by Briana Snow
The idea of cursed grimoires was not a new one to Penelope. She’d seen all of the clichéd horror movies. She knew that the only answer was to destroy the book—but whatever the evil was that had been unleashed, it was out now—and she had to find a way to put it back in.
Phzip! The lights winked out, to a sudden assembly of gasps and even one scream from Manelli.
“Easy people, stay calm, the back-up generator will start up in no time,” the Director was saying, meanwhile holding up his smartphone to illuminate his face in neon blue. Penelope thought that made him look even scarier than he usually did, before immediately wishing that she had not thought that, given their current predicament.
“I am sure you are right, Brigitte. I don’t seriously suspect any of us to have committed the act, but maybe it was a freak accident.”
“Or a freak,” Brigitte mumbled, looking suspiciously around the corners of the room.
Or a book. Penelope’s eyes went back to the glass cabinet holding the Luminaire. She wondered if she should tell them her suspicions. But wouldn’t that just make her sound crazy?
Thmmm! With a whir, the back-up electricity kicked into action, and this time the lights came on at half power, or every second strip light. It made the situation feel worse rather than better, as the Special Manuscripts basement now looked like a half-abandoned laboratory, or a disused office-building.
VRIIIIING! Suddenly, with a peal of chimes, bells, and alerts, everyone’s smart phones went off at the same time. Penelope found her own phone humming the tune of Bohemian Rhapsody even though she was sure that she had switched it onto silent when at work.
“What? Okay. Please, everyone answer your phones!” the Director was looking annoyed at his own handset, which was repeating the 1812 overture at deafening volume.
“Hello?” Penelope heard Brigitte and the others answer.
“Hey?”
“Not now!”
Penelope didn’t recognize the incoming number, and as soon as she clicked on the green answer icon, and said “Err… Hello?” Click! The line disconnected. Everyone’s line disconnected, all at the same time.
“Well, that was weird,” Brigitte was saying, looking around them all.
“It’s probably nothing, just a freak electrical fault or something,” the Director was saying uncertainly, but Penelope’s eyes were being drawn to the Luminaire. Was it her imagination, or had the book flipped a page?
“What electrical fault? You’d need a freak wi-fi station, or freak radio waves or something, wouldn’t you?” Brigitte was arguing, as Penelope started to walk around the group to the document.
The Luminaire had indeed turned the next page, and the Archivist could see, in the bottom right hand corner the same lions-head sign that had appeared on the frontispiece was there in miniature too, but this time, in its jaws it held a number: 66.
Why does the book start at 66? she thought oddly, as behind her the crowd started to argue ever more intensely about what was happening. There was a knock on the door, and the Director answered it to one of the officers.
“Have you had some kind of power outage, sir?” the officer was saying. “All our communications are going screwy down here, so we might process you all upstairs.”
Penelope was looking at page 66, which was technically the first page of the book. It was covered in strange half circles, lines, and triangles, as well as a spidery script made up of demented ant markings and dying finger smears. Or at least, that is what one half of her brain told her.
The other half told her that it was describing a circle. No, not a circle… she read. A cone. The angles and words were referring to how a circle could be maintained, and opened, and what angles it would need to stay stable as the ‘cone’ part developed.
“This is crazy,” she was whispering to herself, as she realized that the room itself was starting to reduce in people. Distantly, she could hear the officers talking to each one of the assembled staff here as they took them out one by one, starting with the Director himself.
“Don’t talk to anyone, and please don’t touch anything, or each other,” the officer said, leading out Mary Manelli after the Director had gone.
Phzip! The lights flickered once more, and Penelope swore that she could feel something like a tremor underneath her.
“What was that?” she gasped.
“What was what?” answered Brigitte, looking at her oddly.
“That tremor. I felt a tremor!” Penelope said, looking down at the floor.
“I never felt anything,” the older Archivist said, before the officer came for the next person, and then the next.
