I originally posted this here for a writing prompt.
How long I sat there in silent study, I cannot tell. I know that when I first pulled down that book from off its shelf and bent that ancient binding and set my ignorant gaze upon those wicked leaves and saw that horrid script running across the pages, I had an instinct to run. No, instead I ran my eyes along those evil lines and read. How long I sat there, I cannot tell.
When I turned the last page, and finally closed the cover of that ominous tome, I awoke with a start to my surroundings. First, I saw that the lights had all gone out. No more were the library’s florescent bulbs droning quietly above. Yet, this came into my mind next, how did I see so clearly? I saw by a green glow which hung like a phosphorescent mist over everything.
My eye found out a window whereat a drizzly rain of sticky tar seemed to be falling over the town I called home, and quiet and blue and melancholy those empty buildings lay without one soul to be seen moving along those once familiar streets.
With a creeping up my spine, I felt the need to pull away from this strange vision and face once more that dark library. How I had stood with my back to it for so long, I cannot tell.
The geometry of my immediate surroundings seemed reasonable, though all was cast in tones of that garish green glow. The legs of the table were right, that is, perpendicular, as they ought to be. The book lay as it ought too, flat upon a flat surface. The chair felt solid enough under me. But, as my gaze wandered down the, I hesitate to say columns or rows, of bookshelves, all the normal laws of angles and dimensions seemed to fall away into a kaleidoscope of escheresk monstrosity.
There was no ceiling or floor or even walls. There was no end to it. Just a continual maze of dark books. I had often joked with my sister that I should like to be buried at the library and not at the church. Here the nightmarish reality of that fancy was brought to my eyes.
All in a flash, it ended. My vision passed, and I was once again in the familiar town library. It was late. Only old Mordechai was there, poor mad Mordechai, who whispered strange things to his bottle, who would only come into the library when it rained.
I reached over to lay my hand upon that weird volume, but all I felt was the cold plastic of the table. No, the book was gone, if it had ever been.
Tale Told 