In the center of the ancient brick library-which itself stood roughly at or near the center of the somehow cryptic town; a cryptic quality that perhaps only came from the overlook of the town, its odd combination of rural barrenness, inhospitable urban vibrancy and decaying urban and suburban sprawl: the old Catholic cathedral, the series of abandoned, filthy mills that loomed like vast ancient stone mastadons by the grey river; the archaic, blasted factories; the scarred, fenceless, lifeless gravel heaps (those vast barren wastes of suburbia or urbia), gravelyards, graveyards, gravel pits; the crumbling, clotted, stained white sidewalks, the eerie closeness of the buildings downtown, and of course the railroad: all the bloody, rusty red rails, the sagging, pitted, dilapidated, scarred, faded, uneven ties, the sprays and crooked lines of gravel alongside then, the ancient, huge, cryptic signs, switches and eldritch railroad crossings with their sinister black-hooded lights resembling a glowing red eye of evil intent; but most of all, the vast, abandoned, ruined railroad yard, the stockyard, the hellish terminus fro the regional rail line, a rail line that barely functioned anymore; this, this juxtaposition of barrenness, sprawl, enclosure, ancientness, ruin and decay, this was the town, at least, it was the downtown-there stood a vast, mighty iron-walled, iron-floored, iron-shelved, iron-roofed, finally, iron-doored cubic vault. It was old itself, too-and why shouldn't it have been? It was appropriate, it was fitting. After all, didn't the subterranean vault (which was so moribund and tomb-like, so funerary despite its drab color of faded dull iron-gray and its pyramidal apex in its broad roof that tapered to that point that so Egyptian and ancient) house only the rarest, most valuable, oldest tomes?
They were ancient, dusty, moldy, musty, mellowing, faded volumes-many of them first editions, both fiction and nonfiction, even textbook; somehow autographed with a plain, simple authorial homily and scriptural signature by the original authors themselves!
And, some of these archaic voumes were from before the Colonial period; although, really, more of them, most of them were published well after it.
So, down deep in the library and at it's center, somehow resembling and acting like its ancient, giant, ferrous, boxy heart-perhaps the heart of a slumbering yet deadly beast; an ancient, mammoth beast-there was the vault and its lifeblood was the grand storehouse of the breadth of history; the representative history; of American literature trhough almost as many eras and ages as America had existed.
Naturally, due to the sensitive, valuable nature of the goods locked away within its iron fastness and impregnability, only a hand-picked chosen few (most of them being head librarian, librarians and library assistants with the most experience and seniority) were allowed oft-limited access to that sacred inner chamber.
In the sacrosanct nature of that sanctum sanctorum; though in a way it was more like a neglected, enclosed bouleterion or a more open, larger genizah; and the reverence, dignity and exclusivity that they paid to it, there was something hauntingly, cryptically religious, as if they regarded it as a grand, sacred, secure altar or pulpit or sacrifical, blood-stained, knife-decumbent, pagan, gilded table: a table of horrors, or terrors, of darkness-of immolation and wicked intent. For at least in the physical, mental and perhaps spiritual or at least implicative darkness of it all, the operating force behind whatever latent or clandestine religiosity attached to it was clearly a malevolent one.
Yet, in the end, all it was, was a careful, selective, thorough safe and slow selection and placement and protection of irreplaceable books, wasn't it?
What harm or horror was there possibly in it-or behind it, coiled up, curled up like a giant satanic viper ready to spring and strike with celerity, with devastating, deadly force?
If anyone would have known the obvious answer to those ominous, purposeful questions, it would have been one of the elite: the few chosen librarians sent to maintain that somehow morbid site.
Without that locale, in the well-lit, temperature-controlled, sterile yet cozy and clean, heart-warming precincts, corridors and stacks, shelves of the library proper itself, one would never guess, never imagine, never dream of the existence of that nighted, locked, dank, dark, ferrous cardial chamber and the portentousness, the prodigiousness, the odiousness or, at least, creepiness that suffused it-and that undoubtedly crept into the heart and mind of even the steeliest, most stalwart, staunchest librarian (with an overactive, paranoid, horrific, Kingian imagination) whose misfortune it was to draw the task of repairing down on some foolish, mercifully infrequent, irregular detergent errand.
Thus, it was a young librarian's occupation occasionally to be slated with this grim, hateful, unenviable duty one eeriely, unseasonably delightful, balmy spring's early evening.
The books in the vault, much like orchids in a greenhouse, in a glass-roofed, glass-walled steamy hothouse, needed at least occasional but still meticulous tending, arrangement/rearrangement, and maintenance; though this rarely involved anything more difficult or ostentatious than a simple dusting-yet if methodically done, due to the sheer volume of volumes, such a dusting could take weeks: straight, sleepless weeks of nothing more than dusty diligence, of dusty wiping, swiping, and flat, nay, flattest erasure of airborne, book-settling filth.
