Chapter Text
Jonathan Leitner-Robinson was never a happy child. Not uncared for, mind you, both his parents and his grandmother tried their best to raise him with all the love they were capable of giving. In his grandmother's case, there wasn't much parently love left to give, and as for his parents… They were always busy, mum with her job as the archives, dad with his library, his “passion project” as he'd refer to it in mixed company, which was pretty much anyone outside of him, his wife, and his assistants. Jon never resented them for it, as it was all he'd ever known, and since he wasn't particularly popular amongst other children, he had nothing to compare his rather narrow worldview to.
There were upsides to his parent's job, though, and this was something he could compare to the other kids. He was an avid reader, with a sharp memory for detail and a profound distaste for reading anything he felt he'd already read before. This made him difficult to please, even when he'd started going on weekly trips to the library and coming back his bag bulging with books he would carefully select. The upside to their job was that they'd always bring him back a book whenever they went away on a business trip, which was quite often for people in professions one might consider sedentary, though the strangeness of it never crossed Jon's mind.
The books his parents brought him were as starkly different as they were. His mother would bring him back journals, dictionaries, fiction and history books, even the odd handwritten diary every now and then, which Jon handled with the utmost care up until he'd finished with it and he discarded it as he did the offered. His father, in contrast, would bring him beautifully printed first editions, heavy leather-bound tomes, and looking back on it Jon could swear some of them had been genuine medieval manuscripts. Not that he'd cared, at the time. It was never the format of the book that mattered to him, only the content.
A few years in the future, when e-readers were popularized, Jon would almost discard print entirely, up until he realized that digital simply wouldn't keep up with the... specificities the texts his job would require him to read.
All this was to say that Jon was a lonely, slightly unhappy child—though thoroughly unaware that he was lacking in the “familial love” department—and that he was quickly running out of options of books to read. By the time he was 8 years old, he'd gone through the library, not even bothering with reading the same author twice, and even his globe-trotting father was having trouble finding things he hasn't read. His mother was more and more absorbed by her archival work, and his grandmother was no help, buying him anything she'd find in local charity shops, yielding very few books he actually cared to give a try to.
So when his father asked him if he wanted to visit his library, Jon could barely contain his excitement. You see, Dad's Library, as he referred to it in his internal monologue, was strictly off-limits to him, and he hadn't been privy to a single book inside. He tried to school his glee down into a semi-apathetic nod the best an 8-year-old can attempt such a thing, and was shaking his hands at his sides in excitement when his father took him to the massive oak door that separated the family house and the library, reached into his collar to pull a key on a chain, and unlocked the door.
Inside were… books, as Jon had expected. Rows upon rows of books, but this was unlike any library he'd ever been to before. The manner in which the books were arranged seemed random, almost haphazard, but he also felt a purposefulness to it, in the spirals and towers and piles of books, even what he could only describe as an altar here or there. He also realized that the library that could be viewed from the outside was just the upper level, and several winding stone staircases in different parts of the room led deeper down.
Jon gaped at the sight before him, and when he looked up at his father, the man was beaming. He'd patted Jon on the head, and sighed, telling him that he knew Jon would love it, that Gertrude thought he was too young, but—
As he said this, a loud crash came from one of the staircases, followed by a string of loud words Jon didn’t understand. His father sighed.
“It seems,” he said, his tone almost conspiratorial, “that my assistants can't be left alone for more than an hour without tearing the place down. Can I trust you to go back upstairs into the house while I handle this?”
Jon had nodded solemnly at this, pride warming his chest as his father entrusted him with something, however small.
“I need you to promise to not touch any of the books. Can you do that for me?”
Jon nodded again, eager to please, and earned himself another pat on the head, and just like that he was alone, surrounded by books.
Hundreds, thousands of books he hadn't read yet, and the knowledge suddenly hit him that most of the books here had never been read at all. Where the knowledge came from, Jon had not known, but in his 8-year-old mind, it made perfect sense that these books weren't just forbidden. They were unknown.
He stepped gingerly towards one of the shelves and felt his resolve not to touch them falter as he read titles that he did not recognize. Again, the classifying system struck him as odd, being used to more conventional libraries, but he supposed if his father kept gardening books with archaeology, he wasn't going to question it.
All at once, reading the titles on the shelves—his father hasn't said anything about looking around—he was hit with a particular feeling of wrongness. Like he'd trespassed, somehow and the owner of the house had just noticed him. A deep panic seized him, like nothing he'd ever felt before, and before he knew what he was doing he was running up the stairs to the oak door, slamming it behind him as he rejoined the safety of his house.
He breathed heavily, and sat down on the floor to calm himself, when he noticed his hands weren't empty. He wasn't carrying a book when he'd entered, he was sure of it, but there it was, gripped tightly against his chest.
Panic seized him again as he thought just how mad his father would be if he found he’d broken his promise. The way his brow would furrow in disappointment. He wouldn't trust Jon with anything ever again. The idea had him shaking, but even in his state, he couldn't help but be aware of the book.
It was a square thing, like a child's book, meant to teach farm animals or the alphabet, but where the cardboard should have been bright and colorful, it was black and white, the title "A Guest for Mister Spider" engraved—carved, Jon thought—into the cover, surrounded by webs that looked like they'd been drawn by a child. He was quite certain he'd never seen a book like this before. He turned it around, expecting a summary, a quote, and was met with a crude drawing of a spider, presumably the eponymous Mister Spider. His stomach lurched at the image, at its swollen, bulging abdomen and the many eyes that covered what might pass as a face.
The spider was wearing a bowler hat, and Jon found that he couldn't tear his eyes away from that deep stain of red. He hated the hat more than anything else on that picture.
Without thinking, more like a muscle spasm or a reflex than any conscious decision he could have made, he opened the book.
The first page was a book-plate, engraved with the words “From The Library of Jurgen Leitner”, and, though he didn't yet know it, those very words would haunt his nightmares for years to come.
Knock knock, the book said.
Who is it, Mister Spider?