by Tobias Wade
“What other gentleman?” the librarian interrupts. Elijah turns to scan the crowd, but there is no sign of the bespectacled man.
“Where did he go? He offered $250,000 for—”
“Oh, that old trickster,” the librarian sighs, his grip tightening slightly around Elijah’s shoulders. “He’s been making false bids all night just to get a reaction out of people. Come now, you won’t find a better deal than 200 grand.”
Elijah literally paid 80 dollars for the page just this morning. And to think that tomorrow morning he might wake up without rushing out the door, or spending half an hour trying to fish a broken pencil out of Sammy’s nose again—well it’s best not to push his luck. Elijah allows his hand to be engulfed by the librarian’s offered handshake, feeling the firm grip latch onto him like a hunter who is still afraid his prey might wriggle free.
Over the next hour all the proper paperwork is filled out and the exchange is made. The librarian (who introduced himself as Dr. Beckel), congratulates Elijah and wraps his arm around the teacher’s shoulder once more as they part.
“Did you feel it? When you touched the page?” Dr. Beckel asks, his voice almost coy in its half-whisper.
Elijah doesn’t need to ask for clarification. He simply nods, not meeting Dr. Beckel’s intensely probing gaze. Best not to sound foolish by indulging such a fantasy.
“It’s nothing compared to the presence of the book. And did you know, Elijah, it grows stronger with every page that’s added?”
The warm buzz of the book fair fades around Elijah, a clammy chill crawling across his skin.
“What is causing it?” the teacher asks.
“You know,” Dr. Beckel grins. “Would you like to touch the book after your page has been reinserted?”
“What on earth for?”
The librarian’s smile stretches as he pulls him a little closer in a conspiratorial fashion. Elijah can distinctly feel Dr. Beckel’s racing heart and the moisture under his arm where he’s been nestled.
“To greet him with me, of course.”
The book is breathing. That’s the first thing Elijah notices when he enters the back room of the National Library.
He hadn’t expected Dr. Beckel to call until the morning, but his restless slumber was disturbed in the dead of night by a phone call.
“Hello? Hello? Everything okay?” Elijah asks. What respectable person would call after midnight except in an emergency?
“Yes indeed, Elijah. Come join me, will you?”
“Who is this? What time is it?”
“Dr. Beckel, and it’s imperative you come at once.”
The line goes dead. Elijah squints against the harsh light from his screen. 1 AM. A text message flashes the library’s address. Then another containing a mapped route. Elijah sets his phone down, but it keeps beeping and flashing.
Pass-codes to enter the building.
Floor directory inside the building.
Combination of the backroom vault where the book waits.
He tries calling Dr. Beckel back, but it only goes to voice mail. He had evidently planned this night quite extensively. A curious dread hangs over Elijah while he stumbles about the room getting dressed. What emergency could possibly arise from a book? Unless of course, the legends were true…
By the time Elijah arrives at the library, he had fully convinced himself against the absurd idea. He doesn’t see any security on the way in, so he figures Dr. Beckel had dismissed them for the evening and invited him now so he wouldn’t be seen. Perhaps it was against their regulations to allow an outsider into the vault, and he was simply extending this courtesy as appreciation for discovering the artifact.
Of course, they had parted with him enigmatically saying, “To greet him with me,” but even that could be an awkward translation for ‘see the book together.’ Dr. Beckel was kind enough to speak in Swedish for Elijah’s benefit, so he couldn’t hold an odd turn-of-phrase against him.
Despite such reasoning, Elijah knows the book is inside even as he approaches the steel door. The air is somehow tangible as though resisting his advance, and an instilled compulsion urges him to run without cause. Scolding himself for acting as superstitiously as the children in his class, Elijah enters the vault combination into the keypad. He pauses briefly before opening, shocked to find his fingers stiff as though frostbitten. He doesn’t have the time to process this information before the door swings open.
