Discovery

It was another restless night, as they all were in the Sisyphus Manor. At this point, Cecilia assumed that sleep was as necessary as nourishment—That meaning, not at all.

With nothing but the ticking grandfather clock and her own churning thoughts he company, she made a decision, one she had been trying to avoid since her last meeting with Calliope.

Cecilia needed to confront the journal. She did not understand what it meant, what was hidden within all of its pages and paragraphs, but whatever there was, it had to mean something, something important, integral to what would become of her here.

At last, this book had to offer something that was not just shadows and suspicion, but some real explanations.

So, toeing her way out of bed and down the winding corridors, Cecilia crept into the library after the midnight hour, when she could have some faith that no one would be wandering, and perhaps even the heiress might be in her room rather than awaiting Cecilia. Her heart hammered so loudly that she feared it might betray her, alerting the whole house to her snooping. The air was thick, heavier than usual, as though the very walls disapproved of her intrusion. She moved past the familiar shelves, past the histories and romances left out for display, until she reached the far cabinet with glass fogged from the inside, in which Calliope had shown her hiding spot with a wink and a finger to her lips.

With hands she forced steady through their shaking, she lifted the protective glass case that rested over it. Her breath stilled, as if expecting a shift in air. Seeing its cover again, she swallowed, her heart clenching as the missing deer left an empty space amongst its animal crowd. The illustrations themselves also itched at her brain; she assumed that the animals each must have represented someone, most likely people she had met and who meant something substantial to this horrid story. Not only that, but she felt like she recognized the art style itself…

The book was thin, deceptively so, as if there could not be anything so integral to her survival if it seemed so starved in size. When she opened it again, though, she saw the familiar Vietnamese characters written alongside the same unrecognizable symbols she’d seen before in the journal in her own room. She worried for a moment if there was anything substantial to trust in these paragraphs, but as she thumbed page after page, Cecilia realized the stack never seemed to diminish, as if the pages never seemed to end.

As with everything in the manor, there was more than met the eye initially.

And then it happened. On one page, between the symbols, a single word in her own language, clear and unmistakable.

Escape.

She nearly dropped the book. She told herself that it must be coincidence, a trick of the eyes, some scholar’s marginalia that resembled that word by chance. But no, the ink was darker, fresher, as though written for her. And when she touched the letters, tentative and light, her fingers tingled. Not with heat or cold, but with a hum, like the vibration of a struck string, and she swore she heard a sharp inhale of breath pop from deep in her ear.

She slammed the book shut by instinct, sweat pouring down her neck and hands shaking from atop the journal’s cover. Cecilia tried to stifle her own haggard breathing, but she couldn’t even tell if her lungs were functioning anymore. Her heart itself was between beating like a hummingbird and lying paralyzed as a stone in her chest.

All she knew was she wanted to get the hell out of there—Now.

She put the book back, forcing herself to carefully set it as it was before instead of just chucking the thing and running away.

But no matter how fast she walked down the hall or how tightly her wrapped her thin blanket around herself, she knew what she saw. What she heard. What she felt.

It confirmed the reality she’d still prayed was somehow fake—This was no longer imagination. It was no longer paranoia. There was no trust that strange happenings followed only Dmitri or Olrin or even a singular entity. She felt it all around her, in the book and in the everything all around. The uncanny was here, woven into the bones of this place, waiting to be found.

She should be afraid, and she was. But beneath the fear ran something sharper. It was not just curiosity for what knowledge the book held, but what she could take from it. What could she learn that could be applied to her situation, to get by the dredges of this house, of this world, of whatever made it all up. Perhaps what she was feeling was hope, something she was afraid would leave her if she dared to name it. But the word was not meaningless. It was a sign, a fragment of the truth she had been searching for, that she was desperate to hold on to and use as her light to keep searching for an exit.

Perhaps this story had seams. Perhaps, if it did, it could be broken.

Tomorrow, she would return to the book. She had to.

If the book whispered to her once, it would do so again. It had to.