This woman, she somehow found it, too. Appearing before me, as though from nowhere, with bright eyes and a curious smile. She walked in and said she had a feeling she was supposed to be there. It was the strangest thing.
Her name is Lois. She is a marvelous young woman, with deep blue eyes and dark auburn hair that reminds me remarkably of my dear Miranda. I have the strangest sense that she has come from a great distance away, though I cannot begin to fathom what that might mean. I don’t know what it means yet that she is here, but I think it could turn out to be something spectacular—the breakthrough I have been looking for, perhaps.
So, Lois had been there since the beginning. That was a long time to remain in the building. Everly riffled through the remaining pages in that journal, seeking out her name again. On the second to last page she found it, dated a couple of years later.
Lois has consented to being tested, and with the new equipment I have been able to procure, I know that the results are more accurate than ever. I could barely believe my eyes when the results came back positive, though of course it makes sense. Why else would she have felt so drawn to the Eschatorologic? I have suspicions about this location, too—suspicions that I have shared with no one yet. They would help to explain Lois, I think . . .
Miranda has taken quite a liking to Lois. They get along splendidly, the two women. I hope this will be good for Miranda, as I fear my work has kept me away from her more than I’d like. It’ll be good for her to have a new friend, especially as she is currently in the family way.
This made Everly pause. Recalling the newspaper snippet she found, what seemed so long ago now, she remembered the wedding announcement for Richard and Miranda Dubose. That implied that Miranda was her grandmother, which meant that she was pregnant with her mom at the point when Richard was writing. Everly quickly scanned the rest of the words in that journal, frustrated when no more was mentioned about her mother or Miranda’s pregnancy.
Putting the journals back under her pillow, Everly lay on the narrow gray bed, staring at the ceiling, trying to find a way to put aside the horrors from her day enough to fall asleep.
She didn’t cry that night, but later she would wish that she had. Later, she would wish that she had used all the tears she could before the day arrived when she would never be able to cry again.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Mary Dubose entered the building for the first time ten years after Richard Dubose had discovered it. Her inaugural entrance was not terribly different from that of Everly—she had been walking and found a strange building arising out of the soil where before she could have sworn there was nothing but densely polluted air. She walked in, found a place, decided not to leave, and then found that she couldn’t.
No one, not even Richard, knew who she was. The wonders of the impossible.
Mary Dubose Tertium entered the building for the first time approximately thirty years later (by some accounts). It would have been sooner—should have been sooner, in fact—except that by then Richard had begun to catch on, and he had become significantly smarter when it came to dealings with the building.
Mary Dubose Tertium entered the building for the first time on the arm of her newly minted husband—one Jacob Tertium, a bright-eyed and bushy-haired grad student whom she had become acquainted with in the final stretch of securing her degree in astrophysics.
Jacob Tertium held a particular fatal flaw that he would come to regret much later in life: curiosity. When Mary told him vaguely of her father’s work for an unknown lab space on the outskirts of town, Jacob’s interest was piqued, and he asked to visit.
Here, Mary hesitated, for the span of perhaps half a heartbeat. But then the allure of new love won out, and she agreed.
Even though she, herself, had never been to the building. She only knew where it was because as a young girl she had often trailed her father to work, halting at the foot of the infinite stone stairs, some form of childish wisdom keeping her away as long as possible.
It had been the first rule her parents had instilled in her, as soon as rules were a concept that could be abided by, that held the possibility of being broken.
You will not go to the building, they had told her, again and again and again until the will not in the command had begun to sound more and more like a cannot, like if she were to try to enter it there would be some invisible force to prevent her from walking through the front doors.
This was not what happened.
What happened: Jacob and Mary approached the building, hand in hand, and walked up the dozens and dozens and dozens of stone steps. Mary felt a buzzing beneath her feet as she went, though she thought that it very well could have been the nerves making her shake so. Jacob felt a buzz, too, but his was far less physical and far more spiritual: the insubstantial buzz of anticipation that comes with fulfilling a long-kept possibility.
Much to his credit, Richard did not yell when he discovered his daughter and her new husband striding into his place of work. He cast shifting eyes between the two of them, and then put on a smile that Mary could tell was false, but Jacob couldn’t. He’d asked if they wanted a tour and showed them the most benign and simple of rooms the building had to offer (which was not much—a few closets and empty bedrooms, mainly). When Jacob threatened (in an entirely polite manner) to linger further, Richard brusquely ushered the two back toward the lobby, more or less pushing them out and closing the doors tightly behind them.
The next day, Jacob wanted to return.
It took a month of this before Richard began to get angry. Not at his daughter or her husband, exactly—because how could they know? More at himself, for the secrets he now realized he had kept too long.
So, back at the Tertiums’ home one evening after a month’s worth of visits to the Eschatorologic, Richard sat them down and told them the truth.
Or a version of it.
He told them of the genetic anomaly that ran through Mary’s veins. Told them what she would become, should she continue to return to the building, should she spend too many hours in that cursed place. Told them in the vaguest and most uncertain terms of the powers at play in that building that were more dangerous and unimaginable than the mind could fathom and told them that they could not come back.
What he did not tell them was what his role in those dangerous and unimaginable feats was.
Nor did he tell them the things he did not yet know. The doubly cursed life that befell those with the anomaly.
Doubly blessed, doubly cursed.
Jacob nodded at Richard’s explanation, saying he understood, and Mary lingered, white-faced and shivering, in a corner of the room, listening to it all without really being able to absorb any of her father’s words.
Richard left feeling confident, settled, assured that he had done everything he needed to.
Except that Jacob should never have seen the building at all—would never have, if it hadn’t been for his enhanced wife leading the way that first day.
Except the very fact of him having been there at all changed something in him. The fact of his knowing what everything could lead to made him a different person, a different husband, a different father. Some for better, some for worse.
Except one can never play with a safe amount of fire. It will always erupt into an uncontrollable inferno, in time. And always without you seeing it coming.
Jacob Tertium never should have gone in the building.
And Mary Tertium never should have left.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Richard perched precariously on the edge of the gray bed, careful not to let his weight shift too much. Beside him, a shallow tray with warm, soapy water balanced on the lip of the mattress. Richard hummed lightly to himself while he worked, dipping a sponge in the water and carefully wringing it out, until the last drops of water fell with nimble plinks into the tray.
“You know,” Richard said, only half to himself, “it was never meant to be like this.” He gently sponged the skin around a shallow cut, careful not to let it drip. “But it’s all for her own good; she’ll see that one day.”
The woman who was not his daughter said nothing to this. Richard chuckled drily. “Of course, you agree with me, don’t you? You’d want the best for her, too.”
