The Body Library

by Jeff Noon

  Nyquist told him, “I returned there.”

  “You did?”

  “In the daylight. It was empty. Just an empty building.”

  Vaughn nodded at this. “No, you have to go at night, I know that much. The book only comes alive after dark.”

  Nyquist let him calm down a little. He couldn’t work out if the man was telling some kind of truth, or inhabiting a complex fantasy. But one thing was certain, Nyquist had stepped inside the same world, real or otherwise, and he needed to tread carefully.

  He spoke calmly: “Overseer K wouldn’t take too kindly to you being here, I reckon.”

  Vaughn stared at him. “You’re not going to tell her, are you?”

  “That depends. Are you lying to me?”

  “No, no! I swear it on every word that’s ever been written in this or any other language, now and in the past, and on all the words yet to be written for now and forever! I swear it!”

  “What about Wellborn?”

  “Patrick Wellborn? He introduced me to the book, the torn-out pages, the smoke, the magic of the ink. He started this whole thing for me. If anyone is, he’s to blame.”

  “I see.”

  “He knows more about the Melville Tower than any of us. Talk to him, not me.”

  Nyquist was starting to get a picture of Wellborn’s activity, of his desire to spread the word about The Body Library and about Melville Five. He was a kind of prophet, or an oracle, leading the way forward, pointing to the future.

  He changed tack. “What about a woman called Zelda Courtland? Did she ever come to a meeting?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know all the names.” Vaughn was a little more confident now. “This is just a private matter, me coming here, partaking as I do. What can I say, I like to feel the flow, the buzz, the story coursing through me, just a sentence or two! That’s all.”

  “What exactly happened down there, Vaughn? In the room?”

  “You saw it.”

  “Explain it to me. What about the words? The way they–”

  “The words took flight!”

  “How? Why? For what purpose?”

  “The council have for too long governed how our stories must be told.”

  “How come the words can float off the page? What is it, some kind of magic trick?”

  “No. It’s true. It happens.”

  “Hypnosis, maybe. Is that it? A shared hallucination?”

  “I really don’t know. I’m just…”

  “What?”

  “I’m just following the story, seeing where it will take me.”

  Nyquist relaxed a little. He could see that Vaughn was essentially an innocent, someone caught up in a tale he could barely understand.

  He looked across the gap to the neighboring rooftop and saw that the young couple had risen to their feet and were now looking across at him. They were teenagers, nothing more. “You kids get out of here,” Nyquist shouted. The boy put a little fight into his voice, but the girl said to him, “Come on, Marcus, we’ll find somewhere else.” They left by the roof’s fire door. Now the two men were alone. Even the letter moths had vacated the lamp’s halo. Vaughn was pressed up against the low railing that marked the edge of the building. Nyquist leaned over and looked down: a small courtyard was seen two floors below. Three or four washing lines were stretched across the gap, from one window to another, two of them hung with clothing. Through one of the windows a woman’s voice was heard as she started to sing a blues number.

  Sometimes I wake up, and my heart is closed up tight.

  Sometimes I stumble, yet my eyes are open wide.

  The lyrics and the melody were meant for Nyquist alone, or so it seemed, and as he listened he thought again of Zelda.

  He asked, “Is it worth killing for, this revolution of yours?”

  “Probably, for some of us. Not me, of course. Not me.”

  “Who then?”

  The answer came in a whisper, half of joy, half of fear: “Oberon.”

  Nyquist came close. “Tell me about him. Tell me about Oberon.”

  Vaughn was taken over by a sudden ecstasy. His eyes rolled back until only the whites were showing and the living words crawled madly across his bare skull.

  “We await him! We await his return in glory.”

  “Tell me what you mean!”

  But it was too late, the council officer had lost himself totally to language, and his mouth spewed forth a multitude of phrases and sentences, in which obscenities and manic prayers mixed together into a tumult of cries, howls, hisses, chirrups, and susurrations.

  Nyquist kept hold of him: “Speak to me.”

