The thing in the Library (short story)

𝓦𝓻𝓲𝓽𝓽𝓮𝓷 𝓫𝔂: 𝓜.𝓔.𝓓.𝓛𝓲𝓿𝓲𝓷𝓰𝓼𝓽𝓸𝓷

Thank you for reading in advance🫀

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𝓐𝓻𝓽 𝓢𝓸𝓾𝓻𝓬𝓮: https://pin.it/1Yf8tbHza

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The air, a viscous draught exhaled from October’s death-rattle, clung to the skin like grave-clothes. Above, the firmament writhed in agony, a tormented canvas painted with shadows deeper than any abyss. The clouds, sculpted by the cruel hand of Nyx herself, mirrored the tormented visages of fallen deities, their once-sacred souls now leashed to eternal twilight. Not a single star, no defiant spark of celestial fire, dared to pierce the suffocating gloom; even their mournful twinkles were extinguished in the encroaching darkness.

It was a Friday, marked not by the promise of respite, but by the chilling premonition of doom. A day etched in dread, when the constellations themselves recoiled in horror, refusing to witness the unfolding tragedy. The usual heralds of despair – the raven’s guttural lament, the owl’s dolorous keen – were amplified, imbued with a terror that echoed in the hollow chambers of my very being. The sky, a vast, starless maw, descended upon the earth, its oppressive weight threatening to crush the breath from my lungs. Only the moon, a pallid voyeur, dared to peek from behind ragged veils of cloud, its spectral light painting the landscape with grotesque, elongated shadows that writhed and pulsed with a life wholly their own, mocking the stillness of the impending doom.

I am immured within the yawning gullet of the Blackwood Library, a sepulcher of entombed knowledge and festering transgressions. My footsteps, timorous and hollow as a consumptive’s cough, reverberate through the tomb-like stillness, only to be devoured by the lamenting sputter of the candelabra I now cling to as a drowning man to driftwood. Each failing flicker unleashes phantasmagoric shapes that writhe in torment upon the ebonwood shelves, which groan under the weight of silent, censorious tomes, their cracked leather bindings whispering blasphemous secrets in long-dead tongues. The very air, thick with the dust of ages and the cloying reek of putrefaction, clings to my throat like a spectral strangler’s hand, stealing my breath and leaving me gasping in its wake.

I had sought succor here, a sanctuary from the encroaching disquiet that gnawed relentlessly at the very sinews of my soul. But within these violated halls, I discovered not solace, but a deeper, more insidious dread – a malignant presence that seeped into my very essence. It began as a subtle prickling, a phantom touch upon the nape of my neck, a discomfiting premonition of unseen eyes piercing the veil of reality. Now, it has festered into a palpable horror, a suffocating weight that seems to exude from the mortared stones themselves, pressing down upon me with the force of a grave slab.

As I raise the candelabra in desperate supplication, its meager light a frail bulwark against the encroaching dominion of shadows, my foot, with a sickening lurch, finds purchase upon something slick and unnaturally yielding. A glacial terror spears through my veins, leaving me trembling in its wake. Blood. Gouts of crimson, scattered like grotesque rubies across the time-worn flagstones, their surfaces dulled with the patina of age. They spread in no rational order, a chaotic fresco of despair, a crimson hieroglyph beyond mortal comprehension. They lead nowhere, forewarn of nothing, yet their gory abandonment speaks with a morbid eloquence, whispering tales of depravity and ruin. A story etched in viscera, a chilling testament to some unspeakable transgression against the natural order.

My heart, a frenzied captive, thrashes against the cage of my ribs, its frantic palpitations echoing the mad hammering of nails into a coffin. The library’s silence, once merely disquieting, has now thickened into a tangible menace, a malevolent sentience that breathes down my neck. I strain my ears, desperate for any sound that might illuminate the source of the horror before me. But there is only the mournful sigh of the wind as it claws its way through shattered panes of stained glass, and the frantic, drumming cadence of my own blood, a morbid symphony of impending doom.

