Chapter 6: Day 6

Day 6,

This house sits on the edge of where the forest that covers most of the island gives way to the gently rolling grassy hills where the villagers make their farms.  I sometimes see the family that brought me to the house on that first day in the distance working their fields when I leave for town in the morning.  I wave and they wave back and shout a greeting but we haven’t had a real conversation yet.  Not too far into the woods behind the house there’s a stream that I’m told is useful for washing and bathing, but so far I’ve been making use of the small cistern catching rainfall from the roof and piped in.  Speaking of, I need to clean my clothes from yesterday.  I must have slipped in the mud at some point during my flight from the cathedral.  Back to that chiton again today I suppose.

---

I’ve been looking through the archives all day and haven’t found any mention of that cathedral.  Then again, there are a lot of books I haven’t been through yet.  I’d ask Pat about it, but today’s the first day I haven’t seen him.  I could probably ask around town and find him without too much trouble, but as friendly as everyone here I’ve met has been, I'm still more comfortable around books than people.

Back to setting up a proper cataloging system I guess.  It’s taking a while since I have to at least skim most of these books to figure out what’s in them or what they’re about or when the records contained in them took place.  While I haven’t found anything yet about what I encountered last night, I’ve come across references to a number of other entities and phenomena of a similar vein.  Fairy groves, a lake full of stars, a cliff where a soothing siren’s song can be heard.  The most commonly referenced was something called “nighttime shades” but those references already assumed the reader was familiar enough with them to not require an explanation.  The closest thing I could find that might be related to that cathedral was a “Wandering God of the wilds.”

One of these days I’m going to need to go out and see some of these things for myself.  Perhaps there’s answers to be found with one of them about what this place actually is and where I and the other outsiders before me came from.

---

I think I’m being haunted.  As I tried to get to sleep tonight I kept being disturbed by a noise from the other room.  At first I thought it must be one of the small animals whose nests I had thrown out when I moved in. I didn’t think it could be a person or large enough animal to be dangerous as I’d latched the doors and windows before bed.  I tried to ignore it and sleep, telling myself I’d deal with it in the morning but the scratching and shuffling only grew more irritating as the night dragged on.

Enough was at last enough and I pulled the cloth covering from my bedside crystal, took it in one hand and a broom in the other, and made my way to the door to the hall in a sleep-deprived haze, wholly unprepared for what I would find.

I’d expected something like a squirrel or rat or bird, not the entity crouching on the far end of the hallway with its back turned to me as it peered into the kitchen.  Draped over its back was a cloak of leaves and dark fur that trailed onto the floor.  From its head grew barren tree branches like antlers, ash white shifted to a cold blue in the crystal’s light.

Before I could move to confront it or retreat back to my room it turned its head toward me, slow and deliberate as it dragged the antlers along the walls with a wood on wood scraping noise.  Its eyes glowed with pale green light intense enough to leave spots in my own vision when I blinked in surprise yet curiously illuminating nothing beyond their sockets.  Its face was very nearly human, just a little bit too long and narrow with a broad squared nose that brought to mind a deer when paired with the antlers.

Our locked stares may have only been second or it may have been minutes, but as interminably long as it felt it ended in an instant as with one motion the being turned the rest of its body around and launched itself at me with a shriek.  I’d like to say that I brought up my broom to ward it off or threw the crystal and its light in the creature's face or even just jumped out of the way back into my room closing the door behind me.  I’d like to say that I was brave, or at least competent in the face of danger.  In truth, I simply froze up and screamed as the thing in the hallway disappeared just before colliding with me, leaving behind only a few scattered leaves as its own screech turned into laughter.  Whatever it was and whatever it wanted, it seemed amused by the outcome of our meeting.

It feels like the better part of an hour since then.  Maybe more.  It’s been quiet ever since beyond the normal night noises of nocturnal birds and insects outside.  I checked the house and found nothing out of place and no signs of the entity’s presence except the leaves it left when it disappeared and a few scratch marks from its antlers on the walls.  Writing this all down has helped calm my nerves enough to sleep, and the wait’s been long enough that I don’t think whatever it was is coming back tonight.

You are reading story The Archivist’s Journal at novel35.com

You can find story with these keywords: The Archivist’s Journal, Read The Archivist’s Journal, The Archivist’s Journal novel, The Archivist’s Journal book, The Archivist’s Journal story, The Archivist’s Journal full, The Archivist’s Journal Latest Chapter