Dr. Beckel is standing over a steel table with the massive tome open before him. Elijah didn’t get a true sense of the thing’s scale from a single page, but weighing in at 165 pounds, measuring almost 3×2 feet across, and stitched with the skin from over 150 different donkeys, the Codex Gigas was truly as magnificent as the legends imply.
And most remarkable of all, of course, is the inescapable fact that it is breathing. The pages flutter softly up and down in the dead air. Elijah can feel his own breath and heart automatically resonate to match the even pulses. The sensation of a nameless terror is even stronger up close, almost as though he just remembers that he is being chased while not being able to recall who or what was pursuing him.
“It’s beautiful—isn’t it?” Dr. Beckel asks, not taking his eyes from the throbbing book. His words come in short, halting bursts as they too are trapped within the pulsing rhythm. “It thanks—you for the—missing page.”
“What is—going on?” Elijah tries to force himself to take a deep breath, but it catches in his throat, refusing to release until it’s expelled involuntarily in time with the rhythm.
Dr. Beckel closes the Codex, and the intensity of its presence immediately lessens. He turns toward Elijah with a maniacal gleam in his eye that is almost as terrifying as the book itself.
“Do you know what is so fascinating about Herman the Recluse?” Dr. Beckel’s words slur over one another in frantic excitement. Elijah doesn’t have the chance to respond. “Not the desperate plight he found himself in—not that he wrote this in a single night—not even that his spirit is still bound within these pages. What is truly remarkable about Herman, is that when he called out in the blackest night of his need, he found a voice who answered.”
“But how do you know these things for sure? What has it—has he told you?”
“Herman told me he wants out—that he is ready to make a deal again.” Dr. Beckel practically moans the words, tenderly running his hands down the book’s spine. “Only he has nothing left to offer the Devil, so he has made a deal with me instead.”
“I don’t understand what any of this has to do with me,” Elijah replies. If he was just trying to show off, then he’s already seen quite enough—
“Elijah, dear Elijah—it has everything to do with you!” Dr. Beckel’s voice rises shrill and sudden. “I need Herman to tell me how he struck a deal with The Beast, and Herman needs a body to bind his soul and escape the book. Naturally, I couldn’t offer my own, so we will be needing another vessel for his use.”
Beckel opens the book again. Elijah’s heart aches, straining to race in conflict with the encompassing rhythm. The words burn upon the page as though written in fire, and though Elijah urges his body to retreat toward the door, he finds his feet jolting inexorably forward with each gasping breath.
He struggles helplessly as Dr. Beckel whips a butterfly knife from his pocket. He tries to lurch out of reach, but his feet continue relentlessly plodding toward the book. Elijah’s desperate efforts only manage to unbalance himself, sprawling into a messy tumble on his ass. The evasion is pointless, however, because Dr. Beckel never intended to attack with the knife.
Elijah watches from the ground as the librarian draws the blade across his own palm, spilling his blood freely over the reclaimed page. The thick drops sizzle on the paper like water on a hot pan, a dense cloud of bloody must instantly pervading the air.
“The deal is struck,” Dr. Beckel grunts through the pain. “Take your prize, then deliver mine.”
The odor from the red mist stings Elija
h’s eyes and blurs his mind. The sound of his voice is an avalanche, and the intolerable pulse from the heaving book dominates all thoughts until the entire world exists only during each beat; each pause between bringing a vacuous nightmare of suspense and anticipation.
Elijah doesn’t exactly see what happens after that, but he can still sense it as though imagining a scene from a book. He feels his body—what used to be his body anyway—standing up from the floor to stagger across the room. He feels Dr. Beckel embrace the body and help it stand.
“Take your time, Herman,” Dr. Beckel says. “It’s been almost a millennium since you’ve last walked. You might have forgotten a thing or two.”
“That long?” Elijah hears his own voice reply. “That is no greater span than an hour in Hell, just as infinite suffering cannot be halved. Eternity then has come and gone, and my pact with The Beast is at last resolved.”
