As he drove, Richard became aware of a bizarre and unexpected sensation: contentment. All day long his thoughts had been circling around and around in the tumbler, socks mixing with sweatshirts, boxers with bath towels. But now, he was in a cool-down cycle. All he had to do was watch the road, keep the window down to savor the balmy, after-storm air, and, when it came, make the right onto Washington Street.

Across from the District Courthouse and adjacent to the Town Hall, the Public Library of Brookline occupied a stately red-brick Georgian Revival building nested atop a grassy hillock. A pair of enormous oaks whose leaves were nearing maximum greenness stood on either side of the acclivity, framing the scene with cinematic symmetry.

Richard squeezed the Pontiac into a streetside space directly across from the library. He fed the meter.

His ascent toward the building segued into a brisk jog. Dazzled by the melding of ebbing sunlight with brick reds and leaf greens, his eyes were only half-open. He approached the entrance, braced his body like a tailback about to administer a punishing stiff-arm, rushed against the door—and crumpled. He tried again. It was locked.

“What the…? No, no!”

A sign next to the door read: HOURS…Saturday 10–5.

The readout on Richard’s phone read 5:43. He lumbered back to the Pontiac.

A gaggle of library employees exited from one of the side doors, laughing and waving to each other as they separated, some heading for the street, others toward the underground garage between the library and Town Hall. Watching their end-of-day camaraderie spill out into the copper light, Richard felt as if he was being spoon-fed a cannonball. He retrieved the rune translation from his pocket. HWÆRCWOM…HWÆRCWOM. He must find out what this meant. Not tomorrow. Not after dinner. Now.

Let’s see, there’s the Boston Public in Copley Square. That might still be open. Or King Library at BU. Would they let me in without a student ID? Or there’s the Internet again. He considered being more aggressive with his search criteria, or trying other search engines. Or…

He had it. Groats Good Books. Though he had not been there for several months, he was pretty sure it stayed open until six on Saturdays. It would be close, but he thought he could make it if he caught some green lights.

At five-fifty, Richard pulled into the second of three parking spaces reserved for Groats Good Books. The converted chapel’s granite steeple with its silver cross at the apex was streaked with rain-wash. The brown lawn was overrun with equally brown weeds, while grass blades and sedges glistened. The building’s gray-brick exterior was alive with ivy, which had been allowed to spread unchecked. It claimed everything: walls, roof, chimney, shutters, the solitary high window. Where there was no solid surface to cling to, the vines banded into clumps and grew outward. In several spots, the building looked as if it had sprouted leafy tumors.

Groats’s welcome sign above the door was not a sign, exactly, but a piece of stained driftwood on which was painted a crude image of an open book. On each exposed page was painted a circular, lidless eye. Sky-blue irises, big wide pupils, red capillaries threading through the white orbs. They were rimmed with golden sun-spikes and angled just so, seeming to gaze earthward from their high perch. If you approached Groats in the evening, as the sun began its decline from yellow to orange, and you answered the sign’s gaze with one of your own, a strange thing would happen. About halfway between the parking lot and the entrance, an optical illusion involving color, distance, and perspective would take effect. The blue eyes would turn green and appear to look up slightly, a signal of admittance. Then they would freeze, and as you continued to walk forward, they would gaze beyond you, through you, returning their attention to the wide world.

Richard experienced this effect as he passed beneath the sign’s never-ending watch.

His metacarpus swallowed the brass doorknob that was polished to a gleam by decades of grip-sweat. He rotated clockwise, half-expecting another rebuff from the bibliogods. Not so. A click of tumblers, a tentative shove. But the creaky pine door was no pushover. It was ancient, thick, warped, and wedged in the jamb. It took some gentle jimmying before Richard could cross the threshold.

Next Chapter: Part Three: Diversions, Digressions, Discoveries, Chapter IX