After that, all is confused darkness. My mind has drawn the curtain. I awoke, as I have said, in my room with Cal at my side.
If I could leave, I should fly from this house of horror with my nightdress flapping at my heels. But I cannot. I have become a pawn in a deeper, darker drama. Do not ask howl know; I only do. Mrs Cloris was right when she spoke of blood calling to blood; and how horribly right when she spoke of those who watch and those who guard. I fear that I have wakened a Force which has slept in the tenebrous village of 'Salem's Lot for half a century, a Force which has slain my ancestors and taken them in unholy bondage as nosferatu - the Undead. And I have greater fears than these, Bones, but I still see only in part. If I knew. . . if I only knew all!
CHARLES
Postscriptum
- And of course I write this only for myself; we are isolated from Preacher's Corner. I daren't carry my taint there to post this, and Calvin will not leave me. Perhaps, if God is good, this will reach you in some manner. C.
(From the pocket journal of Calvin McCann)
23 October 1850
He is stronger today; we talked briefly of the apparitions in the cellar; agreed they were neither hallucinations nor of an ectoplasmic origin, but real. Does Mr Boone suspect, as I do, that they have gone? Perhaps; the noises are still; yet all is ominous yet, o'ercast with a dark pall. It seems we wait in the deceptive Eye of the Storm .
Have found a packet of papers in an upstairs bedroom, lying in the bottom drawer of an old roll-top desk. Some correspndence & receipted bills lead me to believe the room was Robert Boone's. Yet the most interesting document is a few jottings on the back of an advertisement for gentlemen's beaver hats. At the top is writ:
Blessed are the meek.
Below, the following apparent nonsense is writ:
bke dshdermthes eak
elmsoerare shamded
I believe 'tis the key of the locked and coded book in the library. The cypher above is certainly a rustic one used in the War for Independence known as the Fence-Rail. When one removes the 'nulls' from the second bit of scribble, the following is obtained:
besdrteek
lseaehme
Read up and down rather than across, the result is the original quotation from the Beatitudes.
Before I dare show this to Mr Boone, I must be sure of the book's contents
24 October 1850
DEAR BONES,
An amazing occurrence - Cal, always close-mouthed until absolutely sure of himself [a rare and admirable human trait!], has found the diary of my grandfather Robert. The document was in a code which Cal himself has broken. He modestly declares that the discovery was an accident, but I suspect that perseverance and hard work had rather more to do with it.
At any rate, what a sombre light it sheds on our mysteries here!
The first entry is dated 1 June 1789, the last 27 October 1789 - four days before the cataclysmic disappearance of which Mrs Cloris spoke. It tells a tale of deepening obsession - nay, of madness - and makes hideously clear the relationship between Great-uncle Philip, the town of Jerusalem's Lot, and the book which rests in that desecrated church.