With his lantern broken and its light extinguished, Jonathan is lost in the darkness of a place that he describes as a dungeon. He slips and falls down a staircase. At the bottom of the staircase, he sees a glowing light somewhere ahead of him.

He starts crawling toward the light and notices it is coming from under a door. He hears an adult voice coming from the door. As he moves toward the door, he steps on a pile of something that makes a loud noise when it crashes to the floor. He hears a grunt coming from behind the door. Then, the door opens, and a voice says, “What are you doing here?”

Before he can answer the question asked of him, a hand grabs his sleeve, and a voice says, “Get in here” (93).

Jonathan sees that the room is full of books. He realizes he has stumbled upon Slabhenge’s library and that the person standing in front of him is the librarian. Jonathan notices the man is extremely old with thin white hair “draping over his shoulders and far down his back” (94).

The librarian tells Jonathan that it has been four years since he saw anyone except rats.