More bibliomancy

The butler had been moping ever since the stable-boy had left.  I’d been rather puzzled as to why I was paying for the employ of a stable-boy when I had no stables, so when he announced his desire to move on to a horse-farm I had congratulated him on his determination to pursue his career and offered him a month’s garden leave.  He accepted, looking suddenly happy, and that was the last I’d seen of him.  Judging by the butler’s ill-temper it was the last the butler had seen on him as well, but I was avoiding thinking about that and the implications.

It was beautiful outside, at least as far as I could tell by looking out of the window, and I had decided that a walk might be good for my health.  I was dressed to go; I had on my best walking coat and had located my grandfather’s swordstick and my father’s favourite huntsman’s hat and was pulling on a pair of boots that I didn’t recognise but appeared to be my size when I realised that I couldn’t possibly leave the house without some idea of what might befall me when I did.

I finished tying the bootlaces and then pulled a book down from the bookshelves.  I opened it without looking, jabbed a finger on to the page, and then looked to see what was written there:

She’d attended his funeral a year ago – seen his casket being lowered into the ground.

I mused for a moment that seeing a casket being lowered into the ground was no guarantee that anyone was in the casket, or that any body in there was the intended one, and then I tried to remember where the front-door was.  The house was so large, and I left my suite so infrequently, that it usually took a moment or two to remember where I was going.  Then the memory returned, I allowed myself a small chuckle of triumph, and I started off.

As I closed the front-door behind me I caught sight of the butler watching me from the upper landing window.  He still looked morose, perhaps even forlorn, and I wondered if I should buy him a pet of some kind.  I recall that my father had his butlers shot when they stopped being able to manage their day-to-day duties, but I had a feeling that times might have changed since then, and I wasn’t in the mood for entertaining the police and their enquiries.

There is a long, gravelled drive that leads out of the house and down to the main road and I was half way along that when the spire of the church hove into view.  I thought for a moment, and remembering the words from the book decided that I was probably intended to go and view a funeral today, so I clambered over the two-bar wooden fence that stopped cars randomly driving into the fields, and waded through knee-high grass in the direction of the spire.  It was tough going at first, but slowly the grass became lower and lower and the walking became easier, and then it turned into something that was neatly mowed and maintained and the churchyard was just across a low stone wall.

There was a funeral going on as I approached, with a large crowd of black-clad mourners gathered around a hole and two caskets, side-by-side on a large blue tarpaulin, presided over by the vicar who I recognised as the son of the man who had buried my father.  I managed to get over the wall, though it was harder work than the fence, and avoided falling over when I landed on some fresh flowers on a grave on the other side.  Some people in the mob… I mean, mourners, turned when they heard me swearing as I tried to keep my feet, but I ignored them.  There was a flash of pain on the vicar’s face and I wondered if he had his father’s problems of gout, vanity and avarice.

A woman broke away from the crowd and confronted me.

“This is a private funeral,” she said.  Her eyes were red and her lipstick appeared to have been put on in a moving vehicle in the dark.  She was old enough to be my sister, and she held her arm stiffly as though it had been broken and never set properly.

“This is private land,” I replied.

“It’s a church,” she said.  She still looked annoyed, but her tone had come down a notch as though she suspected I had something to say she wasn’t going to like.

“My church,” I said.  “I’m the landowner here.”

She looked like she was chewing a mouse as she tried to work out what she could say to that.

“My sons are both dead,” she said finally.  “We are burying them.  You may stay and watch if you wish.”

“Whose funeral were you at a year ago?” I asked, the bibliomantic words burning in my head now.  She’d been turning away, but now she turned back again.

“You know…?”

I nodded, though I had no idea what she was talking about.  Tears welled in her eyes.  “She said you never knew,” she said.  Her voice cracked and became a whisper.  “She said she was trying to protect you.”

“Who?” I prompted.  The vicar was staring over at us, clearly waiting for one or both of us to join the mob.

“Your mother,” she said, starting to sob.

Now that was interesting, since I was under the impression that father had shot mother as well when she stopped being able to produce children.

