Page 39

On this side of the door is a console table tucked against a wall; on it, a small box of matches and an old lantern smudged with soot. This wing must have no power. Daisy said this was mostly abandoned. Whatever the reasoning, I light the lantern and proceed through. Misty whines as I reach for the handle, but keeps following me into the shadowy wing.

A breath dies in my chest as I take in the utter devastation. I glance up at the ceiling to see no fancy chandeliers that would illuminate the hallway. The only source of light is my small lantern. Raising it before me shows burnt wallpaper and old crumbling frames where portraits might have once laid. Wood furniture is piled with dust along the mirror image of the West Wing—long hallways with deep mahogany walls, groaning wooden floors, and thick carpet runners. I notice a golden outlet casing beside a door and flick the switch. A meager trail of sconces flicker before bursting into white light and becoming dark once again. “Well, I tried…” I continue down the hallway, turning right and then left to a hallway I would otherwise miss if not for the strange writing scratched into the wall.

I ignore the carefully etched words and push ahead. The air is cold, frigid like the never-ending gloomy weather outside. Goosebumps scatter along my arms and a shiver wracks my frame. I pause, realizing that Misty isn’t following me. Turning around, warm light glints off ‌Misty’s coat as she sits near the mouth of the hallway, unmoving.

“What’s wrong girl?” I coo as I walk back to retrieve her. As I bend to the floor to pet her, the slow groan of a door opening echoes throughout the dark hallway. Out of the corner of my eye there’s movement. Shakily, I twist on my heels, narrowing my gaze. I raise the lantern to illuminate the space, and from this level on the floor, I make out the outline of long, unnatural legs standing in the distance. My heart jumps erratically in my chest as I scramble backward into a wall. Misty’s growls return as she rears up and barks with a ferocity I can’t imagine emanating from her lithe body.

The figure stands there in the middle of the doorway, beckoning me with its long, spindly fingers. My sight latches onto the movement. My focus strains. Time slows. My vision becomes hazy. The figure whispers something, and through my distorted vision, I can see the words tumble from its mouth and into my head.

Come with us.

Come back to us.

The creature succeeds in thoughtlessly making me rise. My feet obey its call, carrying me toward the open doorway. Through the haze, I make out its tall, shifting form—wisps of shadows swirling, coalescing into something otherworldly. Misty is still barking. There’s no stopping her as she trails behind me, tepidly and reluctantly, still tethered to me. I dig my heels into the low carpet, straining against the pull. But my body is not my own. Somewhere in the distance, a guttural laugh echoes, vibrating in my chest. The many steps down the hallway collapse into just a few, and before I realize it, I’m standing at the threshold. My vision blurs like cobwebs are being draped over my eyes. Darkness presses in, prodding me forward. The threshold opens up into a winding staircase, spiraling up into the unknown.

Misty, stop following, please. I want the words to spill from my lips, but I can’t. I can only think and watch as the lantern—its handle cold and foreign in my fingers—leads the way. A sharp gust of wind slams into my chest. Misty nips at my ankles, whining low. A groan reverberates up the staircase—an eerie sound, too inhuman to be the wind. My breath seizes in my lungs as my feet carry me up those last steps and into the disarray of a dusty, charred room.

Dust layers on every surface. There is scorched medical equipment strewn about. Stainless steel trolleys glint under the light, still loaded with syringes filled with a strange dark substance. Everything in here, long abandoned. The spell snaps like a rubber band pulled taut. The lantern clatters from my fingers, and my body goes limp. Misty rushes to me immediately, bashing her head into my awaiting arms. “Misty,” I hug her, relief coursing through me. Her one ‌eye blinks up at me, and she huffs as if reprimanding me.

“Where are we?”

There is a hospital bed blackened at the corners. By its side are rusted IV stands, and much like the syringes Arik collected, these too are filled with a black substance. Behind the bed is a row of windows overlooking the rear of the house, all half open, allowing the biting wind into the room. Could this have been the source of the groaning sound? No. I saw that thing, whatever it was. The sound it made had weight and malicious intent.

Moonlight filters in, filing in the gaps my now doused candlelight lacked. Did someone die here? Was this the reason Kieran laid salt before the various thresholds? I swivel on my heel, blinking as I make out the entrance to this room. There was nothing. No white line of protection. There wasn’t any at the pool room either. It could only mean the salt lines were ludicrous or they actually worked.

The question circles back. Did someone die here? The wind kicks up, scattering shredded papers across the floor. Misty leaps and paws at them, chasing scraps that flutter like dying moths. I kneel, picking up a single piece—a photo, frayed at the edges. Even in the faded fragments, I recognize the dark, tired blues of Doctor Lazarus. I pick up another one, which reveals intertwined hands, a couple mid-kiss, but the heads are missing, ripped away, leaving only torsos locked in intimacy. I gather the other papers. More charred, torn photographs. There’s a woman swimming in the sea. Then, another with her facing the horizon. Then another with the couple, holding tightly onto a woman whose faces are all unrecognizable due to black stains. The images blur together. The pieces of someone’s life—violently dismantled.

