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[Case #0102706. Statement of Janet Drake, nee Leitner, regarding her relationship with her father and his library. Original statement given June 27th, 2010.
Statement begins:]
I know what this Institute is about. Oh, you may hide it under a veneer of research and academics, but the truth remains: you are a similar stain on this Earth as my father’s cursed library. Why you keep these dangers around, I will never understand. The hubris of academics at its finest, I suppose. But I’m not here to warn you off your artefacts and investigations; I’d be a hypocrite if I did.
You want to know about my father. Indeed, that is why I agreed to give this statement in the first place. I tell you about my youth and his library, and you give me the Leitners currently in your possession. I won’t even ask if you ran this by your boss first.
As long as I get to destroy those books my father loved, I will have no questions at all.
So. My youth. It wasn’t horrifying, if that’s what you’re after. The library came towards the end of my time with him, and I didn’t stick around long enough to see it destroyed.
But I was there long enough to know it should have burnt alongside the man long, long ago.
I grew up with my father. My mother died shortly after I was born, and though my parents were not married to one another, and they certainly did not love each other, my father was enough of a traditionalist to want his only child around him and raised to be ‘proper’. Not that he really cared. Rest assured, my hatred for the man goes beyond years of childhood neglect and indifference; I certainly had enough love from my mother’s side of the family and the multitude of nannies my father hired to take care of me. There was no affection lost, though I will admit to desiring his attention when I was younger.
All children look up to their parents at first, after all.
He was always obsessed with leaving something meaningful behind. Most people are satisfied with a child as their legacy, but he wanted more. Something that wouldn’t die. He swanned in and out of my childhood with stories and books, as well as multiple gifts to make up for the numerous missed birthdays, milestones, celebrations, and so on.
...perhaps I am more bitter than I pretend to be.
Regardless, the first time I came into contact with one of those... books, I was fifteen. It was 1987, the first year the Library was opened. My father took me in, wanting to show off his achievements to his estranged daughter, I suppose. I don’t know why. He had already seen enough people die to those things.
I think, at the core of it, he was a very lonely man my father. Oh, it was entirely self-imposed, given his tunnel-vision, and by no means will I ever excuse or forgive him for his decisions, but as a mother myself now, well...
I think I understand a bit more. He had probably finally looked up now that his life’s work was in progress and realised that I was already a teenager. He probably thought taking me there would make us bond, as I too held a fascination for books and history and mysteries.
But only the mundane ones, you see.
His library was a grand thing, that I’ll admit. A twisting, maze-like building that made no sense, yet held artistry in every turn. It was careful in its insanity. Maybe that’s why it was so beautiful to me, that very first time. I’ve always been interested in history, as mentioned before, and I was familiar with Robert Smirke’s architecture. So I could appreciate the lengths my father had gone to design and build his library.
Only an hour later I was wishing he had burnt it to the ground instead. He had taken me to an open atrium of a kind, reassuring me that this was where the more ‘benign’ books took up residence. The ones that wouldn’t attack or kill you the moment you touched them, the ones that were even safe to read, if only for a few pages. I don’t know what possessed him to take that book out and hand it to me.
‘Watch this, Janie-dear,’ he told me, a nickname I had long outgrown, but he still used to cling to my childhood.
I should have said no. I should have dropped it, consequences be damned, because maybe then I could have lived a normal life. Maybe then I could live ignorantly in a city with my son, instead of travelling around the world to clean up his mess.
But I was fifteen, and my father was making an effort. So I held it open for an assistant to read. It felt heavy in my hands, heavier than it should have been given its size. I still remember my eyes catching on the title.
The Shrinking Man, was embossed in fresh bronze lettering. From the Library of Jürgen Leitner.
The assistant was terrified, but my father was rich, and he paid enough for the poor and the desperate to put their lives on the line for the sake of the cheque. He was classy like that.
I don’t know what the assistant’s name was. I likely never will. But he read a page outloud from the book I held, sweat dripping down his temples and his voice trembling in fear, even as my father encouraged him to continue.
The book was written like a fictional scientific journal, describing a phenomenon where a person’s skin seemed to shrink around their bones ‘like a tight shroud binding a corpse’. I remember that line as clear as day. It still haunts my nightmares.
Probably because of the way the assistant’s voice grew strangled when he read it. And because of the way he too, began to... shrink. He didn’t get smaller, not really. But his skin seemed to crumple around his bones, like chicken in a vacuum seal.
Or a tight shroud binding a corpse. Whatever fits best, I suppose.
I try to believe that my father didn’t know what would happen. That he was ignorant to the suffering, and too entranced by his achievements to truly notice the horrors he was inflicting. A part of me has to believe that, has to tell myself that despite his stupidity and pride, he wasn’t that cruel, that malicious.