Bibliomatic

I have no idea who left the book on the table, for all that the obstreperous woman in the nurse's uniform keeps telling me otherwise.  I found it there two days ago, back when it was winter, and I puzzled over it for a while then.
"What day has thirty-six hours?" I asked, watching my reflection in the full-length mirror.  I have to watch it, as every now and then, when it thinks I'm not looking, it sneaks off to do things by itself.  Yesterday I had to wait twenty minutes for it to come back before I could find out if I had a smear of jam on my face.
"Is that a riddle?" said a small boy outside my door, eavesdropping on my conversation.  "Can I answer it, grandad?"
I ignored the child, who was apparently speaking to some unseen parental figure, and let my fingers caress the cover of the book again.  It had a dust-jacket on, all dressed up against the ravages of time in blue and yellow, and the plasticky paper squeaked beneath my fingertips.
"Grandad?  Grandad, have you gone deaf again?"  The small child, still talking to its invisible guardian was now stood in front of me, watching me probe the book.  "Grandad, can I answer your riddle, please?"
I waved an impatient hand at the child and the bones in my wrist ground together audibly.  I winced, and the child took a step back.
"Go away," I said severely.  "My hand is trying to drop off."
"Aww, grandad!"  The child whined, making me glad I didn't know it.  Then it scampered out of the room, running off on some unspeakable errand.  I allowed myself to feel relief, and then turned my attention back to the strange book.  The 36-hour day.
"What kind of day has thirty-six hours?" I murmured, intending it only to be to myself, but somehow the child had returned with a man, who I assumed must be his grandad.
"Where did the book come from?" said the man, his voice gentle and patronising.  I immediately thought of the obstreperous nurse.
"I don't know," I said.  "It was just here.  I was just going to use it."
"Use it for what?" said the man, ignoring the small child who was jumping up and down whinging still about wanting to play riddles.
"I'll show you."
I lifted the book in both hands, and then drew them apart, letting the book choose a page to fall open to.  Without looking down at it, I laid a finger on the page, and then found the next full sentence after where my finger was.
People came and poked and pushed, and shoved things in and out and over her.
I read the line out loud, and both the man and boy looked a little surprised.  I was surprised myself, it was an aggressive omen.
"What does that mean?" said the man.
"I don't know yet," I said.  "The art of bibliomancy is in the interpretation of the oracle's words.  At face value, some woman, or possibly a girl, shall be assaulted by people.  It sounds unpleasant."
"Bibliomancy's not real, dad," said the man, but the child now cowering behind his knee clearly knew better.
"Of course not," I said.  "Of course not.  Now, where is that nurse?"
"She's in the cupboard," said the child, pointing.  "She was there this morning."
And indeed, the nurse was in the cupboard, bound hand and foot and gagged.  When, after many expressions of shock and horror, the man had dragged her out, woken her up, untied and ungagged her, he asked her what had happened.
"People!" she spluttered.  They'd gagged her with her own outsize knickers and it looked as though she hadn't like the taste.  "They came in and overpowered me.  They pushed me down and poked and prodded me like I was some kind of exhibition.  Then they... they shoved me...."  It became clear that she was uncomfortable talking in front of the child, and I felt a momentary pang of sympathy for her.
"Where was my father while this was happening?" asked the man, rather tonelessly I felt.
"You'd taken him out for the afternoon," said the nurse, going bright red.  "You said it was his birthday yesterday."
Hah!  I don't have birthdays any more, age is for the old.  The man looked disappointed though.
"That's worrying," he said.  "They might not have been after you, you see...."
"They knew my name," said the nurse.  "And they kept saying a word, over and over again.  I didn't understand it.  Bibliomata."
"Machines powered by books," I said.  "Now we're in trouble."

Crimson Jimson Weed

The butler harrumphed behind me like a dyspeptic horse, and stopped pushing the bath-chair. I pretended not to hear him, rearranged the blanket over my legs a little, and refused to move the steering rod.

"I fear, Sir," said the butler in his deepest, most gravelly tones, "that if I continue pushing the chair at present, we will run straight into that knot of small children gathered by the bandstand."
"So?" I snapped, annoyed that he was paying enough attention to spot what I was up to. "They've been lined up like skittles..."
"Nonetheless, Sir," said the butler slowly, "there are members of Her Majesty's constabulary watching them. You can see them over there, Sir, in uniform. I suspect that they would take a dim view of such a happenstance."
I sighed, and pushed the steering rod to the left, aligning the front wheel of the chair with the cycle path, and the butler resumed pushing. We started off slowly at first, then gained a little speed as the butler overcame the chair's inertia.

The cyclists hated me for using their cycle path, but the butler adamantly refused to run down the less deserving members of society, and had threatened to leave my employ unless I stopped throwing lit cigarrettes at shell-suit clad scum while we were out. Irritating the cyclists seemed to be the only past-time he was willing to indulge me in.

As he grunted and panted behind me, I laid one hand on the customised controls (one of which would pogo a sharp stick in and out of the side of the bath-chair fast enough to catch in the spokes of a cyclist's wheel and retract while being hard to spot), and pulled a book from under the blanket spilling over my seat. I lazily opened it at random, not looking at the pages but scanning the area for cyclists and any small children the butler might have missed, and stabbed my finger down onto the page. Now I looked down to see what sentence I had struck:
"The head is somewhat broader than the rest of the body, and often assumes a spatulate form."
I frowned, wondering what kind of person had a spade-shaped head, and how that could possibly affect my future.
"Are you indulging yourself in bibliomancy again, Sir?" asked the butler, who disapproved of most of my hobbies.
"Faster!" I shouted, at my most imperious. If the butler had the breath to talk to me, then he wasn't pushing hard enough.
"Turn left," gasped the butler as the bath-chair gained speed. "We're headed for the ducking pond!"

I pulled on the steering rod, and we took the corner in the cycle path sharply, the butler being forced to run at an angle to the bath chair as he tried to follow the curve. To my utter delight, I saw his foot catch the walking stick of an elderly lady, flicking it out into the middle of the ducking pond. She stood there, wavering, not wanting to move without anything to lean on as the butler caught his gait again, and managed to get square behind the bath-chair.

