As he scanned across the rows of gravestones, he wondered why an author chose to write horror or people chose to read them. Anyone desiring to be scared out of their skin only need visit here at night.

In a storm.

To meet with their enemy.

And stand amid the graves and contemplate that one day, maybe even today, you’ll join the residents.

This landscape being the unavoidable, absolute proof of the real misfortune of life. That no matter what you did, your existence would bring you to a place like this, with a good chance of pain on the way.

William wondered what ironic twist placed him here, the hero in this story, the person trying to make everything right. His childhood reading diet of Enid Blyton classics The Secret Seven and Famous Five had characters, who even as children possess skills and smarts which far outweighed his abilities.

His arsenal lay empty. All he had was a hunch. Oh, and a weird magical book of which he only vaguely understood. His theories were only guesses.

But he need only remind himself she had stolen his hard-earned career to stiffen his resolve, reed-thin though it might be. Either way this turned out, he had nothing left to lose. Cliché as that sounded, his first love was writing, and that had gone too. He hadn’t written a word of fiction in eighteen months.

He stared down at the grave before him and pondered if this woman knew the wheels which had been set in motion, the fates changed because of her. Dreams stolen, health destroyed, lives extinguished. Poor victims who survived, but spiraled downward, incorrectly blaming fate. They couldn’t imagine the one responsible was a girl, and then the woman she became, who used her power with such wicked abandon.

Perhaps it wasn’t all her fault. This insidious exploitation might be a generational disease. Someone empowered the pages, infused them with a spell. If not for this woman and the book, Nem might have become a good person?

In his first reading of the inscription which inspired this game plan, the words meant nothing to him. He was more taken by the life accounting, as he thought of the notations. The curses of many. The granting of dreams. But when he read the page again, he speculated who was the author and who the recipient?

Dearest Pat, may this bring you your desires. Be careful, be wise, and be kind, Love Aggie.

He realized at the park this was the only example he’d found of a passing on of ownership. Each time he noticed the handwriting change in the book, he presumed this signaled the passing to the next person.

Here, though, was something different. Between the old and new script, the dedication had been left.

This could mean something, he’d thought. Lucky he’d noticed it because a simple online search revealed Patricia was Nem’s murdered mother, and Aggie had to be her older sister Agatha Jane. The elder fared no better than her sibling, having also suffered a violent death. This at the hands of her own father.