Episode XXXVII - A Library of Love

            Ellis descended into Franck’s lab with a palpable sense of relief.  The air was thick with the smells which the youth from Larksborough was coming to associate with the science of Hypostatick Philosophy and, dark though it was, there was something comfortable about the greenish glow coming off some of the apparatus.  The lab had not been in use for a couple of days, so Ellis could only assume that it was always like that.

            Equally familiar was the sound of Siren and the Former Baron bickering at the bottom of the stairs.

            “But we didn’t do it,” Siren was saying, “at least, not intentionally.  We don’t understand half of the stuff you have here and, to be honest, with most of it lying around gathering dust, I’m surprised something like this hasn’t happened already.”

            “You must have been responsible,” came the Former Baron’s rebuttal, “pictures do not just come to life of their own accord after decades of silence.”

            Ellis descended the steps quietly and came down between the two.

            “Wasn’t it Gulliver’s medallion that set it off?” he said calmly, earning a melancholy glance from the other pirate.

            The Former Baron was on him in an instant, “What medallion?  What happened?” Then, before anyone could answer, he leapt over to where Gulliver was standing and hopped about animatedly, shouting, “let me see it!”

            Gulliver pulled the medallion out from its hiding place in his shirt as Siren brought the Former baron up to speed.

            “He found it on the Fabled Isle of Riches.  It seems to be a  powerful artefact which either has a store of energy, or amplifies the energies of the wearer.”

            Von Spektr examined the gold disc in his hands, taking time to peer at each of the symbols and images graven into its surface.

            “Yes, yes,” he said, “that’s very perceptive of you my dear, very perceptive indeed!”  He looked up at Gulliver, “And the frame activated when this drew near?”

            Gulliver nodded, gulping as he did so.

            “Then it’s quite clear what must have happened,” the Former Baron said excitedly, stepping away from Gulliver and pacing around the room, “this medallion jump-started a highly endodynamic reaction within the mechanism of the frame itself, which pulled Great Uncle Adelbert’s Hypostatick energies out from the reservoir and began to draw energy in upon itself from the outside world, making him stronger and pushing him ever closer to becoming a Geist!”

            “So, how do we stop it?” asked Ellis.

            The Former Baron Von Spektr stopped still in the middle of his lab, scanned the faces of each of his companions in turn, glanced at all the apparatus that surrounded him, rubbed a hand through his thinning hear and then, at last, shrugged.  “I have no idea,” he said.

            “Well, there must be something we can do!” Siren said, her voice strained with frustration.

            “I’ll need to have a look through my books,” he said, wringing his hands, “Oh, but there isn’t time, there just isn’t time!”

            “Which books,” Siren asked, “tell me which ones you need and we’ll go and get them.  We can even  help you search through them.”

            “Oh, there’s a whole string of titles I’ll need. The Combined Compendium of Practickal Hypostatick Philosophy, Jospeh Moer’s Philosophick Almanack, no. 62, The Compleat Workes of Borellus, vol. VII, I should think, Baronet Rudigore’s Advyce from your Ancestrie and How to Avoyd It, Hans Velker’s Ghost’s, Ghouls, Ghasts and Geists: An Hypostatickal Approache for Philosophick Studie, The Summoner’s Codex and Experiments with Geists: A Philosophick Endeavour, by Adelbert Von Spektr.  They should all be in the kitchen.”

            “Then let’s start looking,” Siren replied, “Gulliver, Ellis, follow me!”

            “Yes Ma’am!” Gulliver replied a little over-enthusiastically, especially given his recent melancholy mood, but Ellis watched them ascend the stairs until, as they neared the top, Siren looked down and shouted, “Ellis does mean you, Ellis.  Now hurry up, or, as soon as I get my ship back, I’ll throw you to the Velocignaths!”

            He sighed, then obeyed, leaving the Former Baron to examine each of his devices in turn, as if hoping to find a clue in the cogs and pipes that he had hitherto failed to notice.

