Content Warnings

• Body disfigurement
• Body modification
  Discussions of: blood, gore
• Mentions of: violence, animal disfigurement, death, car accident

JONATHAN SIMS

Statement of Sebastian Adekoya, regarding a new acquisition at Chiswick Library. Original statement given June 10th 1999. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London.

Statement begins.

JONATHAN SIMS

(Read aloud from the archived witness statement of Sebastian Adekoya)

Books are amazing, aren’t they? I mean, when you think about what they really
are. People don’t give the actuality of language the weight it deserves, I feel.
Words are a way of taking your thoughts, the very make-up of yourself, and
giving them to another. Putting your thoughts in the mind of someone else.
They are not a perfect method, of course, as there’s plenty of scope for
mutation and corruption between your mind and that of the listener, but that
doesn’t change the essence of what language is. Spoken aloud though, the
thought dies quickly if not picked up. Simple vibrations that vanish almost as
soon as they are created, though if they find a host then they can lodge there,
proliferate and maybe spread further. Still, it is not a reliable method in terms
of a thought’s endurance, as humans are fragile creatures and rarely last a
century.

A book, though, is another story. There are written texts that have outlived the
civilisations that created them. Imagine, thoughts hundreds, thousands of
years old, preserved and ready to be taken again. Corrupted, or translated,
perhaps, by a culture that does not understand them, but still, ideas that have
outlived by lifetimes the mind that first conceived them. Will the thoughts that
first ran through Shakespeare’s head ever stop being thought by someone,
somewhere? And a book, so dense with a mind’s fossilised creations, is it any
wonder they have been ascribed such power throughout the ages? Or that an
old library, with heavy tomes covering every wall, seems to have such a weight
to it, beyond the physical presence of the texts it holds?

I used to work at Chiswick Library. I didn’t have such ideas back then, though. I
just knew I loved books, always had, and so when the opportunity arose to
work in my local library I jumped at the chance. I had been a voracious reader
ever since I was old enough to hold a book for myself, and even before that my
mother tells me I would pester her constantly to read to me. I suppose you
might say my mind has always been receptive to the thoughts that lurk in the
written page. Still, Chiswick Library is a long way from the cramped and austere
libraries you’re probably imagining. It’s light and airy, with bookshelves and
carpets that speak more of cash-strapped local councils than of the rich
majesty of knowledge. It has an extensive children’s section and the vast
majority of its stock are dog-eared paperbacks of true crime, literary fiction
and reference books. It has a modest collection of books on tape and the
atmosphere, though quiet, is far from oppressive. In a word, I would sum the
place up as ‘unthreatening’.

It was three years ago when this happened. I had already been working there
for about a year when the book first turned up. Now, we used to buy all of our
books new, and I never did any of the acquisitions for the library, so I couldn’t
say when or where it might have been bought from, but it looked old and
pretty beaten up when I first noticed it. It was handed back with four other
books at the front desk, and as I was scanning them through I noticed that one
of the barcodes didn’t seem to match up. The barcode and ISBN both
registered as being that of Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh, but the book itself
was an almost featureless black paperback, with a title on the front in a faded
white serif font The Boneturner’s Tale.

I was a bit confused, and called the librarian, Ruth Weaver, over to ask about
it. She didn’t recall seeing it ever before, but stuck in the front was the ex-libris
bookplate of Chiswick Library, as well as a lending label with a handful of
stamps going back several years. Ruth shrugged and told me not to worry too
much about it – we’d get it recorded and put on the system properly, but
something about the situation bothered me, so I decided to check the record
of the man who had returned it. His name, at least according to his library
card, was Michael Crew, and sure enough three weeks ago he had borrowed
four books from us. Specifically, the four others he had returned. I suggested
to Ruth that perhaps he was a self-published author who was trying to trick his
way onto our shelves, and she laughed, saying it was probably it, although why
anyone would go to the trouble of faking it just to get on the shelves of
Chiswick Library was beyond her. The book even looked worn, though, like it
had seen decades of being read, with a line creased down the spine and one
half of the cover faded from the sun. Nor, from what I could see, did it list any
author at all.

It was at that moment that Jared Hopworth came in, and I had to put the book
to one side. Jared and I had once been fast friends; growing up on the same
road, attending the same schools, we had spent much of our early life as
inseparable. But he had always been, well, not to put too fine a point on it,
thick as mud, and when I went away to university, he stayed behind. I think he
saw it as something of a betrayal, and when I finally returned, I knew
immediately something had changed between us. He spent the time I was
away becoming a bit of a crook, and upon my return began what would
eventually become a campaign of petty terror. He was always very careful to
stop before he did anything that might get the police involved, and I guess
there was enough leftover affection from a childhood spent together that I
never really thought about reporting him. It was

JONATHAN SIMS

Oh, Erm Hello Elias.