“What is this room?” I look up to find Misty pawing at something on the floor, sniffing it with urgency. I rise, brushing dust from my clothes, and approach her. Her nose presses against a charred leather cover. Another journal. I pick it up, tracing the burned edge with my fingers. I drop the journal to my side and scan the walls for a light source. But of course, there’s nothing. I don’t even know why I bother. My eyes trail after my dog; she plops into a clean spot in a single trapezoidal slant of moonlight, her tongue lolling from her mouth as she watches the night sky.

“What would I do without you?” I say as I open the book, plop down beside her and begin flipping through its pages. Scribbled handwriting covers every page with dates and continuous sentences, but only a few are legible. Whatever fire had torn through this place had consumed a piece of someone’s history along with it.

June 1, 2010

The summer has been intolerable. Not because of our endless, useless meetings, or Bishop’s insistence that we approach my discoveries with caution, but because the illusion of partnership has grown increasingly difficult to maintain. My wife and I have kept this ruse for far too long. I, for one, am not opposed to relationships for the sake of advancing careers, but this has evolved into something that makes me want to shed my skin and plunge myself deep into the hot springs of Misery’s underground caves.

Same goes for the group I’ve found myself in. The people who have glued themselves to me since Archmouth have come to believe my experiments in the Limina are a collective effort, that what I have uncovered belongs equally to us all. They’re wrong. They mistake our proximity for importance.

Truth is, the right to fame and discovery has always belonged in the hands of those willing to do what others cannot. And I, Kieran Lazarus, son of that bastard Victor Lazarus, am willing to do what it takes to make me infinite.

My wife understands this better than any of them, it pains me to admit. She is not a likable woman by far, but she has her moments.

Sheriff Valen would only provide me with what I needed if I had leverage. My wife arrived at the idea of the binding ritual. So below as above. If a life can be tethered across worlds, then what prevents it from being anchored permanently? What if we were to leave our leverage prisoner in the Limina? What if I could separate her from my brother? He never deserved her anyway, it should be me. It should have always been me.

It would only require a few months of preparation and Valen would be more than willing if I had our precious creature in the control of my fingertips. What prevents someone from ensuring a soul cannot simply wander away from the prison built around it? I hated the elegance of the idea the moment my wife spoke it aloud. Because it was brilliant and I hadn’t thought of it first.

The rest of the page is torn from the singe of fire. This must be his personal journal, which must mean that somehow the journal in my room was his wife’s. By the content of this journal, she must have recently passed—if Daisy’s information is correct—yet none of the occupants in this house seem to be grieving. There were no signs of love having lived here, no pictures, sites of mourning, nothing.

My curiosity pushes me to turn to a random page in the journal, hoping to find more information. I need to know if I’d walked straight into an ongoing feud, or worse, a criminal investigation.

I find another faded page covered with dark soot.

I had spent years approaching the problem from the wrong direction by attempting to stabilize the crossing into the Limina. Valen’s cadaver collection has allowed for ‌ease of access, the harvesting of souls that allowed me to travel. But Valen will be required to put a lot more into this endeavor and there is only one way. I need a higher output of Immorcantem. The ritual will be an undertaking. A bind for a bind. My wife knows the others will never know the extent of her contribution. Knowing them, they would recoil from the implications long before they ever grasped its significance, what this could mean, what this could cure. We would be richer than our minds could ever imagine. Our subject for the ritual, besides one thorn in my side, is someone whose absence would not raise unnecessary complications. She is providential in that regard. No extended family nor roots deep enough to pull questions from anyone around here. And if they did, they would soon find themselves under soil and into the waiting hands of the Limina. A woman like her drifted too easily through the world, convincing herself that isolation is independence and within that is ‌strength. In reality she’s the perfect target to sacrifice without witnesses. My pretty bird for a glass cage.

My wife enjoys this plan. Kill the woman she hates. It’s a win-win. Jealousy can be a remarkably productive emotion. When the ritual is complete, the tether will remain where it belongs, far beyond the reach of anyone who believes themselves capable of interfering. The others, of course, will believe I’m preparing for another routine crossing. They still believe we were the team we’d been once. It almost feels unkind to allow them to continue thinking that.

The entry ends there with no follow up, the rest is eaten by flames.

A sudden bang shatters through the quiet. I startle, and the book flies from my hands and disappears below the hospital bed, eaten by the shadows. My heart hurls itself against my chest. For a breathless moment, I think of the shadow creature, and dread tightens around my throat. Is it back? Another bang follows. It sounds like it’s right below the window. I scramble toward the windowsill, gripping with caution as I peer over its edge. Grime smudges beneath my fingertips. The jolting sound again cuts through the air, then another, each one unraveling the night further.