The Journal Of Edwin Gray

by Scott A Johnson

  With Molen gone, I was forced to tend to my own needs, for the rustics of the area had heard of the reputation of the master of Grey House, and his passing did nothing to ease their apprehensions. The house was shunned as though diseased, and as I had taken leave of my studies due to my uncle's passing, doubtless I seemed to be the same reclusive sort as Edwin Grey.

  The workers who came to install electrics in the house, a thing which my uncle never saw a need to do, spoke in hushed tones when they were not aware of my presence, and ceased speaking abruptly when I was known to them. They wired a total of seven rooms, more than I needed, and ignored, at my insistence, the study where the journal lay sleeping.

  My sleep became fitful as I continued to read, as dreams of death and dark forces flitted in and out of my consciousness. However, as I stated before, I found the book and the account of the life therein addictive, and could not sate my desire to know. As I studied the journal over the following days, I found more morbid strips of folded newspaper, each bearing the names of victims murdered or killed in some bizarre fashion. It wasn't until I came to an entry for November 26, 1922, that the newspaper and entry took a startling turn. Keeping in mind that, until this point, I steadfastly believed Molen to be responsible for the deaths which the scrawled handwriting told of, the entry startled me and gave me reason to doubt.

  My uncle's entry had been monotonously like the others for months, each ending with a question for the unseen, and each followed by the scrawling epitaph for some unfortunate. What followed his entry on this day, however, set my flesh crawling with the knowledge that everything I knew of how the world functions was to be brutally cast aside.

  The entry of Edwin Grey, in this case, is unimportant, and so I shall dispense with the relating of it, but the response, however, however, read as follows.

  Beneath the sands of ancient time, amid the kings whose rules are but things of legend, shall be found a boy of great power.

  The accompanying piece of newspaper confirmed my suspicions, that the journal had made reference to the discovery of the tomb of the Egyptian king, Tutankhamen, a boy of twelve when he ruled Egypt. I sat aghast at the picture of Carnavon and Carter grinning at the opening of the burial mound, for how could someone such as Molen have known? The jagged script was the same hand as all the previous answers, and yet it could not be that the unseen had known. My mind reeled with the magnitude of that one cryptic line, that some being could have sight enough to see not only the present, but what lie ahead.

  I immediately made for town and the police station therein, my purpose to question Molen myself. I was led to a cell in the very darkest bottom of the station, where the only light came a barred window, and Molen lay still on a filthy mattress on the floor. He heard the door open and rose to meet me, his face coming into the spill of light. To this day, I carry with me a grim sorrow for my having put him in that place, as it became apparent me that his jailers were not kind during his incarceration. His left eye was swollen shut, his lips were split and caked with blood, and although his speech was slurred for his injuries, his voice was the same even tone I'd first heard on the day of my arrival. The guard left us, and I asked Molen of my suspicions, of the murders, of the strange prophetic notes in the journal. He smiled as best he could, his voice dripping with sadness, as he told me that he could see the journal beginning to take hold of me as it had my uncle.

  As a testament to the type of man he was, he held neither grudge nor malice toward me for what he regarded as a grave misunderstanding. It was not he, Molen said, who wrote in the book, confessing that he never actually learned to read or write. But he had heard enough, through the study's thick door, to know that whatever evil was contained in the book, it was released each time my uncle laid his pen to a page. He told of nights spent huddled in his room with candles burning, for the dark was too much to bear when Edwin's madness overtook him. The shrill cries and piercing oaths that echoed through the halls of Grey House seemed to make the darkness all the worse, like a palpable thing in which he feared he would be engulfed. He explained that he had stayed out of loyalty for my uncle, and feared the worst would befall him were he to be left alone. All this and more he told me, most of which had the flavor of rustic superstitions. But then he related to me an event, which to this day I feel, has great bearing on my uncle's death.

