Author: Raedbard
Rating: G - PG-13
Characters: Giles, gen.
Timeline: 1970s, before Giles' Oxford crash-and-burn experience.
Summary: Mr Rupert Giles, librarian's assistant, finds a most interesting book among the ancient manuscripts which he is helping to catalogue.

A/N: Incorporating elements of a few M. R. James stories, but principally borrowing from 'Canon Alberic's Scrapbook'.

TO MAKE THE NIGHT'S ACQUAINTANCE

1. 'I Have Walked Out in the Rain - and Back in the Rain'

There is a particular kind of Oxford college in which what is commonly known as the 'supernatural' seems more likely to play a part in the ordinary business of life. Such places attract many more eccentric personalities even than the common-or-garden variety of college, easily found in that great city. Their precincts boast an unreasonable amount of dark corners and rain-soaked gardens in which creatures of the night might reasonably be thought to lurk. Though a great amount of potential certainly exists in these places it is rare that anything comes of their extraordinary qualities. But strange events are not unheard of in Oxford, and it is the story of one such event which I am going to tell now.

Mr Rupert Giles was a librarian's assistant of some four months standing. He was an able worker as well as an attentive pupil and was fast becoming something of a favourite, rather to his own surprise, with the Librarian of the College to which he belonged and in whose library he was labouring. On the afternoon during which my story commences he was occupied in looking through and cataloguing the many antique manuscripts which were, and very likely still are, in the possession of the College.

It was a dull day without and, indeed, Mr Giles had been soaked through in just the very short time which it had taken him to walk, or as it turned out, to run from his rooms in the western wing of the college over to the Library, not one hundred steps away. His clothes (old fashioned for the times but very apt for his work with the ancient papers and pictures of the collection) were then something of a distraction to him in his work, damp as he was, and he was not as attentive on that morning as was his custom. This did not escape the attention of the Librarian:

"Are you quite well, Mr Giles?"

"Oh, er...yes, Sir. I suppose. Just a little, erm, damp."

"Is it raining?"

"Yes, Sir. Quite hard when I was coming through the Quad."

"Well, Mr Giles, Mr Giles: you cannot sit here in damp clothes and plough through the manuscripts - you may drip on them for one thing," (Giles smiled nervously at that last), "So, off you go into the back, into my rooms and dry out. Go on!"

Mr Giles allowed himself to be shooed into the Librarian's rooms where he took his seat and accepted, somewhat meekly, the small brandy (it was after noon) which was proffered.

"I shall give you half an hour - or an hour, Rupert? I will get on quite well without you, my boy."

"Yes, Sir. Thank you."

As the door closed, Giles breathed a guilty sigh of relief. He removed his jacket and, after shaking it out, placed it on the back of one of the chairs which stood behind the Librarian's oak table. As he did so he caught sight of an antique item which had, so it seemed, escaped the attentions being paid to its fellows in the Library itself.

This was a rather battered book of a very advanced age and many leaves, some of which were only barely maintaining their positions within the volume itself. It rather caught Mr Giles' eye, for all its faults. So he sat him down by the fire and took up the book, meaning to make good use of the hour that had been given him. Very soon he was deeply engrossed in his reading, so much so that he hardly heard the heavy door of the Librarian's rooms re-open and admit the Librarian himself.

"Ah, Mr Giles. Are you quite dry?"

It took Mr Giles a moment to rouse himself from his book but he summoned his wits quickly enough to smile at the Librarian and, with an uncharacteristic guile, to replace the book in its original place before its absence was noted. Soon he was back at his work amid the manuscripts of the collection proper but he found that a nagging curiosity about the book he had left behind in the librarian's rooms was still with him.

He spent a poor night, having been unlucky enough to be caught in the rain for a second time on his return to his own rooms and, as if this was not enough misfortune for one night, to find that he had missed his supper at the College. He made do with a little toast and tea and went to bed hungry. But what was a worse source of discomfort to him were the dreams which ensured that his sleep was somewhat less than peaceful. Can you guess of what our Mr Giles dreamt? He woke more than once with the almost irresistible urge to journey back through the Quadrangle that he might lay his hands on the fascinating book of the afternoon. On his last awakening he got as far as rising and reaching for his shoes before his reason returned. He spent the remainder of his night wakeful, listening to the rain on his casement window.

