The Wanderer in Unknown Realms by John Connolly Page A

You saw what might happen to a man who underestimates a book, especially a book like the Atlas .”
    I looked at the fire. Books were still burning in it. I smelled their leather bindings charring in the heat. Their pages curled inward as they took flame, as though in agony.
    â€œYou were speaking of the Atlas ,” I said.
    â€œMaggs found it at last in the most unlikely of places: in the collection of a widow in Glasgow, a God-fearing woman who did not even seem aware of its existence and could not tell him how she had come by it. It had hidden itself away amid worthless reprints. It would not allow itself to be read, not until its time had come. Then Maggs found it and knew it for what it was, and he contacted me. He asked if I could find a buyer for it, not knowing that the buyer, too, had revealed himself. But the Atlas knew. The Atlas was ready for them both.”
    â€œSo you paid Maggs a finder’s fee and passed the book to Maulding.”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œYou didn’t cheat him?”
    â€œNo. I am scrupulous about such matters.”
    â€œYou are moral about such things?”
    â€œNot moral. Afraid.”
    I let that go.
    â€œDid you look at it?” I asked.
    â€œNo.”
    â€œWhy not?”
    â€œAgain, because I was afraid.”
    â€œDid you even see it?”
    â€œBriefly, when Maulding came to collect it.”
    â€œWhat did it look like?”
    â€œIt was perhaps two feet by a foot and a half, the bindings a deep red, the spine ringed with gold loops. Two words had been burned into the cover: Terrae Incognitae . Unknown Lands.”
    â€œWhat was the binding? Leather?”
    â€œNo. I believe it was skin.”
    â€œAnimal?”
    For the second time, she shook her head.
    â€œNot . . . human?”
    â€œAgain, no. I don’t believe that the binding was of this world, and the book pulsed beneath my hand. I could feel the warmth of it, the sense of something like blood pumping through it. It did not want to be held by me, though, only by Maulding. He was meant to have it. In a way, the book was always his.”
    It seemed extraordinary. I did believe that she had acquired the book and sold it to Maulding, but the rest I found harder to accept: a living book, a book with intent, a book that had hidden itself away until the right moment, and the right owner, came along.
    â€œIf what you say is true, then why now? What changed to cause the book to act?”
    â€œThe world,” she said. “The world has altered itself without the book’s impetus. Evil calls to evil, and the circumstances are right. You more than anyone should know this to be true.”
    And I understood.
    â€œThe war,” I said.
    â€œThe war,” she echoed. “ ‘The war to end war,’ isn’t that howWells put it? He was wrong, of course; it was the war to end worlds, to end this world. The fabric of existence was torn: the world was made ready for the book, and the book was ready for the world.”
    I closed my eyes. I heard the wet, heavy sound of bodies being dropped into a crater, and my own screams as they brought me the news of my dead wife and children. I saw twisted remains being carried from the ruins of a farmhouse, a whole family killed by a single shell, children born and yet to be born brought to an end in fire and rubble. She is right, I thought: if this is all true, then let the book take the world, for whatever emerged in its aftermath could be no worse than what I had already seen. The landlord’s wife had been right: I did not believe that the war had purged the earth of poisoned seeds. Instead, they had germinated in spilled blood.
    â€œWho wrote this book?” I asked. “Who made it?”
    She looked away.
    â€œThe Not-God,” she said.
    â€œThe Devil?”
    She laughed: a hoarse, unlovely sound.
    â€œThere is no Devil,” she said. “All this”—she waved a hand at the occult