Too much has happened in the last two weeks, and yet so little. I’ve slept 30 hours in as many days.

We couldn’t find any specific shop in San Francisco selling this exact kind of journal. It seems it’s quite common. Together, my father, Deschamp and I found no less than thirteen shops within a five kilometer radius of the Exposition selling them, all from a craftsman stationary company in town. I asked a few of the shop owners about this company and managed to get a name, Axell, which belongs both to the company and the man in charge, one Mister Albert Axell.

I bought a city map from one of the shops and made my way south, down the peninsula, in search of Axell. The difference between the Fair and the city proper is staggering, but I shouldn’t be surprised. It’s not like an entire city, any city, could look like the Exposition does, and San Francisco is just now recovering from a catastrophic earthquake back in ‘06. Most of the city is brand new, and so eye-catching in its own way. I learned this from a fellow patron of Swan Oyster Depot, a restaurant just south of the Fair.

His name was David Duval, which was a coincidence I had to stop myself from sharing as Mister Blake. David is a man of middle age, though it still looked too early for his moustache and temples to be greying. I’d place him at 40, myself. He wore a large, exceptionally wide black suit, which he filled out well, and a jolly smile seemed permanently sewed onto his ever-reddened face. He’s a native of California - Salinas Valley, to be specific - but moved to San Francisco and away from his family in 1900. During our chance meeting at the Oyster Depot he let me in on a few choice pieces of information only a local could know.

“Never,” he said, pointing a large finger at me, “and I mean never get anything but the oysters here. On top of that, never get oysters anywhere else! You’ll thank me for it.”

I did just that, and I wasn’t disappointed. I can’t lie and say I’m not a snob about oysters, but these shattered any expectation I’d had.

“You were absolutely right, sir! Thank you.” I took down another as I spoke; I couldn’t help myself.

“My pleasure! I wouldn’t be able to sleep tonight knowing I’d sent a Frenchman on his way without showing him the best seafood on the west coast. Say, what brings you all the way to this side of the States, anyway?”

It’s a question I’d thought about a lot since arriving. What was Charles Blake doing in San Francisco? Luckily, I had come up with an answer the night before.

“Being frank with you, Mr. Duval, there aren’t many places left the French can blend into now, if you catch my meaning. Even New York’s out of the question, what with all that business on Ellis Island.”

“Oh, I quite understand that, Mr. Blake. I hope I don’t have to tell you I find the whole thing ridiculous. It’s the government, you know. It’s always the government, and if it’s not in America then it’s another government. The French appreciate a good oyster, and that makes you alright in my book. Tell me, did you come over with any family?”

“I’m an only child and unmarried, as yet, but this city seems to have plans for that already. I came with my mother and father, and a family from Paris who was living with us before we left, the Hugos. My mother died in New York. It was the air, we think.”

“My apologies, sir, I didn’t mean to drudge that up. I’m a Catholic, and I know your mother is looking down now, proud of you as ever.”

“Thank you, Mr. Duval.” I needed the kindness more than I realized.

“Please, call me David,” he said, and shook my hand.

“Thank you, David. Truly.”

“Now, then! What do you plan to do, Charles, now that you’re here?”

“I’m glad you mentioned it, David, because I could use some help. I was an apprentice in a printing press as a child, but I was always most fascinated with the art of book binding, and of leatherworking. I’ve heard of a stationary company called Axell nearby, and I wonder if you know anything about it, or have directions to it.”

David smiled at that. “Axell? As in Albert Axell?”

“Just the same.”

“The Lord works in mysterious ways, Charles. It just so happens that you’re talking to the fiancé of Albert’s daughter, Maude.”

Adam, you’ve done it again.

“You’re kidding,” I said, dumbfounded.

“The opposite! In fact, I’ll walk down with you right now, if you’d like, and we’ll just see about getting that job for you. Albert doesn’t close up until six.”

“Perfect!”

We finished our oysters and walked a few blocks south, David leading me around swerving cars and carriages, past construction sites and zigzagging through the streets. Suddenly he stopped and pointed out a particularly opulent car, a black and white model I’d never seen before.

“That there is the chauffeur of Mister Harrison, Axell’s top man. It doesn’t look like Harrison’s in it. Let’s go ask about him, shall we?”

I had no time to form an opinion, really, as David went off to him straight away. The car was truly a thing of beauty, I could see that and I don’t know a thing about cars. As I’ve mentioned before, no road leading to the Duval house was stable enough to support a car, so I only saw them regularly after I had joined the army. Still to this day I have no great affinity for them. German invention, you know.

We ran right up to the car with little effort - the man was driving about as slow as he could manage - and as he saw the two of us coming up to him, he waved and pulled up along the side of the road.

