“Can you See anything out there, Happy?”
“Yes. .” said Happy. “Enough to make me not want to See any more, so I’m going to stop looking. Trust me on this, JC; you don’t want to know. Some transitions are more distressing than others. Let’s just say. . the Secret Libraries aren’t where we thought they were. You take me to the weirdest places.”
They carried on down the spiralling staircase, all of them being very careful to stay well away from the edges, which lacked any kind of railing. Kim got bored pretending to walk down and dropped quietly down through the open space in the middle, sticking close to JC. He’d already lost all track of how far down they’d come. His leg muscles had begun to seriously ache when a light suddenly flared up, and he stepped off the bottom of the staircase and onto solid floor. He stumbled away from the stairs to give the others room to get off, and looked around him.
He was standing in a huge underground cavern, packed with row upon row of tall, sturdy bookcases. A stone floor, and a stone ceiling high above. And book-shelves, book-shelves everywhere, stretching away further than the human eye could follow, in every direction JC could think of, plus a few more.
Melody and Happy stared about them with wide, hungry eyes, making Oooh! and Aaah! noises, both of them forgetting the sour moods they were supposed to be in. Kim laughed softly, clapping her hands silently together.
“So many secret places turn out to be something of a disappointment when you finally get to see them,” said JC. “But not this! It’s like they have every book in the world here, including all the ones that no-one’s supposed to have.”
Melody took hold of herself and sniffed loudly, striking a conspicuously unimpressed pose. “Who needs all these books? Why not put them all on e-files? Then there’d be no need for so much storage space.”
“Because you can’t hack books, of course,” Happy said witheringly. “If you want to know what’s in a particular volume of forbidden lore, you have to come down here in person, check out the book, and read it. Except you can’t because that isn’t allowed. Mostly.”
“What about remote viewing?” said Melody, to be stubborn.
“With the shields they’ve got in place here? Any wandering spirit that tried to sneak in here would get its ectoplasm kicked so thoroughly it would end up in another dimension, with its arse on fire. And besides, most of the books down here are so dangerous in their own right that they would deep-fry your brains inside your skull if you tried to read them without taking the proper precautions.” Happy paused. “Or so I’ve heard. There are an awful lot of stories about the Carnacki Institute’s Secret Libraries, and every single one of them contradicts all the others. Does your password give us access to everything, JC? Or should we lurk quietly to one side and not touch anything?”
“We can look at anything we want to, now we’re in,” said JC. “Or so I was given to understand.”
“And if you’re wrong?” said Melody.
“Listen for the bang,” said JC. “Ah, here comes the Librarian.”
They all turned to look as the current Librarian came strolling forward to meet them. Everyone in the team took their time looking him over because this particular individual was in fact an empty suit of rather old-fashioned clothes, inhabited by nothing obvious or indeed visible. There was clearly something inside the clothes from the way they bulged and moved and wrinkled. But nothing protruded from the starched collar or the stiff cuffs or the bottom of the trouser legs. There were also subtle and somewhat worrying indications that whatever was inside the clothes wasn’t necessarily, entirely, human. The clothes came to a halt in front of the team and struck a sort of respectful pose.
“Well, hello there!” said a dry, dusty voice from somewhere in the vicinity of the starched white collar. “Visitors! How very unexpected and unannounced! Don’t get many visitors these days since I put down the enchanted man-traps. And the head-eating things. Never can remember what they’re called. . Anyway, nice to see you all! I’m in charge here, inasmuch as anyone is, or can be. I prefer to be called the Keeper of Secrets; but unfortunately that never caught on. Mostly, I’m called the Empty Librarian. Guess why? Never mind, never mind, moving on. . How can I be of service to you good ladies and gentlemen?”
JC looked at the others, and the others looked right back at him, making it very clear they had no idea of what to say either and were therefore leaving it to the team leader. JC gave them all a cold glare that promised exacting retribution in the near future and turned back to the Empty Librarian.
“Pardon me, sir,” he said very politely, accompanied by his most winning smile. “But are you dead or alive?”
“Almost certainly, sir,” said the Empty Librarian.
“All right,” said JC. “Absolutely definitely moving on. . I am here to inquire about whatever material you might have concerning the original Druids.”
“Hardly any, I’m afraid, sir,” said the Empty Librarian. “Given that the Druids possessed no written tradition of their own. Modern Druidry is a whole different thing, being mostly made up by a bunch of woolly-minded second-guessers.”
“Doesn’t anyone know anything about the original Druids?” said JC.
“You could always ask the Droods, sir. .”
“I’d rather not,” said JC.
“Very wise, sir,” said the Empty Librarian. “Simply thinking about that horrible family is enough to make me mess my underwear. If I wore any.”
“Far too much information,” muttered Melody.
“We had an encounter with the ghost of the old god Lud,” said JC, talking quickly over Melody. “Down in London Undertowen.”
“Consider me officially impressed, sir,” said the Empty Librarian. “Did he have anything to say? I could always add another page to his official biography.”
“He said he wasn’t of this world, originally,” said JC. “That he came from another place, Outside our reality. And that there were others like him. One of whom recently reached down and made. . alterations in me.”
“Wouldn’t surprise me at all, sir,” said the Empty Librarian. “You’re not the first visitor I’ve seen down here with eyes like those.”
JC knew a distraction when he heard one and shouldered it firmly to one side. “Have you any books on the subject of people being touched and changed by forces from Outside?”
“Stacks and stacks of the things, sir. Everything from the original Siggsand Manuscript to Jane’s Field Guide to Abominations from the Outer Rings. We used to have an illustrated edition of that last one, but it kept freaking people out, and I got fed up cleaning up after them. So now I only show it to people I don’t like. There are any number of very useful books on the subject, sir. However. .”
“I just knew there was going to be an however,” said Happy. “Didn’t you just know there was going to be an however?”
“Shut up, Happy,” said JC.
“However,” said the Empty Librarian, firmly, “these are the kind of books where you have to study for years to be able to read them. Never mind understand them. Some scholars have been visiting here for years, working their way through a particular volume one page at a time. While making copious notes. And occasionally having to stand up face-to-face shouting arguments with other scholars over what it all really means. Fist-fights, head-butting matches, and rolling-around-on-the-floor biting contests were not uncommon until I got bored and started fining them body parts for each infraction. Nothing like losing the odd ear to calm someone down. In my experience, sir, you can’t get two of these so-called experts to agree on anything, where forces from Outside are involved. That’s Academe for you. Is there anything else I can help you with, sir?”