I do not have any concept, I will admit, of how long I’ve been hiding here. The sun’s light is clearly still coming through the window – I can see it creeping in through the crack beneath the door – but I have not any sense of how low in the sky it might be sitting, how heavy it might be upon the horizon. For the past however long this last entry has taken to compose, I have used my writing as a shield. I have told myself that so long as I continue to spill words onto the page, then maybe – JUST MAYBE – I will find a calmness within me and be able to return to thinking clearly. …but I have run out of past about which to write. I have reached the present. These very words stand as evidence that this has not deterred me from my journaling. And yet I still do not feel calm.

I remember what happened in the garden. Even without reviewing my diary entries from that day, I can still see the man with the misshapen eyes looming above me, regurgitating a twitching mass of insects at my feet. I just want to believe that I was feverish, that I was delirious; hallucinating. I want to happily never have to again recall those moments – to edit them from my brain and pretend as if they had never occurred.

When they fell upon the floor they spelled out letters. How is that possible? And the woman on the ship – how did they know? I have seen and come to terms with bizarre and terrible things in my line of work, but what I witnessed today in that closet? My brain stubbornly refuses to do anything other than cringe away from the thought. I can feel my heart pounding in my head. I feel as if I need to run, but there’s no where to run to.

…

Mr. Purvis has two snakes that he keeps in an aquarium. No – no. Let me start over…