  Vaughn managed one last of moment of sense. “Apartment 14,” he said, looking directly into Nyquist’s eyes. “14!”

  “You mean in Melville Five? What will I find there?”

  “Apartment 14. That’s where it starts. Wellborn told me this. Always, every time. That’s where it all starts.”

  He broke free of Nyquist’s grasp and backed away. He was leaning out over the barrier, over the drop, and at any moment he might overbalance and fall. But instead, he crumpled forward like a doll, bent and broken. He was whimpering.

  “Come on, Vaughn,” Nyquist said. “It’s over now. It’s over.”

  But a few more paragraphs beckoned.

  Nyquist heard footsteps at his back and he turned in time to see a man approaching.

  He stopped a few feet away from Nyquist, his face and body completely hidden by the shadows that seemed to cling to him like a cloak, or a second skin.

  “Who are you?”

  The man replied with laughter, a cruel sound, muffled as though by a cloth. And then he stepped forward into the glow of light from the lamp.

  Nyquist couldn’t move.

  A swarm of letters circled around the man’s head. His long hair hung down like a half-broken veil that he peered through. He grinned, his lips slightly parted, his eyes as black as the sky above, and any sign of compassion just as distant.

  It was Patrick Wellborn.

  The dead man.

  His entire facial area was covered in letters, marks and numerals. They writhed madly about, constantly seeking new meanings, new words to spell out. Wellborn tore off his ragged shirt to show that his entire body had been infected, top to bottom, one living story of flesh and blood. He bellowed in rage or glory, it was difficult to tell which, an action that sent the letters swirling across his face, arms and chest.

  Nyquist was still bound to the spot. This one moment of time held him completely.

  Vaughn was genuflecting to Wellborn, apologizing over and over for his errors. But his superior ignored him. He didn’t speak, he didn’t need to; the letters on his face and body spelled out his hatred, his agony, his utter despair.

  At last Nyquist could move. He took half a step backwards, only to feel the back of his legs meet the barrier guarding the edge of the roof.

  And now Wellborn spoke at last, a simple statement.

  “You killed me.”

  Nyquist tried to get away, only to feel Wellborn’s hand on his chest, pushing, pushing quite gently. It was enough. He managed a breath, and half a word of untold desperation and then he was tumbling over the rail.

  That moment of utter loss, of nothingness.

  The shock of it.

  The sudden gulf, opening.

  And then at last his reactions kicked in and he twisted around as best he could and reached out blindly and he felt his hand hit the railing. He grabbed hold of it. His body swung further down and hit the wall beneath, knocking the breath from his lungs, but he was still hanging on, hanging tight, until he felt the blow to his fingers, his knuckles, the sharp pain of it, the fist that smashed down on his hand.

  And he let go. He fell.

  He struggled against the air itself, but there was nothing to hold on to, not now, only the washing lines as he broke through them, tangled in the sheets, and then the clothes of another person’s life momentarily, his hand gr
ipping hold of a line for a second, but that too broke apart and he was falling, falling on, falling through the words, through word after word after word torn from his wide open mouth, falling, through all the stories he had suffered and struggled with to get this far, to this city, this building, this rooftop, this courtyard, story after story after story until this one moment arrived, the present, the concrete floor reaching out for him with sickening speed even as his brain slowed and slowed, giving him time to work out in mathematical detail the exact moment of impact.

  Here: where one word meets another.

  The Books

  THE WINGS of an angel fluttered all around.

  It was a large white bed sheet that drifted down to cover him. It was followed by a couple of men’s shirts, a bath towel, and half a dozen pale blue handkerchiefs. Nyquist lay unmoving, one hand still clutching hold of the washing line which had partially broken his fall. But for that, he might well be dead. This one thought, finding its way into his dream, comforted him.

  And then the pain arrived.

  It woke him fully.

  One eye opening.

  His face flat against the concrete, the other eye still hidden.

  His mouth crooked, a tooth broken.