ELIAS

Do you have a moment?

JONATHAN SIMS

Not really, I’m sort of in the middle of something.

ELIAS

I understand, it’s just that Miss Herne has lodged a complaint.

JONATHAN SIMS

A complaint? I could just as easily complain about her wasting my time.

ELIAS

That’s not how it works, Jonathan.

JONATHAN SIMS

I wouldn’t even have had to do the recording if Rosie kept her equipment in
better condition.

ELIAS

Regardless, I would prefer that you not antagonise anyone connected to the
Lukas family. They are patrons of the Institute, after all.

JONATHAN SIMS

Fine, fine, I’ll be more lovely. Now, can I get back to work?

ELIAS

Very well. By the way, have you seen Martin?

JONATHAN SIMS

Oh, he’s off sick this week. Stomach problems, I think.

[Sound of Elias Leaving]

JONATHAN SIMS

Blessed relief if you ask me.

Statement resumes.

JONATHAN SIMS

(Read aloud from the archived witness statement of Sebastian Adekoya)

It was worst when Jared visited the library, because that inevitably meant that
he was bored enough to seek me out for harassment. Sure enough, he started
chatting with me, meaningless jibes that served to wait it out until Ruth, who
didn’t know about Jared’s problems with me, returned to her office and closed
the door. As soon as she had done so, he turned and in a single movement
tipped over the metal returns cart, spilling the recently received books all over
the floor. He smiled at me and apologised. I did my best not to show any
irritation, or indeed any reaction at all as I slowly walked around and bent
down to start collecting them. As I rose to my feet I felt an impact on the back
of my head and staggered. Behind me, Jared stood holding the book I had put
aside, The Boneturner’s Tale, and had apparently picked it up to hit me with.
But rather than offering me a fake apology or further violence, instead his eyes
were locked on the book. We stood there in silence for a few seconds until he
said something about needing something new to read, turned around and
walked off.

I was, I will admit, a bit unsettled. As far as I could recall I had never seen Jared
read… well, anything, really. And the look in his eyes when he had left had
something in it not entirely unlike fear. Still, it was a welcome relief to have
him gone, and I quickly tidied up the rest of the books before Ruth noticed
anything amiss.

There was nothing else I recall that happened that day at the library, but on
the way home afterwards I passed by Jared’s house. I had moved back in with
my parents while I got everything sorted out after university, and he had never
moved out of his childhood home, so we still lived on the same street. It was
late September at this point, so by the time I had walked back from the library
it was dark, and I noticed a small shape moving in the pool of orange light
below the streetlamp.

As I got closer, I realised with a slight start that it was a rat, and not a dirty,
wild rat but a large, white one, quite well-kept and clearly once a pet. But
there was something very wrong with it. It was dragging itself slowly, pulling
from the front legs, and I saw that the back half of it was flat, as though
deflated somehow. I thought it must have been run over, but there was no
blood or sign of crushing, nor did it seem to be in any actual pain. It just had a
back half that flopped and twitched obscenely as it made its gradual way
across the lighted pavement and out into the darkness. I just stood there and
watched, transfixed by it, until it disappeared from view. Thinking about it
now, I remember its head was turned at a strange angle, far further round than
it should have been, although I might be getting confused. Many of these
experiences run together when I look back on them. There was no light on in
Jared’s house, but I hurried home quickly after that.

I didn’t see Jared again for some time. At first I was just happy for the space,
but as the days turned into weeks I started to feel something I wouldn’t have
expected to – worry. If it hadn’t been for the way he had left last time it
probably wouldn’t have bothered me, but he had looked so strange, and even
without him coming to the library it was rare I would go a week without seeing
him. By now it had almost been a month. Still, I resisted the urge to go to his
house and check. If it turned out he was fine, then I’d be inviting a whole world
of unpleasantness, and besides that, I reminded myself, he wasn’t my problem
anymore.

It was late October when Jared’s mother came in. It was near the end of the
day, and outside was already dark. I was putting up a display about good
Hallowe’en reads before heading home, when I heard the door open. I turned
around and there she was. It took me a few seconds to recognise her, if I’m
honest. I hadn’t seen much of her in the years since Jared and I had been close,
and she had aged noticeably. Mrs. Hopworth wore a bulky overcoat, though it
wasn’t that cold yet, and her arm hung down in a sling. Something about the
angle of the arm and how it hung there seemed faintly abnormal, and I
wondered if she had broken it.

When I asked Mrs. Hopworth if she was okay she just stared at me, her eyes
burning with hatred. With her good arm she reached into her coat and pulled
out a small, black paperback. She threw it on the floor without saying a word
and turned to leave. I couldn’t help myself, I asked her if Jared was alright. She
spun back and started to swear violently at me, told me I had no business with
her son and that I, and my books, were to stay away from him. As she spoke, I
couldn’t look away from her arm and the odd ways it twisted as she gestured.
How her fingers seemed to bend the wrong way. I was glad that Ruth had gone
home early as I didn’t want her to witness the disturbing confrontation I had
now apparently caused.

