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The Book Can Kill

 

The detectives looked further into other recent suicides of known psychiatrists and uncovered that many of them also shared some sort of link to this unusual book.  Typically the evidence surfaced in the forms of notes relating to patients who had read part or all of the book.  The assumption was made that these patients may have brought the book to the doctors, exposing them to its content.  Because I do not have any records of these specific cases, I cannot say what became of the patients or if any copies of the book were found at the scene. 

Deeming the book too dangerous for any one person to examine, the small group of brave psychologists who first took on this research agreed that the pages should be divided.  Each doctor would receive only a few pages, then write an analytical report to share with his colleagues.  This worked, although only later would history reveal how much luck had played into their hands.  The pages alone didn't have the strength of their combined whole.  What they discovered was truly amazing.  Some pages consisted of simple text while others included drawings, puzzles, or babblings.  Here, for the first time ever, are actually images from a page of the Libri Verum.  This example demonstrates how the front and back of a page seem to be meaningless, yet when the page is folded a particular way, the message becomes clear.

Why try to hide a message in a book that has already established its clear intentions?  Perhaps this was a compromise of sorts, the guilt of contributing to a source of madness versus the overwhelming desire to speak.  Only the author knew.  And sometimes I even wonder about that.   It is often believed that insanity and genius are only a whisper apart.

Several pages, even to this day, seem to have no meaning.  If they do, they have yet to be discovered.  The vast majority of pages, however, allowed the panel of psychologists to form an educated hypothesis.  The final sentence of their summary read, "We therefore conclude that the literature in question may cause the participating subject to negotiate their circumstances to a lethal end."  In simpler terms - the book can kill.

 

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