            Upstairs, in the kitchen, everything was chaos.  Books were flying everywhere, displacing pots and pans, plates, glasses and cutlery, as well as certain extraneous items of food.  At the centre of this tornado of activity, a librarian’s worst nightmare, stood Siren, barking orders as if she were already back on deck, as Ellis and Gulliver dutifully rooted through the heavy volumes that lined every available piece of shelf space in the small room.  The voice of Adelbert Von Spektr echoed through from the hall, but no sensible words could be discerned.

            “There, was that the Borellus?” Siren demanded as Ellis threw aside another book to get those trapped at the back.

            “It’s volume three,” he replied.

            Siren let out a grunt of displeasure.  “Why can’t Franck keep his books in some sort of order?  I’m telling you, the next time we get a quiet moment, I am cataloguing this entire collection!”

            “Rather you than me,” Ellis muttered under his breath.

            “I heard that, Ellis, and don’t think you won’t be helping.”

            Ellis’ shoulders slumped.

            “Oh, oh, oh!” came Gulliver’s excited voice, “I think I’ve just found one of the books what we need!”

            “Which one?”

            “It’s Ghosts, Ghasts and Geists, An ‘ypostatickal Approache for Philosophick Studie.  What a mouthful!”

            “Take it down to Franck right away.  He can start into it whilst we look for the others.”

            Gulliver nodded and danced his way around the piles of books until he found the door to the dining room, which he promptly vanished through.

            “Well, that’s the last of the kitchen shelves,” Ellis announced with a sigh a minute later, as Siren scanned the piles they had just created, just in case they had missed something, “time to try the dining room”

            He climbed down from the surfaces, dusted himself off and then followed Siren through into the next room, where the whole chaotic process started all over again.

            “I brung you one of those books what you asked for, Mr. Von Spektr,” Gulliver muttered after he had lugged the hefty tome down the stairs into the basement laboratory and finally managed to drag the Former Baron’s attention away from the minutiae of his inventions.

            “Ah, good, it’s the Velker!” the Philosopher replied, “and please, call me Franck.  It’s enough having Allinson giving me my title all the time.”

            “Allinson?” Gulliver asked, confused.

            “Oh, you know, the boy, Allinson!”

            “Oh, right, you mean Ellis don’t you?”

            “If you say so.  Now, hand me that book, if you please.”

            Gulliver obliged, setting the book down on the bench before the Former baron and then backing away slowly, as if it might explode at some point in the not too distant future.

            “So,” the Former Baron said, opening the dusty cover and peering through the contents page, “you are a pirate, like Siren, eh?”

            “I used to be, sir.  I was the first mate on the Dusk Raider, until I lead a mutiny on another ship.”

            “That sounds fascinating,” the Former Baron said, nodding, but not lifting his head from the book.  “Now, if I start with the chapter on ‘Geist Manifestations’ and move on to ‘Mechanisms of Containment’, I should be able to build up some kind of picture of what’s happening so far and…”

            Gulliver listened for a minute, before concluding that he wasn’t going to be involved in the conversation any further, and so he made his way towards the stairs with the intention of rejoining the efforts in the dining room.

            “Oh,” the Former Baron said suddenly, startling Gulliver just as he was about to ascend the staircase, “when you’re up there, could you also look for Artifacts of the Western Isles, by Malachi Shunt?  It might help us to identify your medallion.”

            “Uh, yes sir!”

            “Good lad, good lad,” the Former Baron muttered as Gulliver ran up the stairs, “and do, please, call me Franck.”

            “If you’re looking for a good read,” Adelbert Von Spektr was calling through from the hall, “May I suggest The Empire of Cataclysme: Why Lakhma Must Returne, by yours truly.  It’s worth reading from cover to cover, I can assure you!”

            “I think I saw that one fifteen minutes ago, “ Ellis said quietly to Siren, who knelt beside him as they rifled through yet more books, “it wasn’t by Adelbert, that’s for sure.”

            “Aha!” Siren shouted triumphantly, “I’ve found Borellus at last!”

            “No,” Ellis sighed, “that’s volume seventeen.”

            “Oh, for the love of top sails, how many volumes are there?”

            “The Compleat Workes is in thirty-six volumes, but I don’t believe anyone has a complete set of them,” came Adelbert’s voice once more.

            “So who’s to say Franck even has volume seven?”

            “I’m sure he knows his own library,” Ellis said, not sounding convinced.

            “I’m back,” Gulliver said from beside the door to the hall, trying his hardest to ignore the ranting commentary coming from behind the canvas.

            “Oh good,” Siren said, standing up and smiling, “there’s a pile of books there, please take them down to Franck for us.”

            Gulliver looked at the stack of weighty volumes with a weary gaze.

            “Yes, Ma’am,” he said with a slightly limp salute, but Siren was already turning back to the bookshelves and before he could even start to remove books from the  pile she added another to it.

            “Okay,” Gulliver began, huffing and panting, as soon as he passed through the door into the Laboratory, “we’ve got… some Codex or other… something by… Moer, and some… some other books.”

            He staggered down the stairs and eventually dumped the pile of books on the Former Baron’s workbench, just beside where the old man was flipping through page after page of the Velker tome.

            “Anything interesting learnt so far,” he asked once he had caught his breath.

            “Oh yes,” the Former Baron replied with glee, “did you know that, for a while, in the 3^rd Century of the Isolationist Protectorate of Waterwell, Geists were bound to the submerged vessels of the Waterwell Armada, meaning that, when the Armada struck into Hollowlake it was essentially an undead invasion, which completely changes the classification of reparations required in the event of failure, but of course none of this was known at the time of the war.”

            “And does that ‘elp us?”

            “Oh my, no, but it is interesting, wouldn’t you agree?”

            “Uh, yes,” Gulliver replied, scratching his head, “well I brung you more books.  Maybe they’ll ‘elp?”

            “Thank you, my boy, thank you,” the Former Baron said as he examined the small pile of books.  “Ah, the Philosophick Almanac!  What a good old friend that is.  I would never have gotten through my teenage years without it, spending all that time hunched over in my room whilst Father banged on the door demanding I spent some time in the dungeons like any other healthy boy.  Ah, those were the days…”

            “I’m sure,” Gulliver said uncertainly, “well I’d best be off upstairs, then…”

            “Oh yes, yes, yes.  Got to keep at it, as they say, oh yes…” the Former Baron trailed off whistfully.

            Gulliver slowly mounted the suddenly familiar staircase and slipped back into the hall.  He could hear Siren and Ellis talking loudly in the dining room and so, at first, he didn’t notice that anything was wrong.

            “But it has to be here, Ellis, it has to!”

            “We’ve stripped every shelf, there is no sign of Borellus volume seven.”

            Siren let out a controlled scream, “I really didn’t want to have to start investigating the other rooms!  All the other books were down here, why not Borellus?”

            Gulliver felt  pang of sympathy for Siren, and for his back, which did not relish the possibility of carrying books down more than one flight of stairs.  He scanned the corridor, trying to work out how many other rooms might hold books before they had to venture onto the first floor.  It was then that he noticed that the canvas had slipped away from the picture frame.

            “Well, let’s face it, it was pretty unlikely that we would find any of them in just the first two rooms that we checked.  We should consider ourselves lucky.  And, who knows, maybe the Former Baron won’t even need Borellus?”

            “Well, maybe,” Siren said with a sigh, before jolting upright and looking at Gulliver with surprise as the lanky pirate dashed into the dining room wearing a panicked expression on his face, “what is it, Gulliver?”

            “It’s the Former Former Baron… Adelbert, or whatever ‘is name was…”

            “What about him,” Ellis asked, feeling a hot lump building in his stomach, “what’s happened?”

            “I dunno ‘ow, but… but… ‘e’s gone!”

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