Fowler,
Christopher. Rune (New York: Ballantine, 1991) 340 p.
The
basement of an old and rundown London library houses a great
collection of occult books. Dorothy Huxley is the librarian. “With
her hair tied in a bun and a woolen cardigan draped over her narrow
shoulders, she appeared more like a pensioner checking for the latest
romance novel.” (p. 96). Her assistant is Frank Drake.
His
enthusiasm was boundless and mostly misapplied.... Some people lacked
the necessary equipment to face the rigors and responsibilities of
modern life. Frank Drake was one of them. Academically bright but
physically useless, he was doomed to be a perpetual student, full of
ideas about how to change the world, but incapable of changing a
plug.... He possessed an aptitude for a startling array of skills,
but his ever-shifting attention destroyed his prospects in any single
career. His mind was a jumble of good intentions, a confusion of
half-baked plans that constantly intruded into his work. Twenty-eight
years old, slightly built and prematurely balding, he seemed destined
to pass into middle age ten years ahead of other people.
Although
most of the general library sections were depleted, the building’s
single greatest strength lay in the volumes on ancient history and
the supernatural which Dorothy’s mother had collected together. A
red rope separated the entrance from the public section of the
library. The stairs led down to the occult reference collection,
housed in the basement.... The overhead light panel flickered on. As
the smell of decay filled her nostrils, she took stock of the room.
The far wall of the basement had a severe case of rising damp, and
most of the stacks nearest to it—TEMPLARS, TETRAGRAMS, THOUGHT
READING, TRANSMUTATION—were steeped in mildew. (p. 97).
Dorothy
stood in the basement of the library and felt the frightening weight
of the words which surrounded her. It was as if the sheer volume of
thought held here had created an artificial gravity within the room.
She felt the bloating damp which mottled the pages of each ancient
tome pressing against her skin, but still dangerous that their mere
transcription had caused untold suffering. Lives had been lost
building this collection. Theories with their seeds in one volume had
been nurtured in another decades later; and later still had borne
their poisoned fruit in detailed manuscripts. The collection,
completed by her mother as she neared her final breath, now lay in
waste and decay, its secrets undiscovered.
But
this was how it had been intended.
For
although the collection represented itself as harmless esoterica to
the casual browser, it revealed to the dedicated scholar a universe
of cruelty, for the simple reason that it was perfectly complete. No
further study was needed than careful perusal of the books within
these walls. Their knowledge, once it had been truly comprehended and
applied, would yield a harvest of such darkness that no light would
ever penetrate the void again. The library could kill. (p. 154-55).
Dorothy
uses the occult reference collection to help foil an international
conspiracy. The general collection also comes in handy when some of
Dorothy’s friends try to create a videotape with a subliminal
message. They arrange the book spines on the shelves in the
background to spell out the message.