Compelled by a morbid curiosity, a perverse hunger to comprehend the origin of this macabre spectacle, I follow the erratic crimson trail, each footfall a step further into the labyrinthine corridors of madness. The sanguinary path leads me past towering shelves, their ebon surfaces choked with volumes of forbidden rituals and blasphemous incantations. Damned titles leap out from the inky depths: De Vermis Mysteriis, bound in human skin; Necronomicon, its pages reeking of sulfur; Malleus Maleficarum, a testament to mankind’s cruelest inclinations. Each name a chilling summons, a siren’s lament luring me inexorably towards the jagged precipice of utter despair.

The trail of blood, like a crimson serpent, now winds its treacherous way towards the grand reading room, a vast, desolate chamber dominated by a colossal oak table, its surface scarred and stained with the countless sins of ages past. As I draw closer, the stench of corruption intensifies, a cloying sweetness that clings to the back of my throat, forcing me to gag and retch. My breath catches in my chest, a strangled gasp lost in the suffocating atmosphere.

The table, a sacrificial altar to forgotten gods, is bathed in the moon’s ghastly, ethereal glow, which streams through a shattered oculus high above. And upon it...

A tableau of unimaginable desecration. Books ripped asunder, their pages strewn across the floor like the skeletal remains of fallen leaves after a tempestuous storm. Inkwells overturned, their contents spilled in grotesque pools that congeal into nightmarish visages, leering and malevolent. And in the very epicenter of this unholy wreckage, a figure, impossibly still, slumps over the table, an effigy of despair carved in flesh and bone.

The desecration, the ravenous chaos that clawed at the library’s heart, poisoned my soul. To witness such a violation upon this sanctum of ancient lore, this mausoleum of forgotten wisdom, was to taste the bitter ashes of despair. It was clear that some unspeakable entity had ravaged these halls, driven by a desperate hunger – a hunt for forbidden knowledge, or perhaps something far more…sinister.

A torrent of conjecture flooded my fevered mind, yet each hypothesis was quickly drowned in a sea of doubt. I, but a humble guardian, a mere sentinel entrusted with the purity of these sacred texts, possessed neither the skill nor the right to unravel this enigma. What horrors would unfold should mortal eyes gaze upon this gruesome tableau? The very pages of these venerable tomes were defiled with crimson ichor, their words rendered unreadable, their wisdom forever tainted. A trail of carnage, a gruesome breadcrumb path, led to the epicenter of this pandemonium, a lurking predator waiting to feast upon my sanity.

Overwhelmed by a terror that seeped into my marrow like a creeping plague, my head swam, and the ground threatened to swallow me whole. I grasped desperately at the corner of a towering table, its ancient wood cold and unyielding beneath my trembling fingers. The candelabra, a grotesque parody of order in this maelstrom, shuddered in my grasp, its feeble flames mirroring the frantic pulse of my fear. Each flickering light threatened to plunge me into an abyss of impenetrable darkness, leaving only the spectral gaze of the moon, a pitiless observer, to illuminate this scene.

That Friday… it was a psychic barrier, a chilling premonition whispering insidious warnings against lingering within those hallowed, decaying walls for more than a few stolen hours. After that day, each return to the library ignited an immediate unease within my soul, a palpable dread that even my simple colleague detected in my haunted gaze. But it was not his concern, nor the lingering scent of violation, that clawed at my sanity. No, the true terror bloomed in the moment I knew my very life was forfeit, a sacrifice demanded by the shadows lurking within.

Though the physical chaos was purged, scrubbed away like a festering wound, no earthly ablution could cleanse the spiritual stain. The sterile order offered no solace, no echo of the maternal comfort, that precious security more valuable than the purest diamond. A certainty sunk its claws into me: to remain, to toil within those cursed halls, was to forfeit our mortal coil, our essence destined to drown in the river of time. But why that all-consuming darkness?

