L) Chaptet 11

11.

Richard went back to work and Lance followed suit. They would have to
wait until late evening and after closing time for their plan to be
successful. It was Lance's job to find the necessary materials during
this time. These included the sleep drug for the security guard,
flashlights, and a crowbar. Richard already felt nauseated at the
prospect of attempting to carry out Plan A. Secretly Lance felt it too,
and both began to doubt their capabilities as potential secret
agents.

It was early evening when Richard found the solution to their
problems, a solution he was amazed Lance had not already spotted.
Re-reading the last few paragraphs of The New Eschatologist Richard was
indescribably pleased to find the following paragraph: 'Richard, Lance
and Dr.Quinn took the lift down to Stack 1. Once there they quickly and
silently made their way to the Cage. Dr.Quinn positioned himself
carefully in front of the keypad for the security door in an effort to
prevent either Richard or Lance from observing the combination. He hit
a nine, followed by a six, another nine and a seven.'

He phoned Lance immediately to tell him the good news.

'How come I didn't notice that?' Lance replied, perplexed.

'You weren't looking for it I suppose.' Richard was jubilant, 'Now
there'll be no breaking and entering. It'll be much easier!'

'Much easier' Lance repeated, 'Very very easy in fact.

Two hours later Lance arrived at the library again in time for Richard
finishing his shift. He was carrying a large kit bag and looked
particularly conspicuous. 'C'mon, let's get going, quickly' Richard
began heading straight towards the lift to the lower stacks as soon as
he saw his friend, and motioned him urgently to follow.

'Richard wait,' said Lance, grabbing his friend's arm and bringing him
to a stop.

'What?'

'What if it's a trap.'

'A trap? How could it be? And by who? What are you talking
about?'

'You don't think it seems too easy?'

'No Lance. I don't.' Richard replied sternly, arching his left
eyebrow, 'I think it's quite clear. We find the secret room in this
library where this book very obviously belongs, and we get to the
bottom of this mystery once and for all. No reason why we should be
afraid of that is there?'

'Well?no'

'Is there?'

'No of course not.'

'Then let's get going.' With that Richard turned and carried on
walking, leaving Lance to wonder at his confident yet also somewhat
paranoiac attitude. Nevertheless he was just as eager to discover a
secret room as his librarian friend, so he decided to go ahead with the
plan anyway and keep his concerns to himself.

It was with great pride that Richard keyed in the code to the security
door on the Cage, pride that he, Richard Querulous was finally worthy
of the privilege. The thought that he was not in fact worthy at all but
only knew the code because of a supernatural book that was recording
everything around it did not enter his mind at all. As the door swung
open Richard again felt a wave of pleasure flood his frail little
frame. This was his spiritual home.

'Come on' Lance pushed him aside and made his way in, 'We don't have
time.'

'You've ruined my moment,' Richard complained.

'Now, it was this wall wasn't it?' Lance asked rhetorically, ignoring
Richard and proceeding to knock lightly on the eastern wall of the
Cage. Both friends felt pangs of excitement, the wall did indeed sound
hollow. If it was made of granite, it was granite cut very thin. 'Let's
see if we can find some kind of switch,' Lance suggested and began
feeling around the dark floor and cold walls for any protuberance that
might indicate a button of some kind. Richard turned the light on to
aid his friend in his quest, then closed the Cage door behind them. He
had an inkling that what they were going to do next would require
privacy.

'I can't find anything, how about you have a look' Lance concluded,
picking himself up from the floor, 'Can you-' he stopped mid-sentence,
dumbstruck by the sight of Richard raising a crowbar in both hands
above his head, looking for all the world like he was going to attempt
to plunge it into the wall. That, of course, is exactly what he did.
The force of the blow sent him tumbling backwards, dropping the crowbar
with a loud clatter on the stone floor.

'Careful!' Lance hissed.

'Ow, that really fucking hurt,' Richard cursed, inspecting his hands
with a worried expression, 'I think I've got splinters.'

'Doesn't matter,' Lance replied tremulously 'I think we've found our
secret passage,'

Looking up at the wall Richard saw a small hole and the gloom of a
hidden chamber opening up before them.

A few minutes later and Lance had finished creating a man-sized
opening in the wall (Richard had intended to do it himself but the
those first two strokes had worn him out, and he was worried he might
get a blister.)

'There. Hand me the torch,' Lance peered into the darkness in front of
them and reached his hand out for the torch. Richard, having turned it
on and begun shining it into the opening kept hold of it however, and
did not look likely to surrender it without a fight.

'Looks like a staircase,' Richard declared, shining the light
beam at what should've been the floor of the chamber.

'A very old staircase. Could be dangerous, we should be-'

Before Lance could finish his health and safety announcement Richard
had already stepped into the breach and was beginning to pick his way
carefully down the winding staircase. 'Fine, don't listen then' Lance
muttered whilst easing himself through the opening and onto the stairs,
'Don't blame me if you break your neck.'

