Out of sight, out of mind.

Robert walked slowly among the stacks, his white cane clicking gently as he swung it from side to side, noting the width of the passage and whether or not he was veering left or right. Occasionally, he would stop and feel the side of the bookcase, noting the catalogue number printed down the ridge in Braille.

Robert worked in a unique establishment, the only library in the world staffed entirely by blind people. Not just partially-sighted, all the people he worked with day-to-day were utterly blind. None of them could read a word of the books they shelved and categorised - not that it was a great issue, the computers were voice-activated and every volume had Braille labels attached, auto-printed when a book was first filed.

The volume that was just entering the collection was old, like most of the stock, and the cover was heavily illustrated. It might have been gold leaf in the indents, but who could know colour when everything was black? Robert’s fingers brushed the intricate pattens that criss-crossed and circled the cover, circling in and back out again. People would put anything on book covers in the old days. Why on Earth would you draw some kind of mathematical diagram on the cover of Wuthering Heights, for goodness’ sake?

Of course there had to be sighted people on staff for emergencies - Dan and Dan were the regular security guards, and Neil covered for Dan or Dan when they had a day off. They were all nice enough chaps, not chatty but always pleasant and professional. And Robert was sure that in an emergency they would snap to and sort out the things he couldn’t. But for most matters, as Senior Archivist, it was Robert who dealt with the filing, who lead visitors to the stack which contained the text they wished to consult, who retrieved the text and supervised the visitor’s stay in the Reading Room. Few visitors came, but what did the management expect when they set up a library full of first editions of Victorian literature (and the odd bodice-ripper) that were obtainable with the tap of a button on a Kindle?

But there were a few things Robert and his staff didn’t know.

Robert didn’t know that Dan and Dan weren’t mild-mannered security guards at all - they were part of an SAS-trained, assault-rifle-toting protection squad. That the library wasn’t in a converted, closed-down branch of HSBC - it was in a basement across the road from the British Museum. That the braille labels weren’t entirely accurate. That the literature wasn’t always Victorian, and that none of it could be described as bodice-rippers.

Robert didn’t know that the book he was filing was the Necronomicon.