2. 'I Have Outwalked the Furthest City Light'

The next day Mr Giles was back in the library, attending to the business of exploring and cataloguing the older inhabitants of the shelves. I am afraid to say that once again he was not paying as much attention as perhaps he ought to his work. His mind was, as you will have guessed, on that one particular volume to which access was, for the moment, impossible - the librarian was away from the library. Mr Giles withstood the boredom and wearying requirement for meticulousness for about two hours of the dull afternoon - the skies outside the College Library and indeed all across Oxford, were still grey and foreboding - before he found himself in need of a rest from his work.

He was alone in the stack and found, as he took himself on a slow walk around the chambers, that he was unlikely to be disturbed in any other part of the Library or its adjoining rooms. Everyone was away. Now here again an uncharacteristic capacity for deception encompassed Mr Giles. Once he had ascertained for a second time that the library building was empty, he turned his attention to the Librarian's own rooms and, with a guilty bearing, he first examined the heavy outer door, holding his breath that he might catch the slightest of noises that would betray the existence of an inmate. Then, his fingers cold and shaking, he tried the door. It gave the tiniest of clicks and a deep groan, then opened to reveal the object which was being so keenly sought, resting where he had left it on the oak table which occupied the centre of the Librarian's sitting room.

He rushed to it, with a desperate need to feel the volume once again in his hands filling him. As he reached the table and took up the book he felt, but paid no heed to, a warm breeze which blew up and into his face so that, for a few moments, he felt very uncomfortable. But what was that discomfort to him now that he held his prize?

Would it surprise you to learn that Mr Giles did not remain in that room? Before he quite knew what he was doing he was walking out of the library and the College and up the long road which runs past Merton and out into the Oxfordshire countryside, the book held close to his chest. It was some time before he stopped, exhausted, threw his back against a tree near the roadside and sank down into the grass, letting the book fall with him. With shaking hands he drew out his packet of cigarettes, his matches and tried to calm himself, all the while staring at the book which rested in the greenery at his feet.

It was many minutes, and two more cigarettes, before Mr Giles took up the book again and began to read and to browse over the old engravings, illuminated passages and mysterious writings contained within the ancient covers. He was not sorry for his deception for he could not, in those moments, feel any strong emotion but that of the curiosity which had enveloped him so completely that he became oblivious to his surroundings and situation. If you asked him now about the contents of the book and perhaps enquire as to what had been so fascinating Mr Giles would be unable to answer you clearly. He could only say, as he did to the gentleman who told me this story, that if you had seen it and held it in your hand, read its words and felt the power in the knowledge, well...you might then understand.

The oblivion into which Mr Giles mind cast the contents of the book applied to all matter contained therein with one exception. This was an old drawing which he discovered somewhere towards the end of the depredated volume. I myself have never seen this picture, nor did the gentleman from whom I learnt of Mr Giles experiences. It did, however, make the strongest of impression upon Mr Giles and it is his description which I must use to convey to you something of the horror which this one simple drawing created in him.

You have never seen such a creature as the one in this drawing, was what Mr Giles told my friend when he first spoke of this incident. It was not a horror inspired by any quality of extreme physical awfulness, there were none of the modern accoutrements of a nightmare - no blood or bone or putrid flesh, nor any evidence of the rituals of the occult or the hundred other examples of petty devilry which one expects from a picture designed to cause a fearful reaction. The horror of this creature was contained in the incredible potential for evil which seemed present even in the pencil-lines which formed the body of the beast on the page. It was so dreadful, and moreover even in its bestiality it was so life-like that Mr Giles was completely unable to look away from the picture for many minutes together so trapped was he by the bleak and fatal terror which this figure inspired in him.

