April 21. I found him in the dark of the parlor, naked. “Look on me and be amazed,” he growled. And his eyes burned in the dark like twin fires. I remember nothing after but that I woke in my bed well after noon with a headache and Mary insisting that I did not need a physician, only to rest and let her care for me.
May. I know not what day it is, for the days run together as currents in a stream. They hold odd séances below. I can hear them, but I am too weak to go downstairs, and too afraid.
August. It is terribly hot. A foul stench permeates the house, turning my stomach. The boarder has gone, I know not where.
September 1. The beast skulks the halls of the house, frightening all within. The servants, the few remaining, fear him. He tells the most fantastical tales. Once, he claimed to be the last surviving member of a lost, chosen tribe, when I know he was poor as a church mouse, common as dirt, raised in an orphanage in Brooklyn. Every time it is a new tale, until it is impossible to know what is truth and what folly.
September 20. I will have no more of that woman’s sweet wine.
September 28. The lack of wine has made me terribly ill. For a week, I have lain upon the bed, writhing and vomiting, attended by our last remaining servant, Emily, the dear girl. She has confessed that she is as frightened as I. It seems she chanced upon a locked room left unlocked and nearly plummeted to her death through a trapdoor and a chute that she surmises can only lead to the cellar.
October 3. I was awakened in the night by screams, but I could not tell where dreams left off and waking began.
October 8. Emily has not come for six days.
October 10. With effort, I roused myself from bed and went downstairs. The shutters were sealed and the house had the feel of a tomb. “Where is Emily?” I inquired of Mr. Hobbes, cool as you please though beneath my dressing gown my knees shook. “She has gone rather suddenly to be with her sister, who was in childbirth,” the beast answered. “Strange that she did not mention it to me or collect her wages,” I said. “She did not wish to trouble you with such petty concerns,” he answered. “Then why has she gone without her purse?” I asked, for I had gone to her room first and found it there, untouched. Mrs. White materialized then at his side, drawn by the tone of my voice, no doubt. “We shall see that it is returned to her, the poor dear. So worried was she about her sister.”
What woman leaves behind her purse?
October 13. Once again, I was stopped from entering the cellar by Mr. Hobbes. “It isn’t safe,” he said, and something in his tone, the cold blue of his gaze, had me scurrying back to my room.
October 15. I hear whispers in the very walls. Oh, some terrible calamity is surely at hand!
October 17. Mrs. White has gone to the country to perform her services as medium. The charlatan! I am alone in the house with him.
October 19. Today, when I saw Mr. Hobbes’s carriage pulling from the garage and into the street, I hurried downstairs and, with a hairpin, worked at the lock of the curio cabinet until I heard it give. Then I read his terrible book. Profane! Obscene! Filled with degradation and filth! It was all I could do not to pitch it into the stove. Oh, I am in danger! I have written to my dear cousin once more and told him as much. Why oh why did I consent to selling the house to that terrible woman? Trickery and deceit! Lies and more lies! I shall take it back. I am Ida Knowles, and this is my house, built by my father. But first, I mean to discover what is happening in the cellar. I must see it for myself.
“What was happening in the cellar?” Evie said to herself.
Jericho stuck his head through the library’s doors. He was breathless. “Evie, some help here? We’ve got a crowd.”
“Coming,” she said and put the diary aside.
PRELUDE
Memphis stepped out into a morning that had come up in a bad mood, gray and cold and wet. The night’s rain had sent a shower of autumn leaves onto the walk, where they made a matted golden carpet. Octavia had asked Memphis to sweep them up before they left for church, and he did so, brushing them into a dustpan and dumping them into the garbage bin. A police sedan wailed up Broadway, followed by a second and a third. Memphis leaned over the gate, trying to see what was happening. He stopped a neighbor who was rushing past.
“What’s going on?”
“Heard they found a body in Trinity Cemetery,” the man said.
“There’s lots of bodies in Trinity Cemetery. It’s a graveyard,” Memphis said dryly.
“They think it’s the Pentacle Killer,” the man said and hurried down the street to join the others. Memphis abandoned his broom and followed.
Outside the tall wrought-iron gates of Trinity Cemetery, a crowd had gathered, some folks still in robes, slippers, and head scarves. Mothers shooed their children back to the sidewalks and told them to stay there unless they wanted a good swat on the bottom. The police swarmed the gentle hills of the old cemetery, which had been the site of a great battle during the Revolutionary War and still sported a marker commemorating that fact. Memphis backed up and climbed a lamppost, trying to see better.
On the street, a cry went up. It was followed by gasps and more cries as word was passed from lips to ears, rippling over the people like a drowning wave. Memphis spied Floyd the barber and hopped down and ran to him.
“What is it, Floyd? What’s going on?”
Floyd looked at him with doleful eyes and shook his head. “It’s not good, Memphis.”
Memphis felt as if he’d swallowed a piece of ice that was melting slowly through him. “Who is it?” he asked, but already his blood pounded in his ears, a prelude.
“It’s Gabriel Johnson. They say the killer took his mouth and strung him up like a crucified angel.”
DEATH NO LONGER HAS DOMINION