Then Emrys felt a pain so intense, it left him no breath with which to scream.

The Doomsday Archives

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The Doomsday Archives is the hidden place in New Rotterdam where all the weird stuff that happens here gets cataloged.^{[citation needed]} Strange figures have appeared around town, at the sites of hauntings or unexplained deaths, and they always leave with an object from the scene.^{[citation needed]} They might even be the cause of all these problems, like the Illuminati.^{[speculation?]} Sometimes witnesses try to follow them, but the strangers always disappear before anyone can find out where they go.

Watch the doors.^{[clarification needed]}

5

The pain was like a flower: a bud that unfolded, petal by petal, into an exquisite blossom of agony. It swelled just behind Emrys’s right eye. He scratched at his face, howling wordlessly, and heard his friends doing much the same.

But Emrys had little consideration to spare for Hazel or Serena. His own torment was so demanding that he could think of nothing else. If his eye wasn’t already squeezed shut, he might have clawed it out just to end this suffering. Whatever living ember had somehow burrowed into his face was sharp and hot, angry and wriggling.

And then, miraculously … it was gone.

Just as quickly as it had come, the pain dulled. The chorus of wails that had surrounded Emrys quieted into low, shocked whimpers.

He heard his own breath coming out as a wheezing percussion. Beside him, Hazel moaned, and Serena let out a sob. Emrys blinked against his tears, saw the fuzzy shapes of the others. They were both clutching their right eyes.

“What …?” Hazel asked thickly. “What was that?”

“Dad!” Serena bawled. “I want my dads!”

Emrys thought she might very well get her wish. The whole building must have heard them shrieking bloody murder from the open penthouse apartment. Emrys’s own throat was raw from screaming. Any moment now, his parents would burst upward, finding the three kids groaning and crying.

“You guys … where are we?”

The shock in Hazel’s voice drew Emrys from his thoughts. He wiped furiously at his eyes, focusing his vision on the ransacked penthouse. Only—it wasn’t.

The room that surrounded them was massive—far bigger than even Van Stavern’s spacious loft apartment. The ceiling stretched upward in a series of decorative arches, culminating dozens of feet from the floor.

And speaking of the floor, Emrys realized that the surface pressing painfully into his hip was neither the ancient vinyl flooring shared by most of the apartments in the building, nor the planks Van Stavern had covered his loft with. Instead, marble tiles stretched from wall to wall, polished and gleaming. The stone was cool against his palm.

He pushed himself up, standing shakily, as did Serena and Hazel. Somehow, impossibly, the world had shifted around Emrys and his friends, depositing them from Van Stavern’s apartment into this new place.

“No,” Serena said. “No, this isn’t real. This is a dream.”

“There are so many books,” Hazel noted with awe.

The walls were covered in them, in fact. Far more even than in Van Stavern’s apartment. Shelves that were three times as tall as Emrys climbed the edges of the chamber, each laden with heavy tomes. Some of the books looked ancient, their leather bindings brittle and peeling. Others were clearly new, with spines wrapped in colorful paper and stamped with foil titles.

But strangest by far were the displays. All around the room—set artfully across plinths, cabinets, and in gleaming glass cases—was a gallery of curios straight out of a horror movie. There were grinning masks and vacant-eyed dolls. A dagger’s curved blade seemed to drip with dark ichor when Emrys saw it from the corner of his eye, but was clean and polished when he glanced directly at it. In one display, an iron lantern housed a single bulbous candle, the wax of which had melted into a configuration that looked startlingly like a screaming face.

The chamber also contained chairs, sofas, and sumptuous carpets, all arranged around what appeared to be a functional fireplace. Skulls of various alarming shapes and sizes lined the mantel above it. There were doors, too, half a dozen of them leading who-knew-where, though they were all dwarfed by what Emrys could only think of as the main door—a colossal spire of dark wood that crested into several menacing points. Its antique knob was cast in bronze—except for the blue-and-white enamel eye at its center.

Serena stepped up to a standing mirror. It was a flat pane of silver, wreathed by sharp metal leaves. The mirror reflected the room back at her, but with one important difference.

“Whoa …” she breathed.

Serena wasn’t in it.

“What is this place?” Emrys asked, moving beside her. He, too, cast no reflection. He waved a hand over the surface of the mirror, where no one waved back.

Emrys glanced to Hazel, who gave him a wide grin; he felt himself beaming back at her.

It was real. All of it. The ghost stories and urban legends they’d been chasing since camp, cataloging every haunted bread crumb, were real. And had led them here. It was as if this gallery of haunted objects had been made just for them.

This place—this eerie, improbable place—was theirs.

Emrys approached a nearby plinth, on which a small dried hand was laid beneath a glass bell jar. As he got closer, he realized it was actually a paw—a monkey’s paw—with four tiny digits curled into the palm and one outstretched. Emrys reached toward the glass, his own fingers fluttering.

“I wouldn’t touch that if I were you,” a new voice intoned. It was steady and aged, the voice of a grown-up. “You’ll find it’s terrifically cursed.”

Emrys yelped. He spun around, searching for the stranger. But all he saw were his friends.

“Down here,” the voice said.

Emrys looked to where the strange book lay on the marble floor, abandoned in all the excitement. The eye at the center was still open. It turned in its leathery socket, settling on Emrys.

“So you’ve found the reliquary,” the voice said, echoing from the tome. “Then I suppose it can’t be helped. Welcome to the Order of the Azure Eye.”

The room was deathly silent as Emrys and his friends stared at the talking book.

“Did anyone else hear that?” Emrys asked in a high, nervous voice. “Please tell me someone else heard that.”

“S-speakers …” Serena declared weakly. “Speakers in the floor.”

“One speaker, actually,” the book said. “In the Atlas. My name is Alyx Van Stavern. I live in apartment #701. And you, I take it, must be the children from the lower floors—the ones who have been spying on me.”

Emrys let out a little gasp. Van Stavern had known they were watching him?

“You’re Van Stavern?” Hazel asked. She crouched to get a better look at the book, which swiveled its blue eye toward her. “What happened to you? Your apartment’s been destroyed.”

A weary sigh emanated from the tome, as clearly as if the man were standing right there.

“I should start at the beginning,” it muttered. “Or as close as I can get to it. I’m a member of an organization of … well, I suppose you’d call us occult investigators. We are scholars and mystics, adventurers and legionnaires. We come from diverse disciplines and nationalities, each bringing our expertise to a common, crucial aim: protecting our world from the dark forces that threaten it. Or at least we did. As far as I can tell, I’m the last remaining member of the Order. Until today.”