Phzzzzzp! The lights flickered again, and Penelope felt her knees move a little. There. It was undeniable now, she thought as she turned to see the last remaining archivist pale as he looked at her. “You felt that, didn’t you?”
The man nodded. “I felt something, but uh…”
Phwip. There was a soft sighing sound from behind Penelope. It was the sound of paper turning; of a page being pulled back—and, when she had turned around, she saw that the Luminaire had indeed turned another page. The lions head icon in the corner now read 65.
“Did you hear that?” Penelope asked over her shoulder. “The book… The book turned a page, all by itself…”
“What are you talking about?” the archivist was saying, as the door opened behind him.
“If you’ll come with me please, sir,” the police officer said. “Ma’am,” he nodded over at Penelope, who was paying no attention whatsoever to what was happening, and was instead bent hunched over the glass cabinet, as she read the second page of the manuscript. “You’ll be quite alright here for a moment, ma’am, just one second and we’ll have everyone out.”
Penelope made a dismissive noise, as she read about how the cone that extended from something called an ‘astral circle’ would have to tunnel, whilst keeping itself stable, through several layers of something before it managed to reach its destination. There were even further hints, tips, and techniques about how to reinforce the stability of that ‘cone’ and the circle above it.
“It’s like a Twister, or a Whirlwind,” Penelope mumbled to herself, as the door opened behind her, and a new, slightly Eastern European voice spoke.
“More like a Whirlpool, actually. Please, we have so little time, Miss Harp!”
“No, you go ahead,” Penelope said distractedly. “I’ll be fine here for a moment.” Even though she felt very far from fine. Whatever was happening to the book, to the New York Public Library around them, and even to poor old Hopkins somewhere upstairs by now, had the Special Archivist oddly entranced. She felt caught in the slow moving act of some terrible tragedy, unable to leave her part or tear her eyes off of the other actors…
“Penelope Harp!” the voice said, much louder and closer, before a strong grip pulled her backwards, and a chair smashed down on the glass cabinet in front of her.
“The book!” Penelope gasped, reaching forward into the splintered mess, but the hand that held her was strong, and pulled her away from the shards of glass.
“Is fine, Miss Harp. Not much can destroy the Luminaire Clavem, at least, nothing short of a bomb going off I should think.”
At the pronouncement of the book’s name, Penelope realized that the person holding her wasn’t a police officer, and she found herself looking up into the eyes of a statuesque woman with high cheekbones and a sharp jaw. Eyes as blue as arctic seas, and twice as cold.
“Uh… Who are you?” Penelope breathed, feeling not so much intimidated, but overwhelmed.
“I am the woman who is going to stop you becoming a devil’s very own personal Shish kebab! Now, take the Luminaire, and come with me.” The woman nodded to the shattered cabinet where the book still sat with its pages open, completely untouched and unharmed by any glass or chair.
“But, how did it not even get scratched?” Penelope breathed.
“Ugh!” The woman sighed theatrically. “Do I have to spe
ll everything out for you? The Luminaire is cursed. Probably the most cursed trilogy of books of their kind in the history of creation. Now, pick up the book and come with me!”
Penelope suddenly saw a fault in the otherwise fine plan of escaping the shadowy, trembling basement where they were currently. “Why do I have to pick up the book! Can’t we just run away?”
“Because, if I touch the horrible thing, an Archon of the nine hells will materialize and eat my brains, or use my arms as golf clubs or something.”
“Or break your neck,” Penelope muttered.
“Yes, quite! But you, Miss Harp, seem to have the unfortunate gift of being able to communicate with the Other Side without tripping off any of their normal warning bells and occult traps. So, you will have to pick the damn thing up, before either that demon gets up here, or the police realize that I am not a clinical pathologist,” the woman said, already moving towards the door to peer out at the flickering hallway.
Wondering what else you were supposed to do when you were cornered by an evil occult manuscript and a mad woman, Penelope seized the book, feeling that similar electric shock that she had felt before, and followed the woman out of the laboratory, and into the dark.
