The Wanderer in Unknown Realms by John Connolly Page B

books, boxed and unboxed, and she might as well have been consigning every one of them to the flames—“is so much smoke and mirrors, mere amusements for the ignorant. They have as much bearing on reality as does an actor capering on a stage, dressed in a cloak and horns and waving a pitchfork. The thing that created the book is greater and more terrible than any three-headed Christian god. It has a million heads and each head a million more. Every entity that rages against the light is part of it and is born of it. It is a universe unto itself. It is the great Unknown Realm.”
    â€œWhat are you saying—that, through this book, some entity wants to transform this world into a version of its own?”
    â€œNo,” she said, and now the sternness left her face, and it glowed with a zealot’s light, making her appear more ugly than before. “Don’t you grasp it? This world ceased to exist as soon asthe book was opened. It was already dying, but the Atlas disposed of its remains and substituted its lands for ours. This is already the Unknown Realm. It is as though a distorting mirror has become not the reflection of the thing but the reality of it.”
    â€œThen why can’t we see the changes?”
    â€œYou have seen the changes. Why, I do not know, but soon others will, too. Somewhere deep in their psyches, down in the dirt of their consciousness, they probably sense it already, but they refuse to recognize what has occurred. To recognize it will be to submit to the truth of it, and that truth will eat them alive.”
    â€œNo,” I said. “Something can still be done. I’ll find the book. I’ll destroy it.”
    â€œYou can’t destroy what has always been.”
    â€œI can try.”
    â€œIt’s too late. It’s too late for us all. The damage has been done. This is no longer our world.”
    I stood, and she rose with me.
    â€œI have one more question,” I said. “One more, and then I’ll leave you.”
    â€œI know what it is,” she said.
    â€œDo you?”
    â€œIt is the first and last question, the only question that matters. It is ‘Why?’ Why did I do it? Why did I collude with the book? Why, why, why?”
    She was right, of course. I could do no more than nod my assent.
    â€œBecause I was curious,” she said. “Because I wanted to see what might occur. But like Maggs, like Maulding, I think that I was merely serving the will of the Atlas whether I knew it or not.”
    If “why” was the first and last question, then “because I was curious to see what would happen” was the first and last answer. A version of it had been spoken to God Himself in the Garden of Eden, and it was always destined to be the reason for the end ofthings at the hands of men.
    â€œI tell you,” I said, “that I will find a way to stop this.”
    â€œAnd I tell you,” she replied, “that you should kill yourself before the worst of it comes to pass.”
    She retreated from me until she was against the fireplace, the mantel at her shoulders. Her dressing gown ignited behind her, the material blooming red and orange around her legs. Then she turned her back to me, revealing her naked body already blistering in the heat, the material adhering to her skin, and before I could move she threw herself face-first into the blaze. By the time I dragged her from the hearth her head was a charred mess, and she was already dying. Her body trembled in its final agonies as the books around her burned in sympathy.
    I left them all to the flames.

XIII
    AS I walked away from the Dunwidge home, I heard the sound of screaming and shouting, and windows breaking. Before I had gone barely half a mile, the noise of the fire engines was ringing in the distance.
    I had no cause to return to my lodgings. I had a gun, and I had left some spare clothing at Maulding’s house. My business in the city was