The Last Page (89 page)

She read the
Iscan Herald
with the shylock on, the only copy in the castle. She sensed her lukewarm bathwater funnel down the drain. It ebbed from the tub’s enameled roses like rain.
I must be seeing,
she thought.
What else can this be if it isn’t sight?

But the bathtub seemed to breathe, the pages of the paper modulated in her hand. She felt the water in the pipes slipping down the drain. She followed it for a while.

There must be something wrong with the furnace. The pipes were cold. She used the
Herald
to start a fire. She left the room, fetched the
C
srym T
, brought it back to bed. She got out her notebook and scribbled a page of notes: all with the shylock on.

Am
able to see better than I thought. Will attempt to decipher part of a glyph with the shylock still on.

Y
llo’tharnah seem to be following the book. I don’t know how, but a corporeal manifestation nearly killed us at Nathan’s mansion: a
²⁵
Why? Are there L
nshin’thn too? Are there limits to Their hierarchy?

I assumed the One I bound at the Porch of S
th was alone.

Am having nightmares. Shapeless things. I see insuperable slithering masses in the dark. I feel giddy all the time. Something is happening.

This glyph. This jellyfish glyph. I have no other name for it. It terrifies me for reasons I cannot describe. Ref: page 847 of
C.T.

Cataclysm. Creation. Things I can’t explain. Can’t explain. Yella by
n! It’s like I’ve become a child again, without vocabulary to describe a thing!

One thing is certain. Nathan Howl was brilliant. I think his house is a transdimensional fortress. Something I can use. Not now. Not even in a month from now. But soon. Soon.

Find it funny how They (the Y
llo’tharnah) are trying to get in. I’m trying to get out and They’re trying to get in. Each of us pressing against our respective side of the membrane. A case of greener grass? Or just a singular truism common to both our species: the need to explore, to conquer new territory. To learn, expand and grow. The need to create and destroy. The evolution of the inner beast. Becoming more of whatever it is we are. Creator, killer, philanthropist
. . .

Just another natural increment in our progression. In the development of gods. They are gods. Not the deaf blind disconnected gods of Incense Street. They are waking gods. Undying. Planning gods. Proximate and looming.

Sena tucked the notebook between a pillow and her thigh. She picked up the
C
srym T
and opened it to her mark. Just ahead was another passage about the Last Page.

She swore.

The Last Page of what?

She flipped to the back of the book. It ended like most books, abruptly. There was nothing special about the final page except one small thing.

Nathaniel Howl had written in his precise scholarly hand:
Ha! Clever Pun. And so like tattoos they now seem to me!

Always another mystery.

Cameron had told her Nathaniel had gone crazy. Maybe it didn’t mean anything at all.

She studied through lunch into late afternoon.