The vile, crushing irony of it all was that the vault was constructed to be an utterly dust-free, airtight sterilely clean chamber....yet obviously this design specification no longer held true-if indeed it had ever been the truth at all.
Often, all the many oddly spousal or maternal duties associated with and occuring at libraries were clearly set out in a kind of little duty roster or log (a log of bibliographical. bibliophilc devoirs: most related to upkeep and dust or mold-eradication; often by any means necessary) that was itemized for each person and that stated, with no room for convenient ambiguity, who would do what for any given night, on any given night. The oft-monastic vocational behavior of most normal librarians notwithstanding, in this one man's mind, as he stood now over the night's duty roster and read his name and his nightly, seldom-performed taks with muted but ever-growing disgust (and possibly horror) it seemed to go far beyond that.
They were ancient, dusty, moldy, musty, mellowing, faded volumes-many of them first editions, both fiction and nonfiction, even textbook; somehow autographed with a plain, simple authorial homily and scriptural signature by the original authors themselves!
And, some of these archaic voumes were from before the Colonial period; although, really, more of them, most of them were published well after it.
So, down deep in the library and at it's center, somehow resembling and acting like its ancient, giant, ferrous, boxy heart-perhaps the heart of a slumbering yet deadly beast; an ancient, mammoth beast-there was the vault and its lifeblood was the grand storehouse of the breadth of history; the representative history; of American literature trhough almost as many eras and ages as America had existed.
Naturally, due to the sensitive, valuable nature of the goods locked away within its iron fastness and impregnability, only a hand-picked chosen few (most of them being head librarian, librarians and library assistants with the most experience and seniority) were allowed oft-limited access to that sacred inner chamber.
In the sacrosanct nature of that sanctum sanctorum; though in a way it was more like a neglected, enclosed bouleterion or a more open, larger genizah; and the reverence, dignity and exclusivity that they paid to it, there was something hauntingly, cryptically religious, as if they regarded it as a grand, sacred, secure altar or pulpit or sacrifical, blood-stained, knife-decumbent, pagan, gilded table: a table of horrors, or terrors, of darkness-of immolation and wicked intent. For at least in the physical, mental and perhaps spiritual or at least implicative darkness of it all, the operating force behind whatever latent or clandestine religiosity attached to it was clearly a malevolent one.
Yet, in the end, all it was, was a careful, selective, thorough safe and slow selection and placement and protection of irreplaceable books, wasn't it?
What harm or horror was there possibly in it-or behind it, coiled up, curled up like a giant satanic viper ready to spring and strike with celerity, with devastating, deadly force?
If anyone would have known the obvious answer to those ominous, purposeful questions, it would have been one of the elite: the few chosen librarians sent to maintain that somehow morbid site.
Without that locale, in the well-lit, temperature-controlled, sterile yet cozy and clean, heart-warming precincts, corridors and stacks, shelves of the library proper itself, one would never guess, never imagine, never dream of the existence of that nighted, locked, dank, dark, ferrous cardial chamber and the portentousness, the prodigiousness, the odiousness or, at least, creepiness that suffused it-and that undoubtedly crept into the heart and mind of even the steeliest, most stalwart, staunchest librarian (with an overactive, paranoid, horrific, Kingian imagination) whose misfortune it was to draw the task of repairing down on some foolish, mercifully infrequent, irregular detergent errand.
Thus, it was a young librarian's occupation occasionally to be slated with this grim, hateful, unenviable duty one eeriely, unseasonably delightful, balmy spring's early evening.
The books in the vault, much like orchids in a greenhouse, in a glass-roofed, glass-walled steamy hothouse, needed at least occasional but still meticulous tending, arrangement/rearrangement,
The vile, crushing irony of it all was that the vault was constructed to be an utterly dust-free, airtight sterilely clean chamber....yet obviously this design specification no longer held true-if indeed it had ever been the truth at all.
Often, all the many oddly spousal or maternal duties associated with and occuring at libraries were clearly set out in a kind of little duty roster or log (a log of bibliographical. bibliophilc devoirs: most related to upkeep and dust or mold-eradication; often by any means necessary) that was itemized for each person and that stated, with no room for convenient ambiguity, who would do what for any given night, on any given night. The oft-monastic vocational behavior of most normal librarians notwithstanding, in this one man's mind, as he stood now over the night's duty roster and read his name and his nightly, seldom-performed taks with muted but ever-growing disgust (and possibly horror) it seemed to go far beyond that.
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