“Good day, Mister Duval! How are you?” He was a thin man, so thin the wind could’ve picked him up out of the car if he wasn’t careful, and he wore a grey flat cap over a mess of black, unkempt hair. He had the accent of a New Yorker, and the smile of one, too.

“I’m just fine, Ed, but I’d like you to meet someone! This here is a new friend of mine, Charles Blake. Charles is in town for the Fair, and I do believe he’s interested in working for Mr. Axell and Mr. Harrison down at the shop, isn’t that right, Charles?”

“Yes, sir,” I said, shaking Ed’s hand. “It seems I have luck on my side today.”

“Ah, Frenchman, eh?” Evidently my accent was about as conspicuous as his. “I’ll tell you what, mister, why don’t you two hop in the back, and I’ll take you straight over so we can find out about that job?”

“Why, thank you, Ed!” David said, opening the car door for me.

We climbed in the back and started off right away.

“Hey, Frenchy,” Ed yelled back at us. “How do you like California?”

“Well, it’s better than New York,” I said, laughing.

“And what’s so bad about New York, kid? You got something you wanna say?” He took a moment to turn fully around and locked eyes with me, all while maintaining speed.

“Easy, Ed,” David said, putting a hand on my shoulder, “Charles just got back from Ellis Island. Don’t you remember about Ellis Island?”

“Oh!” Ed covered his eyes with his hat like a vaudeville act. “I forgot you were French! Don’t hold it against me, eh, Frenchy?”

“Sure, Ed,” I said. “Just do me a favor and keep your eyes on the road for a minute.”

“Oh!” He pulled up his hat and turned back around. “Honestly, my memory’s so touchy I’m surprised I’m still employed. You don’t mind, though, do you, Dave?”

“You could forget your own name, Ed, but as long as you remember how to drive I wouldn’t care!” David threw his head back in a belly laugh, and I couldn’t help but join him.

“Whatever you say, pal. Hey, what’s that over there?” Ed pointed over the windshield to the next right turn, where, bellowing from around the corner, was a huge, black cloud of smoke obscuring the entire right side of the road. David leaned forward.

“Yeah, what is that? Ed, how far are we from the shop?”

“Dave, that’s the turn. The shop’s right around that corner.”

David’s jolly smile fell from his face.

“Ed, turn right.”

“I’m not sure about that, Mister Duval.”

“Ed, we need to turn there.”

“David, I really think-”

“Damn it, Ed! Turn the fucking corner!”

Ed turned into the smoke cloud, where we were nearly blind.

“It’s Axell’s!” David jumped over the car door and ran toward the first place past the corner, a little one-story brick building whose windows were bursting with orange flame.

I jumped out and ran after him, too shocked to think, and Ed followed. David split the crowd and nearly pulled the front door off its hinges getting in. It was still swinging shut when I got there, and I followed him in without a second thought. This was the only chance I had of finding out the mystery of the journal directly from the source. There was no time to lose.

Inside was a blur of smoke. I heard Ed come in after me, calling for Harrison, and David ahead calling for Maude. I followed him blindly through smoke so thick I couldn’t see my hands in front of me but by the orange glow of nearby fires flashing beside me as I ran. I covered my mouth with my shirt, coughing more than breathing, and strained my eyes to see what was in front of me. David was running through a row of desks straight to a door on the back wall. Next to the door there was a window, and as a stack of paper caught flame next to it, I could see the silhouette of a man behind the glass, hunching over something on the ground. David ran his shoulder into the door at full speed, breaking it down, and I followed close behind. There was a hallway, and on our immediate left there was a massive, wooden shelf blocking the door leading into the window room, which David was trying to pull away by himself. I came up next to him, counted us off, and pulled, but it was no use. Ed joined us wordlessly, and I counted again, 1, 2, 3, and it budged. Again, I counted, 1, 2, 3, and on 3 the shelf came loose and shattered to pieces on the floor. David pulled the door open, and inside there was the standing man, face blackened with soot, hunching over an elderly man and a young woman, both laying on the floor, unmoving. The woman’s dress, I saw, had burned badly away, revealing her scorched legs underneath. Ed took the hunching man’s arm over his shoulder, and David carried the woman in his arms, shouting at me: “Get Axell!” and tilted his head to the man on the ground. I crouched down to him, and by the look in his eyes, I knew there wasn’t much time left. I lifted him over my shoulder and stumbled my way through the smoke, slamming full force into the desks. I collapsed as I got through the front door, a few strangers catching us as we fell. I coughed until I had tears streaming down my face and no air left in my lungs.

