A red glass, anatomically correct Klein bottle, chambers pour into chambers, for the student of souls - the heart, endlessly feeding itself; ancient wax dummies dissected and flayed for the young anatomy student, for the occultist a variety of Grimoires, the shelves ornamented with a West African Fetish, stop here and browse.
This is a big shelf, several actually, hidden in the maze, A wide tower, a monolith, beneath it's shadow a dozen shelves, and as more again piled rag-tag on the floor. Poring through the titles he doesn't notice her. This is inconceivable, how could he not?
She is his shadow.
Paperbacks, cloth and the older books bound in leather. Rare hides of exotic and extinct animals, toads, lizards, serpents, skins that purport to be Basilisk, or dragons, gilt bindings, decorated, embossed, Fore-edged paintings on masonic themes, pyramids and all-seeing eyes, landscapes with ancient ruins and silhouettes, this one, an alchemist in his laboratory; the ink, of mummies ground into tears; the light, well enough, pull a volume down, look at it's author - Known? Obscure?
Preface, scan the first few pages, the light here, enough to read, barely, it is, after all, not a library, but if you purchase a book and return it in good condition he often remits a credit, your reading or profiting of it was cheap.
These books, you cannot find them anywhere else.
First editions, rarities, there are none of the new-age titles here, the "Healing with crystals" or "My Dinner with Bigfoot" or "My Pleiadean Adventure", this section, it is more about power - mans extending the sphere of his will into places he has yet to control; dominate, into fate, chance, divination, heaven and hell, his efforts to make sense of a perfectly orderly universe - it is, in the end, not the universe, the cosmos that has failed, it is man, and here are recorded his countless attempts at redeeming himself. And - always - in this section - he fails. Ask the proprietor. If you want redemption try the sections on philosophy or religion, here we merely attempt to remedy or mitigate our worldly situation.
He has in him a fascination with the obtuse, the obscure, "the sources", as he will later tell her, history in the first person, often far more fabulous than any fiction, read Herodotus, "The Anabasis", Speke's "The Discovery of the Source of the Nile", or Bernal Diaz's "The Conquest of New Spain", this is history, life, as told by those who were there.
But today we are discovering something different, tastes vary, after all.
Grimoires, a West African Fetish, A handmade Vou-Dou doll filled with pins. These are the ornaments upon the shelves, there are others, curios, curious, they prompt the imagination. There are Necromicons - Grimoires for Necromancers, spells for summoning, communing with the dead, There are many, many Books of Spells, Books on the Conjuring of Money, of Love, of Demons, There are Books of Sympathetic Magic, Alchemical texts that list all the chemical reactions to be had with unobtainable ingredients, Books on Poisons, Philters, Salves, all to be collected - when (Usually midnight, on a Solstice), where (beneath the light of a silvery moon, where else?), how? (with a black dog that will pull the root from the ground and die shrieking), why (well, you know), who - why, of course, you...why are you here?
***
They each browse, it's dark here, the titles, front pieces, prefaces hard to read, and it takes sometimes a few pages to make a decision. These are not cheap, but today, this evening, he desires a certain company, intelligent, curious, and so browsing, looking for that rarer cast of mind, a bridge between twinned souls out of time, a shared understanding.
This is it. We live once. Read - and in the span of a few hours you can live again.
Film does not have this, or rarely, and seldom at the same level. You watch a film. You are passive, an observer, on the sidelines.
But a book, a book demands investment. You have to imagine. These words demand an internal conjuring, an effort to put face, voice, dress to characters, to fathom their intentions, to follow their reasoning, to feel their unknowing, their joys and tribulations. Film rarely does this. Books do it as a matter of course.
Here is a book of love. This is it, a Grimoire with all the spells required, bound up in Unicorn Hide, with a Unicorn Ivory Heart inset in it's cover, sealed by the proprietor with a gob of wax to prevent casual note taking, the seals - checking one - Prometheus again - holding fast a strand of horse mane or hair. There are others, more spells, less spells, some recipes, some - a few charms, but by and large books on manners, etiquette, the social graces, how to win over the man-woman of your choosing, or, failing that, how to turn your affections to another, more worthy conquest. An entire chapter on turning sour grapes into wine.
A folio of signed contracts with the devil - illustrated, signed in blood - Signatures of Paganini, Musard, Robert Johnson, Urbain Grandier, Faust, countless others, the signatures - always different, Lucifer & Satan's own handwriting, the scrawl of their countless deputies and minions, the lesser demons on his behalf, witnessed by a retinue of disgraced judges and lawyers, the pages scorched as if each contract had been plucked from the fire and reeking still of Sulphur and brimstone.
It is, of course, impossible that the devil signs any such contracts, the contracts are themselves proof, he is a remarkably inconsistent forger, here a flourish, there a scrawl, still - this folio, that it exists, read the contracts, this one, Signed in Notre Dame Cathedral, or here again in the Hartz Mountains, on the Brocken, at the Crossroads, there are contracts deputized out to the more minor demons for the less ambitious, here a contract riddled with errors and witnessed by Titivillus, here a mendicant Friar signed his soul away to Beelzebub, Belphegor and Asmodeus for a never-emptying wine flagon and a secret passage to a nearby convent.
Reading, engrossed, who would not be, the bargains made and sealed, it is absurd, comic, fantastic, tragic, and he stands - this will be expensive - but -
... she is bumped, reading over his shoulder, discovered as it were, and she stands back at his shutting of the folio, she was reading too, and asks:
"Were you going to purchase that?..."
He nods eagerly.
He notices her. She is beautiful, and she follows him to the till. The Proprietor, he seems unsurprised, and drily notes that this, it comes in rarely, and always a contract or two thicker, and then states the price.
His sense of humor, really, is unsurpassed, but what did you expect for this? He knew it would be expensive, yet not this; and she is behind him:
"I can help. We can share it."
The deal is made, the folio wrapped in paper and tied up in string, they leave together, and only then does he think to ask her name...