The light from the torch was weak and the beam fairly narrow, but
without it neither Lance nor Richard would have made it down the
staircase alive. The stone steps were steep and difficult to navigate.
Some had crumbled slightly and more than once both friends came close
to slipping up and falling to their doom. The torch prevented them from
falling victim to the worst errors of judgement, but even so they were
forced to hug the walls and at times each other as they made their way
slowly into the gathering gloom. The fear was mixed in with an intense
feeling of excitement and discovery however. Both pictured themselves
as Indiana Jones on some great adventure, though if they encountered
tarantulas, or snakes of any kind, they would definitely be turning
back.

'I think we've reached the bottom,' Richard declared cautiously,
before suddenly lurching forward and screaming girlishly as he fell
headlong into the dark.

'RICHARD!' Lance shouted, reaching out in vain to grab his friend.
There was a thud.

'Ow'

'What?'

'Ow, that really hurt.'

'Richard? Are you there?'

'Yes'

'Are you hurt?'

'Yes, but I found the bottom.'

Lance hurried down, almost slipping himself and found that, to his
surprise, there were only five steps to go. He found Richard lying on
the floor rubbing his elbow furiously.

'Do you think it's broken?'

'Your elbow?'

'Or my arm. Anything,'

'Let met have a look,' Lance picked up the torch and shone it
over
Richard's body.

'No, nothing broken.'

'And you're a doctor are you?' Richard replied, picking himself up from
the floor and trying to regain his dignity. 'I'll have the torch back
now,' he declared, reaching his hand out expectantly. Lance however,
was ignoring him.

'Looks like a door,' he said, shining the beam over a heavy-looking oak
portal directly in front of them. Without consulting Richard further he
stepped forward and pushed. 'Might need some help here,' he said
breathlessly after a few minutes of struggling, 'Probably hasn't been
opened in a long time.'

'Hand me the torch. That might help.'

'It needs two of us, no torch.' Lance put the torch down on the floor
in a gesture of conciliation. 'Come on, let's get this thing open
before someone notices our act of criminal damage upstairs.'
With both of them together they managed to eventually force the door
open. They were relieved to find once they had done so it did not seek
to return instantly back to its original position. Finding a doorstop
big enough to stop this door would have been a quest in itself. As they
opened the door they felt the new chamber suck air into itself, as if
it were a clinically dead patient who had just received life-saving
artificial resuscitation. Richard bent down quickly and picked up the
torch.

'This place stinks of sulphur. What is it?'
Richard shone the torch into the room and surveyed it as best he could
with the beam. The chamber had a floor, that they were certain of, but
intense darkness strangled the beam into submission before it could
reach the far wall of the room, and so Lance and Richard were left with
the impression that there wasn't one and that the room went on forever.
What they did notice however was row upon row of bookshelves, each one
full to the brim with large black, leather-bound books.

They made their way into the chamber with disciplined trepidation. Upon
setting foot across the threshold Lance made sure the door was secure
and would not close behind them. Richard shone the torch along the near
wall of the chamber, but could not see where it ended in either
direction. He began to feel a deep sense of dread that had now
obliterated his previous confidence.

'What's this then? Stack zero?' Lance asked, surveying the rows and
rows of bookshelves as Richard made another pass over them with the
torch light.

'I think we should be very careful,' Richard whispered, 'This room must
be huge, I can't see either end of it.'

'Let's inspect the books. I wonder what they keep down here.'
They approached the bookshelf closest to them, and as Richard shone the
beam over the multitude of spines he was not surprised by what he saw,
shocked, but not surprised. It merely confirmed his worst fears.
Something truly terrible was most definitely happening.

'The New Eschatologist, Summer 1649?' Lance whispered incredulously,
reading the first spine.

'The New Eschatologist, Autumn 1649?' He continued a little
louder.

'The New Eschatologist Winter 1650? Summer 1650? Spring 1650? Autumn
1650? Winter 1651? Jesus Christ!'

Richard drew in a very deep breath. This was all too much to taken in,
this was incredible. He let Lance take the torch from him without a
fight, and tried not to notice as his friend paced quickly on into the
chamber, waving the flashlight up and down the neat rows of death
chronicles and watching the years fly by.

'They must have thousands of these things in here!' Lance shouted from
quite far away. 'How is this possible?'

Richard meanwhile felt a need to sit down. The stone floor beneath him
felt oddly warm, but this was the least of his worries. He was sitting
in a room that appeared to chronicle the deaths of millions of people,
hundreds of thousands of people for each year since the dawn of time or
so it seemed. Quite naturally he was struggling to comprehend this
idea. What made it harder of course was the fact that he was the latest
in line to receive his death sentence, and very soon he would be
joining these millions of unfortunates in their literary and literal
graves, and he had absolutely no clue as to why.

