The Library of the Labyrinth (Inktober, Wednesday, October 21, 2020)

For Inktober, October 21, 2020. Prompt word: “sleep.” Tuckerization: Eric Hinkle

(Note: This story is adapted from H. P. Lovecraft’s Dreamland Cycle)

A reminder that volunteering for tuckerization only means a character in the story shares the participant’s name. Other than that, no other similar characteristics are implied.

Original by Jack Gaughan published
in The Fantastic Swordsmen, 1967.

The Library of the Labyrinth

by

Alan Loewen

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

In his twenty-second year, in light slumber, Eric Hinkle descended the seventy steps to the Cavern of Flame and encountered the bearded priests, Nasht and Kaman-Thah. Having answered their questions and riddles correctly, Eric asked a farewell blessing of the priests and boldly descended the seven hundred steps to the Gate of Deeper Slumber and set out through the enchanted wood.

Eventually, he found a home in Ulthar, a small town known for its huge population of cats and where it was a crime to harm or kill one of the feline denizens. However, his reason for taking up residence in the peaceful town known for the pink buildings, topped with old, peaked, red-tiled roofs, overhanging upper stories and numberless chimney-pots had nothing to do with his love for cats. Though he was fond of taking long walks among the suburbs of Ulthar with their quaint green cottages and neatly fenced farms, his love for his adopted town had nothing to do with nature or aesthetics.

Ulthar boasted several libraries and in his ever-present quest for knowledge, Eric became a well-known patron of them all. However, each morning in the waking world, Eric would have no memory of his life in the Dreamlands of Earth and at night, he would live decades in his little town, only dimly aware of his waking life and reluctant to leave his search for knowledge to once again live in the mundane world of waking life.

After many years of Earth and centuries of existence in the Dreamlands, Eric came upon a clue in a dusty tome of the town’s history of a hidden library somewhere within its borders, the Library of the Labyrinth. Carefully worded questions in Ulthar’s inns and taverns garnered only hints and rumors. Eric also paid a visit to the Temple of the Elder Ones that sat above the town on the area's highest hill. There in the modest, ivy-clad stone tower, home to priests and their ancient records, Eric sat and cajoled the high priest Atal with imported wine from the steaming jungle city of Hlanith.

However, his years of searching were fruitless, yet Eric’s imagination burned with a desire for a new library with stranger secrets and deeper and older wisdom than what was available in the more public athenaeums.

It was not until his seventieth year on Earth and his third millennium in the Dreamlands, Eric heard a knock on his door of the cottage where he resided in Ulthar. Upon opening, Eric found a man dressed in rags that held out a sealed letter in his grimy hands. Leaving without accepting from Eric the proffered coin for his troubles, the messenger walked away.

The letter was written on aged parchment in an unsteady hand inviting Eric to meet with the writer who signed himself as simply Meras.

On the appointed day, Eric made his way through the winding streets of Ulthar and found himself at the foot of a dark and foul-smelling alley. Concerned that the letter may have been a trap to release him from the few valuables he carried, Eric paused in consternation. However, seeing cats nimbly walking through the alley on their own personal business, Eric made his way down the passageway until he came to a nondescript door of rotten oaken wood.

As there was no response to his knocks, Eric released the latch and swung the door inward.

Immediately his nostrils were assailed by the aroma of old books and ancient scrolls. With his heart beating with expectation, Eric stepped inside the dimly lit hallway that led to a large room with bookcases overflowing with manuscripts and tomes bound together in thick leather covers and iron hasps. Scrolls overflowed onto the floor in a haphazard manner.

Barely able to breathe from excitement, Eric stepped fully into the room. To his right, a robed man sat behind a desk so overladen with books and scrolls he was almost concealed from sight. A black cowl hid his face.

Eric approached the librarian, for that was clearly what he was, and laid the letter on the desktop.

With a sigh of obvious relief, the man picked up the letter with shaking hands and welcomed Eric to the Library of the Labyrinth, a repository of all the ancient books of the Dreamlands. The Library, the man said, only had one patron at a time who was also the master librarian. When the old librarian comes to the end of his ten millennial long position it is his responsibility to find his own replacement.

Eric now sits at the desk formerly occupied by the previous librarian. It is possible to wander the Labyrinth for a decade or more among the stacks before returning to the desk but Eric does not mind for he grows wise with wisdom and knowledge.

He no longer returns to the wakeful world for he has learned an immortal truth.

The Dreamlands are not Earth’s land of dreams. The Dreamlands are the true reality and Earth is nothing more than a vague shadow of unpleasant illusion.