Page 120

Reading this again sends a crackle of cold up my spine. I flip the page and I’m met with a drawing. A huddled stone fortification, the shadows of men under half a moon, the entryway a heavily penned black.

Even after so much time, it has a weight that catches my breath. It makes me stutter, push the journal roughly away on the desk, fear sinking its rabid teeth into me. And even though I know it’s only a drawing made by some Danish noble hundreds of years ago, I’ve felt this way before.

I know it so intimately: the feeling of being watched from the dark. It’s the way I felt when I found Laurel crumpled in that hallway. It’s the way I felt when I saw Marcella draining Dr. Sims in Dean Shea’s house. And it’s the way, horribly, that I felt in the basement of the chapel, shoving his lax, desiccated body into a narrow hole, feet down.

The way his jaw cracked open on the muddied floor, his single eye shaking on its loosened ligaments.

Shuddering, I turn the page. My breath catches when the entire journal splits in two, my heart skipping a beat.

Who’s responsible for defacing a beautiful old book like this? Perhaps Evelyn didn’t mention it because it was in the basement for a rebinding. Preston employs its own team of restoration experts that come once a month to resew cracked bindings, to fortify old leather, and in the worst cases, replace an entire book interior. Perhaps it was handled too roughly when it was hidden.

Fucking men. They probably don’t even give a shit.

This crack looks new: the exposed catgut stitching is still as creamy white as it would have been the day the journal was made, even though the exterior stitches have been rubbed black by time.

I write as I read, taking a quick translation.

They came into our fortification and met us, whom any God-fearing man would call foes. The denizen’s eyes shone a dead white, the color of a winter moon. It sayeth: Turn back for there is starvation here.

I, their master, stood at the rear of our order, gnashing a human bone. I spake:

Who comes into our home

But a fool bent on death?

Who witnesses our killings

And does not run?

Only—

I pause, running my eyes over the next lines. Pause, restart. Blink.

Only those come to make a pact

Survive this place.

Only those who pledge the oath

Will live in glory.

The warrior king’s knees shook. Some fled, some stayed, hitting the earth with the ends of their spears. My denizens laughed, a sound like bones on rock. But the king stepped forward and said:

I have come to send you to your rest

If God wills it

You are fiends and betrayers

And I will give you no quarter.

Bend to the Lord

It reads like a saga.

Biting my lip, I check for any markings in pencil at the front pages. How can I be sure this is a diary and not a folktale? But I know, now. These stories have more than a grain of truth within them. Even the most fantastic, horrifying tales could be real.

I return to the text.