3. 'I Have Looked Down the Saddest City Lane'

The light was fading as Mr Giles again grew close to Merton College, his steps somewhat weary and his book protected from the returning rain inside the folds of his jacket. Now a mood of repentance had fallen on him and he was eager to mend his fault and return the book to the Librarian with as much haste as he could muster. So with all good intentions he returned to the scene of his theft, expecting to see at least a light in the Librarian's chambers even if the Library itself was still as empty as it had been earlier in the day. But there was no light in the little room belonging to the Librarian and the whole place was dark and empty. So, with a heavy sigh, he turned his heel and returned to his rooms in College. It was not a long journey, as I believe I have already intimated, but for Mr Giles it was not an altogether carefree experience on that particular night. He had again missed his supper in Hall and was looking forward to the half packet of Jaffa cakes which awaited him back in his rooms. His anticipation of this treat was causing him to rush through the Quadrangle and up the stairs past the Porters' station and this haste prevented him from being as careful in his steps as others might have wished.

"Oh, excuse me - I didn't quite see you there, Sir."

"Yes, hmmm. Giles, isn't it?"

"Yes, Sir."

"Hmmm. Well you just watch your step in future, young man. There's others in this College not quite so fleet-footed as yourself."

"I'm sorry, Sir. I can assure you it won't happen again."

"Just you see to that - and your friend too."

"I'm sorry, Sir but I'm quite alone."

The Bursar of the College, for he it was, peered more carefully into the growing dusk behind Giles' shoulder. "Oh, ah - I see you are. Funny thing, I could have sworn I saw another fellow at your elbow, young Giles."

"No, Sir. Just me."

"Yes. Well, run along now - or that is, be off to your rooms."

Mr Giles nodded deferentially and continued, somewhat less briskly, on to his destination.

"I wonder what the old man was talking about just now," he wondered, aloud, to himself as soon as he had shut the door of his rooms behind him. "Seems odd that he should think there was someone with me. And, come to think of it, that chap in the corridor held the door for me a trifle too long. Ah, no time for that now - onto Jaffa cakes!"

You may easily imagine how Mr Giles spent the next hour of his evening once the biscuits had been broken open and the tea brewed. It was indeed, so restful that after a time, in spite of his continued inner turmoil over the adventures of the day, he was dozing in his comfortable armchair which sat before the fire. But for all his comfort and the wearying nature of the day it was not very long before he woke to find that the last vestige of light with which he had fallen asleep had now completely departed. His room was pitch black. So he reached out to turn on the lamp which stood beside his chair on the table upon which the book that had been the cause of so much of his exhaustion also lay.

As the light illuminated the room something in the corner of the inner vestibule, very close to the door, caught Mr Giles' eye. This was an incongruous something, a thing which he did not remember being there when he had sat down. Perhaps his old overcoat had fallen from its hook. He rose from his seat, meaning to go over and restore the item to its rightful place, but he got no further than a single step from his chair. The something, even as he looked on it, began slowly to rise from where it had seemed to lie across his threshold and as it did, to assume a solid shape: a thin back leading to broad shoulders in which every muscle stood out in sharp relief; long nails on hands which looked inhumanly strong and dusky skin, so thin as to be almost transparent. Mr Giles only barely muffled a scream as the creature turned its eyes on him.

He does not, he told my friend, remember at all clearly what happened next, only that the creature was almost upon him before he recalled where he had seen it before and figured to himself a desperate ploy to put an end to the beast. The matches were out of his pocket in a second and the horrific drawing of the thing standing before him up in flames before many more moments had passed.

4. 'I Have Been One Acquainted with the Night'

You may ask what became of the book which was at the root of this most unpleasant experience. It is, I believe, still in the possession of our Mr Giles and forms an important, if rather unloved, part of his library of the occult. The Librarian of the College, when asked to accept the volume, as well as Mr Giles' apologies, upon the next morning, stated that he had never seen the book in his life and that such an item could form no part of his personal library.

Mr Giles himself, though understandably shaken, broached the topic of his encounter with a few select people, of which my friend was one. Another person privileged with the knowledge was Mr Giles' father, who made his opinion on the matter only too clear:

"Well, my boy - I warned you, didn't I, of the type of thing that was bound to happen to you if you went to Merton? You wouldn't have it. Still, it is good for you, in a way...help you to see what life, your life, is really all about. Just don't go prying around in old books too much, you hear?"