Unhallowed (Rath and Rune #1) - Jordan L. Hawk Page 0,95
the matter? Are you all right?”
Sebastian swallowed forcefully. “This set of drawings. I know this place.” He slowly looked up and met Ves’s eyes. “This is the house I grew up in.”
The adventures of Sebastian and Ves will continue in Unseen, Rath & Rune Book 2.
Share Your Experience
If you enjoyed this book, please consider leaving a review on the site where you purchased it, or on Goodreads.
Thank you for your support of independent authors!
End Notes
Huge shout-out to all of my Patreon patrons, especially Dusk T., Robin H., and Shane M. Thanks also to patron Colette for naming the bar the librarians hang out in, The Silver Key. If you’d like to join them, check it out here: https://www.patreon.com/jordanlhawk
For anyone interested in learning more about turn of the century libraries, it is my true pleasure to direct you to A Book for All Readers by Ainsworth Rand Spofford, which is in the public domain and can be downloaded from Project Gutenberg (http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/22608). Spofford was the Sixth Librarian of Congress and an incredibly entertaining writer, whose deep passion for his subject shines forth in every paragraph. Much like Vesper, I think it’s fair to say Mr. Spofford was literally ready to die on the hill of proper margin width in rebinding.
By 1910 large institutions such as the Boston Public Library had sizable binderies, staffed with numerous people and equipped with machinery to make the job quicker and easier. Such a setup seemed impractical for a smaller institution such as the Ladysmith museum. I also couldn’t see Mr. Quinn sending any of his beloved books, but especially cursed or rare tomes, out to a commercial bindery. Hence the decision to set up the bindery and conservatory of the museum’s library as I did.
The rare book trade flourished in America from the late 1800s up until the Great Depression. Much as with tulip bulbs during “tulipomania” in the 1600s, or Beanie Babies in the modern era, rare books were considered a solid investment whose value would only ever go up, never down. Though some were sought out by genuine book lovers, their status as an investment not only led to wildly inflated prices, but to a high demand from those rich enough to afford them not as important cultural artifacts, but as something to be acquired the way one might acquire stocks and bonds. The true victims of the rare book trade were public and university libraries. Small, rural public libraries, which might have ended up with rare volumes purely by chance, and which lacked the means to keep them secure, suffered the most. Libraries big and small were stripped of any book considered valuable by unscrupulous men, who would then remove as many marks of ownership as possible so they could be sold on to “collectors” who cared less for the books than for their perceived investment value. The trade finally collapsed along with the stock market.
The panic surrounding Halley’s Comet really happened, and every news story mentioned in this book is based on actual newspaper articles, as are the “comet pills.” And yes, that includes the article about planned human sacrifice, where a man named Henry Heineman and his cult the Select Followers apparently attempted to sacrifice a Miss Jane Warfield to stop God from destroying the cosmos.
In addition to the usual apocalyptic fears surrounding comet sightings throughout history, science stepped in to further whip everyone into a frenzy. After the presence of cyanogen gas was discovered in the comet’s tail, French astronomer Camille Flammarion stated the gas would wipe out all life on earth when the planet passed through the comet’s tail shortly after transit. Though other astronomers immediately discredited this view, it stoked public hysteria even higher.
Halley’s Comet wasn’t the only celestial visitor in 1910. An even brighter comet unexpectedly appeared on January 12. Called the Daylight Comet or the Great January Comet, it was already visible to the naked eye when first noticed by diamond miners in the Transvaal. The first scientific observation came on January 17, by which time it was bright enough to be seen during the daytime. When Halley’s Comet returned in 1986, some eyewitnesses of the 1910 visit reported having viewed it previously in the daylight; as Halley’s was visible only around dawn and dusk in 1910, it’s thought they conflated the memory of the two comets.
The New England vampire panics occurred sporadically from the late 1700s until the 1890s. The romantic literary vampire notwithstanding, the vampire myth originated as a pre-germ-theory attempt to understand the spread of disease, especially through close-knit families. In the New England panics, tuberculosis would strike down one member of a family at a time; the explanation was that the first sufferer had been a vampire, who now returned to feed on their kin. The body would be exhumed, and various organs (usually the heart, but records also show the liver on at least one occasion) were burned. The ashes would then be fed as a cure to any sufferers.
The School of Night is inspired by a wild theory concocted by Arthur Acheson in 1903, based on the line from Love’s Labours Lost that Ves quotes. It’s the modern name for an Elizabethan-era conspiracy theory of a “School of Atheism” used to accuse and discredit Sir Walter Raleigh and some of the poets and scientists he patronized. Sad as it is to say, there is absolutely no evidence that Shakespeare, Marlowe, Raleigh, and the Wizard Earl ever belonged to a secret occult cabal.
The use of silver in folklore has a very old pedigree. It should be noted that evil creatures such as vampires could not be seen reflected in mirrors not because they have no reflections at all, but because the silver used to back mirrors was too “pure” to reflect such corruption. The Beast of Gévaudan—whatever it or they might have actually been—supposedly could not be killed until it was shot with a silver bullet created by melting down amulets bearing the image of the Virgin Mary. Though Vesper and Nocturn aren’t old-school monsters, it was nevertheless fun to give them an old-school weakness.
Also by Jordan L. Hawk
Whyborne & Griffin
Widdershins
Eidolon (short story)
Threshold
Stormhaven
Carousel (short story)
Necropolis
Bloodline
Hoarfrost
Maelstrom
Fallow
Undertow (novella)
Draakenwood
Balefire
Deosil
Hexworld
“The 13th Hex” (prequel short story)
Hexbreaker
Hexmaker
“A Christmas Hex” (short story)
Hexslayer
Hexhunter
Spirits:
Restless Spirits
Dangerous Spirits
Guardian Spirits
About the Author
Jordan L. Hawk is a trans author from North Carolina. Childhood tales of mountain ghosts and mysterious creatures gave him a life-long love of things that go bump in the night. When he isn’t writing, he brews his own beer and tries to keep the cats from destroying the house. His best-selling Whyborne & Griffin series (beginning with Widdershins) can be found in print, ebook, and audiobook.
If you’re interested in receiving Jordan’s newsletter and being the first to know when new books are released, please sign up at his website: http://www.jordanlhawk.com. Or join his Facebook reader group, Widdershins Knows Its Own.
Find Jordan online: