21
At first I didn’t recognise my own eyes in the mirror, one of the many that formed a chain of muted light along the corridors of the labyrinth. What I saw in the reflection was my face and my skin, but the eyes were those of a stranger. Murky, dark and full of malice. I looked away and felt the nausea returning. I sat on the chair by the table and took a deep breath. I imagined that even Doctor Trías might be amused at the thought that the tenant lodged in my brain - the tumorous growth as he liked to call it - had decided to deal me the final blow in that place, thereby granting me the honour of being the first permanent citizen of the Cemetery of Forgotten Novelists, buried in the company of his last and most ill-fated work, the one that had taken him to the grave. Someone would find me there in ten months, or ten years, or perhaps never. A grand finale worthy of City of the Damned.
I think I was saved by my bitter laughter. It cleared my head and reminded me of where I was and what I’d come to do. I was about to stand up again when I saw it. It was a rough-looking volume, dark, with no visible title on the spine. It lay on top of a pile of four other books at the end of the table. I picked it up. The covers were bound in what looked like leather, some sort of tanned hide, darkened as a result of much handling rather than from dye. The words of the title, which seemed to have been branded onto the cover, were blurred, but on the fourth page the same title could be clearly read:
Lux Aeterna
D. M.
I imagined that the initials, which coincided with mine, were those of the author, but there was no other indication in the book to confirm this. I turned a few pages quickly and recognised at least five different languages alternating through the text. Spanish, German, Latin, French and Hebrew. Reading a paragraph at random, it reminded me of a prayer in the traditional liturgy that I couldn’t quite remember. I wondered whether the notebook was perhaps some sort of missal or prayer book. The text was punctuated with numerals and verses, with the first words underlined, as if to indicate episodes or thematic divisions. The more I examined it, the more I realised it reminded me of the Gospels and catechisms of my school days.
I could have left, chosen any other tome from among the hundreds of thousands, and abandoned that place never to return. I almost thought I had done just that, as I walked back through the tunnels and corridors of the labyrinth, until I became aware of the book in my hands, like a parasite stuck to my skin. For a split second the idea crossed my mind that the book had a greater desire to leave the place than I did, that it was somehow guiding my steps. After a few detours, in the course of which I passed the same copy of the fourth volume of LeFanu’s complete works a couple of times, I found myself, without knowing how, by the spiral staircase, and from there I succeeded in locating the way out of the labyrinth. I had imagined Isaac would be waiting for me by the entrance, but there was no sign of him, although I was certain that somebody was observing me from the shadows. The large vault of the Cemetery of Forgotten Books was engulfed in a deep silence.
‘Isaac?’ I called out.
The echo of my voice trailed off into the shadows. I waited in vain for a few seconds and then made my way towards the exit. The blue mist that filtered down from the dome began to fade until the darkness around me was almost absolute. A few steps further on I made out a light flickering at the end of the gallery and realised that the keeper had left his lamp at the foot of the door. I turned to scan the dark gallery one last time, then pulled the handle that kick-started the mechanism of rails and pulleys. One by one, the bolts were released and the door yielded a few centimetres. I pushed it just enough to get through and stepped outside. A few seconds later the door began to close again, sealing itself with a sonorous echo.