  Past the witching hour Molen arose from his bed at the sound of scuttling in the main hall. How he could have heard such a quiet noise I cannot say, but he rose to investigate thinking it rats or some other creature that had somehow gained entry. When the dim light of his candle reached the great hall, he was chilled, he said, to find Edwin Grey lying on the stony floor clutching for his pen which lay just out of reach. It was odd, he said, because he was reaching with his left hand, which now flitted and flopped like a fish on the stone. He went to aid Edwin and, upon seeing his face in the candlelight, realized he was still asleep! As he bent to wake him, that hand, cold and powerful as a snake, snapped around his wrist with such a strength that Molen cried out in pain, snapping Edwin from his deep slumber. Almost immediately, the hand released the manservant, who readily helped his disoriented employer back to his room. Edwin slept there peacefully for the rest of the night, but Molen did not as he sat outside his employer's chamber door should something else arise. That which he found strange, he said, was not so much that his employer had been sleepwalking, as he'd done so on numerous occasions and Molen had grown accustomed to such things, but that it was his left hand that reached and flailed, as his employer was right handed. His statement jogged my memory to that terrible night when Edwin Grey lay bleeding on his bed with a smoking pistol in his hand. It was, I suddenly recalled with frightening clarity, in his left hand.

  I summoned the jailer and demanded the release of Molen, but was informed despite my protestations that it would have to wait until morning. Though it was I who'd put him here, I would still have to wait to retrieve the kindly man. I bade him good evening and promised I would return on the morrow to bring him back to Grey House. He thanked me most warmly and shook my hands through the bars of that old cell. And though it grieved me to leave him in such a place, I departed hastily, as Molen's recount had stirred something within my mind. I was certain the book was a malignancy, and that it must be destroyed, but I still wanted to know. I wanted to see what it was that could have driven a man such as my uncle insane, and the answers waited in that accursed journal.

  I raced back to Grey House, my mood divided as to whether to read or burn the thing. With thoughts of my uncle in my mind, I decided on the later, though the closer I got to the heavy door of the study my resolve thinned. As the heavy key clanked into the lock and squealed in protest at being turned, I could feel the book calling to me from beyond the door, as surely as if it were a lover calling my name. I shoved the heavy door open and found myself unable to move, held fast by an unseen force as my eyes fell on the journal. It was conflict that held me, I know this now, as the sensible thing to have done would have been to burn it, throw it into the fireplace and be done with the damnable thing. But it was my own insatiable curiosity, my need to know, that made me take several leaden steps and reclaim my place before the journal on the desk.

  I opened it to a page randomly, my breath shallow as I could not fathom what new horrors awaited my eyes in the form of scrawling ink. The entry on which the page fell was marked for August 1, 1923 in my uncle's right-handed script. He'd ended his entry in what I'd come to know as his customary way, with the open-ended “What shall tomorrow bring?” Tucked neatly below it, covering the reply which I both sought and dreaded, was another of the ominous clippings of newspaper, this one larger than the rest. I gingerly lifted the clipping away to read the unseen's answer.

  The great leader shall die, and a power will be sent into mourning. A quiet man of ruthless power shall succeed him.

  I knew the date as did any man who held residence and love of the country, and as I unfolded the article, my breath froze in
my lungs. Warren G. Harding, the President of the United States of America, had died the next day, and somehow the journal warned of his demise. I skimmed through several other pages, each containing clippings of smallish size, until I came across another, dated September 1, barely a month after my arrival. The clipping that accompanied that page was in equal size of the one that detailed the death of the president, and it was with great trepidation that I read the entry beneath my uncle's.

  The great land across the sea shall fall.

  The accompanying article from the next day's news told of the collapse and complete decimation of Tokyo and Yokohama in the great land across the sea, Japan. It had been an earthquake, the likes of which had never been seen before on the island, and the casualties measured in the hundreds of thousands.

