Page 167 of Sinister

I pause at an engraving depicting men in dark robes surrounding a tall figure.

Their hands are outstretched toward a swirling wispy mass suspended over this person (is it even a person?) in the center.

Goose bumps spring up all over my arm.

“Who-who are they? Do you know?”

“Here, is there a caption for this image?” Sin asks, squinting at the text written in an elegant Victorian font beside the illustration.

“This says it’s from the late 1800s—Sinclair Arnoult the First. He was one of the founding members of the Ouroboros Society.”

“Sinclair Arnoult the First?” I echo in shock. “The same name as yours?” I raise a brow.

“Unfortunately,” Sin replies in a grim voice. “That’s one of my ancestors.”

“So what number are you supposed to be?” I ask with a laugh.

“Fourth.” He smiles sheepishly. “There have been quite a few Sinclairs since.”

“Fourth? Your father isn’t named that,” I mention with a frown. Four would imply four generations, and it’s been less than one hundred fifty years since the late 1800s.

“Yes, well, all the others died young,” he replies absent-mindedly, as if reading the silent question on my face.

“Oh,” is all I can say as we both lean forward to examine the pictures more clearly.

“The family resemblance is uncanny,” I say, trying to keep my voice steady to show that I’m not nearly as spooked as I look. “He looks very certain of himself,” I add when the silence between us becomes uncomfortable. “Very confident.”

“Very arrogant, more like it,” Sin says, his eyes glued to the text surrounding the engravings. “It says here that he was the leader of an occult movement said to communicate with beings beyond the veil.”

“What, like ghosts?”

“Yeah, but Arnoult’s group was on a whole different level,” Sin replies with growing unease in his voice. “Says here that they wanted to call upon demons to fulfill their deepest desires.”

An actual shiver runs down my spine at these ominous words. “Summon demons? That sounds like a B-grade horror movie.”

“It gets worse,” Sin adds in a clipped tone, as if trying to distance himself from the gory details of his ancestry. “Apparently, this society, most definitely the Ouroboros Society, believed they could commit human sacrifices to call upon a demon to fulfill their deepest desires.”

“What? Human Sacrifices?!” I exclaim, trying to read the pages he’s turning with stiff fingers. “But seriously, Sin, how is it that we never learned about any of this before? They teach the Salem Witch Trials in school, but not this?”

“The Ouroboros Society were all men, Petra. Powerful men,” Sin replies, pointing to a footnote in another of the rare books from a stack on the table. “That’s why they didn’t face the mobs and pitchforks like the women accused of witchcraft. At least, not initially.”

“This is insane,” I blurt out, not knowing what else to say.

“Look.” He draws my attention to a number of newspaper clippings. One of them details the murder of twenty-five university students in the town square; a couple others mention the grisly deaths of some wealthy men. But one in particular catches my eye—the one that mentions Arnoult and his seances to call upon otherworldly beings.

The newspapers seem familiar. As if I’ve seen them before. And perhaps I did, because the information is the same as the one in my dreams. The twenty-five students who killed themselves in that so-called sacrifice. Rutherford and Underwood’s macabre deaths.

These are all like my dreams.

And suddenly, a current of terror grips me.

What does that mean? Are my dreams real? Are they a true window to the past?

But how? Why?

How the hell am I dreaming about things that actually happened over a hundred years ago?

But the lingering question is: If those events truly happened, then does that mean dream-Petra and dream-Sin were real people, too?