You may delve into the spice of A Thousand Arabian Nights, with its silken sands and desert sun,

Or pop down the bunny hole in the mad and twisted Alice in Wonderland,

But never should you open the one marked The Private Journal of Ellsworth Holtgrefe, for as you read it, it will read you.

It’s neat and spidery handwriting spins its web around you, drawing you in, bringing you closer. Almost a work of fiction, but still very much happened, it speaks of long-lost worlds filed with strange flora and odd fauna, where the streets are literally paved with gold, and the bricks are of ruby and sapphire.

How wondrous were Mr Holtgrefe’s adventures! But in recent times, the leather-bound book is much more interested in you. It reads into your life, laying out your memories like you have laid it out, pages to be turned, and read, and thought upon. It tucks your name into a secret place on a secret page, one that no man, except the one Mr Holtgrefe, has ever seen.

And once the book has inked your name into itself, you are its slave, bound to come when it gives its silent call. It ties puppet strings to you, and plays the role of Grand Puppet Master, whispering in your ear, calling upon you to do its evil bidding in the ivory lit darkness of the night.

It tells you to kill, to burn, to poison. The impressionable words had picked up new meanings, new intents in the jewelled cities, moulded into a tool for malicious powers to play with, a gate into this mortal world. The book is a mouthpiece, but alive itself, a servant to the vile gods at large, but waiting in the shadows for its chance to take power.
Leave the leather-bound tome marked with silver upon the library’s shelf, to rot away, waiting for a time that will hopefully never come, and find something else, something much less maddening. Let the evil gods play out their shadowy game, without you as a pawn, only to be sacrificed for something much more terrible at the other side of the board.

Leave it be.