The Library of Forbidden Books

Chapter 11

Nina and Gretchen paged through the peculiar book that resonated the life and philosophies of Adolf Hitler. It gave Nina chills, how accurately the pages mirrored that of the chapters printed to the world, but she kept paging. Gretchen stood by her side, now almost totally sober, biting her thumbnail as she perused the messy slanted text with her friend.

“I have to know what else is in there,” Nina announced with such zeal that her friend had to hold her back.

“Bad idea, Nina. We don’t know the state of the structure!”

“I don’t care. If this is the original text in Hitler’s own hand, imagine what else could be found,” Nina argued.

“Okay, fine. So then tell me, if these books are so profound a find, how come they are here in the open and nobody who worked in the house, nobody who appraised it, none of the estate agents, took any of these books?” Gretchen made her point clear with assertion. Nina turned to her with a frown and passed her the book, so that her hands would be free for the others. Gretchen shook her head, her expression fraught with disinclination.

Nina pressed forward to retrieve a larger book. The spine was ripped halfway down, exposing the twine that bound it once. It was a brick brown color now, but Nina guessed that it was once red. Unlike the previous book it was not an amateur production and contained print, but there was no detail of publisher or date of first publication. Only the title gave hint to its contents:

The Combined Gospels of Heyel’repetus and Argathule.

“What the f…?” Nina frowned as she paged, reading brief passages of necromancy, sacrifices, and cannibalism as rites to deities. Etchings stained every few pages with instructions on these despicable practices. “Gretch, this one has no author mentioned… anywhere.”

“Did Hitler ever come to Scotland?” Gretchen asked. “Or was there ever a Nazi occupation in Oban?”

“No, not as far as I know. During the Battle of the Atlantic in the Second World War, the Royal Canadian Navy and the British Royal Navy plus the Allied merchant ships frequented the area. There was a base here too, to look out for enemy U-boats of the Kriegsmarine, and the Allied air forces kept the Luftwaffe to ensure that merchant ships made it safely through to Great Britain and Russia,” Nina explained. “Also, remember Hess flying to Scotland to try to broker peace with us? Hitler’s right-hand man, deputy führer of all things, betrayed him by that solo flight to Scotland.”

“Oh, yes, Rudolf Hess! Hey, you think he might have brought this version of Mein Kampf to Scotland?” Gretchen asked. Nina shrugged. She was curious as to the odd religions mentioned in the formerly red book.

“Let me see that one,” Gretchen smiled, holding out her hand.

“See? I knew you wouldn’t be able to keep your nose out of this adventure,” Nina chuckled, and passed Gretchen the red book that lacked an author or date. Her friend started paging, but when she came to a certain sketch in the last few chapters she gasped in terror and dropped the book to the dusty wooden floor. Nina was struggling to get two other books out when she heard Gretchen’s reaction.

“What?”

Gretchen looked ashen.

“Gretchen! What is it?” Nina pressed. It was strange to see her flamboyant pal so shaken, but Gretchen just smiled uncomfortably and shook her head, “Just creeped out by some of the pictures in there. My God, the stuff people are capable of!”

“No shit,” Nina replied, thinking of her own experiences of the past with evil people who followed very strange dogmas. “These two are at least marked properly with publishers and authors, but, you know, these titles were banned in the old days.”

“How do you mean?” Gretchen asked, wiping her hands profusely on her clothing. “Banned by whom?”

“In general, the Vatican, the church. It was called the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, a record of forbidden books that could corrupt the world or undermine the church’s authority,” Nina explained as she looked through the decrepit pages. “This one is by Voltaire,” she mentioned. “Oooh, so forbidden.” Gretchen had to giggle at Nina’s mockery. Nina looked at the other. “And here is Jean-Jacques Rousseau, aye. No wonder they are put in the walls. Obviously they were not supposed to be out here among the impressionable minds.”

“This is fascinating, Nina! There was a reason you had to get this house!” Gretchen exclaimed. “What else is in there?”

Nina grinned like a boastful child, scraping her hands dirty against the age-old interior of the makeshift hidden bookcase. One after the other, she retrieved books that were listed on the index before 1966. Of course she could not recall them all, but she knew which authors’ works were prohibited.

Another unmarked book made its appearance, a work of literature so vile that Nina threw it aside as soon as the wall birthed it. It fell with an unholy thump, the impact challenging the thunder outside and the thick dust from the coarse wood blossomed up around the thick, massive book. Gretchen shrieked at the horrible binding of it.

“I know,” Nina winced. “It looks like a goddamn spider.”

Gretchen’s eyes grew wide as she scrutinized the cover. Slowly she stalked closer, her heart speeding as the thing came into view under the dangling naked bulb that hung suspended from the rafters by its flimsy electrical cord. “Ni-na?” Gretchen whined slowly.

“Yes, Gretchen,” Nina’s muffled voice came from inside the wall. She was bent over, her torso all the way in to reach the books right at the back, covered mostly by sand and wooden shavings. Gretchen crept closer to the grotesque tome on the floor, half expecting it to move.

“Nina!” she called again.

“What?”

