8:13
Dan was totally fucked.
This was not a phrase that came easily to the usually taciturn man. He prided himself on being resolute. The calm in the storm. The steady hand on the trigger.
So, it took a lot for him to say he was totally fucked.
He started out calm enough. Cool even. Strolling into a library that would make any bibliomancer giddy with joy he’d remained the opposite of giddy. Sensible. Serious. As a bibliomancer he had all those words, though he rarely used that many. That was him. Steady. Resolute. Calm. Largely silent.
Faced with walls of books, tiers of books like the layers on a wedding cake, stretching to a ceiling at least three stories high, accessible by a winding stair that started to the left of the window Dan climbed through to access the space and curved around the room several times, a nautilus spiraling upwards, any reader would be floored. Any bibliomancer? Well, they might probably want to just set up a bed and live there.
The room was not only tall but also wide, the center of it at least thirty feet across. In the center of this space marched two rows of antique card catalog cabinets. Each cabinet had to have forty drawers and stood close to six feet tall. There were five cabinets per row and each row was double sided so there were twenty cabinets in total. Dan couldn’t even calculate how many cards they held though he’d go with one for every book on every shelf in the three-story library.
Around the card catalog island in the center of the space were set double rows of bookshelves, some eight to ten feet high, forming a square around the card catalogs with small breaks at each corner so people could move between the stacks. It was these he was wondering, brain goggling, pulling books out randomly from the shelves to look at their spines, run his fingers along the beveled edges of pages, flip volumes open to skim their contents, when he heard a noise. The library had wooden floors that absorbed but did not completely muffle the sound of his footfalls, so the sound of something falling to them was quite distinct. Not clear. More a muffled thump. But considering Dan was the only one in the space and therefore, by that argument, the only one who was going to make a noise, when a thump sounded from across the space, past the card catalog cabinets, and somewhere in the stacks to the far side of that, he heard it.
And like someone who was way less cautious and steady and sensible than himself, he went to investigate. Footfalls soft on the hardwood he stalked past the card catalog cabinets, one hand idly on the top of one crossbow. Pausing just past the cabinets he looked down the length of the first row of bookshelves, determining there was nothing there.
Heart beating a quiet tattoo in time to his steps, he soft footed through the break between the shelves and peered around the corner and down the long corridor between the first and second row of shelves. Down about a third of the way a book lay on the floor.
Okay, logic. Maybe it fell. Odd but it happened.
Dan started down the path between the shelves, set to put the book back in its place. Then there was the rustle of pages being furled. He looked down the shadowed path, lifting the alchemy torch Siobhan gave him to better see. In the odd green glow of the torch the shadows moved strangely so at first Dan thought he was seeing the shift of light and dark, not the furling of pages.
Because that was just… Not… Right.
It was just shadows. He kept telling himself that until the first arm pulled itself out of the shifting shadows and flipping pages. A full arm, too big to have come from something the size of a book. An arm that was more tatters and shadows than substance, or so it appeared in the uneven light of the torch. Around it a black cloud formed, more suggestion than substance.
In that moment Dan understood that he did not want the rest of the body that arm was attached to emerging from that book. He lunged forward, kicking his foot out to catch the cover of the book and flip it closed on the materializing arm. It caught, the arm too wide, despite its tattered state, to allow the book to close.
Dan lifted his foot and brought it smashing down on the half-closed cover, silently offering the book his apologies for treating it so rough.
The cover bucked under his foot. The arm turned, a skeletal hand emerging from the edge of a tattered sleeve and latching on to Dan’s leg. With its grip came a burst of terror, seeping into him with the black cloud that was now clearly emitting from the wraith-like arm. Pounding along the pulse in his ears, warping sound and sense to its beat, the fear swelled, an entity seeking to escape him swelling against the prison of his skin. Clenching his teeth and fighting to keep his hands steady, he yanked his crossbow free, aimed it down at the arm, and pulled the trigger, releasing a bolt that went right through the arm and lodged in the wood floor.
Fuck. Dan cursed in his head. Roundly and repeatedly as he drew back, kicking hard to try to dislodge the grip on his leg. He could see through the bones of the hand, like they were made of smoke, but the grip was as solid as any he’d felt from corporeal creatures. As the hand dug into his leg he imagined he saw the edges of the bones tatter and swirl, only to settle to seep into his pants so the grip became stronger. The fear digging its way into his bones like it had claws meant to seek the marrow of him.