Dr. Beckel opens the door. Elijah tries to shout—to move—to feel or breathe—all pointless with no body left to fight against this vellum prison.
“Eternity is nothing to me if it means I can wield The Beast’s hand. You will show me the rite you called him by?”
“If I have learned anything from my ordeal,” Elijah’s voice replies, “it is the power of one’s word. I shall give unto you what is promised, but we must first gather some ingredients for the ritual.”
Elijah has never felt such abject anguish as feeling his body leave without him. He cannot feel pain as he did when he was alive, no receptors or frayed nerves register his dire situation, but he is overcome with a spiritual torment which crushes his every perception.
In that moment, every good memory of his life is tainted. His mother’s smile when he brought home a good grade has twisted into a leering snarl in his mind. The tenderness of his first kiss was now a pitying taunt, and every pride or triumph of his life now subtly alters to feature his shame and self-loathing.
It seems to Elijah that he must have lived the most despicable life in the history of man, but even knowing that it’s over brings no relief. Now he knows he must spend an eternity recalling and obsessing over each private misery. And if he had to wait a thousand years as Herman did, or longer still as the unknown eons bring the human race crumbling into death around him, would he remain bound to sit alone and dwell upon his grief all the while?
Impudence. Treachery. Deceit. Impudence…
No, not alone at all. Even now it seems The Beast is with him.
12
Elijah doesn’t know how much time passes in such a miserable state, but he blesses the disruption of the opening door as though it is an angel come to rescue him. The bespectacled man from the fair, now carrying a large suitcase, creeps into the room to regard the book. He drags a massive case effortlessly onto the steel table as though unaffected by the book’s preternatural presence. Sure hands grip the cover and close the massive tome, and with it the maddening pulse of the alien heartbeat is muffled. Elijah instantly feels some degree of sanity and stability return, and he holds onto his conscious spark for all he’s worth.
Can you hear me? Elijah screams in his mind.Herman has stolen my body! I’m trapped in here!
“Henry. Henry Wiggins,” he replies. Presumably his name, Henry withdraws an identical Codex Gigas from his case, laying it upon the table. He then hoists Elijah’s book as though it weighs no more than a common paperback, securing it within the case.
What?
“Yes yes, I can hear you. Now where did they go?”
To gather ingredients for a rite to summon The Beast, but I don’t know what—
“Not to worry, The Beast does not walk so idly as that. You’re coming with me now, and we’re going to get your body back.”
Why are you helping me?
“Dr. Beckel stole a soul from me.” Henry’s narrowed black eyes flash dangerously behind his spectacles. “That was a very foolish thing to do.”
Henry Wiggins moves with the vitality of a much younger man. Elijah can sense his surroundings around the case as they travel to one obscure shop after another. It’s impossible to determine exactly what these places are; none have any signs or banners to distinguish their unusual wares: the hand of a nun, skeletal fragments from dead kings, and a cat which had been skinned and turned inside out, to name just a few.
Henry converses rapidly with each shop owner in an unfamiliar tongue before moving on to the next. After three or four such shops, he seems satisfied with an answer, prompting him to carry Elijah into a cab heading out of town.
Elijah recognizes the driver’s rough stubble and low patchwork hat. He had been loitering outside the last shop, and it seems a funny coincidence for him to be picking them up now. He’s about to comment on the fact, but his thoughts are interrupted once more by another whisper which throbs in the back of his mind to the pulse of that alien heart.
Impudence. Treachery. Deceit…
Please hurry, Ellijah begs. The whispers are growing louder.
“Oh?” Henry is fussing dispassionately with his necktie. The case containing the Codex Gigas rests on the empty seat beside him. The cab driver glances behind him, quickly returning his eyes to the road.
It keeps repeating itself like a broken record. Impudence. Treachery. Deceit…
“Hm.” Henry leans his elbow upon the window to rest his chin in his hands. His fingers are drumming a slow rhythm on his chin.
I don’t know how much longer I can take it. Is something in here with me? The Beast…
“Calm yourself. You’re only hearing an old echo of his thoughts. This book hasn’t crossed paths with The Beast in a very long time.”
