Haggopian and Other Stories

“Why, we…that is…” Harry stumbled again, feeling foolish, wondering just why they had come.

“Please enter,” said the old man, standing aside and ushering them deeper, irresistibly in. “It is the books, of course it is. They all come to see Möhrsen’s books sooner or later. And of course there is the view from the tower. And the catacombs…”

“It was the ruins,” Harry finally found his voice. “We saw the old building from the road, and—”

“Picturesque, eh. The ruins in the trees… Ah!—but there are other things here. You will see.”

“Actually,” Julia choked it out, fighting with a sudden attack of nausea engendered by the noisome aspect of their host, “we don’t have much time…”

The old man caught at their elbows, yellow eyes flashing in the gloomy interior. “Time? No time?” His hideous voice grew intense in a moment. “True, how true. Time is running out for all of us!”

It seemed then that a draught, coming from nowhere, caught at the great door and eased it shut. As the gloom deepened Julia held all the more tightly to Harry’s arm, but the shrunken custodian of the place had turned his back to guide them on with an almost peremptory: “Follow me.”

And follow him they did.

Drawn silently along in his wake, like seabirds following an ocean liner through the night, they climbed stone steps, entered a wide corridor with an arched ceiling, finally arrived at a room with a padlocked door. Möhrsen unlocked the door, turned, bowed, and ushered them through.

“My library,” he told them, “my beautiful books.”

With the opening of the door light had flooded the corridor, a beam broad as the opening in which musty motes were caught, drifting, eddying about in the disturbed air. The large room—bare except for a solitary chair, a table, and tier upon tier of volume-weighted shelves arrayed against the walls—had a massive window composed of many tiny panes. Outside the sun had finally won its battle with the clouds; it shone wanly afar, above the distant mountains, its autumn beam somehow penetrating the layers of grime on the small panes.

“Dust!” cried the ancient. “The dust of decades—of decay! I cannot keep it down.” He turned to them. “But see, you must sign.”

“Sign?” Harry questioned. “Oh, I see. A visitors’ book.”

“Indeed, for how else might I remember those who visit me here? See, look at all the names…”

The old man had taken a leather-bound volume from the table. It was not a thick book, and as Möhrsen turned the parchment leaves they could see that each page bore a number of signatures, each signature being dated. Not one entry was less than ten years old. Harry turned back the pages to the first entry and stared at it. The ink had faded with the centuries so that he could not easily make out the ornately flourished signature. The date, on the other hand, was still quite clear: “Frühling, 1611.”

“An old book indeed,” he commented, “but recently, it seems, visitors have been scarce…” Though he made no mention of it, frankly he could see little point in his signing such a book.

“Sign nevertheless,” the old man gurgled, almost as if he could read Harry’s mind. “Yes, you must, and the madam too.” Harry reluctantly took out a pen; and Möhrsen watched intently as they scribbled their signatures.

“Ah, good, good!” he chortled, rubbing his hands together. “There we have it—two more visitors, two more names. It makes an old man happy, sometimes, to remember his visitors… And sometimes it makes him sad.”

“Oh?” Julia said, interested despite herself. “Why sad?”

“Because I know that many of them who visited me here are no more, of course!” He blinked great yellow eyes at them.

“But look here, look here,” he continued, pointing a grimy sharp-nailed finger at a signature. “This one: ‘Justin Geoffrey, 12 June, 1926’. A young American poet, he was. A man of great promise. Alas, he gazed too long upon the Black Stone!”

“The Black Stone?” Harry frowned. “But—”

“And here, two years earlier: ‘Charles Dexter Ward’—another American, come to see my books. And here, an Englishman this time, one of your own countrymen, ‘John Kingsley Brown’.” He let the pages flip through filthy fingers. “And here another, but much more recently. See: ‘Hamilton Tharpe, November, 1959’. Ah, I remember Mr. Tharpe well! We shared many a rare discussion here in this very room. He aspired to the priesthood, but—” He sighed. “Yes, seekers after knowledge all, but many of them ill-fated, I fear…”

“You mentioned the Black Stone,” Julia said. “I wondered—?”

“Hmm? Oh, nothing. An old legend, nothing more. It is believed to be very bad luck to gaze upon the stone.”

“Yes,” Harry nodded. “We were told much the same thing in Stregoicavar.”

“Ah!” Möhrsen immediately cried, snapping shut the book of names, causing his visitors to jump. “So you, too, have seen the Black Stone?” He returned the volume to the table, then regarded them again, nodding curiously. Teeth yellow as his eyes showed as he betrayed a sly, suggestive smile.