Around the room lamps hanging from the columns spark to life. A few remain unlit, their lanterns missing or perhaps just out of oil.
Beyond the columns the room is lined with long horizontal alcoves. Zachary wonders why the space seems familiar, and then he sees a single skeletal hand at the edge of one of the shadowed spaces.
It is a crypt.
For a moment Zachary wants to flee, to follow the cat up the stairs.
But he doesn’t.
Someone wanted him to see this.
Someone—or something—thinks he should be here.
Zachary closes his eyes and collects himself and then he investigates the room.
He starts with its occupants.
At first he thinks they might be mummified but as he moves closer he can see that the strips of cloth wrapped loosely around the bodies are covered in text. Most have dried and decayed along with their wearers but some of them are legible.
sings to herself when she thinks no one is listening
reads the same books over and over again until each page is intimately familiar
walks barefoot through the halls, quiet as a cat
laughs so easy and so often as though the whole universe delights him
They’re wrapped in memories. Memories of who they were when they were alive.
Zachary reads what he can without disturbing them. The unraveling sentences and the sentiments that catch the light.
he did not wish to be here any longer
one strip of text reads, wrapped around a wrist that is now no more than bone, and Zachary wonders if it means what he thinks it likely means.
In one alcove there is an urn. It has no memories with it.
The others are empty.
Zachary turns his attention to the rest of the room. Some of the columns have carved indentations, sloped surfaces like podiums beneath their lamps.
One podium holds a book. It looks extremely old. It has no cover, only loosely bound pages.
Zachary picks up the book as carefully as he can.
The parchment breaks to pieces in his hands, crumbling into fragments over the podium.
Zachary sighs and the sigh carries more of the fragments from the podium to the stone at his feet.
He tries not to feel too badly about it. Maybe the book, like the people around it, was already gone.
He looks down at the former book fallen around his feet and attempts to read but there are only bits and pieces.
He makes out a single word.
Hello
Zachary blinks and glances at another fragment of paper.
Son, it reads.
He reaches for another piece, large enough to pick up.
of the fortune-
The paper turns to dust in his fingers but the words remain burned into his eyes.
Zachary looks at another broken piece of ancient paper, though he knows what it will say before he reads it.
tell
er
Zachary closes his eyes, listening for the this is not happening voice in his head but the voice in his head remains silent. The voice knows that this is happening and so does he.
Zachary opens his eyes. He bends down and sifts through the broken book on the ground, focusing on the first fragment with text that he finds and then another and another.
there are three
things lost
in time
Zachary continues to search as the book continues to deteriorate. The only pieces he can discern are single words.
sword
book
man
The words vanish almost as soon as they are found until only two remain in the dust.
find
man
Zachary searches through the pile of crumbling paper for additional clarification but the bibliomancy session is over. This book that is no longer book-shaped has nothing more to say.
Zachary brushes the dust of prophetic paper from his hands. Find man. He thinks about the man lost in time from Sweet Sorrows. He has no idea how to go about finding someone who has been lost in time at the behest of the ghosts of former books. He stares at corpses who do not bother staring back at him, their staring days long past.
Zachary takes the lamp from its pedestal and the rest of the lights extinguish themselves.
He walks out the door pausing to pull the key from its lock.
The door swings shut.
The hallway outside feels longer.
Zachary hangs the key on its hook and replaces the lamp on its shelf. It sinks into place and the light at the other end of the hall vanishes.
Zachary glances down the hallway. It disappears into darkness but the farthest reach of the lamplight finds a shape in the shadows, someone standing in the center of the hall, staring at him.