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“Oh, Jon!” Martin waved a file around as he half-jogged after Jon. This was what he got for leaving his office. “I’ve just about finished the research on one of the statements that doesn’t record right.”
Jon did his best to banish any visible annoyance before turning to his least useful assistant. “Did you find anything useful?”
Martin shifted under his gaze, shuffling through the pages of the file. “Not much. The people and places are mostly verifiable, although the timeline doesn’t match up at all, but the Leitner book doesn’t seem to exist anywhere outside of this statement, which is odd-”
“The what?”
“Er, the book, Ex Altiora, “From the Library of Jurgen Leitner,” the title doesn’t show up on any list I can find-”
“Give me that!” Jon snatched the file away and stalked into his office.
-
Jon took a wobbly step out of his office, trying not to show how reading over Dominic Swain’s statement had shaken him. It wasn’t some coincidence, or a characteristically-misspoken conversation with Martin twisting into some terrible coincidence. The bookplate Swain had described matched the one Jon himself remembered exactly.
“Sasha.” He didn’t normally leave his office during the day, and even if they couldn’t see how off-center he felt, he could feel Tim and Martin’s gazes on him at the mere oddity of his appearance. “I was wondering if you could double-check the research on this statement for me.”
Sasha accepted the file and started to skim it. “I though Martin was already through with this one.”
Jon huffed, trying to pull his usual persona around him like a protective shell. “I’d appreciate a more discerning eye giving it a second look. Particularly the book- Ex Altiora.”
Sasha’s eyes were still skimming, and she hummed. “Ooh, a Leitner. Can’t just dismiss this one, Jon!”
He stiffened. “I- I beg your pardon?”
Sasha glanced up, hair falling over one eye. “You know I worked in Artefact Storage for a bit? They’ve got a whole shelf of them. Nasty things, but also credible instances of the supernatural,” she adopted a mimicry of his own voice for the last. “Research marks assignments dealing with books or libraries for Storage veterans specifically, since we’ve already learned all the protocols,” she spun her chair slightly, waving a hand at the other two, “You remember Tim? That month I got three different haunted library assignments? It was because they don’t want to risk just anyone tripping over a Leitner.”
“Were any of the libraries…?” Jon thought he did an admirable job hiding the squeak in his voice, under the circumstances.
Tim snorted. “Actually haunted? Pretty sure visiting one of ‘em was where she got that bug she ended up passing to half of Research. Maybe it was a cursed chest cold!” He let his voice waver and wiggled his fingers, eyes bright with mischief.
Sasha rolled her eyes. “Do you want me to round up some of the background on Leitners, Jon? I think Storage has a short history of their collection to go with the handling and authentication packet, though it’s annoyingly vague. Allegedly, there’s supposed to be clarification on “the 1994 incident” somewhere here, but with Gertrude’s filing…”
“That would be much appreciated, Sasha.” Jon turned on his heel and retreated to his office as quickly as he could without arousing suspicion. A whole shelf….
-
He had clearance to go into Artefact Storage, now that he was Head Archivist. He could go look for himself, if he wanted to. The thought was less a comfort than a persistent threat, looming over him. If he went looking for the Institute’s collection of Leitners, no one would stop him. If he picked one up, wandered off looking for a door, would anyone keep him from knocking?
He’d been working with a handful of walls between him and several dozen books just like the one that had ruined his childhood for half a decade and never known. Sasha had given him the list of titles and known effects with her research. Even if they weren’t identical to A Guest for Mr. Spider, they all sounded every bit as destructive.
And the titles were another thing. Scanning them, he’d nearly convinced himself for a moment that he’d somehow picked up the Leitner name and crafted an imaginary encounter to go with it. Maybe the trauma that had defined so much of his personality and the lingering memory of his hands acting without his input or desire were entirely concocted, a symptom of some deeper illness lurking in his own mind. It wasn’t as though he remembered his bully’s name to check, or had any evidence at all aside from his own memories. None of the Leitners in the Institute sounded the least bit like his own. If it weren’t for his own experience, he’d dismiss Dominic Swain’s Leitner for not matching a known text on the arcane, and it at least sounded like a near enough match thematically. As far as Artefact Storage was concerned, Leitner had never collected children’s books.
Around the time he’d entered university, Jon had convinced himself that, while his encounter had been real, there was no real library. Just whatever person or thing had created the book trying to make themselves sound more important. But there were dozens in the Institute alone, and he held evidence of more out there unrestrained in his own hand.
He didn’t leave his office for the rest of the day, alternating between trying to distract himself recording false statements into his laptop and trying not to vomit. His head felt too light for his body, and he was distantly sure that all of the recordings would have to be redone, rendered unusable by the shaking of his voice and the long, nauseous pauses he had to take every few paragraphs. When Martin knocked with tea in the midafternoon, Jon remained silent behind the locked door, afraid of what might come out if he opened his mouth. There were more of them.
He stayed much, much later that night that even he made a habit of, and he didn’t sleep once he did return home, to assured of the specter of long, hairy limbs to risk dreaming.
-
When he recorded Dominic Swain’s statement several days later, he counted it as a personal victory that his voice didn’t tremble on the tape, and spent the rest of the day working curled under his desk and flinching every time someone knocked at the door.