  I could no longer believe my own senses, for what I now saw was, in my mind, quite impossible. No man could know the fates, and no journal could predict the future. However, the predictions were there, in a script that dripped of the evil power which surely gave the journal its sight. To try to describe the revulsion I felt at the time would be futile, as there are no words that can bring to mind the loathsome nausea that permeated my being at the sight of that handwriting. But I could not tear myself away from its jagged lines, and I passed a few more pages until I found myself at the last entry, made the night before my uncle's death.

  October 28, 1923

  I am so very tired. With each passing day, more horrors greet me in the form of this journal and the newspapers that I scarcely know how I shall continue my existence. Much like the Cyclops of myth, who gave one eye in trade for prophecy only to be granted none but that of his own death, I feel compelled by some morbid purpose to continue writing each day, only to see the grisly reaper winking back at me through events that are out of my control. How and when shall it all end?

  Beneath this strange epitaph, the unseen had written the chilling line that, even today, haunts my sleep.

  Tonight, and by the very hand sought lo these months.

  Though I was certain I had not noticed it before, or if I had, the change had been so gradual that it garnered no notice from me, the scrawling handwriting was now much more clean, polished, as though practiced. While it still did not resemble my uncle's right-handed script, it was at least a match for it in beauty, and the unseen had written with flowing lines and without smudging the paper.

  I looked back to the beginning, pausing, not to read but only to see, at each of the unseen's entries and found them all to be in stages of development, such as a child's would be were he just learning to write, until at last he wrote as well as his schoolmaster.

  In my excited state, my mind began to formulate wildly far-fetched theories as to my uncle's demise. A test was in order, though now I could not even begin to fathom how I rationalized doing so. Perhaps it was my thirst for knowledge, for if knowledge can be truly equated with power, then one who possessed the knowledge of things to come would be like unto a god.

  With my hand trembling violently, I took up my uncle's pen and turned to an empty page in the journal. I scarcely breathed as I steeled my nerves for a leap into the breach of my own beliefs and touched the pen to the page. It was a simple entry, one which would satisfy my curiosity, though the possible outcomes could have been calamitous. I wrote only one line aside from the date, Edwin Grey's customary closing question. What will tomorrow bring? No sooner had I written it than I wished I could blot it out, take the ink back into the pen and forget I'd ever touched the damned book. I did not know what entity had written for my uncle, nor did I know if it would answer my question, but I did know that I had no wish to lay eyes upon it. I rushed from the room and locked the door with the heavy iron key, then went to my bed where I remained huddled amid the candlelight until exhausted sleep overtook me.

  I awoke in unfamiliar surroundings and soon realized that I'd been walking in my sleep. I was, I was horrified to discover, in my uncle's bedchambers, laying on his bed much the same as he'd been when Molen had found him. I came up with a choking scream, and half-ran, half-fell, out of the room that still held the pungent odor of death. Outside the doorway I stood, my heart racing as I struggled to find my orientation. It was then that I realized that I held my uncle's pen in my left hand. It seemed queer for I, like my uncle, am right-handed. My brain began to burn with suspicion and dread as I raced down the stairs to the study. Was my supposition correct?

  Taking the key from the pocket of my robe, I unlocked the door and threw it open, my stomach lurching at the sight of the journal lying on the table. My approach was cautious, as, in my wild state, I half expected it to leap at me from the table. As I came closer, I could see that the unseen had indeed answered my question, and that the handwriting had reverted to that of a child, with jagged points and backward letters. As I read the reply, my blood froze in my veins with terrible recognition.

  A falsely accused man shall die in a cage, beaten by those who cannot understand.

  It took only a moment for the words to sink in, and in that moment I must have screamed, for I remember the sound reverberating off the stony walls as I raced up the stairs to my bedchamber. I snatched up the telephone and rang the magistrate, my heaving breaths making my frantic question difficult for the simple man to understand. When at last I could make myself clear, he informed me in a voice that I'm sure was meant to be somber that Molen was dead.