Chapter VI
“My name’s Verity, by the way, Verity Vorja,” the tall woman striding ahead of her said.
“Oh.” Penelope wondered, by the way that the woman had declared herself, if the name was meant to mean anything to her—but it didn’t. They had emerged from the laboratory and made their way to the main doors, which had apparently ceased to function and remained steadfastly open. Beyond them, the lights of the hallway were also flickering on and off, and it appeared the lift at the far side of the corridor was in use.
“Damn!” Vorja said as she approached the door, looking at the buttons on the walls to see if there was any way to speed it up. “Sometimes there’s an emergency recall…” She started fiddling.
“But who, what… How do you know about the book?” Penelope stammered.
“Oh, it’s my job. I’m a book hunter. I find rare manuscripts for people who cannot appreciate them,” Vorja said.
Penelope looked at the heavy weight in her hands. “And uh, someone wants to buy this?”
“Yes. Many someones in fact. Every small-town Satanist this side of Paris is after that book you have in your hands—but it won’t do them any good, as I am not going to get it for them.” Vorja found a small lever. “Aha!” She broke the thin plastic cover and yanked on the green recall handle.
“You’re not. I suppose that’s good then,” Penelope said dazedly.
“Against my vows, you see,” Vorja said helpfully, looking up and grinning as they heard a distant whirring coming closer from the floors above. “Oh, I should really do this now shouldn’t I, before we go any further.” The woman turned around, cleared her throat, drew herself up and placed one long hand over her own heart.
“Do you, Penelope Harp, so solemnly swear to fight the forces of corruption and darkness, of terror and evil, wherever you may find them?”
“Uh… yes?” Penelope said. “I mean, who doesn’t want to do that?” she reasoned.
“You’d be surprised,” Vorja confided. “Then I pronounce you, child, under the auspices of the Most Ancient and Erudite Order of Saint Agnesia, may your courage illuminate the darkness.” Vorja patted Penelope on the shoulder. “There. Now we can talk.”
“Talk about what?” Penelope was feeling more and more discombobulated with every passing minute. “Hey, wait—what did you just do to me? Am I now a part of a cult?”
“Cult? No! The Ancient and Erudite Order of Saint Agnesia is a sisterhood; we’re like a sorority, only we do less singing, and more hunting demons,” Vorja said, as there was a whump and the doors to the lift whirred open. “We’ve been trying to keep the whereabouts of the Luminaire Clavem lost and forgotten about for nigh on a thousand years, as well as a whole host of other terrible inventions that mankind thought were a good idea at the time. Ah,” Verity shook her head at what the innards of the lift had revealed. “Probably best not to look down, dear. Here, give me your hand.”
Penelope did look down, to see a police officer lying in a tangled and impossible heap on the floor, his limbs set at angles that even a yogic master would find incredible. She immediately staggered as a wave of nausea hit her, and if it wasn’t for Verity’s steadying hand on her shoulder, she would have fallen.
Thmm! The lift started to rise spastically upwards.
“That’ll be the eldritch forces,” Verity nodded sagely at the lift’s convulsions.
“The what?” Penelope asked again.
“The eldritch forces are as close as we’ve come to understanding what’s between our material plane and the hells. Tesla was interested in them, and we all know what happened to him, right?” Verity made a circling motion around her temples. “So, that is to say that no one knows what they are made of, or how they work. But, what we do know, is that whenever the walls between the planes are breached, when a spirit manages to talk to us from the Other Side, or when a demon manages to break through, then those forces run amok. It’s like static electricity but on a huge scale. Televisions don’t work, phones ring, lights go on and off. God knows why it happens, but it does. It’s the surest sign of a disturbance from between the planes.”
“The planes.” Penelope’s head caught up with what Verity was saying, after finally managing to not look down at the police officer on the floor. “You keep talking about the planes and the hells and the Other Side. So… We’re being haunted?”
