Legend warns of this dire curse, and our distressing personal experience confirms it. One of our esteemed and adored employees, Thelma Kickmule, as rock-ribbed and tough-minded an individual as you will find this side of the Marine Corps, read Counted Sorrows from first word to last, certain it would not affect her, and within nine minutes of closing the volume, she became convinced that she was a chicken. No amount of therapy, drugs, or slaps upside the head could dissuade her from this new perception of herself. Thelma now lives in a coop in Iowa, where she is shunned as the “Featherless Hen” by other residents and mercilessly threatened by the farmer who resents that she consumes so much grain without producing a single egg.
Anyway, with fond memories of the charming correspondence they so much enjoyed with Basil Keenly, every librarian is drawn to his photo. Perhaps moved by his handsome face and by the thought that he was called from this world at such a young age, Basil’s librarian friends evidently kiss his portrait, for after a group of them has passed the Wall of Honorable Service, the glass over his image and the frame around it are literally glistening with saliva.
The high point of every tour of the Koontz manor, especially for librarians, is a walk across the Bridge of Nails, through the Curtain Devouring Fire, along the Tunnel of Deadly Spring-Loaded Spears, to the Great Vault of Unimaginable Torment, where The Bask of Counted Sorrows is kept on display in a case ten-inch-thick, bomb-proof glass. Flanking the display are supernaturally alert and lightning-quick Ninja assassins. Flanking the Ninjas are seven-foot-tall, massively muscled guards so pumped full of steroids that their livers are bigger than basketballs. Flanking the guards are genetically engineered, two-hundred-pound pit bulls trained to kill any visitor who matches at least seven of ten indicators on the FBI’s standard psychological profile of a typical rare-book thief. Having been drilled in those ten indicators by the finest dog trainers inthe world, the pit bulls cannot be easily deceived – although a dried dribble of gravy on a visitor’s neck tie or sweater is also likely to instigate horrendous violence. Finally, flanking the pit bulls are attorneys who insist that each visitor sign and have witnessed, on the spot, a statement to the effect that he or she swears that he or she has no intention of committing an act of larceny while in the Great Vault of Unimaginable Torment and will not attempt to damage, deface, dog-ear any page of, or lick The Book of Counted Sorrows.
Librarians, a dangerous and fearless lot, have not a1ways been deterred by the Ninjas, the steroid-pumped guards, the pit bulls, and the bomb-proof glass. Because of their respect for the written word, however, every last one of them, at least thus far, has been deterred from reckless action by the document of forswearance presented by the attorney. As an extra precaution, to encourage the expression of their basic genteel nature, we serve scones and Robertson’s lemon marmalade immediately upon entering the Vault, as well as tea laced with Prozac.
What the librarians see beyond the thick, impurity-free glass is a slim leather-bound book with a sewn-in ribbon page marker. The same thing is seen, of course, by visitors who are not librarians, which includes but is not limited to teachers, bankers, stevedores, peg-legged pirates, pirates without handicaps, butchers, bakers, candlestick makers, software designers, politicians, obstetricians, mathematicians, electricians, professional underwear models, nuclear physicists, artists, car-wash guys, the odd people who design and manufacture those tacky musical toilet paper dispensers, clergymen, grocers, carpenters, worm farmers, hat designers, hat makers, hat blockers, hat dealers, hat critics, post-market hat customizers, clowns, mimes, peanut vendors, private detectives, successful thugs involved in every aspect of criminal enterprise, dentists, dessert chefs, specialty plumbers, mink ranchers, mink gutters, mink sinners, mink-rights activists (that was a bad day on the tour), florists, film-makers, show girls, phlegm analysts, painters of elaborate scenes on collectible thimbles, hair salesmen, and any number of wealthy snots who haven’t done anything all their lives except live off the money earned by their parents.
The binding of the book is enhanced with a geometric Art Deco design crafted with inlays of leather in blue, black, green, and a fourth color for which no one has managed to find a name. Although the volume bears a copyright date Of 1928, the slightly creamy off-white paper has suffered no yellowing in all this time, and it has an exceptionally soft smooth finish equal to the flawless skin of a king’s concubine, supposing that kings in these classless times still possessed the discretion and good sense to keep concubines instead of chasing off after girl pop singers of dubious talent and topless lap dancers, as does every common gink in the kingdom. In spite of its age, the book is as pristine as any tome just off a printing press, with no smudges or spots, no creases or soiling – with the sole exception of the dried maroon smear of blood on page 22, which recent DNA tests have proven to be extraterrestrial in origin.