With uncharacteristic zeal he kicked and flicked and otherwise did his interpretation of the can-can as he bumped into shelves left and right, their remaining standing a testament to their sturdy joints as he was hitting them with enough force to knock over both men and beasts. The book rose and fell with his kicks, the pages flapping and the cover dinging against his leg. He shook like he was trying to get dog shit off his foot, like he’d stepped in slime and was doing his level best to kick it into another dimension, like his pants were on fire and spastic flailing would put the fire out.
Releasing his hold on his crossbow he grabbed the edge of one bookshelf and kicked until the bones inside his legs felt like they’d been knocked loose to jostle each other while grappling for his notebook in the pocket of his tac vest. The velcro on the pocket gave and his fingers dug around the familiar leather of the book. Pulling it partially out of the pocket but leaving some of it in so he didn’t lose it in his mad kicking frenzy, Dan ran his thumb down the edge of the pages, stopping on the mark for binding spells.
“For to be free,” he spat out, kicking again when the hand tightened around his leg so he stopped feeling his toes in his boots. Fuck, that was bad, “is not merely to cast off one’s chains,” he winced and gritted his teeth, forcing out the rest of the words, “but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others. Nelson-” came out on a grunt. He bit his lip, ground his teeth, and spat, “Mandela.”
As the word fell from his lips, heavy with his Magick, the hand released his leg. He dropped to his knee and punched inwards, catching the loosening finger joints and driving them back into the book. Shifting he brought his knee down on the cover, throwing all his weight into the leg.
The book bucked beneath him. He dropped his other knee on it and threw his weight down, buying himself time to flip the page in his book to find and spit out, “It is often safer to be in chains than to be free.” As he grunted, “Franz Kafka,” there was the sensation of a lock setting under his knees, a clunk carrying up his legs to his hips.
He remained perched on the book for a moment, head down and eyes closed. When after several mikros it didn’t move he carefully replaced his book in his vest pocket by feel, then rolled back to his feet and rose. Stooping down he picked up the book and looked a the spine.
J.R.R. Tolkien. The Return of the King.
For an entire mikro his fingers itched to slide the book into his pocket. His Magick, sensitive to some extent to such things, told him this was an original 1955 edition of the book. And he wanted it. In that moment maybe more than he wanted to not consider that he may have just jammed a Nazgul back into the volume.
Common sense, his bedrock, quickly overcame the natural lust of a Bibliomancer for a rare book and he carefully turned and shelved it in the empty spot on the shelf from where it had clearly fallen.
Now that his heart stopped beating to a drum that spoke “heart attack heart attack heart attack” he could hear his own thoughts and his thoughts said that he really didn’t want to have to deal with whatever it was he’d trapped in that book again. Nazgul or something else random that cut off the circulation to his foot. He could do with that not being in his life again.
Or any other book here. He eyed the shelves and their massive volume of books like each one was a loaded crossbow with a questionable trigger, like any moment another one might fall off the shelf and disgorge something else he was potentially not prepared to wrestle with.
And it was just as he was coming to that very sensible, very resolute conclusion that he heard the sound of someone or something moving on the level above him. He looked up, his eyes going to the ceiling, and strained his ears to hear. Maybe he’d- Nope, there it went again. A kind of scuttling. Footfalls. Maybe. But too many and too fast to be something bipedal.
His mind immediately went to what creature from what book it might be, because in that moment he straight up knew it was a creature from another book, escaped like the Nazgul had not. There were just too many options. His mind started cataloging all of them, getting dizzy as the immensity of options tore through his mind and his imagination. Literally could be anything.
Literally. That would probably have struck him as funny if he wasn’t literally having a literal heart attack or literal stroke brought on by whatever crawled or creeped or oozed or seeped out of whatever literary classic was lying on the floor of this library somewhere.
Was his left arm numb? Shit. Boy was he glad he was A. alone and B. this running commentary was in his head. He tamped down on it, straining for the sound of approaching monsters – what else was it going to be? – as he slowly moved out of the stacks, his footsteps methodical, with each steps placed exactly to minimize the sound of boot on wood floor.