“Ahaha!” Verity laughed, slapping her thigh at the hilarity. “If only! A good, simple haunting would make this a walk in the park! No, Penelope dear—what we have here, is a total lack of respect for the laws of physical reality. That grimoire that you have in your hands is one of three, written in time immemorial by the most evil of cultists, who designed each one to open a portal into hell itself. The first portal has been opened, and now we need to find the other two books, or else they will open too, and the earth will be overrun with demons and the End of Days will really be upon us.”
“Oh,” was all Penelope could muster.
Chapter VII
“What did you call that thing that you said was after us? An Archon, was it?” Penelope said as they emerged into the main corridor of the New York Public Library. As yet, it seemed that the alarm hadn’t particularly spread very far at all. The central thoroughfare was still very much open and busy, with people walking from counters to galleries and staircases, their hands laden down with book and papers.
You would have thought that the people here would have been at least a little hesitant, if for no other reason than because of the police! Penelope thought, feeling caught between fear, terror, and astonishment.
“Herd effect,” the tall strident woman said beside her, wasting no time at all as she strode through the middle of the Library, scattering researchers and public to either side of her like bowling pins. “It’s a well-known effect, particularly of paranormal incidents. The general public tend to not panic at the drop of a hat, despite what everyone thinks. You need a critical mass of people to react in a certain way for suddenly everyone else to react in the same way, and so the panic snowballs. It won’t take too long from now, as soon as the first scream occurs,” she said, nodding towards the main doors.
“But, but shouldn’t we warn them? Shouldn’t we be saying something? Tell the police?” Penelope said, holding the heavy grimoire in one hand as she shifted its weight against her body. A part of her was very concerned that this was still, technically a murder investigation at the same time as being… Whatever this was, she thought.
The tall Sister of St. Agnesia cast her a frank and worried look. “To be honest, Penelope, I am not sure just what good that will do anyone right now. That thing which is after the book—the Archon—will walk right through a line of police as if they were made of dandelion fluff!”
“But—but…�
�� Penelope felt out of her depth, and descending. Today, I had started work thinking that nothing much more exciting was going to happen to me other than perhaps getting a lot of dust up my nose, and now I’m on the run from an interdimensional demon of some kind!
“Oh shit,” she heard the panic inside Verity’s voice, and a moment later she felt the cold dread entering her stomach. It was like suddenly being immersed in freezing cold water; she felt every hair on her body stand up, and goose-bumps shiver down her arms.
VRIIIING! Suddenly, at the same time as this feeling, her phone along with everyone else’s in the hallway went off—a cacophony of calls, beeps, and ringtones that had everyone standing silent and confused, looking at each other as they sought any explanation.
“There,” Verity was saying. “There…” She was looking to the main double-glass doors of the exit where, strangely, there stood a silhouette of a figure that Penelope recognized.
“Leonidas?” Penelope breathed, frozen in fear as all of the phones clicked off all at once. It was him, but also, at the same time, it wasn’t. The chief security warden of the New York Public Library stood taller than he usually did, as if he had found reserves of new found strength. He also appeared subtly different in the way that he moved forward through the entrance hall. His knees and ankles didn’t quite move in the way that they should do, almost as if he were trying to walk on limbs that he didn’t quite understand the use of.
It was the ageing security guard; there was no doubt about that—it was his dark skin and his short-cropped white afro, and his dark blue uniform… But it also wasn’t at the same time. His eyes glittered with a light that wasn’t entirely natural; hard and bright, as if they had caught the spotlight of some dark-light camera, and were gleaming wetly all by themselves.
“His… his… his skin!” Penelope breathed, and Verity beside her nodded one short and sharp gesture in answer.
Leonidas’s skin looked older than it usually did somehow. His wrinkles had seemed to multiply, and deepen, and the hollows around the orbs of his eyes appeared almost abyssal. If anything, it looked to Penelope as if his skin were ill-fitting for the skeleton beneath it, like a thin man might look in clothes two sizes too big.