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Lost in a Good Book
It is on an icy winter's day that the visions come to me. Sitting there amongst the shelves in the library, tall and long and filled with a million books like the walls of some surreal maze, they come : the visions, or visitations, or whatever they are.
Outside there is the cold - an intense, hard, sharp cold like a jagged piece of iron. Scientists say that cold doesn't really exist; that it is just a relative lack of heat. But I know that that can't be right. The cold outside the library is a definite, positive energy - icy and dangerous. It is cold that you can feel, a cold that slowly sucks the life out of you when you go out in it. The world has remained locked in ice throughout the day and the sun seems to have no heat in it; no power over the freeze from the night before.
But here inside the library, with the heating turned up to maximum, there is welcome warmth. Many people have gathered just to doze away the day it seems, mulling quietly through books and papers, moving little, seemingly content just to be amongst other people. Mammals huddling together for security and warmth.
And it is as I sit there, reading slowly through a book I have picked up from the Science Fiction shelves, that Gandalf sits down across the table, and fixes his brilliant, twinkling, ancient eyes upon me. I am surprised to see him because of course, as everyone knows, he left the known world a long, long time ago, to find peace and sanctuary in the Gray Havens. But there he is, sitting before me, smiling his smile of wisdom and jollity, but saying nothing. His great beard flows merrily down onto the table before him, and his wizard's staff, I see, is propped against the table, as if it is nothing more than a walking stick. Then I notice the colour of his robes : gray. This is Gandalf the Gray, not Gandalf the White. Gandalf from before the terrible business with the Balrog, from before he makes the journey off to the Havens. So that explains how he can be here. It's still a little unexpected, I have to admit, but I suppose that great wizards like Gandalf have ways and means.
I smile at him, and he smiles back. He holds out his hand towards me, fingers extended as if he is trying to see whether he can touch me, whether I am real. I extend my fingers in return and our touches meet. He smiles, as if pleased that physical contact has been established. Then he nods his head slowly at me, knowingly as if we have some shared understanding now, and then he fades away - beard, staff and all.
And I return to my reading. The ticking of a clock and the rustle of pages being turned are the only noises to be heard.
It is some time later - I don't know exactly how much later - that I have another visitor. I am browsing through the books on the Adventure shelves, and a tall figure taps me on the shoulder. I turn round expecting to see one of the librarians laden down with books, and am rather surprised to be met with the cruel and malevolent stare of a hideous alien creature, twelve feet tall, its chitinous exoskeleton dripping with acidic secretion. It seems to have a large number of limbs, like some immense, intelligent insect and any number of spikes and claws. Its mouth is slowly opening, slavering jaws dripping ichor, as if it is savouring a good meal.
Hastily I step backwards, just as the creature's extensible jaws are snapping towards me. I point to a small, tattered sign pinned to the wall that reads Eating And Drinking Prohibited, in the hope that the alien is able to comprehend the letters of our writing. And then I slip through a small gap between two of the shelves and escape into Large Print. The space-demon, unable to follow me, turns around and lumbers back up the aisle in the direction of Local Information.
I sit down and decide to give some thought to what it is that I am experiencing. All around me, fellow-readers are sitting quietly, leafing through their papers and books, clearly too engrossed to notice the visitations. Or perhaps they are only visible to me? Could that explain it? It is then that I recall something I've recently read somewhere, in a newspaper perhaps, or a book. Scientists - perhaps different scientists from the ones who say that cold doesn't exist, perhaps the same ones - have apparently discovered that the books in a library are the perfect breeding-ground for a certain strain of fungus that thrives on warmth and a ready supply of vegetable fibre and which, more to the point, gives off a mildly toxic gas as part of its natural metabolic processes. A gas which has an hallucinogenic effect when inhaled by some people. And apparently this microscopic fungus has a field-day when it is cold outside, and damp, and people huddle into libraries for warmth.
And what I suppose must have happened is that a unique strain of this fungus has taken up residence in the books of my local library. Some genetic mutation or something. Normally, the organism just metabolises the fibres of the pages it attacks and converts them into the one psycho-active chemical. But here, it seems, it actually absorbs something of the content of the pages, something of the meaning of the words written upon them so that the chemicals given off become coloured with the essences of the characters and events described. The effect of which is that the visions people experience are shaped by which books they happen to be amongst at the time. Characters from Science Fiction and Science Fantasy for me - who knows what else for the people reading the other sorts of books in the library.
It is the only reasonable explanation I can think of. Right now the atmosphere in the library must be hazy with a cocktail of these invisible, exotic gases. And each time someone opens a new book, another great cloud of it gets released into the mix.
But now that I understand what is going on in the library on this cold winter's afternoon, the realisation of what I can do comes to me very quickly. If I am going to experience apparitions out of the books around me, then a universe of possibilities suddenly exists for me. It's obvious. I can choose which visions I want to experience.
I walk along the rows of books once more now, examining each title anew, inspecting covers, thinking of what people and what lands live inside each one. Some I open and read a few lines from, but I try not to breathe too deeply when I do. I don't want to be overwhelmed with the wrong experiences. I am sure I catch a glimpse of Sherlock Holmes spying on me around a corner at one point, but otherwise I manage to remain unintoxicated.
Then, after much careful deliberation, I find the book I am after. I carry it to my favourite seat, which is right up against a radiator in a dark, rather shadowy corner of the library. My thinking is that the warmth here will encourage the microscopic fungi into greater activity. Then I open the book, and slowly begin reading, breathing slowly and deeply all the time, savouring the papery, slightly musty smell coming from each page.
Soon, after only a few minutes, the visions start again. It is just as I anticipated, just as I had hoped. The familiar shelves of the library around me begin to dissolve and waver. In their place appear the gray stone walls of a long, featureless corridor, its stones interlocking perfectly, stretching away into a gloom punctuated occasionally by flickering torches. Vaguely, I can discern entranceways opening off the corridor at irregular intervals. It is dry and warm and a comfortable layer of straw covers the floor.
Somewhere near at hand, I know, the Minotaur stalks. Far off, echoing and booming faintly around, I can already hear his titanic bellowing. I look forward to meeting him; as a Taurean myself, I'm sure we'll get along just fine.
Theseus will be along soon, of course, complete with his ball-of-string trick for finding his way back out of the maze, all psyched up and ready to slay the hideous demi-bull. All I've got to do is to follow him around for a while, cut his thread in a few places, perhaps tie a few loose ends back together in the wrong order, and my scheme will be complete. Theseus will become hopelessly lost in this maze, just as I and the Minotaur are already hopelessly lost. It'll be easy.
There might be a bit of friction at first, I suppose, but once we all realise that we just have to get along, I think we'll provide good company for each other. Theseus, I'm sure, has many good tales he can tell us. And the Minotaur too I shouldn't wonder. We'll just have to accept that we will never be able to escape from this most complex and devious of mazes, this great labyrinth built by Daedalus himself, and all will be well. Because I am caught eternally within this vision now. I know that I can never find my way back out of it. So intricate and tortuous is the maze of Daedalus that no human mind can understand it or work out how to escape from it. So the vision can never end.
I smile to myself and start walking towards the bellowing. Already that cold, drab, other world that I have escaped from seems far away. Nothing more than some dim, half-forgotten daydream, or vision.
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