Reaching the front of the first bookcase facing the card catalog cabinets, he carefully reversed, walking backwards several steps with his gaze focused on the rail of the terrace above. Very slowly, aware of making any noise, he unhooked the torch from the loop on his vest and lifted it high. The green glow of the alchemy fire reflected off large eyes set in a narrow face.
By the nature of the light the face appeared elongated, drawn. Shadows pooled beneath high cheekbones, enhancing the sense of the creature’s features being stretched out, skin taut from the point of the chin, pulling over the gaping maw set with too many teeth. Again the details were vague, the flickering green light making it hard to make out exactly. Maybe those teeth weren’t thin, cat’s teeth set in a vaguely humanoid mouth, lips thinning to the point of disappearing making the impression of needle-like protrusions set in a picket-fence grin. Additionally the uneven light made it impossible to tell the tone of the skin, though Dan would say pale. Very pale, reflecting the phosphorescence where a normal tone would absorb it.
The creature raised a hand with fingers like a tarsier, long with what appeared to Dan’s confused eyes to be too many joints. It was the kind of hand you expected to see curled around the edge of a sarcophagus as the creature within clawed its way free in a gross imitation of birth.
His heart started its irregular beat again, drowning the sound of the creature’s hand-claws scrabbling at the rail of the terrace. There was no solid reason for his response beyond a natural reaction to an unnatural thing, a reasoning creature giving in to a primordial fight or flight instinct. His head grew light and his vision started darkening at the edges, creating a tunnel effect, as two more of the creatures slunk forward, one leaping to perch on the rail, its motions made eerie by the uneven light of the torch Dan continued to hold high. The creature raised a hand against the glow of the torch, shielding its large eyes. The movement drew attention to the weird anatomy of that hand, making already elongated fingers look like pulled taffy.
Drawing deep, even breaths through parted lips, Dan fought to maintain his upright position as his legs did what legs naturally did when all the blood was rushing to them in preparation to get the fuck out of there. No longer worrying about making noise and drawing the attention of the creatures, seeing as he’d already done that with the light.
Embracing the concept of discretion being the better part of valor, Dan spun and rushed across the open center of the room. Between his speed and the uneven light of the alchemy torch the cabinets blurred as he dashed past them, arrowing towards the window frame. Behind him he heard something hit the floor. The skitter of claws on the wood floor drove his feet. Matching the rhythm of them to the frantic thunder of his heart, he dove inelegantly for the window frame, hoping to Magick the creatures remained in the library and didn’t catch him before he cleared the window.
If they did he was totally fucked.
The thought wasn’t rational, a fact that bothered him in the back of his brain where he’d stuffed sensible and steady Dan. Then again, idiotic and unstable Dan, driven by his lizard brain screaming ‘get the fuck out!’ thought it was a fucking genius conclusion. And it repeated it, like a mantra drowning out the thrum of his blood in his ears, as he stumbled over the window frame and threw himself through the resistance in the air separating the horror of the library from the controlled elegance of black-and-white tiles marching in neat rows and evenly-spaced windows hanging incongruously on walls made of hedge.
At the sound of his feet hitting marble Kim pivoted in her seat on the table in the center of the room, looking at him with wide-eyes and pursed lips. Dan straightened, braced his feet, and took a deep centering breath. Then another for good measure. His heart settled into its standard rhythm though the skitter of his brain, matching the skitter of those claws playing on loop, took several more mikros to smother beneath his iron will. Only then did he raise a hand, jerking his thumb back over his shoulder to indicate the stained-glass window.
“No.”
Whether he was denying what his eyes and his brain told him he saw in the library or he was answering Kim’s unspoken question the answer was the same.
“No,” he repeated, just to iron that out flat.
“No?”
“No.”
Kim drummed her fingers on the table. “Sure?”
“Not alone.”
“Bad?”
“Not good.”
“Well, that description helps. Not.”
Dan took a cleansing breath through his nostrils. Took another. Decided his heart rate was low enough he’d be able to speak without his voice shaking. “Things are coming out of books.”
“Things?”
Dan fought the urge to slowly strangle Kim, hiding the curl of his hand against the side of his leg. Had to maintain.
“Creatures. I closed a book on a Nazgul.”
“Nazgul?”
“Ringwraith.”
