Sitting in the same seat as she had occupied the previous afternoon dispelled the doubts that had gathered overnight; the book had certainly been delivered to her; she could visualise the words at the foot of that first page, see herself trying to turn to the next and finding the opening uncut. Several times she walked the circumference of the room, searching for the attendant in grey, but with no success. The fog hanging about the dome seemed even thicker than it had yesterday, and readers unusually scarce; apart from a motionless figure several seats away to her left, she had a whole row to herself. To quieten her mind, she set about writing a full account of her experience, and became quite absorbed in the attempt to recall and record every detail. The damp air grew closer and stuffier; she could feel the warmth rising from the heat-pipe beneath the desk as she wrote on, half mesmerised by the steady scratching of her own pen. After an indefinite interval, she became aware, as she reached mechanically for the inkwell, that the scratching of her pen had become the only sound within her hearing; and she looked up to find herself entirely surrounded by fog.
Her first thought was that someone must have left a door or window open, but that was plainly absurd: she had never seen fog of this intensity inside a building before; it must be some freak of nature. She sat within a little cocoon of light shed by the electric lamp above her place; there was only the usual faint halo about the shade, but the edge of the fog-bank swirled to within two feet of her on either side, and overhead. Cold wisps of it curled across her desk, bearing a strange, ashy, sulphur-salt smell, as of a huge sea-creature suddenly emerging from the depths. She was-or had been-perhaps two-thirds of the way out from the central circle where the catalogue was kept; all she had to do was get up and make her way carefully to her left, and then left again around the circumference of the room until she reached the main entrance. But what would she do then? The fog must be even more impenetrable outside, and besides, there was something profoundly unnerving about it, something that made her very reluctant to leave her small circle of light. Perhaps she should call out; but why could she not hear anyone else calling for assistance? There had been other readers in neighbouring rows; and was it not the attendants' duty to go about and reassure those who might otherwise fall prey to panic? Yet still there was no sound other than the faint, muffled susurration of the fog-bank.
But surely fog did not make any sound? That soft rustling away to her left was not the fog; it was someone coming stealthily up the row towards her. Julia held her breath, listening. The rustling came closer, and ceased; the swirling wall of fog remained utterly opaque; then she heard the faint scrape of a chair-it sounded like the chair immediately to her left-being drawn out, followed by the almost inaudible creak of the seat as someone, or something, settled themselves upon it.
Silence returned. Julia tried to tell herself that it was only another reader, lost in the fog and deciding to sit down until it cleared. But the trembling of her hands belied her. Very slowly, keeping her eyes on the fog-bank between herself and her invisible companion, Julia began to ease herself off her chair, hoping to slip away silently in the other direction, towards the catalogue. Her chair creaked loudly, and as it did so the wall of fog to her left rose up like a curtain.
In that first glimpse, Julia was relieved, though startled, to discover that the chair beside her was occupied by a child, a little girl of no more than eight, with golden curls and pink cheeks, dressed in a starched white frock and petticoats. The reassurance lasted only an instant. There was something fixed and unnatural about the bright, smiling face turned towards Julia, and especially about the eyes, which had been slightly downcast, but suddenly opened wide with an audible click They were the shoe-button eyes of a doll; the face looked as hard and rigid as porcelain; and yet the creature was alive, for it was swinging its legs around with the evident intention of sliding off its chair and coming over to Julia.
All of Julia's hair stood on end; or such was the sensation. The "click" of those eyes snapping open seemed to lodge in her own body with a visceral jolt of terror such as she would not have believed a human being could endure. If the smiling doll-creature touched her, she knew she would die; she could not cry out, for the fear was choking her. Its satin shoes touched the floor; Julia sprang up, knocking over her own chair, and backed away into the wall of fog. Blundering from chair to chair, with still no sign of another human being, she retreated until she collided painfully with what felt like the circular bookcase which housed the catalogue, groped her way along its edge, and lurched into what she hoped was another alleyway of desks, where she stopped and tried to hold her breath and still her pulse enough to listen for the rustle of her pursuers dress.
From the moment Julia left her seat, the fog had closed impermeably about her. If she held her hand so close that her fingers actually touched her face, she could see the outline of it, but beyond that distance she might as well have been immersed in cotton wool, through which filtered a dim, uniform, yellow-grey light. Even in normal circumstances, the Reading Room has a labyrinthine aspect; some have compared it to a spiders web; but because it is possible to see over the tops of the rows of desks and across the central bookcases, these sinister possibilities lie mostly dormant. If all light were to be extinguished, one might imagine that the regularity of its construction, with the rows of desks radiating out from the centre like the spokes of a wheel, would still render escape relatively straightforward. But in fact, merely by pausing to listen, Julia found that she had lost all sense of direction. The strange sea-creature smell confused her senses, and the blood would not stop ringing in her ears. She could not hear, yet she knew that to run blindly would be fatal; the noise of her flight would give her away. Besides-she tried to suppress the realisation, but could not-the creature had found her in spite of the fog. Julia began to tremble uncontrollably.
Noise might be fatal, but to remain waiting for a porcelain hand to insinuate itself into hers was quite unbearable. She took a slow step backwards and bumped against a chair, which scraped; set off in what she thought was the right direction and encountered a cold, vertical surface which she could not identify at all, and from there veered into empty space, losing even her sense of up and down. She felt herself falling; reached out to save herself and clutched at a narrow ledge or flange, which seemed at first solid but suddenly gave way with a rasp, shot from her hand and fell at her feet with a dreadful smash. The creature would be upon her any second; Julia stumbled back into the void, and this time managed to hand herself from chair to chair along the entire length of a row. The noise was frightful, despite the muffling effect of the fog several chairs fell behind her, but she kept on, and when nothing met her hand after the expected interval, threw herself forward with both arms outstretched until she collided with what, she prayed, was the bookcase that ran right around the circumference of the Reading Room. Instinct told her that if she were to follow the curve around to her left, she would eventually arrive at the main entrance, where help must surely be at hand.
Julia stopped again to listen, but her breathing would not slow. Terror had left no room for any thought beyond the desire for escape; she set off again, as fast as she dared, with her right hand brushing along the curved bookcase and her left stretched out before her. In a surprisingly short time she came to an opening, which, she told herself, must be the entrance; she felt her way through, stumbled for some distance in another void, and collided with a wall. No, a door, for it swung away under her weight, and she went on through, quite unable to visualise the foyer in sufficient detail to tell whether she was in it or not. She took a few steps forward, but the floor did not feel right underfoot; it had a hollow, skeletal quality about it; then she brushed against a cold, vertical metal surface, which certainly did not match her recollection of anything in the foyer. Running her hand across the metal surface beside her, Julia realised that it was the end of a bookshelf. Reaching around it, she disturbed a volume which fell over with a thud, and all at once understood where she must be. This was the Iron Library, a maze of shelves crammed with books in their numberless thousands. If she could not regain the door through which she had entered, she would be utterly lost.