One night, sleep, that treacherous haven, betrayed me utterly. A slumber more akin to oblivion descended, a fleeting escape snatched from the jaws of exhaustion. And then, as I teetered on the precipice of unconsciousness, oblivion, a lance of agonizing pain tore through my very chest. Two needles, cruelly sharpened and impossibly wide, pierced my flesh, plunging into my very soul. I was trapped, paralyzed within the confines of this nightmare, unable to fight against the encroaching darkness. The monstrous entity, my u nseen assailant, savored my helplessness, feasting upon my life force. Each ing moment bled away my essence, the pain an agonizing counterpoint to the creature’s vile indulgence. I felt my soul straining at its earthly tether, poised to abandon its ravaged vessel.

And then, a vision, a final, damning tableau flashed before my dying eyes. The monster, a grotesque parody of humanity, stood revealed. Its form, a perversion of nature, sent glacial tendrils of fear snaking through my veins. A creature that sapped my very essence, its gaze locked upon mine with a hunger that was both unnatural and undeniably malevolent. Its eyes, burning with an unholy light, gilded with monstrous desire, pulsed with crimson near the pupils, a glimpse into the abyss of its dark soul. Coarse hair, thick as a shroud, cloaked it from head to toe. A grotesque mockery of a wolf, yet possessed of human-like hands tipped with claws that scraped at my very being, this abomination awaited the opportune moment to devour me whole…

The ghastly thing was now engrossed on that and only that, along with my corporeal essence, as if utterly emboldened by its impunity, wholly unburdened by the presence of those unfortunate fellows with whom I then shared the watch. Anon, it seemed as if, within the very throes of my trembling, were the last vaporous tendrils of my life’s fleeting breath, longing to dissipate in the frigid air. Indeed, the cold of the air was as cold as the darkest frozen river. Its talons, like the morbid fingers of death itself, scoured upon my skin, not with the gentlest of touches, but with a crude, scratching, ripping, tearing at my very fabric of existence. And these wretched wounds, these marks the demon gave me, were so evil that the promise of any sort of healing and rest, seemed naught but a cruel jest. The abominable deportment of this creature took on a semblance of what one witnessed only in a famished predator, or else that of a wolf stricken with the cursed madness, that dread pestilence called rabies. As though twisted and wholly ravaged by malevolence incarnate, its visage, a thing distantly reminiscent of humanity, emanated naught but a savage hunger. This hunger had wholly consumed it since the very moment it had disemboweled those venerable tomes on that most calamitous Friday eve. And I, my hapless self, could but gaze upon this beast with the most desolate despair, like a wretch attempting to clutch hold upon the paltry remnants of a life fast fading before mine very eyes.

I harbored the most dire belief that this fiend would not release me from its loathsome grasp till it had succeeded in extirpating my existence from this earthly realm. Alas! Yet providence, it doth decree a most ironic deliverance. For, like a thunderclap rending asunder the veil of midnight, there arose a grievous pounding upon the oaken doors of this doomed repository of knowledge, where I kept watch. At this, the horrid beast recoiled in an instant, retreating into the shadows. Ere I could summon mine wits to grasp the unfolding scene, I felt the sting of blows upon my cheekbones. They seemed with the most desperate and relentless zeal, as one labors to unshackle a soul from the very confines of eternal slumber.

Most profound was my astonishment when, at last, my eyes unsealed, I beheld the visage of my wretched colleague, his countenance awash with fear most dire. He gazed upon me as though my very sight might portend an approaching doom and a sign of some omen, lost to the world in a deathly slumber, he could do nothing to stir mine soul. Oh, and how my head, it pounded, it throbbed, as though it was a drum of sorts, being played by the fingers of fate. Yet could I scarcely summon the power to utter a solitary word. And then, once more, darkness descended. It came upon me as I realized that his locks, were they not half-strewn with the dust of time?

“Julien! Julien!” he did entreat with mounting panic, his hand, oh, his hands were as though they were hitting my face, striking with ever-increasing vehemence as he strove to rouse my flagging senses. “Good heavens, what possesses thee?! Wake yourself!”