“Like from Tolkien?”
“Yes.”
“That’s not good.”
“It is not.”
“Is that why you hit the floor running?”
“It is not.”
“Care to share?”
“Not sure. Something with pale skin, big eyes, sharp teeth, and claws.”
“Narrows it down.”
“Right. Since I didn’t know what it was I decided to retreat.”
Right. That sounded good. Way better than he ran like he was six and Carl jumped out of his closet when he opened the door in the morning. At least he hadn’t peed himself this time. Fuck Carl. He’d give a foot to have his brother here. Say what you would about the guy he always had Dan’s back. And didn’t scare easily. Or at all. Not that he’d let on. That bravado would not be remiss at this exact juncture.
“I need help with it.”
“Okay. Got a plan?”
“No. Not,” he added, “at the moment.”
“Stay here until you do.”
“Okay.” Dan walked over and took a seat on the table near Kim then focused his eyes on the soothing pattern of the black-and-white tiles and his mind on the chaos of the library which was neither soothing nor black-and-white.
Black-and-white. A thought pinged in the back of his mind at the term. Black-and-white. Like words on paper. There was something there. Words marching with controlled precision across a page. A balm to chaos. Dan settled back, staring at the floor until the pattern of tiles blurred, a backdrop fading at the rear of the stage where his thoughts played out front and center.
“I used Magick.”
“Okay.”
Dan twisted to look at Kim. At his questioning look she cocked her head. “I figure its like that warning “don’t cross the streams.””
“Excuse, me, Egon,” Dan quoted easily, “you said crossing the streams was bad.”
He grinned when Kim lifted her brows. There was something about her that let him let his inner geek out. He was rewarded when she shot back, “there’s definitely a slim chance we’ll survive.”
She grinned. Dan grinned. And the fear left clinging to him that he hadn’t really even realized was there slipped further back into his subconscious where it belonged.
“I think not using Magick is stupid and maybe even impossible. Every time I stick my head in a window for something Air tries to yank me into the space beyond. I think its peeved I’m not in the mix.”
“It does that?”
“It definitely does that.” She grinned and shook her head. “Anyhow, I think we can use Magick but be aware when we start to flag. Like, more aware. Because I know Gwen tapped herself a lot when we went to find Siobhan, but she didn’t say anything. And I don’t think that’s just her being a hero. I don’t think we’re trained to realize we’re tapping out. You’d think it would be something every Magicker would learn while still crawling.”
“Maybe we are taught when we’re that young, but as we get older and our ability to use Magick gets better we rarely hit that low point we learned as kids. Could be the signs aren’t as obvious to us as adults.”
Kim wobbled her head and curled her mouth on a parody of contemplation. “Interesting insight there, Professor.”
She snickered when Dan lifted his brows a micro-inch at the title.
“Any other thoughts?”
“Not yet.”
They both sunk back into quiet, Dan to his thoughts and Kim to contemplating the windows. She jerked when Abe jumped out of the portrait window. They shook out their arms then looked up. Seeing Dan and Kim sitting on the table they bound towards them with a puppy’s exuberant step and expression to match.
“I can’t do anything in there. I think maybe Ben should try.”
At Kim’s “Why?” they sketched both hands in the air, molding the space like it was clay they could form into a sculptural landscape. “You know how its dark except for the stairs?”
Kim nodded. “That’s what we saw.”
“Okay, so, when you get to the top of the stairs, which are very tall, like two maybe three stories. I don’t know,” they shook their head, setting their hair to dancing around. “It took me a meros or more to reach the top and I’m pretty fast.”
Kim nodded again. “I’m guessing you are.”
“So,” they danced their clean left hand on the air, like it was climbing stairs, “when you get to the top there’s not a lot there. Its a platform. No rails. And all around it is darkness. Like, a drop. I dropped a pencil down it and I didn’t hear it land, so,” they waved their hand in emphasis, “assume it doesn’t stop.” Their shoulders rose on an expressive shrug. “I can’t say but I didn’t hear the pencil land. Everything else is super light. Like you have to squint and you want to shield your eyes from it but the light is everywhere so there’s no source to block. And about maybe three feet from the edge is a wall. That wall has mirror with a picture frame around it. Like in Snow White?” They swept their hand, describing a large plane. “Pretty big but not huge, okay?”