When she had finished, Mrs. Hopworth spat towards me, though I noticed she
was careful to avoid spitting at the book that now lay on the floor between us,
and left. I put down the copy of Stephen King’s Misery that I now realised I’d
been clutching, and approached the discarded volume that lay on the carpet.
The battered black cover seemed the same as when I had first seen it weeks
ago, with that faded white title on the front: The Boneturner’s Tale. I reached
down to pick it up, but before I did so a thought flashed across my mind, a
memory of the last time I had seen Jared, and I grabbed some tissues from the
desk before using them to pick up the book. Even then I felt my skin crawl as I
held it.

I decided not to deal with it that night. I wasn’t entirely sure that reading it in
the daytime would be that much better, but shadows cast from outside
seemed to have gotten that much starker since the book had been brought
back into my library, and it scared me. I placed it in the book returns cart and
left, double-checking I had firmly locked the door behind me.

It rained heavily that night. My room is in a converted attic and when the
weather is bad it’s as if I can hear every raindrop against the window that is
just above my bed. It wasn’t a storm, there wasn’t the wind for it, it was just
that heavy pounding rain that drummed and beat on the glass above me. I
couldn’t sleep. There was a nagging apprehension in my mind, something that
after three hours lying in bed had turned into almost a panic. How could I have
just left the book? There was something wrong with it, that much was obvious.
What if Ruth came in earlier than I did tomorrow and took it? What would
happen to her? Should I have destroyed it?

That last thought was quickly pushed away. I wasn’t sure I had it in me to
destroy a book, even one with such a strangeness to it. It surprised me just
how easily I accepted that The Boneturner’s Tale had dark powers, but I
suppose I’ve always felt that books have a sort of magic to them, so it was
really just a confirmation of what I had suspected, deep down, for a long time.
It was two in the morning when I decided that I couldn’t just leave it there
overnight. I got up, dressed and, quietly, headed out into the rain towards the
library, making sure to take my gloves. My coat was supposed to be water
resistant but still managed to soak in the twenty minutes it took me to walk
there. I had the key from locking up that night, and deactivated the alarm as I
entered.

It was almost pitch black inside, and part of me wanted to keep it that way, but
I turned on as many of the lights as I could without it being immediately
obvious outside the building. It wasn’t many, and I still had to half-feel my way
through the foyer and into the library proper. As I approached the desk and
the book returns cart where I had left The Boneturner’s Tale I began to step
less cautiously. It was darker in that corner of the library and I put a hand out
to steady myself against the handle of the small metal cart. I’d taken my gloves
off at that point and my hand came away wet. I quickly fumbled for the torch I
had snatched before heading out and turned it on. Red dripped and pulsed
from the cart, soaking the pages and forming a small pool around it. The books
were bleeding.

I laughed at that. It seemed so appropriate somehow, so utterly correct that
those neighbouring books should suffer, should be contaminated by it. Just as
it seemed right and proper that, when my torch found The Boneturner’s Tale, it
was dry, unmarked by the gory scene around it.

I put my gloves back on and carefully took out that sinister volume and placed
it on the desk. Perhaps I should have fought harder against the temptation to
look inside but my curiosity was too strong. The thick gloves made turning
individual pages almost impossible, and I still had enough good sense to keep
them on, so I just opened it on a few random pages and started reading.

Perhaps I was being paranoid. After all, I touched the book with my bare hands
when it was first given in to the library, and had no problems, but the image of
Jared’s mother wouldn’t leave my head. How her arm had twisted when it
moved. I decided to keep the gloves on.

It was written in prose, and certainly seemed to be a story of some kind. The
part I read dealt with an unnamed man, at various points referred to as the
Boneturner, the Bonesmith or just the Turner, watching an assembled group of
people as they made their way into a small village. It’s unclear from what I read
whether he is travelling with them, or simply following them, but I remember
being unsettled by the details he observed in them: the way the parson would
move his hand over his mouth whenever he stared too long at the nuns or how
the cook looked at the meat he prepared with the same eyes that looked at
the pardoner. It was only at that point that I realised the book was describing
the pilgrims from The Canterbury Tales.

Now, this certainly wasn’t some lost section of a Chaucer classic. It was written
in modern English, with none of the archaic spelling or pronunciation of the
original, and besides that the writing itself was of questionable quality. There
was something compelling about it, though. The debate about how finished
The Canterbury Tales were… well, it’s a very real debate. In the Prologue, over
a hundred tales are promised, but the most complete surviving version doesn’t
even reach two dozen. The book just sort of ends, with Chaucer adding a short
epilogue imploring God for forgiveness. A plea that is generally read as
sarcastic or rhetorical.

