The Armageddon Library

 The entrance hall was marble-floored and the white marble, flecked with red and gold inclusions, glistened as though freshly polished.  Tall stone pillars — not marble as that would have been decadent — held the ceiling aloft in two rows of four pillars each.  Their sides were fluted and their tops were carved to make it seem as though grapes and vines were growing there.  At the far end of the hall were mahogany double doors with brass handles, and along the walls of the hall were paintings; most were landscapes but there were two portraits that flanked the far double doors.

Heather, who had been leading the way until that point, slowed down and then took several steps to the side, stepping out of the colonnaded avenue down the centre of the hall and stopping in front of one of the landscapes.  The painting was rendered in an ochre palette, all earthy browns, deep reds, and a hint here and there of orange.  A single splash of yellow was used to indicate the breaking of sunlight through clouds and illuminating a wide building that looked like a palace of some kind; two storeys high and made of a dark, expensive looking stone.  Part of it was ruined and the walls were shattered and riven; lumps of stone littered the foot of the wall and rooms were partially visible.  A grandfather clock, seemingly untouched by the devastation around it, was located high up in the partial ruin with the time just visible.

“Heather?”  Jacob had reached the double doors and was resting his hand on a handle.

“In a minute,” she said, not turning to look at him.  He looked at the back of her head, admiring her long black hair that fell straight down to her waist, and then at the door.  His fingers tightened on the handle as he made his decision, but the handle refused to turn and the doors refused to move.

“I think these doors need both of us,” he said, tugging on the handle.  The doors were solidly made and didn’t even tremble.  He noticed that the handle was cold beneath his hand and seemed to be chilling his skin instead of being warmed by it.  Puzzled, he pulled his hand away and shook the slowly-growing numbness from it.

“I recognise this,” said Heather, still not turning away from the painting.

“Somewhere you’ve been?”  Jacob stopped shaking his hand and examined the handles on the doors carefully, now not touching them.  One, the one he’d been holding, had a grey layer of condensation covering it but the other was clear. He touched a finger to it, tentatively, and it felt warm to the touch.

“Somewhere I’ll be,” said Heather.  “It’s from a vision.”

“One of those that Yaga gave you?”  Jacob couldn’t keep from sounding faintly skeptical.  Grandmother Yaga was, in his view, a fraud: a con-artist who read tarot cards, cast horoscopes and dabbled in numerology and preyed on the weak-willed and simple-minded.

“She didn’t give me any visions,” said Heather, turning away from the painting at last.  “She gave me a drink that helped me see them more clearly.  I had the visions anyway, every time I tried to sleep.  She helped me see them, and that made them go away so I can sleep properly.”

Jacob opened his mouth and then hesitated.  The dark circles caused by weeks of sleeplessness were still visible on Heather’s face and he’d been kept awake some nights himself listening to her toss and turn and try to sigh as gently and quietly as possible.

“Right,” he said awkwardly.  “Ok, I guess that’s how it worked then.”

“It is,” said Heather.  She took a step forward and then frowned.  Instead of joining Jacob at the door she crossed the hallway to the other side and stared at the painting there.

“This one too!  I will be here in the future.  How strange is that!”

“Well,” said Jacob, trying to rein in his skepticism.  “I guess these are places you want to visit anyway, so maybe it’s not that surprising you were dreaming about them.”

“Visions aren’t dreams, Jacob.  They come on like dreams, but they are glimpses of the future.  It’s still you, just looking through your own eyes at a different time.”

“Seems a bit pointless,” said Jacob.  “What good is seeing it if you can’t do anything about it?”

Heather’s finger brushed lightly over the surface of the painting, feeling the brush strokes permanently imprinted in the oil paint.  It was rough, a little like snakeskin.  “If you remember it,” she said, “you can do something about when the time comes because you can plan what you’re going to do.  It’s like you get an extra chance, time to think about it before it happens.”

“You sound like you’ve done just that.”

“I have,” said Heather.  “Here.”

Jacob decided that standing by the double doors wasn’t encouraging Heather to join him so he walked over to the painting to join her.  His presence normally caused her to back away slightly, so perhaps he could herd her to the double doors like a sheepdog.  To his surprise though, she remained standing where she was and let him get almost close enough to put his arms around her.  He looked at the painting, more to have to something to do than out of curiosity, and almost turned away again.  Then he focused and took in the picture.

“That’s us,” he said, staring.  “Here.  In this room.”

“Yes,” said Heather.  “I had a vision of this room and that painting, only in the vision I came to help you with the door instead of stopping and looking at the art.”

“And?”

“And in my vision we were both killed by what lies beyond the door.”

Jacob was silent for several seconds and then he shivered, a full body shake that made him turn pale and look wild-eyed.  That faded quickly, but the paleness remained.

“What does lie on the other side then?” he asked.  “I thought we were looking for a library.”

“That’s what’s on the other side,” she said as though not realising how annoying that sentence was.  “And there was something else; a snake of ice that lay coiled around the room and guarded the books and breathed out the very cold of Fimbulwinter.  It exhaled, and we died in a freezing gale that torn the heat from our skin and our souls from our flesh.”

Jacob took a step back from her and, when he realised that he’d taken a step towards the door took another step, further away from both of them.

“It’s gone now,” she said.  “It was always leaving, we just were too fast and startled it.”

“I don’t much like snakes,” said Jacob.  His voice was faint and the paleness wasn’t fading.  “That sounds like a nasty way to die.”

“It’s not how I die,” said Heather.  “At least, not today.  I have seen myself in other visions and other places; I surely won’t die until after then.”

“Must be nice to know,” muttered Jacob. “Anyone can have these visions, can they?”

Heather’s sudden smile startled him and she laid a finger briefly on his lips.  When she withdrew it he licked them.

“Seers see their own deaths,” she said.  “It’s depressing, seriously.  I’ve seen myself die eight times now, and each time I’ve had to figure out how to avoid it.  Sooner or later I’m going to get it wrong, and then the vision of my death is the true one.”

“I can handle that,” said Jacob, but it didn’t sound convincing.  “Can we go in the Library now or are there spiders in there?  Or lions and tigers?”

Heather nodded.  “We can go in.  You can open the doors yourself now, there’s no snake on the other side holding them shut.”

“Good to know,” murmured Jacob.  He returned to the doors trying not to tremble as he reached out for the handles.  This time they stayed warm in his grip.  “I hope the Armageddon Library is worth the trip.”

“So do I,” said Heather.