'Don't feel sad,' a medieval peasant whispered, sitting down next to
him and dripping blood from a sucking chest wound all over the floor.
'It's all part of the process. At least you know it's all being taken
note of. Nothing you do is unrecorded. Isn't that comforting?'

'I don't want to die.' Richard moaned.

'No-one does.'

'No-one except those bloody Christian martyrs,' declared an emaciated
Roman governor some metres away, 'They're always begging for it. Oh,
throw me to the lions governor, please governor, crucify me! Your
emperor isn't a god I don't worship him at all! I'm a Christian, I'm a
Christian and you're supposed to punish me. Punish me punish me
governor! Kill me kill me!' He shouted in an increasingly high-pitched
voice, 'They were gagging for it.'

'Quite literally after a while I'd've thought,' Philip Larkin chipped
in, offering Richard a hand and pulling him to his feet. 'Listen
Richard there really isn't much time. You have to leave here and you
have to leave now. Something has come up that was quite unexpected, it
really could spoil everything if-'

'Richard!' Lance called out through the darkness. Richard turned to
look for the light from the torch, and when he turned back his
librarian poet had vanished and he was alone again. He caught sight of
the torchlight and made haste through a dark maze of bookshelves
towards it.

'Richard look!' Lance said excitedly, handing Richard a very thin book
with red covers.

'This isn't a New Eschatologist?'

'No, look at the spine!'

'The Bible, Part Three?' Lance looked at Richard, and Richard looked at
Lance, and as the their eyes met they saw in each other the same
feeling of elation, confusion, and awful fear. Something great and
terrible was happening. Then Lance visibly sniffed the air in front of
him.

'What's that smell?'

'Sulphur, I smelt it when we came in.'

'No, it's not?.What's that light?'

'What light?'

'That light.' Lance pointed at a flickering reddish glow not far from
their location. Their eyes met again, this time it was fear and only
fear they saw in each other. 'Fire'

'Let's get out of here.'
Richard turned and started to run, but noticing Lance was not following
him he turned only to see Lance running the other way.

'Where are you going?' He shouted.

'The way we came.' Lance called back, bringing himself to a stop with
obvious difficulty.

'That's not the way we came!'

'Yes it is!'

'It's not!' Richard screamed, beginning to feel smoke in his
lungs.

'It is! COME ON!'
Richard prevaricated.

'I've got the sodding flashlight remember.'
Having no time in which to debate the issue and with the threat of
death by either smoke inhalation or horrible burns very close now,
Richard capitulated and put his faith in his friend. He might have been
better not to.

'We're heading towards the fire.'

'No we're not.'

'Yes we are'

'We weren't a moment ago.'

They stopped. 'Okay, so we are, but I swear we weren't before.' Lance
shined the flashlight over the bookcase, 'New Eschatologist Spring
948,' where did we come in?'

'I don't remember, Roman times?'

'No, it was later than that.'

'Does it matter, do we know what order these shelves go in?'

Lance thought for a moment. 'No.'

'Alright my sense of direction is pretty good,' Richard began,
coughing, 'Hand me the flashlight.' Lance vacillated. 'Come on.'

'Okay, fine take it,' he capitulated, 'but let's get moving.'

They moved, running parallel to the fire in a direction Richard hoped
was westwards. They rounded a corner, headed down a bookshelf corridor,
rounded another corner, and were facing the fire again, this time it
was closer.

'Fuck' Richard screamed, watching the wannabe inferno tear its way
through the perfect kindling of dry old books and dry old bookcases.
'We're trapped. It's hopeless.'

'No,' Lance grabbed the flashlight back again, 'Come on, we've got to
keep moving.' He pulled Richard onward, round another corner, down
another corridor, and a long way down an alley between the bookcases in
search of one of the walls. He could not find anything after what
seemed like an impossible distance and soon they found themselves once
more facing the fire. Lance was close to surrender, he felt the smoke
clotting in his lungs and the heat of the fire stifling his
breath.

'Turn left' Richard said meekly but with conviction.

'What?'

'Left, we need to go left.'

'How do you know all of a sudden.'

'Philip Larkin told me.' Richard grabbed the flashlight and dashed in
the direction his Hull poet had told him to go. With no other choice
Lance followed, cursing his luck to be saddled with a friend such as
Richard, who had no doubt led him to his death. They wound around left,
then right, then straight on, then left, all the while with Richard
shouting praises to his god Larkin and Lance struggling to keep up.
Finally they turned the last corner and there in front of them stood
the exit. Richard giggled with mad glee as he stumbled forward the last
few metres, 'We're saved!' He chuckled, but he was mistaken. Before
either he or Lance could get to the door, an enormous figure in a
veritably tent-sized dress appeared silhouetted in the portal. The last
thing Richard heard as the oak door slammed closed was the steady and
triumphant beat of Janice's clicker.