Eternal Beasts

Infection

But, as several long moments went by with the book remaining silent, Jared carefully retook his seat, a thoughtful frown on his face as he stared at the now innocent seeming tome. Oddly enough, despite what happened in the library basement, he found himself literally being consumed alive by curiosity, almost to the point of it controlling him. He had to know what the book contained, even if such a discovery would kill him!

After a long hesitation, he reached for it. Just before his hand fell on the smooth material covering the spine again he paused, waiting for something to happen. He wanted to make good and sure no shocking bursts of energy rudely greeted him this time.

When nothing appeared, Jared's eyes narrowed. Then he took hold of the book with an almost convulsive surge. No risk, no reward, he thought as he slowly wrapped his long fingers around the book's massive spine. A slight pull of his arm, the heavy tome slid across the desk's battered surface with little resistance, a further surprise considering its obvious weight. 

Pivoting it around, he eased it back onto its back cover before taking hold of the front cover. The heavy leaf pulled at his fingers as he swung it around to lay it gently on the desktop. By the feel of it, the bulk of the book was indeed in its pages, the top cover, while heavy, not overwhelmingly so. With his other hand, Jared reached out to flip on the small desk lamp sitting on the desk's far corner.

As the soft white light fell on the book's first page, Jared found it covered with strange, alien script and equally unusual illustrations. Eyes narrowed, he leaned in close. What was this, with its graceful lines, dots and swoops? Arabic? Yet the fine, almost spidery script not only didn't resemble the flowing written language of the Middle East, it resembled no language Jared knew. And he knew quite a few, thanks to his father's globetrotting clientele.

At least the illustration, while unusual, was more understandable. It consisted of two circles, drawn like map globes, sitting side by side at the bottom of the page. Peering close, Jared could see the outlines of continents and islands had been drawn on the globes in the same fading ink the top section appeared to be written with. A caption or title was below it, but in the same alien language and so undecipherable.

The page itself crinkled softly when Jared touched it to trace along the outline of one of the landmasses. Its fragile material resembled fine velum or parchment. He had seen a couple of books made out of those materials in visits to Europe when he was younger. Usually they were old, valuable and most often sacred to their owners. Could this book be a holy book of some kind? He mused as he carefully turned the first page over.

That revealed a blank page. But when that one was turned aside, the young man found himself looking at a page densely covered with the flowing alien script. Carefully he flipped it over and discovered it was covered front and back. As was the next page, and the next.

At first glance the script seemed to run on endlessly, with no beginning or end on each page. But as Jared looked more closely, he could see gaps between the lines and slight indentations that marked the beginning of each new cluster of lines. They could only be paragraph indents. Using those as markers, he determined the text seemed to go from right to left, as it did in Arabic, though the book started on the left, as it did in Western languages.

Lips pursed thoughtfully, Jared continued to leaf through the fragile-seeming pages, eyes searching each page for something familiar. Each new page greeted him with more of the spidery writing, oft times accompanied by more drawings and illustrations.

At first the drawings were details of the map globes Jared found on the first page, each simple yet devastatingly clear and easy to follow. One in particular captured Jared's attention for a minute or two, showing a broad plain, mountains to the south and east and bordered on the west by an ocean. Shortly after that particular map, however, the illustrations began to change.