The Book of Life

Jacket collar upturned and hands shoved deep in pockets, Adam Nelson hunched his shoulders against the cold November rain. He walked at a brisk pace. The library, his destination, was now in view, and he wanted desperately to get inside and escape the harsh autumnal chill. He had never understood why fall was such a beloved season. It had always struck him as morbid. Symmetrical rows of bare, sickly trees lined the path to the library on either side. They were lit against the pitch dark sky by antique, Victorian-looking street lamps and the vague glow of a distant clock tower, which presided ominously over the scene. The look of the trees sent a chill down Adam’s spine that had little to do with weather. He picked up his pace a bit more.

The entrance to the library was preceded by a large set of stone steps. Adam climbed them and opened the door, entering a small welcome room. The warmth of the library was a relief. Adam shed his soaked jacket and approached the circulation desk. Behind the desk sat an old man, no younger than 70 years of age, with bushy gray eyebrows and a half ring of bushy gray hair encircling his bald scalp. As Adam approached, the man didn’t move a muscle. Adam wondered if the man was ignoring him at first, but soon noticed his glazed, unfocused eyes. He was blind. A blind librarian. The irony almost made him chuckle.

“Excuse me,” said Adam gingerly, expecting to surprise the librarian.

“Yes?” said the librarian , as if he had expected someone to speak to him right at that moment.

“I’m looking for a copy of Oedipus Rex. Do you have one available?”

“Indeed we do,” answered the librarian , despite not checking. “Follow me.”

The librarian led Adam from the circulation desk into the library itself. Though it had appeared modest from the outside, the inside of the library seemed impossibly cavernous. Stacks of thousands of books stretched from floor to ceiling for hundreds of yards in every direction. The librarian glided through the stacks effortlessly, with no cane or guide to help him along the way. Adam was shocked by the ease with which he navigated through the building. He almost doubted the librarian’s blindness for a moment, but it was obvious that it was not sight that was relying on, but rather an uncanny intuition. He led Adam on a labyrinthine route into the bowels of the library, up and down staircases and in and out of the many mountains of books. Libraries had always filled Adam with a sense of wonder and possibility, but this one more so than any other he had ever been in. This place felt to him as though it were discontinuous with the outer world; it was a realm where things and people were utterly different, where new and unfamiliar rules applied.

Finally, after what seemed like an Odyssaic journey, the librarian settled on a stack and withdrew a book from its shelf. He handed it to Adam. “This is a rare antique copy, so I can’t permit you to take it off library grounds,” he said, handing the book to Adam. “We have reading rooms down the hall, which you are welcome to use if you wish to read it.” Adam nodded his comprehension, and the librarian led him down the hallway and unlocked a reading room. The room was small and nondescript. There were only a plain wooden table and chair and an analog clock hanging on the wall to break up the monotony of the unadorned white walls and drab carpeted floor. Adam turned to thank the librarian, but by the time he had, he was already gone.

Adam sat at the chair and laid the book on the table. The cover was made of old cracked leather, the title obscured by years of accumulated dust. Adam brushed the dust away with his hand to reveal the cover. To his shock, it was not Oedipus Rex. Rather, the title read The Life of Adam Nelson.

Adam stared at the book, dumbfounded, for several minutes, unsure of what to do. His rational mind scrambled to invent an explanation; this must have been the biography of a different Adam Nelson which the librarian happened to pick off the shelf by mistake. Something deep inside him, however, balked at this thin rationalization. It told him something far different, that this was indeed the book of his life, that this monstrous library had lured him into its depths to show it to him.

Eventually, urged on by the optimism of his reason, Adam summoned the courage to peek inside the book, praying that he would see an account of some other person’s life. The spine cracked and groaned as he opened the book and he directed his eyes to the text of the first page. It read, “On July 17, 1997 at 5:35 pm, Adam Nelson was born.”

Adam slammed the book shut immediately. His heart thudded in his chest and beads of anxious sweat began to form on his brow. He began pacing back and forth across the room, all the while staring at the damned book while it stared back. He was torn between two impulses. On the one hand, part of him wanted to put the book back on the shelf where it came from, flee this godforsaken library and never think about it again. On the other hand, part of him was sickly curious to see what the rest of the book would say, how accurate it would be, and what it might portend about his future. Surely, if he could read about all the mistakes he would make in the future, he would be able to avoid them. But what was this book? Was it an account of things that could be, or things that will be? Would he alter his own future for the worse if he read the book’s predictions?