The ducking pond, mostly covered with blue-green algae and festooned with rotting wooden warning signs, was used up until 1961 for testing for witches. In 1961 the witchfinder general for the area found so many witches, (it being the flower-power era) that he declared the whole town to be ungodly and called for the wrath of God to descend and cleanse it. Quite dramatically, as he stood there his eyes flashing fire, his fist aloft, he was struck three times by lightning and cooked to a well-done state before he hit the ground. I've been petitioning for the job of witchfinder general to be reinstated, but with little success so far.

As we carried on down the straight away I looked in the wing-mirror and saw that the butler had his head down and his shoulders thrust forward and was clearly concentrating on maintaining speed. Looking ahead, I saw a couple of park-keepers not paying much attention to the cycle path as they tried to carry too many tools over to their little shed. I adjusted the steering rod.

The butler looked up just too early for me, and stopped running, throwing himself backwards while holding onto the handles, braking the bath-chair very effectively. We stopped just two inches in front of the lead park-keeper, who looked up himself then, and startled, dropped a bag of fertiliser and a large, flat leaf-rake. The rake bounced towards the second park keeper, who leaped backwards to avoid it, and then turned towards me to see what had happened. The spade that he was carrying over his shoulder struck the nanny of my neighbour's hell-spawned children square in the face with a crunch I found very satisfying indeed.

I glanced back down at my book, and smiled, happy that the prediction had once again come true. The butler leaned forward and said in low tones, "I think, Sir, we should leave as soon as possible." When he leaned back, he had taken my book with him.

The art of persuasion

I was sat up in bed listening to the butler having sex. I had been reading previously, but the noises coming from the downstairs study were proving too distracting for me to concentrate on my book, so I was now staring blankly at the page and wondering who he was having sex with. I suspected he was using the fireplace tools in whatever he was doing, and mentally resolved not to touch the poker again with an ungloved hand. He swore that regular sex improved the immune system, and had provided me with references from amazon.co.uk, but I simply couldn't be bothered to check them out. And I rather thought that all he was doing was exposing himself to as many disease-causing pathogens as possible, which didn't seem healthy to me.

The noises culminated in a crash and a high-pitched scream like someone getting rather a lot of poker somewhere private, and then subsided to heavy breathing and quiet whimpering. I looked at my book, closed it up, closed my eyes, then opened the book and stabbed my finger at random down on the page. Opening my eyes again, I saw what sentence I'd found:

'Then, when you look at these people, it will be to the accompaniment of your finely tuned imagination.'

That seemed a pretty apt way of describing how I'd next see the butler when he walked in; maybe there was more to this bibliomancy than meets the eye!

There was a gentle tap at my door, and I let the book fall into my lap and called out, 'Come in!' The door swung inwards, its hinges creaking like a door from a Hammer Horror movie. I have a man come in every month to get them to sound like that -- normally he tunes pianos, so this is something of a diversion for him. The butler limped in.

'The stable-lad is feeling a little unwell,' he said gravely, 'so I think it might be prudent to have him taken to the vet.'
I nodded, but said, 'Have the vet come here; you'll probably not want to move the stable-lad. Or perhaps, he'll not want to move very much.'
To my immense pleasure, the butler blushed red, muttered 'very good sir' under his breath, and shuffled backwards out of the room, pulling the door closed behind him.

Bibliomancy

Bibliomancy is the art of predicting the future using books. A simple method is to take down a book from the bookshelf, open it to a random page, put your finger down at random on the page, and read whatever sentence you've landed on. And that's your guide to the future. Some people swear by using the Bible for this, presumably hoping to be guided by the word of God; other people will point out that since the Bible prohibits witchcraft (but then, the Bible prohibits just about everything somewhere in its meanderings; and what reasonable person takes a 2000-year old prescription for living in the middle east seriously in modern-day Europe?) using it this way is probably blasphemous. Not that that stops the Bible-thumpers; they have circular logic to protect them from such paradoxes.

Of course, you have to close your eyes while opening the book and stabbing at the page with your finger, otherwise you're cheating, and may (perhaps subconsciously) pick a propitious sentence for yourself. This proved inauspicious for my great-uncle Jeff however, who opened his favoured book (Wisden's; he swore that cricket was the Great Solution to the scheme of things) and put his finger down on a scorpion that scuttled across the page at just the wrong moment. I prefer to keep my eyes open, but take my spectacles off, so that I can identify poisonous creatures with wicked intent. Like my ex-wife.

I did it this morning, curious as to what the day had in store for me. My sentence was:
'The caroticotympanic branch is small; it enters the tympanic cavity through a foramen in the wall of the carotid canal, and anastomoses with the anterior tympanic branch of the maxillary artery, and with the stylomastoid artery.'
I will confess to being mystified by this pronouncement and ended up asking the butler for his opinion. When he suggested that I use a book other than Gray's Anatomy for my bibliomancy I threw it at his head and knocked him unconscious for twenty-three minutes.
As it turned out though, it was oddly prescient, but my psychotherapist has forbidden me to try remembering any of the events at lunchtime so I'm not really able to tell you about it.

I shall continue my investigations into this art, and let you know the outcome.