26: A Mysterious Tome
Joel made his choice and picked up the nearest object – a stray notebook – which was lobbed towards Lysander’s head. As expected from someone as brash as Joel, the lightweight book didn’t make it more than half way across the room before flapping open and crashing into a desk. He cursed and tried to reign in his frustration.
“That shit’s not funny, dudes,” he said, “You could accidentally summon a demon! Or something!”
“They’re just figments of your imagination,” said John, looking up from his tinkering with the bored expression of someone who’d argued this point more than they’d have liked.
“No way, we’ve dealt with this shit before, right Kao?” Joel turned to Kaori, who blinked her surprise at the question and ran a hand through her spiky hair.
“We have?”
“I’m sure we did? Those shamans, right? Wasn’t there a ritual?”
“It kinda reminds me of a dream I had,”
“Dammit, I’m sure it happened…” Joel slammed his fist on the worktop, ignoring the looks his peers were giving him. “Or maybe it was a dream? Like, shared or something?”
Ms Thorburn watched the debate with a pained expression. Was she feeling the same as Phantasia about the truth? Did she want to blurt out that they were all under an illusion and that Joel and Kaori really had been mixed up with demons before? That all these things people thought they remembered, all these dreams they thought they’d had, were real events that were being hidden from them? Lysander and Angelo were laughing at Joel again, who stood grimacing in a corner as Kaori tried to calm him down. The truth would settle things. If only it wouldn’t get covered up again.
“Where’d you find that book, anyway?” asked John. He had shuffled his chair over and was analysing the pages with his glasses, tapping microscopic buttons on the rims for various vision-enhancing functions and correlating the data on his laptop. “It dates back about five centuries, but it’s in amazing condition for its time,”
Phantasia explained about the sealed catacombs and the library, replacing the magic doors with devious locking mechanisms she’d managed to hack her way into. John looked sceptical, however.
“I don’t know much about that era of history – it’s hard enough finding out what was going on a hundred years ago, let alone five hundred – but I’m pretty sure the whole area was fairly inhospitable back then, and the only people around were wandering tribes who wouldn’t have had the technology to vacuum seal underground chambers!”
“Oh, I don’t know much about these things!” she replied, “Maybe someone else sealed it afterwards? Or re-sealed it?”
John dropped his face so close to the page his nose was almost touching it. “Nope,” he mumbled, “This was definitely sealed in a vacuum for five-hundred years. Molecular scanning doesn’t lie.” He lifted himself up and scratched his head. “Maybe it was magic!”
Phantasia tried to laugh at his humour, but it must have come out wrong as John avoided making eye contact and shuffled back to his desk with flushed cheeks. As soon as he was gone, Doyle sat himself down next to thee book, his body stretched across the desk like a statue.
“Byron would love this shit,” he said, “Dude loves this sorta thing. Old stories of demons ruining the world and all that.”
“Mutants,” corrected John.
“Yeah, whatever.”
“What’re you doing with it, anyway?” asked Joel, who had calmed down from a bout of existential angst.
“I’m lending it to Ms Anderson,” said Phantasia, “I was hoping she’d be able to translate it,”
“Man, Ms Anderson…” Doyle slipped into a daydream state, “What I’d give to have some private tutorials with her. Maybe I ought to go digging for some old books too…” With a hint of embarrassment on his cheeks, he turned his back to Phantasia and slouched off.
“Boys,” “Men,” Kaori and Ms Thorburn commented in unison.
***
