19th Century Poetry

19th Century Poetry

Journal of Nathaniel Faust, Paranormal Investigator and Occult Scientist (must use contemporary terms, so they don’t get suspicious)

25 Apr 1882

         It’s odd: I find myself writing this testament, even though I swear I’ve read it already. I found it buried in a box of records from the Resolute Sect’s outsourcing to the New York temple (when NY got Grand Temple status). I know I’ve read it, but I find myself unable to remember the details until I start writing them down. Likewise, I can’t remember what I decided to try in order to return. I can only hope I might leave before I die of tuberculosis or dysentery.

      It all started when I had a dream about a girl.

         I was in hell, having been summoned for a tip about a demon causing trouble on Earth. Instead of  him, however, the sole occupant in the frozen hall was a sprightly figure wearing a kind of jumpsuit. She kept her back turned, leaving visible only her short black hair with tiny horns just poking through the top. I was unable to move or speak, all I could do was watch and listen. She was whispering something in what sounded vaguely like Black Dæmonic, but was just different enough that I couldn’t quite make out any of the words. For some reason, it felt like her words were both keeping and repelling me, though she didn’t appear to know I was there. They made me scared, something about them was dangerous.

         The hall started to fade away, and then it was just the two of us inside a void. The whispering continued, but it started to become louder and louder, until my head felt like it would burst under the cacophony of words. When it reached the point where the sound was surely enough to have killed me in real life, it cut off. The girl started to turn, and everything went black. 

A voice so soft that I felt like I’d imagined it (even though a dream is usually imagined) came from the darkness like a hiss from a snake: London. My eyes popped open to see the inside of a pretty full grocery cart.

 “Sir? Sir, are you ok?” a woman in a purple Pup Foods vest was tentatively tapping me on the shoulder.

         “Huh?” I eventually managed to process where I was and what I was doing, “yeah, fine,” I straightened up and pushed the cart over towards check-out. Fortunately, I hadn’t had any frozen or refrigerated food, but a glance at my watch as I checked out revealed I’d only been out for about fifteen minutes. 

         I paid quickly and hurried home to start making some soup for Benton, who’d woken up with a 105º fever. I’d told him to make sure to take special precautions against those undead soldiers, but he hadn’t believed me that reanimation can affect bacteria as well. While the broth simmered, Rel came up from the basement, sniffing the bouquet issuing from the stovetop.     “Lemongrass, sweet basil… limes, garlic, and…” she guessed at the aromatics as I gave her a good-morning hug.

  “Coconut milk,” I whispered in her ear, gently pulling her hair back from the active burner.

She turned and pulled my face down to hers, as though to kiss.

         “You cheater!” she playfully yelled, causing me to wince, “ye know I have trouble telling yer… stupid… ‘New World’ foods.”

     “Well, if coconuts migrated—”

         “Don’t start with that whole refrain again, it wasn’t funny the first time,” she stuck her tongue out and started pulling bowls and spoons from the cupboard, “anyway, ‘wraith slayer,’” we both rolled our eyes, “is not responding to either the Liquor of Light-heart or poultice number seven.”

         “Nuts!” I cursed, always mindful of my right hand, “guess we’ll just have to wait it out. The incense mixture is still keeping it from spreading, right?”

    “Don’t smell any rot outside of him, no.” 

         I threw the chicken and mushrooms into the pot, and finished up the tom ka gai while discussing potential cures we could try, though our list was significantly narrowed after the failure of poultice number seven to treat the rash. If its combination of penicillin mold, aloe Vera, and sun-kissed heather from the mountains beneath the vales didn’t work, then neither the best modern medicine, nor most of our collective knowledge about mystical remedies. We could really only come up with using dream butterfly scales to keep Benton in dreamland, and using Bloodstone’s transduction ritual, which would take too long to put together. By the time the fish sauce was added, we were pretty much resigned to using basic TLC.

 “Hey, buddy,” we said in forced cheerful unison as we slowly edged into the sickroom, “how are ya feeling?”

         The inmate wheezed for a few moments before croaking a weak “like I just had a full night with a succubus.” Benton could barely raise his head off the mountain of mismatched pillows, and his yellowed eyes seemed to drift around languidly without any apparent ability to focus. I gave him a little broth while Rel took his temperature. Seeing that both went down quite nicely, we lit another incense stick and removed to the parlor.

 “I don’t like it,” Rel confessed, “he should be able to at least sit up by now; should we call someone?”