“Why did you throw this book without looking at it?” Gretchen asked. By now her voice was wrapped in serene hysteria.

“Because it was covered in fucking spiderwebs. Yugh! Soft and stringy,” Nina replied. “Why?”

Gretchen sank to her knees next to the book and her throat caught a lump, begging her to purge, but she resisted vomiting. The book exuded a sweet, muffled odor that smelled mercifully like old newspaper and mold, because it was not composed of old paper and mildew after all.

“Those were not spiderwebs, darling,” Gretchen said, scared sober. “It was hair.”

Nina stopped what she was doing. She did not emerge from the small nook yet, but there was no doubt she heard Gretchen loud and clear.

“Hair.” That was all Nina said. It was not a question and it was not a statement, as much as it was an admission of denial. “Jesus Christ, Gretchen! I thought that was what it was, but I could not wrap my head around that!”

“Well, this guy wrapped his head around it,” Gretchen punned to her friend’s horror. Nina came out of the wall and looked at the book from afar, her mouth agape.

“No.”

“Yes, look. It is someone’s face and scalp with the hair, bound as a book cover,” Gretchen revealed rather matter-of-factly. By now she was so shocked that it became fascinating more than it was macabre to her.

“No.”

“Come and see,” Gretchen said, pulling a disgusted face as she took her flick knife from her pants pocket and opened it. Now double the length, she dared pry the cover from the first page and lift it just enough to bear her threatening regurgitation. Nina came to crouch next to her with unbridled repugnance, both women enthralled by the abhorrent object and its nature. Inside, on the first page there was nothing but dirt and mildew. With a dual shriek from both women, Gretchen flicked it open to use her knife to page on.

The second page mentioned the strange religions again, this time printed in German with no publisher or date they could see. The title stood alone at the top of the page — Zur Ehre Argathules.

Nina felt her stomach twist into knots when below the title of the revolting book she found the symbol she so loathed — the emblem she never wanted to see again as long as she lived, but was somehow bound to. The black circle with its radiating blades of lightning-shaped rays mocked her from the page.

At once she knew why Purdue had them chasing the Spear of Destiny, why the brotherhood’s volumes on Norse mythology spoke of shapeless gods and why Atlanteans suffered the fate they did for having too much knowledge of the advanced civilization reputed to have brought the human race to Earth. The occult societies of the Third Reich sought the means to use religious relics to summon ancient and evil gods. Nina looked at Gretchen and tried to recall what she shared in the car on their way to Oban. All that talk of metaphysics and Nazi secrets now had a ludicrous logic to it all.

Would now be the worst time to bring that conversation up, Nina wondered as she watched her old friend pull up her nose at the atrocious item on the floor. Why did she want me to go to that lecture in the first place, if not to sway me to their views even just a little?

“Gretch,” she said, without thinking twice about it.

“Yah?” her friend said from the floor, still unable to peel her eyes from the strange words in the hideous book.

“That lecture in Edinburgh you invited me to, do the subjects covered in it pertain to… I don’t know… anything, maybe, that you can see here?” Nina asked, holding two of the bigger books to her chest. Gretchen spared not a moment before looking straight at Nina. She pinned her with her eyes while she stood up quickly. Nina shrugged, feeling a tad out of line for asking, for basically insinuating that Gretchen would be involved with the kind of things mentioned in the words they discovered here.

“What are you really asking, Nina?” she asked.

“Look, you wanted me to attend a lecture on metaphysics and listen to this bloke ranting on about hidden religions and the theory of old gods as we know it, justified enslavement of the human race, and all that… and here we have a book that happens to promote that very same philosophy. It just seems like more than a mere coincidence,” Nina explained in a light- as-possible manner.

“So I knew that these books were here in your new house? Seriously?” Gretchen retorted, her voice a little more harsh than normal conversation would dictate.

“Look, I’m not saying you knew this was here. That’s absurd. I’m just wondering why you get in touch with me now, of all times, and you happen to bring up this subject matter just when I move into a house with the same subjects obsessed over by the previous owner. It’s weird, Gretch. That’s all I’m saying,” Nina explained, and she was correct. Gretchen had to admit it was all too suspicious.

“I had attempted to get in touch with you many times before, darling, but you were nowhere to be found. Do you know what I had to go through to locate you this time? For the past few years you simply disappeared off the grid. Have you noticed?” Gretchen struck back and what she said was true — Nina had been missing from her regular life for more than three years, on and off, thanks to the constant threat of death from the Nazi creeps she kept running into.

“I’m sorry, Gretch. You know, the past few years have shaken me up so badly I have developed trust issues, even with myself. But this is just too weird, don’t you think?” Nina explained in a more timid tone.

“Not weird so much as alarming, and creepy,” Gretchen agreed, looking at the grotesque book again.

A powerful knock thundered against the door downstairs. Three knocks, and three more a moment later. The two women glared wide-eyed at each other, frozen.

“Expecting company?” Gretchen whispered.

Nina shook her head, “No. I hope to God it’s the Jehovah’s Witnesses, ’cause I can’t take much more unexpected freakouts.”