The Tell-Tale Heart of Madness 1

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Prelude No.1:  A Book is Printed; Later a Deal is Made

There are days that arrive masked, a disguise that gives them the appearance of another mundane collection of mortal hours measured out by the two-dozen. They do not wear signs around their necks that read, “This day may seem but a bell tone: simple and ordinary.” But sound reverberates and travels and never truly dies, echoing out from its birthplace, through the earthly atmospheres, then traveling out into the void between stars. Who know what is out there that listens?

            Johann Grüninger roused himself from a warm bed to begin his day. This took more effort bed. It was the last, unevaporated vestiges of a dream he had had, a very dark dream. Never since he was a young child had he felt this way- like a child again, that jumped at shadows and what unimagined dangers they could contain. He poked the embers in the tile stove until the coals glowed and added a few pieces of wood. But he could not bring himself to eat, not with how he still carried the feeling of the dream in his stomach. “I might as well just begin work, get my mind off this damnable dream.” With that, he went to his printshop, and after his preparations, set himself to printing out the small prayers books that made him the bulk of his living. He had been working so single-mindedly that he did not notice the passage of time, until the bell above the door rang out, startling him, and for a moment he wanted to scream, though he knew not why.
            A man (Grüninger thought this, based on the bipedal form that stood before him, wrapped in a cloak and scarf, under a wide-brimmed Berett, all of which served to hide the person within. This more than anything else unnerved the printer.) “This is… printing shop, yes?” said the voice that issued from within the darkness created by the scarf and hat, “You are the maker of… these?” With that the gloved hand held up one of the small prayer books.
            “Yes,” said Grüninger, with an impatience he wished sounded less like rising fright, “And they are quite available for purchase in many places throughout the town. Now, if you please, I must return to my work.”
            “Ah,” said the figure, “But, I have need of… special order. Book. You print on skin, not just paper… this is so?”

            “You mean Vellum,” said Grüninger, hoping that was what, indeed, the figure meant.

            “Yesss… just as you say! Now, here is what I require…”

            Afterwards, Johann Grüninger had little clear memory of the rest of the conversation, indeed of the rest of the day and a few days afterwards. He found himself, standing in his printshop, the same figure before him, no recollection of the time passed. In his hands, wrapped in protective velvet, was a single copy of what appeared to be the same, simple prayer book as he had printed hundreds of times before. Afterwards, a few things would stay with him for the rest of his life: the terror he felt, not knowing what the patron looked like (and the greater terror he imagined, should he have known), the slightly wrong feel of the vellum the patron had provided him (oddly…warm to the touch), and the lucid dreams of something very big and very bad, passing close by. Though paid handsomely by the mysterious patron, he buried and never spent the strange gold pieces, with the baleful face struck on their surface. Days later, he realized whatever plates he must have used on the special book job were missing as well, though he had not the heart to look for them.

            He died in 1533, though some records say 1531. If he had been asked, the printer would have insisted his death had begun the day the tall figure had entered his print shop. And, as far as he or anyone else knew, the book vanished from history.