This letter is being transcribed by intern Tom Lazythint, as for some reason or another I have become temporarily incompatible with objects on the material plane of existence – a mere phase which I am sure will pass in time, and something I am sure must happen to most people my age at some point or another. Regardless, this statement is a disclaimer against possible typos and other displays of intern daftness which might occur within this transcription.

I would like to say that in fact, I feel quite fine, and very well up to my duties regardless of my current state, and declare that I will fight tooth and nail with anyone who even as much as attempts to park their autocar in my assigned parking spot, parks their grimy feet on my fine brazilian cherrywood desk, or even thinks to attempt to raid my tobacco stocks, pilfer my chocolate stores, violate my taxidermied werebeasts, or as you whippersnapper deviants tend to say “yiffing the howlers”.

I do realize that the corpse found in the bath may in some ways resemble my own proud and well-bred visage in various ways such as height and remarkably well-tailored swimwear, and in this I can see where this confusion may have stemmed from. I do however assure you that I am right as rain and feeling as though I am well in my prime.

I would also like to inform that putting an end to my pay and benefits, or allowing anyone access to my office, would be very ill-advised, considering that I am a storehouse of information – information which this fine establishment would most likely prefer to have limited solely to this fine establishment, rather than in the hands of entities such as perturbed villagers and inquisitive constables.

Yours, if you know what is good for you,

Mint T. Zloty

P.S. Oh drat! I seem to have slipped through my chair again… no! don’t type that you boob! Just help me up or I swear you will receive the caning of your life! You there! I said stop typing you knitwitted son of a diseased mongoloid poopsmith! Just what do you think you are doing?! Get me out of this floor God blast it!

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It has been brought to my attention that someone has purchased a sinusoidal bath as part of the replacement equipment for the baths in the gymnasium that were destroyed by that localized storm.

May I remind all staff that all equipment brought into the facility must follow proper installation protocol and be maintained or observed as needed for the safety and well-being of all Archive staff.

The electrified remains of elder archive staff member Mint T. Zloty were found in the sinusoidal bath still smoking early this evening. Consequently, Professor Zloty is said to be in the south wing reading presently. As an added sidenote – please keep in mind that smoking is strictly prohibited anyplace other than the smokers’ lounge, the walk-in humidore, the library, or your own personal laboratory.

If someone would be so kind – please seek out Mint and please inform him that he is dead and we will not be expecting him to show up for work in the morning.

Thank you.

Sincerely, Babel-Jean Tea Hymn

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“It’s your own choosing,” said the man with the withered arm once more.

I heard the faint sound of a stick and a shambling step on the flags in the passage outside. The door creaked on its hinges as a second old man entered, more bent, more wrinkled, more aged even than the first. He supported himself by the help of a crutch, his eyes were covered by a shade, and his lower lip, half averted, hung pale and pink from his decaying yellow teeth. He made straight for an armchair on the opposite side of the table, sat down clumsily, and began to cough. The man with the withered hand gave the newcomer a short glance of positive dislike; the old woman took no notice of his arrival, but remained with her eyes fixed steadily on the fire.

“I said—it’s your own choosing,” said the man with the withered hand, when the coughing had ceased for a while.

“It’s my own choosing,” I answered.

The man with the shade became aware of my presence for the first time, and threw his head back for a moment, and sidewise, to see me. I caught a momentary glimpse of his eyes, small and bright and inflamed. Then he began to cough and splutter again.

“Why don’t you drink?” said the man with the withered arm, pushing the beer toward him. The man with the shade poured out a glassful with a shaking hand, that splashed half as much again on the deal table. A monstrous shadow of him crouched upon the wall, and mocked his action as he poured and drank. I must confess I had scarcely expected these grotesque custodians. There is, to my mind, something inhuman in senility, something crouching and atavistic; the human qualities seem to drop from old people insensibly day by day. The three of them made me feel uncomfortable with their gaunt silences, their bent carriage, their evident unfriendliness to me and to one another. And that night, perhaps, I was in the mood for uncomfortable impressions. I resolved to get away from their vague fore-shadowings of the evil things upstairs.

“If,” said I, “you will show me to this haunted room of yours, I will make myself comfortable there.”

The old man with the cough jerked his head back so suddenly that it startled me, and shot another glance of his red eyes at me from out of the darkness under the shade, but no one answered me. I waited a minute, glancing from one to the other. The old woman stared like a dead body, glaring into the fire with lack-lustre eyes.

“If,” I said, a little louder, “if you will show me to this haunted room of yours, I will relieve v you from the task of entertaining me.”

“There’s a candle on the slab outside the door,” said the man with the withered hand, looking at my feet as he addressed me. “But if you go to the Red Room to-night—”

“This night of all nights!” said the old woman, softly.

“—You go alone.”

“Very well,” I answered, shortly, “and which way do I go?”

“You go along the passage for a bit,” said he, nodding his head on his shoulder at the door, “until you come to a spiral staircase; and on the second landing is a door covered with green baize. Go through that, and down the long corridor to the end, and the Red Room is on your left up the steps.”

“Have I got that right?” I said, and repeated his directions.

He corrected me in one particular.

“And you are really going?” said the man with the shade, looking at me again for the third time with that queer, unnatural tilting of the face.

“This night of all nights!” whispered the old woman.

“It is what I came for,” I said, and moved toward the door. As I did so, the old man with the shade rose and staggered round the table, so as to be closer to the others and to the fire. At the door I turned and looked at them, and saw they were all close together, dark against the firelight, staring at me over their shoulders, with an intent expression on their ancient faces.

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