I wiped my tears and turned to Albert Axell, whose face was bone white. Though conscious, I knew he had mere moments to live. I gained enough composure to pull the journal from his pocket and show it to him.

“Do you recognize this journal? This specific journal?” The smoke in my voice made it almost foreign to me. He looked at it with flickering eyes and, shaking, held out his hand. I gave it to him. His voice was weak.

“Candle under the pages. Hold the flame of a lit candle under the pages. You must understand,” Axell said, coughing, and used his free hand to grab at my collar, “I tried to stop her. I tried to find it. I tried to… find it…”

His grip went slack. He was dead.

I took the journal back into my pocket and looked up to see the other four being attended to by a doctor in the crowd. I told someone to bring one of them over, shaking and frightened as they were. It was Harrison, who had few words.

I stuck around until nightfall, long enough to get the addresses of Ed, Harrison, and the Duvals, and of the hospital Maude would be brought to. After stopping at a corner store for a candle, I went back home. My father arrived there a little later, catching me in the sink trying to wash the last of the soot from my hair and ears, and told him everything. By the end there was only one question left to answer.

My father lit the candle with a match and I, after checking the front door was locked, produced the journal. Opening it to the front page, where Adam’s first entry was written, I lifted the page away from the rest and tilted the book 90 degrees, so that the wax wouldn’t drip onto it. My father brought the candle under the page and slowly, methodically scanned it along the lines. I wasn’t shocked at all to see writing appear over Adam’s, deep brown writing that looked to me like the old children’s trick ink, lemon juice. We continued this until all the text was visible. I won’t bother rewriting it here, as you’ve surely seen it all for yourselves, spirits, and so you’re aware of what we face.

To what Lord have we been speaking? To whom have we been confessing? Or to what?

The last two weeks have been spent in a blur of sleepless nights, absent-minded meetings with the Hugos and Deschampses, who know nothing about it, and fruitless talks with my father. We have resworn our oath to secrecy, and intend on enacting a plan as soon as we can come up with one. This is why I write. Please, spirits, help us. We need guidance. Give me dreams. I know how unfounded this hope is now, but there must be a way. Somehow, there must be a way. I await your call.

I am Anne. Laurel Anne Hudson. I am a mother. My daughter’s name is Alice. Alice Mary Hudson. My dear, sweet, perfect Alice. I love her so. Bring her back.

She was taken from me by a tramp, a disgusting man living near the railway station. I had always taken care to avoid him when we took the train north and when we came back. He was always there, watching Alice and I.

He came to us once. He told us his name was Otto and asked for ours. Alice told him her name before I could stop her. What kind of a mother am I? He told her she was very pretty and gave her a flower. I took her away before she could take it, and he smiled as we walked away. He only smiled with his teeth.

In September we took the train again to see our family in Salinas, and he was at the station. He came to us again, but he only spoke to Alice. He said Alice, won’t you come to the dance with me, and Alice started to shake. I pulled her close to me, so he walked away, smiling with only his teeth. We got on the train and he must have followed us on. He must have saved for a ticket. A minute after the train left the station, he ran into our compartment, grabbed Alice from me, and ran out the door again. I saw him jump off the train, between the cars. I jumped after him, but I twisted my ankle, so I couldn’t run quick enough. That was the last time I saw her.

My sister, Lilian, gave me this journal for Christmas, so that I could grieve in it. I will not grieve. She is still alive, and Otto has her. I will find her.

I have looked for her for seven months now. My heart is filling with tar, becoming black and heavy. I feel nothing. I force food down my throat so I can continue the search, but oh, how my body rejects it. If I sleep it is by accident. The city is gray and beige and black, and the dull blue of the sky no longer calls my name. The stars are points of light. The blades of grass are small trees, trees are large blades of grass. Somewhere, out in the endless toil, my Alice lives, and Otto with her. Has she forgotten my name? Does she remember my face?

The winged women swirled ‘round the circle of woven fabric below, desperate and fiending with feathers bursting away in tufts. They bore the image of the Void in their faces, vacant pits for eyes and great pulsating red slits for mouths. All which ran through their senses into their minds fed back to an indescribable hunger, an all-encompassing urge to kill and take. The cruel sockets searched below surveying for the feast yet to come. Inner voices spoke this way to each one: Find the lesser and take them for your own. The message was a test, an outright challenge to their loyalty. Their trust. All three understood well their privileged position at the front of Isha’s focus and took the command as one would take their own thoughts. Oh, how the clawed fingers twitched. Oh, how the wretched legs trembled in air, waiting for the chance to once again prove their obedience. All serving the bird mother, eater of men, eater of life. Spittle dripped from these slits, falling to the ground in bursts, flooding the land. Ever searching, the pits saw darkness grow below as fear took hold of men, hurried along by the drops which turned to storms on their way to the Earth. The storms, thunderous and covering, blocked the men from seeing both the heavenly light and the winged women. Their world crumbled. Time was all that remained, save for the last prey.

