These philosophical musings on shadows stir something inside me, and it is all I can do to stave off thinking of him—the shadow himself. A nonentity who has yet to become itself, who can appear at any place, at any time, creeping through the long dark hallways of this house or perhaps standing in that corner right now, just behind me, the one I cannot see, watching me from some distant year.

Which reminds me, this feeling of being watched, of a class I once taught, late at night, in a classroom made cozy and small by the dark ruminating outside the window, pondering us as if we were a lone human outpost in a vast blank world, a refuge growing smaller with the encroaching night—the eyes of the students gleaming uncannily beneath the fluorescent ceiling, absorbing the light, drinking it, and me at the podium, trapped by the students and the outer dark, and the feeling of barrenness, hollowness, like a voice in a tin can echoing missives to no one.

The clank of a chain—I’m sure that’s what I’ve heard. I turn around and catch a glimpse of a man chained to the bedpost, his mouth a rictus, and I nearly drop the notebook. Something creaks overhead, and I look up, but there is nothing there.

I cannot stay in this room any longer. The ceiling seems to keep getting higher, glimmering faintly as with stars. I take the journal with me and lock the door on my way out.

For the next few days, the journal consumes me. I carry it with me wherever I go, reading snatches of it between classes and over lunch. And then I cannot stop myself from pulling it out in class, too, the strange entries drawing me to them while my students are taking a quiz, and like a sneaky student myself, I read it secretly behind my desk.

The journal speaks to me, and this is what it says: