Ash sat in the library of the house where he grew up and opened the journal that his brother had found in a cave by the sea. It still seemed impossible that this fragile document had survived all these years despite the damp, but here it was.
Every story begins with a tremble of anticipation. At the start we may have an idea of our point of arrival, but what lies before us and makes us shudder is the journey, for that is all discovery. This strange and curious story begins for me at the sea. Its sound and scent are my punctuation. Its movements are my verbs. As I write this, angry waves break upon the rocks, and when the water recedes, the rocks seem to be weeping. As if nature is expressing what is in my soul. Expressing what I cannot speak of out loud but can only write, here, in secret…
His French was rusty and a few times he had to stop and look up a word, but the story carried him from its somber beginning to the place where it ended without conclusion, telling of a second volume.
Ash found his aunts in the great room of the house, Minerva editing an article she’d written for a psychiatric journal, Eva weaving.
“Have you both read this?”
“Not yet, no,” Minerva answered. “I asked Theo for it. Where did you find it?”
“In the vault. I suppose it didn’t occur to Theo that I’d go looking for it, or he might have found a better hiding place.”
“He’s too preoccupied,” Eva said.
“What do you make of it?” Minerva had gotten up and walked over to Ash so she could get a better look at the book.
In broad strokes, Ash described what he’d read. It took the better part of fifty minutes, and both his aunts remained riveted to the end.
“I don’t know what to think,” Ash said. “Victor Hugo really believed he was talking to ghosts of long-dead men and spirits from another realm. I’ve read about Hugo. He was one of the most respected authors of the nineteenth century and a proponent of reason. How could he have written this?”
“He was also a massive narcissist and a hashish smoker. He had an imagination as big as all of France. I think he believed what he wrote, but that doesn’t make it true. We all know how easy it is on windy, dark nights to believe in ghosts.” Minerva glanced over at Eva for a moment and then back at her nephew. “Perhaps it’s a novel written in the form of a journal. An experiment.”
“Just because we can’t explain it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. That it’s not real,” Eva said. “I’m worried about Theo,” she said. “And what he thinks it means.”
“And what the second half of the journal says,” Ash added. “There’s a powerful synchronicity between what Hugo was going through when he wrote it and what Theo is suffering.”
“You’re talking about the power of suggestion,” said Minerva.
“This journal was written by a man who had endured the greatest loss of his life and who met a devil who offered to bring his daughter back from the dead,” Ash said. “Theo has lost his wife.”
“It’s a very dangerous connection,” Eva said. “Your brother is in the grip of something that’s greater than he is. And he’s susceptible.”
Minerva looked at her sister as if she was going to argue. Instead she shook her head. “I’ve tried to help him. Have found him dozens of doctors over the years. I’ve exhausted every avenue. I don’t know anymore. Maybe Eva is right.”
Ash was surprised. “I’ve never heard you admitting defeat. Never thought I would.”
Eva came to her sister’s side and took her hand. She patted it the way one would a child’s. For the first time in his life, Ash watched the two of them switch roles, Minerva clinging to her sister, Eva taking charge.
“I know you want to understand everything and find a way to process it that makes sense to you. But there are mysteries that defy even you, Minerva. Even you.”
“Oh, the things you aren’t saying!” Minerva’s laugh was self-deprecating.
“They don’t need to be said.” Eva kept her arm around her sister but turned to Ash. “We need to find Theo before he finds the next part of that book. There’s no telling what he might do. What kind of crazy plan he might try to follow.”
“How are we going to do that? We don’t even know where the cave is,” Minerva said. “He didn’t tell us.”
“He didn’t have to,” Eva said. She pointed to the picture. “Jac noticed it in that photograph.”
“But those rocks could be anywhere.”
“They could, but they aren’t. I know where the cave is.”
Minerva looked at her sister incredulously. “You? How?”
“Our grandfather took me there once.” Eva bit her bottom lip. “He told me that the Shadow showed him the way.”
“You were inside?” Ash asked.
“I wouldn’t go inside. I ran off. I was scared.”
“I don’t believe this-” Minerva started and then stopped herself. “It doesn’t matter what I believe, does it? Eva, can you tell Ash where it is?”
“I can’t climb down there with these old bones, but I can show him the way.”