This notice found pasted to the door leading to the attic room in a gloriously higgledy-piggledy secondhand bookshop, recently. The final invocation imprecation instruction in particular is awfully suggestive of tales of gothick horror perhaps yet to condense from the quantum foam.
What, for example, would one seek to find under ‘Esoteric’ if not the Unaussprechlichen Kulten of von Junzt; pages from the Pnakotic Manuscripts or the Sussex Fragments; the Cultes des Goules of the Comte d’Erlette, or, dare one even mention, the abhorred Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Al-Hazred?
And what would happen were the door to be shut? Would such a disturbance trigger the arrival of the Great Old Ones from cyclopean depths of uttermost space, followed by the issuance of a charnel-house stench of uncoverèd graves, and, notwithstanding inasmuch as which, noises of chthonic, eldritch and – noblesse oblige – preternatural horror?
What would happen to the bibliophile who, having crossed that portal in search of the forbidden and arcane – perhaps lured by ghostly piping audible only to himself, but which appears to emanate from some immeasurably distant Tartarus – were to turn and find that the door had shut behind him?
On a sudden I find that such ghastly images fill my mind. I must write them down before my teeming brian brain brian bursts asunder! But what’s that I hear? That noise on the stair, a florid creaking as of hideous shuggoths squishing wetly up from the basement… The horror! The horror! The door! The door! Hold the door! I cannot…! Iâ, iâ Shub-Niggurath! The sight …. those hideous testicles tentacles…” Aaaargh!
[Professor Trellis - you know what is expected of you.]
What about the poor soul who wishes to ascend to the attic but finds the door closed? What are they to do?
They are to study philosophy, esoterics, or classics as the attic with the religious books is closed for them.
Alone can have an answer of the author of: “Y’all’s Destruction”.
My word. That is amazing.
Goodness me. Maybe there is some hallucinogenic substance produced by the moulds growing on the old books?
Oh, I hope so…