“Pardon, sir? Were you asking something?” the driver asks, speaking in English with a French accent. He angles his rear-view mirror to get a better look at Henry, but the old man doesn’t seem to notice.
What is The Beast? And what’s it got to do with the book?
“The Beast is fear, and the book is the one thing in the world that The Beast is afraid of, that’s all.”
“Are you looking to do some hunting today, sir? Is that why you’re going to the woods?” Henry doesn’t respond. After a pause, the driver continues, “I don’t know about any ‘beast,’ but there’s a healthy population of red deer around these parts…”
“If you speak to me again I will drive a nail through your tongue and pin it to the roof of your mouth,” Henry replies amiably in a voice that could just as easily been an idle commentary on the weather.
The cab driver coughs. He starts to grin, but when Henry doesn’t return it, his face slides back into slackness. The cab increases its speed considerably.
“As I was saying, the Codex was created to tear a hole between worlds and banish The Beast, its power derived from Herman’s soul bound within the pages. Think of it like a safety valve for releasing pressure in case things get a little too… volatile.”
Do you know why Dr. Beckel is trying to make a deal with The Beast?
“Not precisely, but I am familiar with his type,” Henry says. “No doubt some short-sighted, selfish goal that will not bring him half the victory he is anticipating.”
The cab driver doesn’t speak another word for the remainder of their trip, even as Henry directs him to stop where the beech trees grow densely and the road degenerates to a dirt trail. Elijah braces himself against the senseless violence Henry so casually alluded to, but the old man merely pays the driver and exits with his suitcase without another word.
Elijah’s ordinary senses might be clouded, but he can feel the ritual in progress like a black lighthouse signaling him through the woods. Henry trusts his directions as they navigate through the dense trees which huddle so close together as to block out the sky. They must be drawing near because Elijah can feel the rhythm of his internal pulse harmonizing with the maleficent presence. His thoughts are devoured by the thrumming beat, and he must have lost consciousness for a moment because next he knew he was in a clearing of trees containing a large circle of salt
upon the ground.
“Who are you? What are you doing here?” Dr. Beckel asks, voice tense and bitter. He stands with Herman, still occupying Elijah’s body, who kneels with a bloody butcher’s knife. Rolls of yellowed parchment lay as bedding for a headless goat whose profusion of oozing blood dyes the paper deep scarlet.
“I hope I didn’t interrupt anything,” Henry Wiggins says, his smug voice saying otherwise.
“That troublemaker from the book fair—what have you got there?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Herman replies. “The ritual is complete. The Beast arrives.”
Elijah strains to feel if anything has changed. The eldritch presence which drew him here has lifted. The maddening pulse is all but gone. Dr. Beckel glances anxiously around him, while Herman remains kneeling atop the stained parchment, head bowed in silent prayer.
“You lied to me,” Dr. Beckel snarls. “Where is he? Why don’t I see him?”
“He is already here,” Herman whispers, not looking up.
Henry Wiggins shrugs and sets aside the case containing Elijah’s book. “Game is up, boys. I’m flattered of course, but it wasn’t The Beast who made a deal with Herman four centuries ago. The Beast would never have created an artifact for his own destruction. You didn’t need all that mumbo jumbo to bring me here though. If you wanted my attention, all you had to do is steal from me.”
Herman crosses himself and begins to mumble to himself in Latin. “In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti.”
Henry doesn’t appear any different, but there is something about the tone of his voice which leaves no doubt in anyone’s mind. The words carry a certain weight as though gravity itself would pause its celestial task to listen to what he said. Elijah doesn’t have a mouth that can feel dry or a heart that can race in anxious anticipation, but he does still have a very clear thought in his mind: he’d spent the afternoon with a demon without even realizing it.
“Herman and I had a deal,” Henry continues. Elijah knows the same ghastly weight of his existence must be weighing on the others too, for they let him speak without interruption.