         “Who would we call? It’s not like there’s a healer of 17th century zombie bacteria anywhere in commute distance, unless you think—”    “I mean, it’s up to ye if ye wanted to contact—”

  “I can’t just ask for something like this as a freebie, they’d want a trade.”

“And why’re ye so against trading with them?” she rolled her eyes, “surely there’s something in the Resolute archives about the maladies in the area back then.”   “You know how much I loathe him,” I seethed in response.

         “He might not be home?” was her only way to comfort me about having to condescend to go ask his people for help, “it would just be a quick, friendly visit either way…”

         “If he doesn’t end up issuing another writ of challenge, I’ll eat my coat,” I huffed, reluctantly pulling the aforementioned barrier over my clothes.

         “If he does, I’ll make you something,” my wife lowered her voice and leaned towards my ear, “sweet.”

         “Not sure there’s anything in even your mighty repertoire that could make dealing with him worth it,” I jokingly muttered, before planting a small kiss on her cheek and pulling away, “have you seen that flute anywhere?”

 “My brother’s wedding gift? I’ve been too busy with yer errant apprentice to look after instruments.”

         I left her pretend scowling on the sofa while I adjourned to my study to look for the waylaid woodwind. Fortunately, it was sitting in the gutter of 63 Irish Folk Songs with Musical

Accompaniment, lying open in the middle of “Finnegan’s Wake.” I took the pipe downstairs, bidding adieu to the patient and his nurse, and opened a gateway using the refrain from “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary.”

         I emerged from the shimmering haze onto Piccadilly Circus, just in time to accidentally photo-bomb a group of Korean tourists who were taking a gelato selfie. After I apologized by buying them fresh gelato (fortunately their English was about as good as my Korean, and we could just barely communicate coherently between the two), I was able to use their phone map to orient myself in the direction of Bloomsbury. Armed with an Extra Choco-Riot gelato, I made my way down to the famous underground station’s westbound platform. 

         I detest the British public transit system. If you don’t have a phone, you’re bound to get completely turned around on it. There are also quite a few unsavory characters you’ll run into down there.

         “It is rather rude to eat on the tube, though I suppose an American imbecile can hardly be bothered to abide by societal standards,” a haughty, fair young man in a white suit stepped out of the throng to chastise me. His walking stick made its regular sharp tacking noise while he chortled at his remark.

         “Was that supposed to be a joke, Mr Shiny Boots, or are you choking on your perfume?” I gave my critic a withering stare as I took a long, lingering lick , taking care to make sure it smeared all over my lips.

         “Insolent—” he started, but forced himself to calm down, “-hem, apologies, old friend. May I inquire as to your designs at University?” his forced cheeriness was absolutely dripping (not unlike my gelato), “unless you mean to tell me you merely came to London for a lark?”

            I made him wait a couple moments, stewing while I finished my cone, before replying,

“course not, jus’ gotta visitcher library fer a quick lil peek at dem medic—”

  “Please behave like an adult,” Alastair interrupted, “I shall not warn you another time thatI have the warrant to detain any persons within the jurisdiction of Her Majesty’s Sorcerers Resolute… indefinitely,” he tapped his walking stick, using the pinging noise as a reminder of what its master was capable of.

         “Alright, fine. (Not like you could take me in anyways but) I was planning to look at your archives on diseases from the 1670s.” We were interrupted by the PA warning us to “Mind The Gap” as the train arrived.

“You might have given advance notice, should you have had such a mundane task in mind,” my escort sighed in between apologies to fellow commuters.

    “But I so enjoy our little chats, don’t you?”

        “I detest you.”

        “Sarcasm.”

       “Oh, I am well aware.”

    “Excuse me, is this the way to Whitechapel?”

        “NO”

  “You want to go eastbound. Get out here and change tracks.”

   “What he said. You’ll also need to go slightly south.”

         We decided to put off discussion until we reached the University campus (in no small part because people kept asking if he was that guy from “Upbrook Court” and for selfies). As we stepped up to the library’s door, Alastair turned in front of me to seriously get me to explain everything under pain of getting walloped by his cane.

         “Mister Alastair, I assure you that my interest is completely innocent. I am offended, and, frankly, hurt that you would insinuate—”

         “Save it!” he snapped, “you have never had an innocent thought in your life, you damned trickster!” He looked approvingly at my hiss of pain as my hand flared with a slight hint of hellfire that was quickly absorbed by my rosary bracelet. 