  I sank to the floor trying to puzzle out which path had led me to this place. I now knew the secret of the unseen, but too late as dear Molen was now gone. In a pique of sorrow-fueled rage, I hurried down the stairs to the study and snatched the cursed journal from the desk and began tearing pages from it with feverish intent. I barely noticed that, with each page I pulled loose from the binding, a small cut opened on my left hand. Soon it dripped crimson as I threw the remains of the journal into the empty fireplace and threw a lit candle atop it.

  My body was wracked with pain as it felt as if my hand were burning. Through no volition of mine, it began to spasm and jerk as if going through its last struggle for life. I ran to the hallway where several stacks of newspaper sat collecting dust, and, with wicked determination in my eyes, I began to feed the fire with all of the prophecies that the book had summoned until it was no more than ash and my hand was crippled from pain.

  Now, two years later, I still shudder to think of that journal, and of what power it possessed. But I was never certain if the power lay in the journal or in the hand that wrote on its pages. Only now do I know how severely I wronged Molen, and, in fact, my uncle, and I shall carry that guilt on my shoulders for all my days. My withered left hand is a constant reminder to me, of both Edwin Grey and Molen, and of those wrongs I visited upon them. And that I nearly shared the same fate as my uncle, murdered by forces beyond my control, and yet within my own hand, has set my beliefs of what is and is not real in this world to crumbling.

  —The End—

  The Journal of Edwin Grey/

  Scott A. Johnson/

  he wrote as well as his schoolmaster.

  In my excited state, my mind began to formulate wildly far-fetched theories as to my uncle's demise. A test was in order, though now I could not even begin to fathom how I rationalized doing so. Perhaps it was my thirst for knowledge, for if knowledge can be truly equated with power, then one who possessed the knowledge of things to come would be like unto a god.

  With my hand trembling violently, I took up my uncle's pen and turned to an empty page in the journal. I scarcely breathed as I steeled my nerves for a leap into the breach of my own beliefs and touched the pen to the page. It was a simple entry, one which would satisfy my curiosity, though the possible outcomes could have been calamitous. I wrote only one line aside from the date, Edwin Grey's customary closing question. What will tomorrow bring? No sooner had I written it than I wished I could blot it out, take the ink back into the pen and forget I'd ever touched the damned book. I did not know what entity had written for my uncle, nor did I
know if it would answer my question, but I did know that I had no wish to lay eyes upon it. I rushed from the room and locked the door with the heavy iron key, then went to my bed where I remained huddled amid the candlelight until exhausted sleep overtook me.

  I awoke in unfamiliar surroundings and soon realized that I'd been walking in my sleep. I was, I was horrified to discover, in my uncle's bedchambers, laying on his bed much the same as he'd been when Molen had found him. I came up with a choking scream, and half-ran, half-fell, out of the room that still held the pungent odor of death. Outside the doorway I stood, my heart racing as I struggled to find my orientation. It was then that I realized that I held my uncle's pen in my left hand. It seemed queer for I, like my uncle, am right-handed. My brain began to burn with suspicion and dread as I raced down the stairs to the study. Was my supposition correct?

  Taking the key from the pocket of my robe, I unlocked the door and threw it open, my stomach lurching at the sight of the journal lying on the table. My approach was cautious, as, in my wild state, I half expected it to leap at me from the table. As I came closer, I could see that the unseen had indeed answered my question, and that the handwriting had reverted to that of a child, with jagged points and backward letters. As I read the reply, my blood froze in my veins with terrible recognition.

  A falsely accused man shall die in a cage, beaten by those who cannot understand.

  It took only a moment for the words to sink in, and in that moment I must have screamed, for I remember the sound reverberating off the stony walls as I raced up the stairs to my bedchamber. I snatched up the telephone and rang the magistrate, my heaving breaths making my frantic question difficult for the simple man to understand. When at last I could make myself clear, he informed me in a voice that I'm sure was meant to be somber that Molen was dead.