  A pool of blood that seeped away from his vision, becoming blurred.

  He groaned and rolled over onto his back and looked upwards. The face of his attacker, Patrick Wellborn, was seen above, framed by the night sky, the far-off stars. Wellborn was leaning over the railing, looking down. They made contact across the distance. Nyquist panicked. He raised himself as far as he could on one arm, testing each part of his body in turn, moving each limb, his chest, his shoulders and neck. He put his weight on his other arm and fell back and realized that his left arm was badly injured, maybe broken. He sank back down. All he desired was to lie there until sleep took him away forever.

  But he had to move. He had to keep alert.

  He shook himself awake.

  Wellborn would want to finish the job; he was probably already heading for the stairs.

  Nyquist looked around at his surroundings.

  Four walls, no door. The fallen clothing, the washing line.

  A window was open close by.

  Nyquist put his good hand on the ledge and pulled himself up, and then used his legs to push his body over the lip, through the window gap, and down the other side, wincing in pain as he hit the floor.

  He was in a small bedroom. Cheaply furnished, but clean and tidy. He dragged himself to the door, used the jamb to pull himself upright and more or less stumbled from there into the living room. He landed on the floor, on a soft carpet. The radio was on and he heard the velvety tones of Dame Helena Lauderdale, one of the city’s most famous narrators.

  And from the skies came a great wingéd creature whose eyes shone with the moon’s light. It flew over the city, choosing its next victim…

  Nyquist cried out in his pain and sat up, leaning against the wall.

  A man, woman and a small child were staring at him.

  He stared back.

  Nothing was said. The moment stretched out.

  And then the mother spoke, saying, “Help him, Ken. He needs help.”

  But the father wasn’t sure. “What if he’s a criminal?”

  “So what if he’s a criminal? In that state, what can he do?”

  The father pondered this for a second. “True enough.” He got up from his armchair and walked over to Nyquist and lifted him up into a seat.

  “Where are you hurt?” he asked.

  Nyquist couldn’t answer. But their kindness cradled him.

  “He’s in shock, I think,” the mother said. “I’ll fetch him some water.”

  “Yes, that’s good, Martha. I’ll ring for an ambulance.”

  Nyquist shook his head. Quickly, he struggled to his feet, casting off the man’s helping hands. The child, a young daughter of ten years, looked on in awe, her mouth held open in a perfect circle. The mother came in with the drink of water in one hand and a first aid box in the other.

  Nyquist swayed. The room swerved away. He was having trouble focusing. But one thought made it through: this family’s in danger if they help me. That was enough to get him moving, heading for the one door he could see. The mother tried one last time to stop him on the way, but he was determined now. He thanked them all in the best words he could manage with his lips thickening up, and his hearing busted. He could taste blood in his mouth.

  He walked out into a corridor and found the front door and then the street, a narrow alleyway squeezed in between the tall housing blocks. This was Lower Shakespeare – there wasn’t one straight road in the place. Every pathway had many twists and turns. But he was walking, that was the thing. He was moving away from the trouble. Yes, keep moving! That’s all he could think.

  His body ached, but it was a duller pain now.

  His mind was taking over, doing its best to save him.

  His left arm hung limply at his side and he limped a little: his right leg was damaged in some way, but he didn’t let that stop him. He took another turning, and one or two more, but only enclosed spaces greeted him. Shadows crouched in every alcove and doorway. Now and then he saw the sky through a gap in the overhangs, but mainly the roads were covered over. Houses had been built on top of houses, on top of other houses, and so on in layers, each domicile getting smaller. Rooms were split in two, then three, then four; rooms attached to other rooms; walls juxtaposed at strange angles, windows leaning away from the vertical, the road ahead sloping to one side and then the other, the chimneys bent over, the doors crooked. Nyquist staggered along, his own body twisted just as badly as the streets he walked down, as much as the buildings he squeezed between. The rhyme came back to him.