  “Ugh! You— how would you like to feel—”

         “I assure you, the injury to my honor by being called ‘mister’ by the likes of you is well deserving of whatever pain you might get from your blasphemous life,” he tutted, “now, why are you here?”

“Benton caught something from a zombie,” I explained, brushing the scarred palm against my trenchcoat, “and it seems pretty rough.”

         “Ah, yes,” his eyes shone with recognition, “Third Order Benton… he only just left for your house two weeks ago, and already dying? He ought to have ended his sabbatical himself and returned, rather than remaining in that drafty old place.” Despite his feigned apathy he moved aside and let me into the building with a slight nod of acknowledgment. I entered, returning his nod with the most imperceptible incline of my head possible.

         “I issue a formal writ of challenge for mastership of the New York Temple, seat of the Ingenuity sect,” my aggravating prat of an escort yelled as soon as I set foot within the Resolute sect’s library. Annoyingly, the massive space beginning in the basement of University’s library has phenomenal acoustics, and the challenge was heard by over nine assorted Second Orders (judging by their wearing hooded robes) who were gathered around a table. They looked up from the massive manuscript they had been poring over, excitement written in their stoic faced countenances. An official challenge was rare in London, understandably so, what with them having the strongest ArchPrince in over a thousand years (not even he can challenge Merlin’s prestige, though). It was the 16th time Alastair had challenged me.

  “This is the sixteenth time, what makes you think it’d be any different?” I half-moaned.

  “I have strengthened my already superior abilities to their highest point yet,” he crowed,

“this time I shall smash straight through any tricks you prepare!”

  “That’s what you said the last fifteen times,” I muttered under my breath, “unfortunately,

I can’t today. Can I get a rain check? Maybe at the annual challenge?”

         The challenger nearly started gnashing his teeth, “it is my right to challenge you whenever you stand within sanctified boundaries—”

“And it is my right to set the proper terms and devise the rules of the challenge, and I have no interest at the moment,” I stalked off to look at the stacks, “ask again later, if I have nothing better to do, I might oblige you, though if you decide to withdraw that saves me the time it takes to clear a room for the challenge.” My voice probably reached him before the echoes faded away, but I got no indication whatsoever that he heard me. 

         Glad he was apparently respectful or doubtful enough to leave me alone, I made my way through the labyrinthine temple, occasionally getting turned around and finding myself emerging from bookshelf-lined hallways into training or bed-chambers. I once stumbled upon a couple Fourth Ranks eating in a sort of banquet hall/cafeteria. It made me miss my simple six floored brownstone, with its helpful house spirits that let me go from the cellar to my third-floor bedroom by turning around the corner of a wine rack. I was nearly tempted to swallow my pride and go back to ask Mr Shiny Boots for help, but I happened across a Squire who was happy to (or commanded to) show me the way to the medical wing. 

         It was an entire floor, two down from the library. The Squire gestured vaguely around the book-filled walls of the hospital-like cavern and clunked off with squeaky steps. Its enchant was obviously fading—it would soon be another dilapidated suit of armor gathering rust. I prefer my breathing, living friends any day. They would’ve at least known if the book I was looking for existed. I skirted the edges of the curtained interior, hearing occasional coughs, groans, and, once or twice, a scream, as the healers set bones and tended to the cursed or sick. Perusing the shelves down here yielded a trove of healing and soul magic tomes, most of which I had the latest copies of in my own library back home. 

         I was pulling a random blue tattered volume from the far wall when my hand started flaring out of nowhere, sending waves of numb pain from the palm to the shoulder. Dousing it in holy water, I looked closer at the book, which ended up being a very faded edition of Arle’s “Ghost Eggs.” Crucially, it didn’t prompt any more reaction, and nothing about the instructions for trapping ghosts in jars or other containers counts as “damning.” I replaced the book and experimentally walked in a small circle with my palm outstretched. A few tongues of hellfire seeped out when I pointed it towards the stairs back up. I made sure I had my blade and enough other relics/reagents to feel comfortable if one of his people were somehow alive in the Resolute stronghold. I then followed the infernal trail, which led me back up to the surface, and across the street.

