Perception

Among the notes found belonging to T.J. Brimston, 1887

After so many fruitless hours spent ferreting away in the pigeonholes of half-forgotten manuscripts, neither peered at or nor recognised by the Library’s archivists, much less other pale, gaunt students of ancient writ—at last I have found the tome that will bring me recognition!

More than that, after so many solitary hours spent with the lamp turned down low and forgotten by the porters of the Library, who would have locked me in by turn of the skeleton key had I not awoken from my despondent slumber, I have found validation for my years of study!   The environs of the Library have never been particularly healthful; our forebears would have accused the damp grounds of the old monastery, whose chapel now houses the Library, of possessing vapors and fumes, a miasma.  Perhaps they were, in some queer fashion, correct, for there is a heaviness in the air here, especially in the corner I call my own.  Nevertheless, my thirst for knowledge has sustained me, and I have brought my own lamps and candles to supplement the poor reading light.  I have spoken to the Portreeve about the poorness of the light.  “Hmph!” that magisterial old totterer mumbled.  “You should be grateful, young man, that some young spark decided on the installation of gas lamps.  In my day, you were lucky for a tallow candle!”

***

The forgotten lore in the book never makes me drowsy.  It has been five days of continual study with the tome.  I have been discouraged from taking it from the Library, so I arrive as soon as the porter unhooks the rusty gate and bids me enter with a shake of his equally rusty head.  My book has been kept for me at the issue desk, a thin slant of paper serving as my bookmark, which is checked out at the day’s beginning by the assistant, and which I check in again at 8 o’clock as the bells chime in the old vestry.  The assistant, blinking in sleep-addled stupefaction, has more than once commented that I am not seen to exit my arm chair and carrel during the day.  “Do you not dine, sir?” he asks with a frown.  “You know that victuals of any kind are strictly prohibited in the Library.”

“Fear not,” I reply, as I hand the book back in.  “I go to a good supper in my common room.  They hold my meal back for me, on account that they know my habits.”  I gaze then at my watch pointedly, as if to say that I am anxious to be away.  But placing it back into my waistcoat pocket, I cannot but feel the opposite.  I don’t like to leave my book. 

***

While the light in the desk beside my arm chair could be brighter, even with the addition of my own lamps, something else has begun to disturb my plumbing the sweet depths of the book.  The Library is silent, for in the winter, there are very few regular patrons excepting myself.  The assistants move around quietly, padding upon thick carpet, and seldom do they even pass my quiet and private corner of the Library.  Rain and sleet against the panes of the windows occasionally interrupt my concentration, but it is a pleasant interruption.  To contemplate nature is second only to discovering the great secrets of ancient lore. 

But here now, was nature contemplating me!  A harvester—or a spider—of the enormous variety was perched in the corner of the wall above my armchair.  I was surprised to have even seen it in the gloom—large as it was, at least as large as my hand, brown in color, with a relatively small body and long, thick, but un-segmented, almost smooth, legs.  Whatever the faults of the Library, I had never perceived cobwebs, even in the corners of rooms, suggesting that some maid or other must be employed to tidy it and remove the vermin.  The shape of the harvester—so brown and dusky against the paleness, even in shadow, of the crumbling whitewashed ceiling—arrested my interest, and I found it difficult to look away.  As if aware of the contemplation, the harvester remained still on the wall, though at what seemed to me a perilous angle. 

I returned to my reading, turning up the gas lamp as high as its minute light would go.  I happened to glance back up at the harvester.  It had not moved.  It had been my informal experience that scuttling creatures were afraid of the light.  The harvester was as still as a corpse.  I relinquished it to its vigil and worked hard at translating the arcane tongues of my book for another few hours.  I examined my watch, noting it was ten minutes until the chimes of eight.  Doing so, I happened to glance over my shoulder and perceive that the harvester had come down the wall, closer to me and the armchair. 