  There was a crooked man and he told a crooked tale,

  He scratched a crooked story with a crooked nail…

  He couldn’t remember the rest of the verse, but the two lines got stuck in his mind and he repeated them to himself as he walked along.

  He glanced behind, reacting to a noise. A figure moved in the distance, a tall shadow cast against a wall by a lamp. It must be Wellborn: he imagined the man’s anger, knowing that the fall hadn’t killed his victim. Nyquist turned away from the sight, taking a passage between two houses. He shuffled along. A light gleamed ahead. A doorway. A few more steps took him there. The door was open a little way, the lock broken some months or years before. A short corridor led to a larger room. At first he thought it might be a church, that he would find sanctuary there.

  He wasn’t far wrong: it was a library.

  And he thought to himself: what better place to lose a story?

  It looked to be a private chamber, a large study perhaps, the walls and fittings covered in dust and cobwebs and smelling of mildew. Nyquist stumbled down an aisle, using the two shelving units on each side to support himself. A cloud of dust rose up around him, disturbed after decades or even longer. The library was long abandoned, given over to decay and rot, to tales of forgotten realms, forgotten peoples. He groaned anew and grabbed hold of a shelf to stop himself from falling as a stab of pain cut into his side: he must have cracked a rib in the fall. Books fell to the floor as his hands scrabbled for purchase, but at last he managed to pull himself upright and he rested for a while, getting his breath back.

  He listened.

  Was there a noise, coming from the doorway, the corridor beyond? Or in here, even, something or someone hidden in the stacks?

  No. All was quiet.

  He moved on a little further, reaching the end of the aisle, when he heard the sound again, a rustling noise. The sound of pages being rubbed together, a dry sound, the breath of a ghost. He called out, “Who’s there?” But even the act of speaking caused the pain to shoot through him, and there was no answer anyway, a wasted effort. Until he stood as still as he could manage, and he heard it clearly: the whispering. The voices of the dead, the passed over, the lost ones, the disappeared – any and all
of these. They were waiting for him between the pages, waiting for him to join their tribe.

  Patrick Wellborn was alive. The phrase haunted him. Alive! The blow to the head that Nyquist had inflicted wasn’t in fact fatal: he was just out cold, that was the only explanation. Every other possibility involved madness, phantoms, the living dead, horror stories, risen creatures intent on vengeance.

  Nyquist dug his fingernails deep into his own flesh to keep himself alert. He would survive this. He had journeyed too far to give up now. He turned to face the door and waited, waited for Wellborn to come for him. He would wait here and fight him, no matter what; at the very least he would go down fighting.

  Empty words. Too many empty words, that was the trouble. His childhood, his broken marriage, his parents, mother dead at an early age, his father wandering off into the mist of the dusklands never to be seen again; his time on the streets, bringing himself up alone, darting from shadow to shelter and back again, from one home to another, seeking warmth, clothing, food, a modicum of love where he could find it. His job. Such as it was. Helping others for money, when his own goddamn life lay in pieces around him.

  His thoughts came to an end.

  Something was floating in the air, in between the shelves.

  Glowing objects. Insects. A swarm of them. They made Nyquist’s eyes burn and blur, he had to squint to see them properly. Alphabugs. Ten or fifteen, it was impossible to tell how many; each one displaying a letter of the alphabet in red or gold or electric blue, but every bug carrying the same letter this time.

  The letter X.

  They buzzed and fluttered and hummed and zipped around Nyquist. He stepped back involuntarily until he reached the rear wall of the library. He could go no further, he was too weak, and the glow bugs wove a spell upon him. His hands came up to brush them away but they merely circled back and bothered him again. Their bodies were full of fire, yet their wings were no thicker than a sheet of paper from some ancient volume, torn from its binding and cut and fashioned into a means of flight.

  Through the blur of blood and tears he glimpsed a figure at the end of the aisle, watching his distress. It was a silhouette, a shadow that barely moved, and he couldn’t tell if it was man or woman, or even a child. The figure raised its arms as though conducting the bugs in their flight.