A man named Gar bore the image of Agnotep on his face, not the Void. In place of vacant pits sat wheat brown eyes, true-seeing and bright. No red slit was sliced across his jaw, but a mouth, which knew joyous smiles as well as it did the lowest of frowns. His fingers sat still when he told them to, and moved when needed. His legs, powerful and of cultivated prowess, did nothing but answer to his need for work and to no one and nothing else. With these piercing, ever-used eyes he saw the winged women arrive, just as he saw his fellow men panic and die before him: with horrific clarity. And with his lined legs he climbed the highest peak of his homeland and looked again to the skies, where three clumps hung in the air, trembling and writhing and sending their spittle down.

Around him the world sank under the new ocean the beasts had made, walking up the mountainside until finally reaching his toes, where it stabbed and bit at him. Yet he did not feel fear. Men were all but gone from the world, with him as their remnant, yet he felt naught but the faintest breeze, apart from the numb ocean winds the wings made. A little breeze which smelled of tilled earth, of the winter-green trees, of the world after rain, of people and their habits, and of berries picked fresh from the bush, of fire. His soul needed no more strength than that. He stood himself upon the sea, buried his feet in the muddy peak of the highest mountain, and stared into the six pits, massive and rippling and terrible. Lesser men had died at their sight, but Gar stood fast. The winged women, suddenly wrought with faithlessness and cowardice, fled, loyalty gone and replaced with a foreign emotion: fear.

Never have they returned, and never will they. Agnotep demands it.

The day dawns, the day of payment. I give my soul willingly to Isha after I shed this mortal bondage, this flesh cage.

Through me we will have the power to burn the forests to ash, boil the seas to salt. Together we will extinguish the sun.

I feel the rocks beneath me bleed tears of blood knowing you have accepted me, oh flame-mother. I feel them tremble, the sun soon at hand, though one day doomed to us. The rocks beneath me ache with the shaking, O the shaking! The Earth shakes with terror, for it has foreseen what we are yet to do. The fear of flame will rise again and overtake the world as it once did, in the ancient days of Gar’s first nation, in the first days of the new men, when they had yet to harness it, oh flame-mother. The world has forgotten to be afraid, Lord, and I believe I will be their reminder.

In all the ancient past was there ever such a willing vessel for you? Ever, in all time, did you ever have a daughter upon the Earth, ready to hear your commands? And yet you ruled. Yes, the stones tremble! They, too, know what we hold, this chance of chances, to rule without fear of mutiny, without fear of opposition. First falls San Francisco, the city who ate me. Into rubble it crumbles. For Alice, I would crumble the entire world.

Ring around the head is called a halo.

Ring around the rosey is called a game.

The river will turn to blood, trumpets will sound from the clouds.

We were all destined to fall but me.

And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird. For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies.

None will escape, for none are innocent, for all have profited, for all kings take, for all nations want, for all people need. There is no need fire can’t destroy. Are you finished with your world yet? Would you like a second serving? And do you like to smoke? You will be smoking soon, for flame-mother. Your presence is felt and your absence is seen. If He is here, why does He pretend to be dead? The flame-mother never pretends. And she is not dead! Praise the flame-mother! All is to be reborn on a cross aflame, against Ash.

Every day is a battle, and I have won every one. When death wins its first day, it will be out of pity.

A mote of dust in a sunbeam. When The Great Absolute unfolded, the light and pure formed Heaven, the heavy and impure formed Earth, and the mingled pure and impure formed Man. The impure will be cast into flame, though once there was hope. Man has chosen its impure half. It has chosen wrong.

Blessed Lord Isha, come forth from the Void and heed my wish, hear my words so twisted in time. I call upon thine winged women to once more return to the Earth, to slay the heir of Gar, the wheat-eyed Otto. May you use this grimoire as a vessel from whence your spell may be cast, black as night, sure as steel, red as blood. I come to you now as a humble servant of the Void, to give blood to the empty pool, the pool that fuels the engine of your will. I cast myself in, so that this wish may come true: Lay waste to Otto. Lay waste to all who stand in your way. Give aid to any who oppose him. Bring agony upon him, and may he receive this book into his own hands, so its power may course freely through him, so that his spirit may ever linger on, haunting and haunted. To the performance of this task I give my blood, my life force, so my daughter may be free. I give to you, Lord, my life.