The Starless Sea

Zachary blinks and glances at another fragment of paper.

Son, it reads.

He reaches for another piece, large enough to pick up.

of the fortune-

The paper turns to dust in his fingers but the words remain burned into his eyes.

Zachary looks at another broken piece of ancient paper, though he knows what it will say before he reads it.

tell

er

Zachary closes his eyes, listening for the this is not happening voice in his head but the voice in his head remains silent. The voice knows that this is happening and so does he.

Zachary opens his eyes. He bends down and sifts through the broken book on the ground, focusing on the first fragment with text that he finds and then another and another.

there are three

things lost

in time

Zachary continues to search as the book continues to deteriorate. The only pieces he can discern are single words.

sword

book

man

The words vanish almost as soon as they are found until only two remain in the dust.

find

man

Zachary searches through the pile of crumbling paper for additional clarification but the bibliomancy sessi

on is over. This book that is no longer book-shaped has nothing more to say.

Zachary brushes the dust of prophetic paper from his hands. Find man. He thinks about the man lost in time from Sweet Sorrows. He has no idea how to go about finding someone who has been lost in time at the behest of the ghosts of former books. He stares at corpses who do not bother staring back at him, their staring days long past.

Zachary takes the lamp from its pedestal and the rest of the lights extinguish themselves.

He walks out the door pausing to pull the key from its lock.

The door swings shut.

The hallway outside feels longer.

Zachary hangs the key on its hook and replaces the lamp on its shelf. It sinks into place and the light at the other end of the hall vanishes.

Zachary glances down the hallway. It disappears into darkness but the farthest reach of the lamplight finds a shape in the shadows, someone standing in the center of the hall, staring at him.

Zachary blinks and the figure is gone.