DAUMEN KINO'S MESMER

Daumen Kino was obsessed with flicker books. 

He just couldn't get enough of their whispery animations and regularly spent entire days mesmerised by the flapping images contained within. Its fair to say that Daumen got utterly lost in the flickers and was hypnotised by the sound.

He had hundreds, if not thousands, of flicker books in his higgledy-piggledy house. They were everywhere and covered every surface, only interspersed by the candles Daumen loved as well, rising like spectres from the gloom.

Not only did Daumen buy flip books from wherever he could, he also made his own flickering images. Birds, explosions, feasts, unfurling leaves, pies rising, gun's firing, children yawning, eyes closing, mouths opening and suns setting. He drew them all and adored watching his efforts murmur past his eyes like glimmers of another world.

It was this other worldliness that really caught Daumen's imagination. He felt sure his twitching images held the key to unlocking the thin veil between the spheres, the gossamer betwixt vast dimensions. 

Like mayflies, the flickering papers conquered the light in a fury of existence and are gone. Once flipped they are done in a instant. A flick. A fleck. A mote. A speck. A ghost.

Daumen Kino felt sure he'd seen evidence of ghosts in the depths of the fluttering papers. Hazy figures skipping on the edges of vision like crystals forming in his tears. He was transfixed by the possibility and felt both elated and frightened in the midst of these animations.

Daumen craved entry into the filigree within his dancing leaves. He sought traces of the ether and dreamt of crossing the untouchable boundaries therein and lighting a candle on the other side. He would have given his very soul to gain passage.

His lust for the ethereal took him to every dusty emporium within the county and beyond and the older the book the more excited he got, as they were clearer portals, more perfect mirrors and the thinnest of curtains through which to step.

The best subjects were the wispy minstrels favoured by Victorians, the jittery troubadours and shadowy fools. Within the dust of these frozen dances lay the stepping stones to a younger world. He searched deeper behind the murky windows of antiquarians and delved further into the dark heart of the Capital's relics.

Owning countless originals, Daumen sought a truly rare item, an 1886 Melville Living Picture Book. Now, one of these Melvilles would have been hard enough to find but Daumen wanted the fabled hexagon, a mythological array of six books creating an almost animate entity within. None had ever been found and Daumen did not hold out much hope but trudged the metropolis nonetheless.

If Kino could locate such a hexagon he might stand a chance of discerning the shapes within and at last touch the lodes of the ancients.

He felt compelled to continue and it was only at the very end of his quest that he made the discovery.  After months of disappointment it was a non-descript public library down a poorly-lit alleyway into which he stumbled one summer morning.

At the end of a remote aisle covering magic and lore his fingers, piercing deep abandoned cobwebs, scratched a small spine. Slowly pulling it out he released a bank of dust which surrounded him like a fog. Kino coughed and spluttered but continued to pull.

As the booklet fell finally into both his hands he could not believe what he was seeing. A Melville Hexagonal Book of Living Pictures. 

"Oh my God!" he shouted loudly, so loudly in fact that he caught the attention of the librarian sitting at the front desk behind a stack of leathery tomes. The librarian stood and walked slowly towards the farthest aisle.

Daumen Kino had struck the motherlode. He had actually found what was probably the only copy of the book in the entire world. He shook with excitement and his hands quivered as he turned its rare geometry round and round. 

His mouth formed a huge grin and his eyes widened as he realised the enormity of his find. His rapture knew no bounds as he commenced his greatest wish, his destiny, a moment he had been leading up to his whole life, the moment he would riffle these legendary pages.

He began to work the papers.

Immediately a flickering image of a young girl appeared. At first she was sat at the back of the picture slouched on a small stool. Very quickly she looked up and ran towards the front, her face appearing large on the page. her mouth was opening and closing as if shouting something and she clung to the edges of the book as if it was a window frame. The final image was of the girl screaming and sobbing into her hands as a shadow passed by.

Daumen was mesmerised. He gawped at the fluttering life in his fingers. He was shivering with glee but began to feel something else. Was it hesitation after all his searching?

His body felt fatigued as if it were fighting to stay upright. He felt his shoulders hunch and his face descend a little towards the Melville hexagon. His balance shifted. He staggered forward, his hands quaking, clenching the book. His knuckles were white with the strain and slowly but surely his nose nudged the flickering pages, now powering themselves in an endless image of the girl yelling and shaking her head wildly.

She stopped suddenly and Daumen realised that his hair was actually entering the picture, then his face and then his entire head. He grinned euphorically as his dream came true. To peek at secret alchemy, the spirits behind our eyes. 

But a dark stain welled up in front of his eyes and revealed its absolute hatred for the living and its stark compulsion to enter our world to feed its toxic appetite.

Kino shrieked in terror as he stared at this malignancy and tried desperately to force himself back out but to no avail. His torso plunged into the book and with one final scream he knew he couldn't hold on and he vanished completely into the papers.

Scwhupp! 

The librarian reached the aisle just as Daumen Kino was no more. The book, as if hanging in mid air, fell to the floor with a thud. The librarian picked it up and looked at the first page of the drawings.

Sat at the back of the picture was a young girl on a stool. Near her a young man was on his knees with his face in his hands howling. He ran to the front and began to mouth something imploringly to the librarian, something like "I know now. I can see what's here. I've seen the ghosts. Now please let me out. Please!" 

A smudge suddenly rushed past him and a shadow darkened the face of the Librarian. She shut the book and smiled.

She date stamped the ticket for that day. 1st April 1936. It sat below the only other stamp, exactly fifty years earlier, 1st April 1886. The day Melville had secretly hidden a copy of his Living Pictures hexagon in the bookcase.

Still grinning, the librarian tucked the book back into its dusty slot deep in the shelf and walked back to her desk, where she began making her own shadowy flicker books to give away to her lenders.