 By the time I approached the earth sciences building, even the rosary beads were getting hot from the sheer volume of blazing miasma they were absorbing and  sealing away. I very nearly gave into the temptation to suspend the contract with a scratch from my blade, but the memory of last time held me back. Some emergency affecting the building’s computer systems kept the security monitor occupied and the doors unlocked, giving me free reign of the place so long as I kept my head down. Probably whatever was affecting the system was the same thing I was after.  Why would anything from there think to come this far into the territory of the most bloodthirsty sect? I asked myself as I checked labs and lecture halls for a demon or some sort of glowing orb of destruction. After a while I hit on a room with some kind of woefully unbalanced solar system model and a lot of math on the blackboards (maybe? I can’t remember if there was a single number anywhere). My rosary burst off, the cross inverting in the center of a ringed helix of beads in midair, having absorbed so much hellfire that it automatically went into Gateway Mode. I searched the room, finding nothing besides a deceptively heavy meteorite fragment being used as a paperweight for some blank notebook paper. I attempted a summons command (manifesto), but to no avail. There was nothing there.

         I unceremoniously plopped into the chair beside the lectern, switching gear from demon-hunting to calming, centering techniques. I half-figured I’d just accidentally ignited due to the stress of trying to get Benton out from whatever pall had descended upon him. When even complete energy realignment achieved nothing, I started pacing, in case I simply had too much energy. I then started laughing at myself, and, at some point, crying. Whether from pain or stress or just psychological breakage, I have no idea. 

         “Is someone crying?” a faint woman’s voice came, as though from through the wall. I stopped, hiding behind the lectern in silence, completely forgetting about how the burning cross of Saint Peter that floated above the model sun would definitely give me away. A couple minutes passed, and nothing happened besides the increased intensity of the inferno on my palm. After I gauged that the lady had probably gone back to whatever she was doing, I snuck a peek around the podium to check if the hallway was indeed clear. 

         Instead, I saw a swirling black-and-red vortex simmering in the middle of the room. Right where my inverted rosary had been. It had been a while since I’d seen an active Hellgate. I approached cautiously, holding my blade out in defense should a band of demons suddenly burst through. Despite the intense energy convulsing and swirling around it, not a sound emanated from the portal. No roaring demons or wailing souls of the damned. Only the tread of squeaky new boots and an all-too-familiar tapping sound approaching from down the hallway.

         “Nathaniel?” the normally annoyed voice was now filled with sharp edges, “I swear, if you have summoned a hellbeast in the middle of our campus, I shall use it as justification to engage a tribunal against you.”

         Hell or an encounter with Alastair: there was no contest which was more of a headache. I quickly dove into the Pit. Alastair’s shouts dissolved as the tongues of fire lapped me into their “belly.” I was greeted by the acrid stench of unbreathable blazing sulfur and the endless darkness of eternal damnation.

I had emerged atop a precipice. The landscape before me was completely alien, and eerily empty, with nothing but black craggy ground peppered with dark red flames for leagues until dissolving into shadowy nothingness. To my back, somewhere in the distant gloom beneath, was the frigidly hot lakefront of the Devil’s hall, emanating the black miasma that sustained the realm. Not a soul could be seen.

         I stretched out on my back until the dancing spots stopped swimming around my vision. The foul air was ill-equipped to settle my body, and breathing started coming shallower for sheer dislike of it. “Alright monster or whatever you are that summoned me, come eat me. I probably banished you and I’m totally defenseless right now,” I called into the void. Not even the flutter of bat wings indicated the presence of anything. It was as though the entire realm had been emptied.   After a couple more minutes of exposed baiting I pulled myself to the edge to look down at the lake. Its expansive surface lay a dizzying way down, but it looked perfectly normal: the hellfire swirled off its frozen “waters”  like always. A tiny speck representing a being of some kind moved slowly along its shoreline. As that was the only detectable creature anywhere that I could see or feel, I tried to make out what it was doing. Even a viewfinder spell couldn’t penetrate far enough through the darkness to see much more than a whitish spot, which was just as well. I determined that whatever it was it wasn’t likely to represent a dimensional threat and was starting to scramble back to my feet when the cliff started crumbling beneath me, and I fell headfirst towards the distant figure.

         It seemed an eternity as the oppressive air rushed around me. I tried to reach my magic carpet scrap, but my arms couldn’t move through the wind. The white speck gradually came into focus as a youngish, human-looking being with short black hair wearing a white, futuristic-looking jumpsuit. My dream flashed through my memory in the brief space between when I was able to make out her features and when my face smashed into the fragmented obsidian beach.

“Dickens! What sort of torture have you been given?” the girl from my dream bent over me, her black eyes darting between a kind of screen on her wrist and my face. She had a light Gog accent, but her voice had an air of posh intensity that was similar but much less harsh than Alastair’s.