Dan nodded slowly, pulling himself from his thoughts to focus on the image Abe drew with their words. “Okay.”
“And under the frame there are two dials. Like,” they twisted their hand like they were turning a dial, “one of those ones on a faucet?”
Dan and Kim nodded, indicating they got the reference.
“Next to the mirror, where there’d be a placard at a museum telling you about the painting there’s a quote.” They pushed up the right sleeve of their cassock and stared intently at the black tattoo on their arm, then spit out without any hesitation, “The dark and the light, they exist side by side. Sometimes overlapping, one explaining the other. The darkened path is as illuminated as the lightened. Raven Davies.”
Dan blinked at the quote. He could really use that level of recall. He wouldn’t need notebooks if he could remember quotes with that clarity. Maybe the kid would explain how to do it after. Maybe he could do it with his Magick. Abe kept insisting their Magick, while not the same, was of a similar bent. So, yeah. Back to the point.
“So, you think you need dark there?”
“Yes.” Abe bobbed their head emphatically. “There’s no light switch or anything that would let you turn off the light. And like I said I there’s no obvious source to block. I checked. So, I think we need someone with dark Magick to do something.”
Kim frowned at that. “Ben’s Magick isn’t dark.”
Abe turned, contrition and earnest intent drawing their round features up. “Not that way. Not dark.” They drew out the ‘ar’ sound like “spoooooky”. “Like shadows. You know about chiaroscuro?” They lifted their palms hands up at their sides and gave an expressive shrug.
Kim cast her eyes to the left, her expression saying she was searching for a memory. “That’s the effect of effect of contrasted light and shadow in a painting. Caravaggio is famous for it.”
When Dan looked at her with lifted brows, she added. “I did go to art school. You think those little paper houses were something I Magickally learned how to make?”
Dan poked a toothpick into the corner of his mouth. “Nope.”
Abe turned to Dan with an expectant look. “Are you familiar.”
“Nope.”
“So,” Abe waved their hand around, “Chiaroscuro uses the contrast of light and dark to enhance the illusion of three-dimensionality. Leonardo da Vinci was famous for doing that. My thought is maybe there’s something in that frame that I can’t see because there’s no darkness.”
That said they rocked back on their heels and clasped their hands in front of them, their gaze on Dan like they were waiting for him to respond in some manner to their deep revelation about the magick of art.
He worked his toothpick to the other side of his mouth with his tongue. “Okay.”
When they remained staring at him, expression expectant, he found himself, as he had throughout the time Abe had spent trying to teach Dan the subtleties of their Magick and how they thought it crossed to his, feeling compelled to add more.
“We need Ben. I need you.”
“Oh?” Abe’s eyebrows flew up and their mouth pursed. They pointed at their chest with their blackened right forefinger. “Me? Why?”
Dan jerked his thumb towards the book window. “Creatures detaching from books.”
If possible Abe’s eyes got wider. “Oooh.”
“I could use your help with them.”
“Because?”
“Not sure. Just instinct.”
Abe, attention focused on the book window, rocked on their heels and clasped their hands back in front of them. “That slaps!”
Dan looked at Kim, mouthed “that slaps?”. She widened her eyes and turned her mouth down slightly, shrugging, as if to say “fuck if I know?”
She turned her attention back to Abe and said slow, like a parent trying to catch the lingo of their teenage kid. “It does slap,” causing Dan to stifle a snort, rubbing his nose to hide his grin.
Lowering his hand he looked to Abe. “So that’s you and me. We should get another. Too bad Prairie is running around with Ivan and Ben. Daggers that hit perfectly would be useful.”
“She isn’t.”
Dan turned at Kim’s statement, looking at her with a question.
“Ivan threw her at Siobhan before he went running off into the maze the last time.”
“She’s going to be happy about that.”
Kim grinned, then curled her lips over her teeth and slanted a mischief look at the hedge wall. “I’d sleep with one eye open if I was him. For sure. Girl knows ways to make Little Ivan-” rather than say the words she held her forefinger upright then made a sweeping motion downward so her finger lay dangling, making a wooo like a crashing plane as she did so. “She’s got a deft hand with a catheter.”
Dan crossed his legs instinctively, dropping a hand on his belt buckle like he could protect himself from the implied threat.
