What happened before.

This Book contains the Record of the House Viator, Walkers and Travelers, born under the shadow of Bright Io, Keepers of the Door.

That was the inscription on the first page of the red book. I didn’t have the foggiest fucking idea what any of it meant. I put down the book; somehow, turning to the next page felt lit it was a massive step I wasn’t willing to take yet.

My parents were still sitting in the kitchen though they weren’t talking much. I got the impression they were listening or maybe just waiting for me to come back. The clock on my nightstand said it was nearly five in the morning. I pulled my phone from my pocket just to double-check the time, then slipped it back. I was stalling.

The book felt heavier when I picked it up again and turned the page. I stared at the symbols in front of me for a long time. They were…nonsense. Like wingdings, squiggles and random lines and swirls with no clear meaning. The marks seemed almost alive, changing in small, subtle ways as I watched. I took a breath and concentrated.

Slowly, so slowly, they began to swim into focus.

Ours is the distance and the path, all doors are our doors. When you walk with us all. No way is closed to you. The first gift of Viator is this: mark an opening, hold your destination firmly in your mind, then open the Door.

Under the brief caption was a simple drawing of a rectangle.

“What the Hell kind of spellbook is this?” I muttered, getting ready to turn the page.

I hesitated. The paper felt heavier than it should as if it was made of something much denser than pulped-up wood. I grunted, put my shoulder into it, and managed to flip the page.

The book shivered in my hands.

“Shit,” I yelled, dropping it on the floor.

After catching my breath, I leaned over from where I was sitting on my bed and looked down. The book lay open on my rug. The page it was turned to only had a single sentence written in the same spidery script as everything else I’d read.

Only the worthy deserve the Book of the Traveller; the Call has gone out and they will come.

There was a knock at the door.

My parents stopped their whispered conversation in the kitchen. I heard a chair slide back then stop.

“Don’t,” my mom said loud enough for me to hear clearly from my bedroom.

The knock came again.

Knock. Knock…knock.

I scooped up the book from the floor and opened my door. Or, I tried to, but the door was stuck.

“Mom,” I said quietly. “Dad?”

There was a loud thud, then another, and then a crash. My dad yelled out.

“Hey,” I shouted, pounding on the door. “What’s happening?!”

I heard more yelling and commotion from within the house and then silence. My mom’s voice came back to me clearly in the quiet.

“You can’t have him,” she said.

The lights went out a moment later. That’s when the screaming started.

“No, no, nononono,” I yelled, banging on the locked door. “Dad! MOM!”

The book shivered again in my grip, slipping away. It dropped to the floor and I heard the pages flipping in the dark. They stopped. Shaking, I pulled my phone from my pocket and turned on the flashlight, pointing at the book, which lay open.

He can’t take me from you. No one can. You have to surrender me. Don’t.

I stared at the words on the page. The red book was talking to me.

“What’s happening?” I whispered. “Who is out there?”

The book snapped closed. I heard the lock on my bedroom door click open. I’m not sure how it got locked in the first place. The house was dark and silent as I crept out into the hallway, phone held in front of me, its light looking weak and watery as I swept it back and forth.

“Mom?” I whispered.

There was something on the walls. It was red and I almost screamed at first, thinking it was blood. But when I really looked I could see it was incredibly thin and solid.

Thread.

I brushed my hand against the material, ripping it back when I felt pain. The threads were razor sharp.

“Mom? Dad?” I called out, louder now, moving down the hallway toward the kitchen.

I didn’t care if someone had broken into the house; I just wanted to see my parents. And then I saw them, stitched together, and I would have screamed if I was able to do anything at all.

Mom and dad were strung out together, little red threads piercing them everywhere. They hung together like broken dolls pinned to the living room wall, hundreds of those threads pushing into their skin, their eyes, and wrapped around their throats so tight that the wire had cut deep. So deep that it explained all of the blood on the floor.

I shined my phone’s light on them and then around them, at first not able to understand, then refusing to believe, and then finally the screaming came.

“I’ll give you a minute,” a voice said from the darkness.

I whipped around but no matter where I swung the light, the living room seemed empty.

Except for mom and dad.

“Did you do this?” I asked, forcing words out ahead of the vomit that was knocking. “Did you kill them?”

“Yeah,” the unseen voice replied.

“Why?”

“They didn’t want to let me in.”

Now that I was paying attention, I noticed the voice sounded young, probably female, and…almost bored? Like a cat getting tired of swatting a mouse around. Anger came up, climbing over the fear, and I suddenly had the distinct desire to push my thumbs through this asshole’s eyes.

“I’m going to kill you,” I said, clutching the red book.

“Probably not,” the voice said from the opposite side of the room. “Give me the book and I’ll let you die fast and easy like your parents. They barely suffered. I mean, they did a little bit but they shouldn’t have been rude.”

Something stabbed my ankle. I stumbled back, pointing my phone’s light down at the floor. A dozen tiny red threads were slithering toward me. There was a dot of blood between the cuff of my pajamas and my barefoot where one of the threads had already taken a taste.

“You don’t know how much I can make it hurt if I want to,” the voice called out, close now.

Another stabbing pain in my other leg, much worse this time. I jumped away, putting a hand against my calf. It came back wet with blood. Several threads got me that time. I continued backing away, trying to come up with an idea, a way out. But all I kept thinking of was my mom and dad stitched to the wall with hundreds of those angry red threads.

The grief was overwhelming, but only for a moment. Then the hate I felt gave me a moment of clarity. A page from the book came roaring in to fill the silence.

Ours is the distance and the path, all doors are our doors. When you walk with us all. No way is closed to you. The first gift of Viator is this: mark an opening, hold your destination firmly in your mind, then open the Door.

I backed up until I hit the wall. Something giggled in the dark.

“Nowhere to go. Now, where should we start? I’ve always been fond of the eyes.”

I heard the rustle of the threads moving toward me but I didn’t rush. There was no time to try again if I made a mistake. I reached down to my leg for more blood, then turned and sketched four lines behind me in the shape of a crude rectangle. It was done in one continuous motion, fast but precise, maybe four feet tall by two feet wide.

Big enough for me to fit through if it worked.

“What are you doing?” the voice asked, sounding like it was barely a yard away. “Wait, are you-”

I pressed my bloody palm into the center of the rectangle, focusing on the first place other than home that came to mind. For a terrible second, nothing happened. Then the drywall began to flex under my hand, becoming softer, first like sand, then like water, and then I was falling through an opening while the murderer’s voice shrieked behind me.

When I looked back, there was no door, no sign of my house at all. There was only the familiar road leading from Elm Street to the small library where I spent so much of my time. The image in my head when I panicked and pushed through was turtles floating in a tank.

The library is closed at night. I’ve been sitting in the woods a hundred yards away since I fell through, trying to figure out my next step.

Mom and dad…

I can’t think about them without getting sick. Without hating myself for not listening. They died because somebody wanted the book. Maybe I should just give it up. But if I do, how can I make their killer pay for what they did? How can I hurt them without this?

I don’t know if I should go to the police. Would they believe me? Could they help me even if they did?

For now, I’m going to sit here leaning against this cold tree until sunrise, watching to see if I was followed. Then I’m going to call Hazel. In the meantime, I’m updating my post just to continue the record in case…fuck…fuck.