         “Are you… alive?” I groaned, my jaw half-buried in the grit, so it sounded more like “affoo… awff?” She stepped back suddenly, either surprise or fear on her face. Once she got a couple steps away, the girl fixed me with a harder glare than most hellspawn I’ve encountered before.     “You shan’t move,” she commanded, her accent resolving into a London accent the way Benton’s does when company comes over. I started testing limbs to make sure nothing was broken, first by twitching (so as to seem like I was obeying her). When she started getting distracted by her wrist-screen I tried sliding my arm out from its awkward position under me. Nothing happened.

         “Shlih” I cursed, which hardened her eyes even further. Tiny sparks of red seemed to glow where her pupils should’ve been, probably just a trick of the light from the lake.

         “No talking, either,” she said in the same accent, sounding almost like a younger sister of Mr Shiny Boots. I tried to explain who I was, but my voice wouldn’t cooperate. I gurgled bloody saliva helplessly as the tween finished whatever she was doing on her device. I then started to choke on the spit.

         “For Faust’s sake,” she chastised, then, pointing at me, “you’re dead. This place,” she gestured broadly, “is Hell, where you will spend a horrible eternity forever. There’s no sense whining about it now.” For some reason, when she mentioned “Hell” I was freed from whatever curse she’d put on me, and my arm finally listened and let me roll over onto my back.

“I,” I spat, clearing the glassy shards from my mouth, “am not dead yet. You demons have no power over me,” I held up my hand to show her the Five-Pointed Star ringed by the words of the curse. 

         “I’m no demon!” she screamed emphatically, as though she constantly had to fight the accusation, “but, judging by your hand, you are!” 

         I powered up to a sitting position, “look, I’m no demon either, I’m just—” I trailed off, my eyes nearly crossing as they focused on the dueling saber pointed six inches from my face. The straightish blade was entirely covered by a darkish stain, and thrummed with some kind of energy.    “I’ll make this clear,” she growled, “I kill your kind. So, if I were you, I’d run away to your lord or whatever you serve.”

         I stood slowly, my body aching with the hell-granted immortality of the realm, while the military sword never strayed from between my eyes. The girl was a few inches shorter than me, about Rel’s height, though she looked younger, maybe fifteen, at most. I held my hands up and took a step backwards, not realizing I had my back to the lake. When I crossed the threshold I winced, preparing for the inevitable groveling position He usually sends me into, but the hall was empty. In fact, it lay in ruins around me: stone walls smashed to pieces and the ceiling lying in chunks around the floor. I nearly tripped over the loose bricks trying to distance myself from the entrance and that whacko.

         I was barely fifteen steps inside when she followed me, yelling something about there being “no escape.” And there wasn’t.

 “At least give me a chance,” I demanded, pulling my blade out of my coat, “I can duel you for my life: first to draw blood gets…” I couldn’t bring myself to offer my life so easily, “a single demand of the loser?”

   “Ha! Why would I agree to that if I can just kill you anyway?”

“Then that can be your demand, I won’t resist if you can draw blood, promise,” I had managed to put a few sizable chunks of rubble between us, but the girl inhumanly jumped on top of the biggest, springing behind me in less time than it took to raise my blade. 

         I found hers at my neck as she laughed “fine. First blood, Faust’s honor, but don’t cry when I win.”

         “I won’t worry about that until it happens,” I ducked and thrust my blade to parry hers.   “Are you seriously planning on using that companion weapon in a duel? Where’s the actual sword?” she mocked.

         “Haven’t found one good enough,” I answered, pressing her saber aside and moving in close. She kept retreating while still pressing offensively, maintaining distance in a way I couldn’t manage to sneak past. She kept taunting, but I was too focused on her next strike to keep up much of a conversation. She eventually backed into a mostly upright column, and had to sidestep. I seized my chance: flapping my coat around her sword, I managed to close the distance and pull it away from me safely, just barely giving my opponent a tiny scratch on her arm before she pulled away.      Her saber clattered on the stone floor, and her eyes filled with red. Literally; the magical edge apparently dampened whatever type demon or other being she was to reveal that her irises were naturally scarlet, like a vampire in a cheap tv show. Her face then twisted in fear, showing a much more natural look for one so young.

  “I lost,” she squeaked in her original accent, incredulous.

         I stepped back and picked up her sword, which had stopped vibrating at some point during the fight. “One demand, you promised.” She nodded, closing her eyes. A small tear ran from the left one.