These thoughts raced through his mind for a long time; Adam could not tell how long, maybe hours, maybe days. Finally, his primal curiosity won. It sweet talked Adam into reading just one page, and just one more after that, and then another after that, until Adam found himself voraciously consuming the story of his own life. The book had every detail. Every passing thought, every shade of emotion, every subjective experience was recorded. Adam did not know if this book was the work of God or Satan, but whoever had written it had his entire life planned out in excruciating detail from the time he was stardust floating in the Milky Way. Every seemingly free decision he had ever made was the result of this terrible Author manipulating him like a marionette, pulling his strings to make him love or hate, forgive or resent, laugh or cry. Adam had thought that he was the author of his own life when he had merely been the protagonist, putty in the hands of the true Author. His entire life had been a cruel joke, and he was the butt of it.

Finally, after hours of reading, Adam arrived at the sentence: “At 11:48 pm, Adam Nelson read this sentence in the book of his life.” Adam glanced at the clock on the wall. He was unsurprised but somehow still horrified to see that the time was 11:48. Now was the pivotal decision. Adam could still close the book, put it back on the shelf, and live how he had always lived, unsure of what was coming next, doing his best from day to day. Or, he could turn the page, and, for better or worse, read the story of the remainder of his life. Though he had wavered earlier in the evening, it did not take Adam long to make up his mind. He would read the story of his future, and just to thumb his nose at the Author, he would do the opposite of whatever was written. If the book said he’d get married, he’d be a bachelor. If the book said he’d put on clothes, he’d go out naked. If the book said he’d live on the north pole, he’d move to the south. Despite all the evidence in the book that Adam’s life was proceeding on someone else’s script, he wanted to prove that he knew better, that he was the orchestrator of his own life and no one was going to decide for him how he lived it.

With defiance rising up in his chest, he turned the page. His eyes were immediately drawn to a sentence at the bottom of the page written in red ink. It read, “At the stroke of midnight, Adam Nelson died.”

The color drained from Adam’s face. His muscles slackened, and he became faint and lightheaded. All thoughts of defying the Author left him immediately. He looked at the clock. 11:50. Ten minutes to live. The immediacy of his predicted demise jolted him out of his stupor. He leapt out of his chair, burst through the door of the reading room, and began frantically trying to retrace his steps to escape the library. He had no specific reason for doing this; all he knew was that he had to get out of this hellish, monstrous place. He sprinted through the stacks, up and down staircases, twisting here and turning there. Just as he had when the librarian had escorted him to the bowels of the library before, Adam lost all sense of direction and time. He seemed to be sprinting aimlessly and endlessly, making no progress at all.

Finally, by some miracle, he found his way back to the welcome room. There was the circulation desk where the librarian had been, and there was the exit. Adam made a mad dash for it, hoping to forever leave this demonic library behind him and never think of it again. He ran across the room and burst through the exit door into the cold November night. He saw the same sights he had seen when entering the library; the sickly bare trees, the antique street lamps, the ominously presiding clock tower. What he didn’t see was the small collection of wet leaves that had accumulated at the top of the steps.

Running at full speed, his foot slipped on the leaves, and he fell headfirst down the steps. Bones, teeth and cartilage crunched the whole way down. He tumbled head over heels over head until he reached flat ground at the bottom of the steps, a bloody broken mass. He tried to move, but didn’t have the strength. All he could do was wheeze, and even that was terribly painful. Despite his injuries, he maintained the power of sight for the time being, and, glancing up the steps, saw the blind librarian standing at the top. He began descending the steps toward Adam, more gliding than walking. As he descended, Adam heard the clock tower start to toll.

Ding. One.

Ding. Two.

Ding. Three. The librarian was close enough that Adam could hear his footsteps now.

Ding. Four.

Ding. Five. The librarian stood over Adam now.

Ding. Six.

Ding. Seven. The librarian bent over and picked Adam up over his shoulder as if he weighed nothing. Adam wheezed in pain. The librarian turned around and began to carry him back up the stairs, toward the library.

Ding. Eight.

Ding. Nine. “They always run,” said the librarian. “Why do they always run?”

Ding. Ten.

Ding. Eleven.

Adam never heard the twelfth.