It was only at this most dreadful hour did I possess the strength to wrench mine voice from the unseen fetters that bound it. Slowly, I withdrew my head from the confines of his fervent grasp, whilst mine own pallor did match his own. I could ne’er conceal the curiosity that tormented mine being, that unhallowed beast that had spread its tainted wings to cast a shadow over my soul and, it seemed, the whole hallowed library.

“Then this…?” I could barely force myself to utter what I knew to be the truth. As mine voice, it seemed as no more than the pained utterance of one lost in restless dreams, or else him who had scarcely made his escape from his ghastly prison, “…it was not but a mere illusion…it was not but just a dream…”.

“Ah, Julien, lost lamb!” cried the poor wretch, Nocien, his form stooped low beneath the weight of torments born of his dread for my very soul. “I did believe thee vanished, swallowed whole by the abyss! How camest thou to fall into such deathly swoon?”

“I…” I essayed to reply, yet some unseen presence, some dread agency, did steal away my power of utterance, leaving me incapable even of the faintest moan. Only wretched silence remained, a stark testament to my abject despair. “Nocien…it was-“

At my utterance, he recoiled, as though struck by some unseen horror, a specter conjured from the deepest well of his fears. And yet, even as he stood aghast, a throng of figures burst forth into the chamber, the spectral hall of this great library. I could scarcely comprehend the import of the scene. These gentlemen, clad in the somber livery of the gendarmerie, with gleaming bayonets raised high, stormed forth with cries that rent the very air. I found myself quite bereft of the capacity to react ere the elegant coif of Nocien’s raven hair, once so carefully combed, did rise in a manner quite unnatural.

And then, the veil of illusion was torn away. Peaceful dreams were now as unattainable as the distant stars. Even as I parted my parched lips to speak, the luckless Nocien did fix his gaze once more upon mine haunted visage. All to attempt to order me back into a semblance of what I once was. For even he did lack the means to convey unto those enforcers of law the woeful state in which they found my person. How much less might I myself, who beheld with mine own eyes the fiend to whom this misery was owing, seek to explain the unspeakable?

In vain did I cling to the fool’s hope that it was but a terrible dream; of the sort all mortals must contend with when the burden of existence proves most dire. Yet, that pain, so keenly felt when the vile creature did assault me, plunging my spirit headlong into a state unknown, but now all too intimate…that pain did ever more burn in the very place where it had first found root. I held close unto the futile illusion that time might, peradventure, grant some semblance of relief. At best would I then have some dark memento of this cursed night that had now cast down a shadow over our world and myself. From this point on, I seemed to descend by slow but fateful degrees into madness itself, all without realizing, till too late.

For, by what could I measure the encroaching insanity, if not by the sidelong glances, the furtive whispers of my colleagues? In their haunted visages was the stark image of their deep concerns, the worry that was borne through those halls. Oftentimes, they made mention of mine mortuary pallor, the deathly hue that was now spreading to the very surface of my skin. I had remained blind as to the dire consequences of the attack by this thing. I now am talking about it, but the picture took on a darker, more malevolent shape altogether. For that creature had not left my side. Since that dreadful encounter, with each apparition, the haunting was but a symphony of dread and terror.

I could never endure to gaze upon that horrid vision, for with each moment that ed did the visage become less and less of a human. Oh it spoke to me, but its voice told of another story entirely. Yet it did, in the most frightful manner, devolve into a specter that was unknown to man, as I myself found weakness claiming my earthly form. Ever did I sink further with each fleeting hour. Oh but what about that creature?

As it transpires in my memory now, it took place upon the day when Nocien called on me, driven by his own fears, intent on ascertaining the truth of my wretched condition. As we spoke, I babbled of the dream, oh the dream…that dreadful nightmare which had haunted my waking hours from the moment the illness had taken claim of mind and body. At these words the blood drained from Nocien’s face. He turned as a soul possessed, nearing the precipice of utter collapse, so terrible was the dread that now held dominion over him.

“Why didst thou not unburden thine soul of this terrible apparition sooner?” he implored, all as I remained lost amidst the swirling mists of confusion and pain.