“But, yeah,” Kim continued, leaving her finger just dangling there, “Ivan is in for it. Prairie is with Siobhan. I can get her if you need her?”
Dan looked at the hedge. “Speaking of. Where are Ivan and Ben?”
Kim tilted her head in that direction. “Now that you mention it, they’ve been gone a whi-”
As if her words conjured them, Ben and Dan came jogging out of the break in the hedge next to the ribbon window, their strides easy and their breathing even. Dan frowned. How were they not showing fatigue?
Kim seemed to have the same idea. “You guys have been running around for over twenty meros. Why aren’t you flagging?”
Ben gave Kim a look like she needed professional help. “We’ve been gone maybe three meros.” He looked back at Ivan who was sticking his head into the hedge, looking back down the path they’d emerged from . “Three?”
“Three what?” Ivan asked as he pulled his head back.
“How many meros you figure we’ve been gone?”
Ivan’s face creased with thought. “Three. Maybe four? I didn’t pull out a timepiece what with running from a large, slavering beast.”
Kim looked at Dan. Dan looked at Kim. Almost as one they said, “Interesting.”
Dan pushed off the table, landing on his feet and walking quickly to stand several feet forward of the mouth of the hedge opening Ivan and Ben had just exited. “Abe?”
“Me?” Abe pointed at their chest, then looked at Dan. “Oh.” They shook their head vigorously, a look of dawning on their features. “Yeah.”
With that they scampered – yes, they scampered, deal with it – over to stand next to Dan with one knee flexed and their arms bent at the elbow in a runner’s ready position. “I’m good!”
Dan spared Abe a smile, then looked over at Ivan and Ben who were giving them a quizzical look. “You need to go into the portrait window. Abe thinks Ben’s Magick would be useful there.”
Ivan shifted his gaze between Dan and Abe, then looked at the window before returning his attention to Dan. “Okay.”
That’s all the time they had as Gryphon came snuffling and growling through the hedge at that moment. Dan swept his hand back, indicating Ben and Ivan should duck out of immediate view then he raised his hand to his mouth and gave a piercing whistle.
Gryphon large ears swiveled at the sound and he locked his gaze on Dan. Dan saluted the beast with two fingers to the forehead, Abe gave a sheepish smile and a shrug, and then the two of them ran for the opposite wall and the opening next to the window with the bracelet on it. When Gryphon paused in the hedge break and looked around, tilting his head back to stare at the sky, Dan stopped a few feet into the hedge and gave another whistle. Ivan and Ben sheltered behind the open mirror window and Kim dropped and rolled beneath the table so the only clear target for Gryphon was Dan who gave another jaunty salute then dropped back into the hedge. Gryphon lumbered after him. Kim, Ben, and Ivan waited several mikros after that before Ivan and Ben stepped back towards the table and Kim pulled herself out from under it.
Ivan looked over a the window with the portrait. “Any information on what we’ll be looking at?”
“Abe says you climb three stories up the stairs. They end on a platform that has a sheer drop. In front of you will be a wall with a frame hanging on it. The frame has glass and it covers a dark field. Under the frane is a valve. The entire place is brightly lit and there’s no clear way to turn off the light. There’s a quote there, I can’t remember exactly what it is, but the gist is you need darkness and light.”
Ben nodded. “So me.”
“So you.”
“Any threats?” Ivan asked.
“None that they saw. Just a platform, a sheer drop, and a wall with a frame on it.”
“All righty then.” Ivan rubbed his hands together and looked at Ben. “Stairs?”
Ben wandered over to the window and looked up the stairs. Way up the stairs. “Glad I didn’t skip leg day. Ever.”
“Yeah.” Ivan grit his teeth on a somewhat pained smile. “I did.”
Ben threw an elbow back, popping Ivan in the abdomen. “Politics making you soft.”
Ivan rubbed his stomach and looked pointedly at the stairs. “Yeah. Its why I’m letting you go first.”
“So generous.”
With that Ben and then Ivan climbed through the window frame and started the climb. Kim spun to watch their progress for a time before starting her visual survey of the room and her mantra again.
“Bird book rose painting mirror; mirror painting rose book bird. Bird book rose painting mirror; mirror painting rose book bird.”
Enter The Woods 