I flicked ahead a few pages, and found the Bonesmith had apparently crept up
to the Miller while he slept. It described him silently reaching inside him, and…
it’s a bit hazy. All I remember clearly is the line “and from his rib a flute to play
that merry tune of marrow took”. And as for the rest, I don’t recall in detail,
but I know that I almost threw up, and that the Miller did not survive. This was
on page sixteen, and it was a thick book.

I turned to the frontispiece, desperately curious as to how this book had ended
up in our library. In the harsh light of the torch, I could see the creases and
peeling edges of the Chiswick Library label, which usually meant it had been
removed and re-stuck, or taken from another book entirely. I could even see
the edges of another label underneath. Using a pair of scissors, I carefully
peeled off the top one, but was disappointed. It was the label for another
library, probably the last place it had been left, although I think it must have
been in Scandinavia, because it was something like the library of Jergensburg
or Jurgenleit or Jurgerlicht or something like that. It didn’t help me.

I was all set to return to reading the thing, when I heard the sound of breaking
glass behind me. I turned around to see Jared Hopworth standing in front of
the shattered window. Or at least, I assume it was Jared, as it demanded the
book from me in Jared’s voice, but wore lose fitting trousers, and a thick coat
with a hood that almost completely covered his face. Or its face.

He was longer than Jared had been, and stood at a strange angle, as though his
legs were too stiff to use. When he gestured for the book, I saw that his fingers
looked… sharp, as though the skin at the ends were being pushed into a tight
point by something inside. I told him that the library was closed, because at
that moment I could think of nothing else to say. He ignored me, and
demanded again that I give him the book. That was when I did something a
little rash, which is to say I punched him.

I had never really thrown a punch in anger before, or even desperation, so it
came as quite a shock to me when I managed to drive a single, solid fist into his
solar plexus. But as I did this, and this is the part that still gives me nightmares,
I felt his flesh give way and almost retract, drawing me in close. And then I felt
his ribs shift, shut tight around my hand, as though his ribcage were trying to
bite me. They were sharper then I would have thought possible, and at last,
this was what actually started me screaming. Never before or since have I ever
screamed like that, and I’m still a bit surprised I’m capable of making such a
noise, but there you have it.

In my panic I dropped the copy of The Boneturner’s Tale and, in less than a
second, Jared was on it. He released my hand and grabbed it with a frantic
desperation, before he turned to run back out the way he came in. I started to
chase after him, until I saw how he was moving. How many limbs he had. He
had… added some extras. That was the moment it finally all got too much for
me; I stopped running. It wasn’t my book, it wasn’t my responsibility and I had
no idea what I was dealing with, so I didn’t. I just stood there in a daze and
watched the thing that was once Jared disappear out into the rain. I never saw
him again.

The police turned up soon after. Someone had apparently heard my screams
and called in a report. I spun some tale about falling asleep at my desk and
being woken up by an attempted robbery. God knows how I explained the
bloody books, because it wasn’t some disappearing phantom. It took weeks to
get out. Everyone seemed to believe me, though, and miraculously I kept my
job. I haven’t seen Jared in the years since, and I haven’t done any further
research on the book. The best scenario I can possibly imagine is that this
statement is the last I ever need to hear or speak about Jared Hopworth or The
Boneturner’s Tale.

JONATHAN SIMS

Statement ends.

Well, this makes me… deeply unhappy. I’ve barely scratched the surface of the
archives and have already uncovered evidence of two separate surviving books
from Jurgen Leitner‘s library. Until he mentioned that, I was tempted to
dismiss much of it out of hand, but as it stands now I believe every word. I’ve
seen what Leitner’s work can do, and this news, even 17 years out of date, is
still very concerning to me. I’m going to have a discussion with Elias as to what
we can do to address the issue. I know he’ll just give me the old “record and
study, not interfere or contain” speech again, but I at least need to make him
aware of it.

Tim and Sasha have cross-referenced the events here with police reports, and
sure enough there was a warrant issued for the arrest of Jared Hopworth for
breaking and entering, as well as assault. He was never found, though, and the
crimes weren’t serious enough to keep the case active for very long. I’ve been
doing as much research myself as possible, but the book seems to have
vanished along with him.

I asked Martin to try and hunt down Mr. Adekoya himself for a follow-up, but
have been informed that he passed away in 2006. He was found lying dead in
the middle of the road on the night of April 17th. Despite the fact that there
were no crushing or trauma marks on the body, the inquest ruled it a hit and
run car accident due to the mangled position in which he was found. It was a
closed casket funeral.

Recording Ends.

written by Jonathan Sims