated the ones he should love. Albert was asking Mitchell if his son was still with his girlfriend. It seemed to be a subject he didn’t want to touch and I didn’t care. My eyes wandered to the main desk, and there was Leroy checking out a book! The librarian seemed to have no qualms about doing her job during a private engagement. I excused myself from the gentlemen to see if I could get a better view of Leroy’s book. I had to know if he checked out a book from that aisle. It could have been a different kind of book; non-fiction, self-help, hygiene. I was getting closer, but the check-out process had ended and he was leaving. I certainly wasn’t about to follow him out, but the thought of asking the librarian what he checked out crossed my mind.

     I didn’t get the chance to ask. The floor only shook for a couple of seconds, but it was enough to scare everyone. People ran for the doors and flooded into the street. They were panicked and confused, but no one was injured. I found Sidney in the crowd and grabbed him by the arm. I knew what had happened, but I was going to make sure the people thought something else.

     The next morning I watched the people as I went for a walk. A little bit of rain in the morning doesn’t scare me into my car anymore. It always rains here. Beneath umbrellas and under eaves, everyone was reading the daily paper and talking about what had happened at the library the day before, or at least what I wanted them to think happened. She was too far below to do any real damage. Maybe it was the sounds of all the people that woke her up or maybe it was the smell of the chicken lunch with chocolate cake? Whatever stirred Maleficent, the people of Storybrooke simply thought it was settlement of the earth due to the mine underneath.

     I also observed something else. Passing an apartment building, Leroy’s face peeked through the blinds of a fourth-story window. As it disappeared, a white square sign with “Reagan ‘84” painted in red and blue replaced it. The sign didn’t surprise me, since he seemed so passionate about voting. At the time I shrugged it off and continued my walk.

     But Monday evening I visited the library before they closed. There were two more people in the literature section, and before the librarian had locked the doors for the night, two more books were checked out. Yesterday morning on my walk to work, two more signs for presidential candidates were up in front of homes.

     It wasn’t only thoughts of the election that stirred in these people as more of them shared the same coincidence. Discovering the literature section of the library was like catching a virus. First, you walked through it and picked up a book. It didn’t matter if you checked it out or not; once you read a page or two, you began to get ideas. Ideas like personal choice, self expression and even the desire to leave Storybrooke. The travel section of the bookstore down the street was bustling with people buying maps and travel books. No one was going anywhere, of course. The curse prevents that.

     The most alarming thing is that the people who enter the literature aisle are slowly reconnecting to their original selves. Today at Granny’s Diner, Archie sat down beside Marco and the two just chatted away. Until today, I’ve never seen them even look at each other. I saw the former cricket and puppet-maker in the literature aisle on separate days. I don’t even know if they’d met until today, but there they were talking like they’d known each other all of their lives.

     But the library was becoming a popular place to visit. Tonight after work I wasn’t even allowed inside. Due to the event on Miner’s Day, the number of people allowed inside at any given time was lowered and the limit had been reached.

     Why the curse allowed a library in the first place, I’m not sure, but this is something I need to handle now. I’ve got to find a way to shut the library down or risk people coming out of the curse, let alone having others think they can elect someone who will hold more power than me.