  “Just make it quick, I-I’m ready,” she was now shaking as much as her sword had been,

“th-they prepared m-m-me f-for this.”

“I was never going to kill you, you didn’t do anything that indicates it’s necessary to do that,” I calmly explained, offering her back her saber.

  “B-b-but the deal,” she blubbered a little, more tears rolling down her face.

         “I just want to go home, and I think you brought me here? Someone released enough infernal power at University to open a gate.

         “W-wait, it w-w-worked?” she stammered, a tinge of excitement now edging out the fear, “I just wasn’t expecting them to send someone else who—never mind. Sure. We’re home now.”      As soon as she said the words, the realm collapsed around us, though not in the usual, gateway manner. It was like all of reality bent to her voice, and my senses couldn’t keep up. I believe the last I saw of Hell was an image of Him, holding court as usual in the splendid palace that was the usual appearance of the Hall. He smiled at us wickedly, with another demon looking tenderly at the girl. Then it was daylight in New York, and we stood in front of my home. She staggered up the stairs and collapsed against the door, her complexion entirely drained of energy.        I picked her up and slung her over my shoulder, opening the door. A man I’d never seen before stood with his back turned to us, talking to someone in the kitchen.

         “Rel! Benton!” I called, “I’m back! Didn’t get anything, we’ll just have to wait it out.” The man turned and saw us, his bushy eyebrows nearly meeting his receding hairline in surprise.        “Excuse me, young man,” his voice sounded vaguely European, which was usually odd for a client, but I didn’t think it was especially noteworthy as I deposited my catatonic new friend into a chair. 

         “I’ll be right with you, Sir,” I assured him, then I made my way upstairs to my room to see about getting some lightwood essence to energize the girl. Except… my room wasn’t there. At least, my things weren’t. 

“Excuse me, you cannot just enter another man’s home like that, if you need help, I suggest a hospital,” the old man harrumphed.

         “Sorry, I thought this was my house,” I answered, “my key fit and everything… I apologize.”       “Your key!” the man cried, “who sent you? No human locksmith can make a key that works in my door: it’s fused with magic bolts!”

         “Mine too…” I trailed off, noticing why the old man looked vaguely familiar, “are you, somehow, Master Darius Herman? First—”

 “Arcanix of the New York temple,” he bowed, “at your service. Are you to join us? I’m afraid I’ve received no notice.”

         “No, sorry, must be a mistake,” I turned and leaped down the stairs to where an unfamiliar woman wearing an old-fashioned maid uniform stood, checking the girl over for signs of apparent illness. 

  “—hear me?” she said placidly, waving a bottle under the younger one’s nose.

  “Sorry for your trouble, I apologized, motioning her to leave, “we’ll be leaving now—”

         “Wait, young man!” Master Darius commanded, “only those with actual need can—”      “Find your house,” I finished the refrain, “we just needed a quick rest, though. Thank you for your hospitality, we really must be going back to, uh…”

  “London,” the girl croaked, “must tell them about the success.”

         “I don’t know about that, young lady, or what exactly you’re wearing, but I must insist you at least tell me why you both smell of brimstone!”

 “Ah! Well, we just came from a doctor’s practice, he gave us some sulfur for, et, headaches, but now we need to go back to London, so, thank you,” I excused us, and tried to open the door. It stayed shut.

    “Then stay the night. I insist,” the Arcanix replied sternly.

We were trapped, “just for the night, then. Thank you,” I coughed, sitting the girl back down on the seat. The next hour or so passed in awkward pleasant conversation, during which I managed to get a hold of the day’s Times. The date confirmed the fear that had grown in my head ever since I recognized the man whose portrait hung at the front of a small line in my office.

       We were in 1882.

         Since we arrived, I’ve had time to speak privately with the girl. I haven’t yet told her what happened, though she seems to suspect I’m hiding something. Her name is Elizabeth Hart Parsons, and she claims to be the daughter of the Dowager Countess of Rosse. It seems as though she works for a company that has managed to gain access to Hell, and is endeavoring to chart it (highly concerning). She must be either damned in some respect or part demon, probably the latter, considering her horns and eyes. She has the power to change reality with her words, and says that the people she works with call her “Limerick.” She stopped talking after about two hours after we got here, apparently unable to speak any more today (if we’re to spend much time together, I must learn sign language). For some reason, she seems incredibly anxious about going to bed. I think I’ll try to watch over her room tonight, just in case something happens.

---

---

Read more on the Honors Blog.