But I doubt it.
Because he told the assistant to continue, eyes gleaming as though in a trance.
And so, the assistant obeyed.
He continued to speak, despite the strangled nature of his voice, about how after the skin, the bones began to ache and push against the tight embrace of the epidermis, as though it wanted to break free from the tight confines. Here, the assistant began to scratch their arm, fingers tightening around their skin as though attempting to pluck it free. His nails scratched and scratched, until I saw beads of blood well up beneath his fingers.
But by now, he too was caught in the book’s spell.
He could not stop.
The book continued to detail how the organs would swell, how the skin tightened and smothered a person’s very insides, binding them over and over until the person was in constant waking agony. The assistant’s voice was nothing more than a pained whine at this point, and I watched in horror as the injury he had given himself was slowly being torn into a gash.
The book finished with the gory details of how those afflicted with the syndrome would tear their own skin open to rip their bones out and be free of the slow strangulation. It would be a short-lived relief, given the immediate death that would occur soon after.
I won’t tell you in detail what the assistant did after he read that outloud.
I’m sure you can imagine.
The aftermath was enough to break my father out of his trance, and he paled at the sight as I trembled and screamed at him. He quickly called for his clean-up crew, picking me up and hiding my face in his chest, as though that would undo the horrific death I had just seen. As though I would forget that it was his fault the assistant was dead.
He dumped me with another assistant, despite my screaming. He needed to coordinate the clean-up or the preservation of the book, or some other inane thing that was more important than his traumatised daughter.
But that decision is the only thing I will ever thank him for.
It’s how I met my Jack, after all. He was a few years older than me, having just graduated high-school and working at the library to scrape enough money together to go to university. While my father disappeared, he was the one to comfort me and cry alongside me.
We married the moment I turned eighteen, and neither of us ever looked back.
But we were in too deep, at that point. In the aftermath, my father explained what exactly had happened. He tried to teach me about Robert Smirke’s theory of the Fears, of their manifestation in the books he collected and kept safe from the general public.
That was the last time I ever willingly spoke to him. I told him to get out of my life.
He did.
When the library was destroyed only a few years later, both my husband and I wept tears of joy and relief. That was shortlived. My father hadn’t secured the books at all. Only a few were destroyed. The rest were carried off to all sorts of corners and placed in libraries and bookstores and thrift shops, just waiting for the next unsuspecting victim to open it up and start reading.
And all over those books was my father’s name.
I should have let it go. I should have wiped my hands clean from it.
But I remembered very well the weight of the book in my hands that that assistant read from. I remembered my role in his murder.
And so I spoke to Jack. I told him he could divorce me if he wished, that under no circumstances would I drag him into this mess. He told me I was stupid, and that he was with me, no matter what. So we travelled the world, hunting down my father’s books and destroying them however we could.
We weren’t expecting children. Our lifestyle was far too dangerous, but neither of us could deny the desire to have one. So despite the awkwardness of the timing, our Timothy is a blessing we adore. At the very least, we can make the world a safer place for him, one destroyed book at a time.
So there you have it. The life of a daughter cleaning up her father’s mess. A tale as old as time, is it not?
I’ll hand this statement off to the young man you have with you. He’s far politer than you, Gertrude, and his interest in our escapades is flattering. I hope you won’t mind me extending a job offer to him, though I doubt he’ll take it up.
Goodbye, Gertrude.
Leave the books in the usual spot.
[Statement ends.]
[Beneath the statement, Gertrude has made notes]:
Janet Leitner. A tragic, but determined figure. I don’t blame her attempt at recruiting Gerard, though she was right in assuming he would decline. Perhaps it would have been better if he had accepted.
Sources have told me that Janet and Jack run successful archaeological careers in restoration and education. Their residence is listed in America, Gotham City, which makes a disturbing amount of sense, given Janet’s knowledge. For a place full of misery, it is without much fear.
I tried to reach out to Janet not too long ago to see if she knew of any books the Dark might use for their ritual, but was disappointed to find out that shortly after giving this statement, Janet died in a freak plane accident, leaving behind her husband and son Timothy.
However, I was able to get the truth from one of their few employees aware of their venture. Despite her crusade, it seems a Leitner finally got the better of Janet in the end. One of the Vast, according to the employee.
Jack Drake currently lies in a coma, and Timothy is a ward of billionaire Bruce Wayne. By all accounts, he is ignorant to his parent’s true job.
I could go knocking, but that would draw far too much attention. Besides, I respect Janet enough to uphold that ignorance.
Still. It is a shame. Gerard was quite distraught by the news.
[End notes.]