Short Horror Story Review A N L Murry Number 79

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1949 – Spoiler alerts A rare books collector has traced a really great find to a small antiquarian bookshop in London, a little book on the occult by Elizabethan alchemist Dr John Dee (who really did exist). The story title refers simply to the book’s catalogue number in the shop’s promotional literature. When he goes to the shop to collect the book, the shop owner apologizes for destroying the book that very morning. Crestfallen with disappointment, the buyer aks why. The shop-keeper tells him that a heartbroken junior assistant who had recently buried his wife, had started dabbling in the occult using the Dee book and others to research his magic practices, hoping to communicate with his wife despite her being dead. The proprietor had spotted a ghost in the shop, who might be the dead wife, and when he finds the assistant, the young man has hanged himself. The shop owner has therefore decided to destroy the books on the occult in his shop’s shelves to save others from a similar fate. The buyer is left empty handed. An interesting take on the book of spells story-genre, with the very man at the source of the evil works recognizing the dangers rather than gleefully selling the evil on to others. Arthur Chappell