Page 59 of An Inheritance of Monsters

Voraal reluctantly let go of me, and once more I was taken with a sudden urge to invite him to stay… but he glided towards the closet, disappearing between its cracks.

Despite the sudden emptiness in the room, I still felt a sense of presence. I wasn’t really alone.

And I had to bring myself into order. Starting by writing down everything I knew in the secret pages of my Black Book.

I cracked the notebook open, barely stopping to gnaw my pen before I began doing rough sketches of everything I’d seen in the Void and frantically scribbling every last detail.

Mlul’dra, Klee, V’uthli. Guardians of the Void.

The Fuseli Comet, an Elder God of madness and despair… and the countdown until its arrival.

The glimmering cavern of treasures, the sloping dunes… the odd architecture of the other world that I could barely capture on a page. My pencil only slipped and smeared as I tried to recreate their alien forms on paper.

And finally the lists of names. Ivy, Madeline, Beatrix, Elizabeth… and finally myself.

All women marked by the Void.

I didn’t stop until the sun rose.

Chapter17

Juno

Iessentially sleepwalked through the next day.

Despite my terror of the night before, the pale sunlight seemed to wash away most of my fears and worries, but I found myself disenchanted with the thought of existing in the real world.

What was so real about it, anyway?

The waves of the sea felt just as real as sleeping in my bed. The lights of the sea and Zirin’s tentacles were brighter and more vivid than the sun itself.

It was like walking through a dream, but I couldn’t wake up—I had to wait for night to get back to what felt true.

But even my longing to return to the Void couldn’t entirely erase my fears. I found myself drifting towards the wing with Mrs. Marsh’s private room, wanting to look closer at the photos of smeared faces, and Sierra bumped into me while I drifted.

“We were going to film the drop-stairs,” she said irritably, sweeping past me. “It’sthisway.”

I blinked, feeling sluggish and slow. Wehadbeen heading that way, intending to cover Aston Clarke’s death… and I’d completely forgotten.

I found that I was starting to not care if this show got made at all.

What did it matter? It was nothing but dressed-up rumors, using gossip to amp up the drama and bring in more viewers.

None of them wanted to hear the real story. None of them cared about the people who had lived their entire lives here or what had caused their lives to be given over to an eldritch other-world.

They only cared to hear about their gory deaths, to gasp over titillating details.

Spirit Squadhad been started as a way to seek out the truth, and in time, it had gotten twisted.

We were so caught up in digging up whatever would bring in an audience that we’d forgotten there were stories beneath the stories.

Stories nobody would dare tell.

I followed Sierra up the grand staircase, feeling heavier and heavier with each step. Everything began to look oddly misty as we ascended, and I blinked, wondering if it was my eyes or something more, but Sierra was acting completely normal.

We found the doors marked with the spike of orange tape Crispy had left behind, and Sierra paused with her hand on the door.

I blinked again, and the mist seemed to condense.

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