Tom
I can’t believe I’m doing this again.
Tom looked back and forth along the lane of storage lockers. He wasn’t alone, and it was broad daylight, but the truth was, no one cared what he was doing. Everyone milling around out there, under the sun of the warm spring afternoon, had their own troubles to worry about. Tom wasn’t sure if that was reassuring, or sad.
Either way, he unlocked the locker and opened the door.
“Oh, oh, shit.”
As the light leaked in it was obvious someone had returned, and they were…productive.
The board was now full of new candid photos, most of Sophie at her home, but the one at the center of that horrible collage was him at a restaurant…sitting with Kat.
“What the fuck?”
Worse, there were scribbled writings and symbols around most of them.
An end table, positioned at the base of the cot, was covered in strange relics: rusted nails, jars of dirt, feathers, fishbones, and melted candles.
Someone had been busy completing whatever Rodney was talking about in his journal, and surely if his research continued, the book had to be close.
He tried the drawers, but to his dismay, found only more collected detritus and a fresh burst of that same putrescence he could smell in the air.
The smell was familiar, almost sweet, like old gamey meat left so long in the hot sun that it nearly cooked. A greasy smell, like blood red found a flavor. He stopped analyzing it when his mouth began to water, and he was distracted by revulsion and shame.
Still, it bore some fruit. He followed the smell, and found its primary source.
The little cot, Rodney’s bed…it had been recently used.
White sheets tousled, stained a yellowish brown from sweat and worse. And there in the sheets, a distinct lump.
Grabbing a fistful of moist sheets, Tom pulled them back to reveal a small, red, leather-bound book.
He must have fallen asleep reading it.
Reaching out, Tom could feel it, a kind of static in the air, settling like cotton between his trembling fingers and that book.
He knew it was the same feeling Rodney must have felt. The one that drove the author. A tangible truth that was as sure now as anything else he thought he knew. In that book, there was knowledge. Something he wasn’t supposed to know. But there, in that truth, was a power. Sweet, earthy, and seductive.
Want more? Sign up for the ARC Directive to get early access to chapters, unlock exclusive horrors, and step deeper into the dark — only on Patreon.
