A stuttering strobe of white, white light chased the darkness into the distance. A chthonic rumble followed. The returning night hid Jane’s smile. On nights like this, her soul was always a warm summer afternoon. She walked past the uncurtained window.
Her night had begun with a simple dinner alone at one corner of the large, echoing kitchen. A candle her only light; an iron stove her only heat. A visit to the crypt where the Incunabulum slept in its steel cradle followed. After pausing to watch the storm, she continued upthe main body of the house for the company of the more congenial books in the library.
An evening of reading would be concluded by a night of dream brought by the adventures of one parchment bound hero or another.
Once in the library, Jane quickly lit the fire from logs and kindling already laid in the grate.
The book she had chosen sat on table draped in ivory silk beside the overstuffed chair.
She settled in, curling her feet beneath her. Jane sniffed at the pages of the book before opening it, savouring the vanilla smell of old binding. Her fingers caressed the supple leather of its cover. Chestnut hair tumbled in waves over one shoulder, highlighted by the cheery fire.
The flames crackled in the large stone fireplace, their flickering light dancing over row upon row of books, leaving those immediately surrounding it in deepest shadow.
Jane could feel the heat on her forehead, cheeks, arms, and the parts of her legs not covered by her nightgown.
She opened the tome at the leather strip that marked her place and read.
Thus, she began enjoying the company of one of her heroes, this one a peasant human girl named Davida, on a world that no longer existed.
Davida was an orphan of the only sizable city on her world, a grim plutocracy called Scorn. Her mother had been a Teller of Fate and part-time whore murdered by a client when Davida was eight local years old.
Coming upon the horrific attack, Davida had fled her mother’s room with the only things worth taking: her honour and a bag of dark indigo silk containing a fat pack of cards, the Syrat. That deck the older woman had used to great effect to tell the future as well as the past and, more surprisingly to most, the hidden truths of the ever-burning present.
For years afterward, as childhood died and young womanhood bloomed, Davida followed her mother’s path as Teller of Fate, though something lacking in her kept her from becoming as skilled.
As for the older woman’s other profession, luck and a charm that frightened as much as it enchanted kept the attentions of the Jonnies from lingering on her body. It was a poor, though a happy life.
Then the Dark Man came.
Jane read with horror how the Dark Man, who had murdered her mother to gain the Syrat, chanced upon it again in the possession of her unaware daughter.
She cheered as she read of Davida’s use of the Syrat to flee the Dark Man’s intent.
Jane had just read of her appearance in a hut made of uncured wood in the desert when a noise from the hall gently tugged her back into her own world.
At first, she couldn’t name the source of the disturbance. It wasn’t sound, though it had something of the feel of an audio disturbance. It was more a movement in the air, a vibration just shy of actual sound.
She wasn’t overly concerned at first.
The only other person who could get into the house alive was her twin brother. Still, something was out of place. Heightened senses and a lifetime of training came to her aid.
Someone who had no business here was in the house.
That someone had breached the security of the outer portal and her only warning had been that out of place not-quite-a-noise.
Jane stood and closed the book, dropping it into the seat of the chair. Lifting the hem of her nightgown, she stepped silently to the thick double doors sealing the room.
Pressing her ear to the door, the young woman let all sound fall silent. The crackling of the fire, she blocked out, then the sound of her breathing and even the faint double pump of her heart.
‘Listening’ was an inadequate word for the sense she employed now, but no better word existed in any language spoken by humanity.
After a timeless interval, she had it: the soft pads of three sets of steps along the hall two floors below. They were after the Book.
Jane spent a bare second deciding that she had time to change before going to confront the thieves; they should be stopped by the guardian that blocked the entrance to the crypt. Making not a sound, Jane of Clan Airkhart left the library and headed to her room to change.
Continued here.
—Gideon Jagged
Innsmouth, July 2026
© Gideon Jagged
All Rights Reserved