Stacked (Patreon)

Ivan Clouette was a librarian and a good one. Budget cuts and a head librarian that refused to either die or retire meant he was going to go nowhere at his job at the New Bradford Town Library.

Then, unbidden but, oddly timely, an email pinged into his in-box. An invitation to apply for an assistant librarian at a university he'd never heard of before: Miskatonic University in Western Massachuestts. The email claimed it was founded in 1699 and had a collection of at least 200,000 books, not counting periodicals and other media. Over half the collection was still in need of cataloging; some books as old as 200 years! The librarian had heard of his skill in organizing the New Bradford library and sought him out.

He flew to Logan Airport, grabbed a rental car and headed to Arkham, MA for his interview. It went better than he expected and he was hired on the spot.

Then, he began to feel odd...

_____

This was an idea I'd thought of commissioning a story for. Skilled but, disgruntled librarian gets a job at a library that turns out to be a magical library. In addition to missing the part of the contract that read 'changed to suit', he also missed the part that said the contract was for 100 years not 10 years...

Hand drawn. Digitally inked an colored. Was torn between spending another day shading and getting it posted right away. Spent a... number of hours today inking (with a new PS brush) and coloring.