Surprised, despite myself, I leapt out of the armchair.  The harvester scurried back up the wall to the safe haven of the corner.  It had descended to about a foot from the top of the armchair.  As I watched it retreat, I was struck by how large it really was.  One has seen spiders one’s entire life.  Yet I was unpleasantly aware that I would not like the harvester to come close enough to touch me.  I had no desire to kill it, and as long as it did not molest me, it was free to roam throughout the Library.  Yet I found I did not like its proximity. 

***

For the second day, the harvester is haunting my armchair. 

Excitement over how much translation of my book I had accomplished quickly pushed the unpleasant onlooker from my mind as I had my supper, slept, and set out for the Library again in my usual habit.  My nerves were struck, however, when I took my book from the assistant and returned to my habitual armchair and desk.  The harvester—how absurd; how should I know it to be the same one?—was perched in the corner where I had left it the night before. 

How should it warrant my attention?  Perhaps it had died of hunger in its corner, poor creature, and had been left in suspended animation in its shadowy realm.  I had half-convinced myself of this, and its irrelevance to my studies.  I had found my bookmark in the tawny pages of cured goats’ skin and had returned to the translation of sacred and antique rites.  I was busying myself with my pen, which would not take ink as it used to, and when I had finally cleaned it and begun to take notes with a steady hand, I happened to turn my head and observe that the harvester had moved—horizontally, rather than vertically, no closer to me than before, yet, unquestionably, alive. 

I refused to pay it further heed.  I read on, I wrote on.  I disdained to glance at my watch.  I let the dismal rain blanch the windows.  Yet, try as I might to be fully embraced in contemplation of the antique incantations, I found myself turning my head to look at the harvester.  To see if it was still there.  To see if it had moved.  It became a compulsion, unbecoming and distracting.  It drew closer through all this; unmistakably it moved closer.

***

Disaster! 

When I wrote the lines above, I had been merely piqued and disturbed by the presence of the harvester over my shoulder, it seemed, drawing closer to the tome of lore whenever I was most deeply engrossed in it.  The creature would retreat when I seemed to perceive it and to draw back if I turned my shadow to the wall—yet it seemed most determinedly to have a love of the book and no fear of the lamp.

In the midst of my careful study, I heard my name being called by an acquaintance across the Library.  I was hailed in such a way that it seemed churlish to ignore.  Leaving my book open with my mark in it, I got stiffly to my feet to return the calls of my acquaintance.  I determinedly did not look up or over my shoulder.  I left the lamp as high as it would burn.

The silly fool only wanted to take luncheon.  I informed him that I would be happy to dine with him after eight.  He attempted by every possible persuasion to tear me away from my desk, but I, at first making excuses, and then growing cross, refused his every essay.  At last, ruffled and flushed with anger, I returned to my armchair.  My flesh prickled at the same moment I sensed an awful stench.  This was the aura before I dared trust my eyes—the harvester, hulking, huge, and dark—was curled upon the pages of my book, as if warming itself on its pages. 

If it sensed my return, it did not show it.  Filled with rage over the interruption and preternaturally repulsed by the thing, I slammed the cover of the book closed.  The harvester made an effort to escape, but a sluggish one; it did not even quiver as its body was smashed between the book pages, its legs darting out uselessly.  With loathing and surprise, I cautiously opened the book again.  The harvester was dead, pulped.  I used my handkerchief to remove its corpse from the pages, its fluids leaving a sticky, brownish stain. 

***

I stumbled through the day after the death of the harvester. Even the assistant remarked as I left shortly after 7 o’clock that in all the months I had been studying, not once had I left before eight.  I mumbled some pleasantry at him, eschewed supper altogether, and went to bed in a befuddled slumber.

Now I wake and yet must still be dreaming, for I am not lying in my bed.  I look down, not up, and a blurry vision seems to be all I can possess in the gathering gloom.  I think that I can see suspended below me—or perhaps I am suspended?—my habitual armchair in the Library.  Someone else sits there, peering into my book . . .