“Weak….” I croaked in a voice barely audible. “Alas, too weak to resist this fate. For the creature hath drained my essence unto the very dregs of my existence.”

I can still conjure the image of his face. Wrath was burning in his eyes, a storm of vengeance threatening to burst forth, all directed at myself. Or, perhaps, my tortured senses did deceive me. Was that rage, or some dread, a premonition of the horrors yet to be?

“Dost thou not comprehend what vile entity hast claimed thee, Julien?! Thou hast been attacked by a vampire of sorts! A ghoul!”

The utterance itself, that single, dread word whispered from the lips of my fellow watchman – “vampire” – did scarcely pierce the dense fog that shrouded my beleaguered intellect. These pronouncements of the nature of my attacker, never was a real thing to me before. For even though I was not a knowledgeable man who believed blindly to every old wife tale, there was a shred of existence to them in a sense that I could not still quite comprehend. Not that they were never familiar, for I have ever scoffed at the fanciful notions of such infernal entities; I have always regarded them as naught but the dark figments spun from the threads of superstition and fear, the whispers of the superstitious, the ignorant. And yet, in the deeper recesses of my mind, where I could not help but believe that there were vampires, I felt a cold, indefinable unease. I found myself unable to shake the echoes of that dark word, so heavy it was that it echoed in the soul. For, to be sure, I have witnessed many times what was to be done to avoid their attacks and their reemergence into the land of the living.

Too many times I have caught my eyes shut but still saw how the undertakers took the wood right into the chest cavity of the recently deceased. So that their hearts could never bring them back to life in the most evilest and unnatural ways one could imagine. To think that these abhorrent creatures may traverse the shadowed age unto the infernal regions but with the intent to afflict the living with pain and pestilence… That was the most cruel thing that my mind could think about.

Never had I imagined that such beings might reach with their spectral tendrils into the very sanctum of one’s dreams, that they might seek to claim the souls of mortals as their rightful prey. They are like rabid curs unleashed from the pit, they would drain one’s vitality from them with a speed and efficiency most dire. I when I would sleep so soundly, but always felt that something took a hold of me right before I awoke every morning. These spectral beasts do possess not but a shred of mercy. These were the beasts which did not spare a single human soul in sight, for their morals are a thing that no human being could even fathom. Thus did their deeds could not bear the weight of the scales with righteousness. They neither care for the virtues of the light nor fear the eternal fire that burns below.

Never, in my most fevered imaginings, did I conceive that such a horror would descend upon me in so dire a manner. That night, though seemingly unremarkable, became a chasm of dread, for I realised, with a chill that burrowed into my very marrow, that I had been the object of a ceaseless, ghastly surveillance. Some noisome thing, possessed of an unholy interest, stalked my every move, its gaze a promise of utter despoliation, a draining of my very essence.

Poor Nosien, fleeing my abode with a tremor that mirrored my own mounting terror, left me alone with the ravenous wolves of my thoughts. I trembled, a puppet with severed strings, contemplating what course to steer through this encroaching darkness. My mind, a fragile vessel, threatened to shatter beneath the weight of this unimaginable dread, for never had I dreamt that such a moment would arrive.

That thing… oh, that ghastly thing!

Seeking solace, a fragile hope, in the wan glow of the moon, I turned to my window. But there, instead of ethereal calm, I was confronted by the abysmal visage of the beast. Its limbs, shrouded in shadow and thick with unseen bristles, framed eyes that burned like molten gold – eyes that now met mine with an unspeakable hunger. They seemed to sense my weakening, my faltering grip on reality. In an instant, I was pinned beneath its weight, a helpless offering to its ravenous desires. My body, that treacherous betrayer, refused to obey, offering no resistance. Teeth, sharp as shards of obsidian, tore at my flesh. Claws, like razors wielded by a fiend, slashed with merciless abandon, never deigning to meet my gaze. In that moment, the true face of unexpected horror was unveiled, a revelation etched in blood and bone, a whisper of the void that promised oblivion…