The treader of dust

 I picked myself up and knelt there, first feeling my nose to see if I’d broken it (I had not, as far as I could tell) and then cautiously groping about the floor trying to find the flashlight, which had skittered somewhere during my fall.  I realised that the floor was not free from dust, but that in here the dust layer was perhaps a centimetre thick compared with the ten centimetres in the hallway.  Eventually my questing yet fearful fingers found the flashlight while encountering nothing more disgusting to the touch than dust, and I turned it and got back up.

I allowed myself a smile.  No matter how strange this journey had been so far, I had surely hit the jackpot at last!  This room was a study of some kind.  There was a mullioned window at the far end — surely the one I’d seen on my approach — and a large wooden desk with two pillars of drawers supporting it on either side.  A wooden and leather chair was sat slightly to one side, as though someone had just stood up and left.  The wall to my left was taken over by bookshelves; three in total of varying heights.  There were books and papers crammed onto every shelf and I had to stop myself from eagerly perusing them and look further around still.  On the other side of the room there was a globe on a stand, a fireplace filled with cold grey ash and surrounded with marble tiling and a coatstand.  The coatstand was, to my relief, empty.  Had there been evidence that someone lived here despite the dust in the hallway I think I might have reconsidered looking for Tesstament, at least until morning.

Satisfied that I was alone and that this was surely where the Testament had been stored I looked first on the desk.  There was a dark-red leather blotter placed squarely and centrally and an ink-well to the top left.  A pen rested against the ink-well but the desk was otherwise clear.  I felt a little disappointed that the Testament wasn’t there, but as I thought about I supposed it made little sense to hide the book here and then leave it out in plain sight.  So I turned to the bookshelves.

There I found only calamity.  I barely brushed my fingertip against the spine of the first book, something ornithological, and it crumbled into dust, cracking and dissolving into a trickle, which became a veritable waterfall of desiccated paper and aged ink.  The whole book collapsed in on itself as though it had been sat there for centuries, slowly and invisibly decaying until my careless caress unbound whatever still cohered it and returned to the dust we all come from.  I stepped back, shocked, and a little wary after my coughing fit of inhaling more dust and starting again.  When the book had finished its particulate descent to the floor I tried, as gently as possible, to ease the one next to it out to look at its cover, but it too disintegrated into a cloud of grey powder rather than be observed.

Now I was worried.  If the Testament was in this same condition I could imagine no way to salvage it and my journey here had been entirely in vain.  I looked along the shelf, placing my hands behind my back to avoid touching anything and holding my breath lest any of the works prove even more fragile than those first two, and to my immense relief could not find the Testament among the books there at all.

Shaking slightly now, with the effort of not breathing while staring at spine after spine, praying not to find the Testament in such a state, I moved to the chair and sat down.

The chair collapsed around me in a plume of the selfsame dust, dumping me on the floor as it, reduced to microscopic fragments, showered around me.  I threw myself forwards to escape from the cloud, dreading the damage that a coughing fit might wreak in here, and collided with the coatstand which, with a single loud crack, splintered and collapsed around me as though struck by lightning.

I got to my feet, wiping my hands ineffectually on my trousers, picked up the flashlight which was rolling on the floor and casting strange chiaroscuro on the ceiling, and retreated to the door.  It was obvious to me that this room was like an old photograph — you could see how things were in the past, but touching it caused it to split and fragment, destroying it piecemeal.  There was nothing to be found in here and I did not want to be held responsible for the devastation that I had already caused.

I paused at the door though.  In the hallway my footprints were clearly visible in the dust, like prints in wet cement, but now — and I was sure that they had not been there when I walked across the hall to this door — there were additional marks in the dust.  They were small and at first I thought they were paw-marks, but when I played the flashlight over them and looked more carefully they seemed like human feet only the size of a very small child.  Or perhaps, I considered briefly, someone who had been a victim of foot-binding at some point.  Nonetheless, there were additional paw- or foot-prints in the dust and they appeared to have approached the door and then retreated while I, unknowing, was reducing the contents of this room to dust.

I stood there for several minutes, my heart racing, blood pounding in my ears even though I strained as hard as I could to hear any external sounds at all, at a loss.  Should I call out, and confront whoever — or whatever — else might be in this house of dust?  Should I leave, perhaps wait until morning?  Or should I press on, find the wretched Testament and leave as quickly as possible?

I pressed on, if only because no sounds came to my ears no matter how hard I listened and because I couldn’t quite bring myself to give up on the Testament when I was so close.  Who knew when someone else might crack the ciphers and follow the starlight path here?

I pushed less hard on the other door and it, too, opened easily to reveal a kitchen.  The stone-flagged floor had a thin layer of dust on it, much less than that in the hallway but similar to that in the study.  There was a staircase off to the left leading upwards and a half-ajar door on the right appeared to guard a pantry.  There was a large table, set around with five chairs, in the middle of the floor and on it, laid open as though someone had been reading, was a large book bound in what might have been leather.

An icy hand seemed to clutch at my heart — what if this room was as aged and crumbling as the study?  The book on the table — surely it must be the Testament.  I desperately wanted to run forward and inspect it, but after all my experience so far such an act would undoubtedly cause the floor to cave in, or the ceiling to collapse… I was too close to fall prey to such traps now, surely.

I edged across the floor, eyeing the ceiling as though it had malevolent intent, and I laid a gentle hand on the nearest chair, dreading its dissipation into a cloud of sinking greyness.  The chair remained solid though, and the one next to it, and the table as well.  I reached out to the book and then stopped.  If the book should crumble away, then I should at least read the two pages that lay open here in front of me so that this journey be not in vain.

I read those pages and now I understand what trap Vermistaad laid to protect them.  I will not write here what I read, though the words are burned so firmly in my mind that all I have to do to recall them is close my eyes.  I read them, and I understood them, and I knew then that the book was entirely safe to touch and that I would not be taking it from that strange little house; nor would I be notifying anyone of my discovery of the ciphers.  The purpose of that book is to summon the Treader of Dust and I cannot imagine what ends that might serve.

I returned to my home for one purpose only: to destroy my notes and computer programmes.  Already Vermistaad’s curse is afflicting me; everything I touch ages visibly and if I maintain skin-contact with anything for more than a minute it begins to crumble into a fine grey dust.  Wherever I walk I leave faint dusty footprints behind as though I am burning the ground behind me.  I took a faint, macabre pleasure in destroying the evidence of my discoveries simply by resting my hands upon them and watching them break down into that fine, clinging dust that will eventually summon the Treader.

These words, intrepid reader, you may have, but there is nothing in here that will help you find that strange house, or the secrets of Vermistaad’s ciphers.  Now there is nothing left for me to do but my hands together and pray that there is some god out there that will take my soul before the Treader approaches and seizes it for its own unthinkable purposes.