After a quick check of the house, she went out to collect the mail. Flyers and circulars and a couple of bills she would have to start taking care of. And a square package wrapped in paper and tied with twine—addressed to Earl Solomon, no return address.

She rushed back to the house and tore the package open. Inside were four boxed reels of Mylar recording tape, labeled: NEW JERSEY 2019 / HOLLOW ONES.

Odessa opened the back wall inside the narrow utility closet and accessed the secret room. She carried the boxes to the far end of the bookcases of cataloged recording tapes, filing the boxes onto the start of a new, empty shelf.

She returned to the first bookcase, pulling out the very first recording. #1001 / MISSISSIPPI 1962 / VERNON JAMUS.

Odessa threaded the tape into the reel-to-reel player atop the desk and slipped the old, comfortable, corded headphones over her ears, settling into the wide leather chair.

She switched the lever to PLAY. A few moments of hissing and popping, and then Hugo Blackwood’s purring British voice began to speak.

EPILOGUE: The Box

Wall Street is a labyrinth. Canyons of glass and steel, occluding the sun and the sky. Night seems to fall earlier here than anywhere else in Manhattan.

But even then, the dark man in the long overcoat seemed to be walking only in shadow. He did so without effort or direction—shadows just collected around him, trailed him. And he dragged them along as he glided toward the unassuming mailbox.

The few people wandering the street avoided him—not out of fear, nor recognition, but because of an instinct imprinted in the most primitive part of their brains. Perhaps, in their fleeting observations, they noticed that he cast no shadow of his own.

The dark man approached the mailbox and extended an impossibly pale hand toward the mail slot. He deposited a small, letter-locked paper. It was addressed to Hugo Blackwood and sealed in wax with the symbol of a radiant, all-seeing eye.

This letter had taken hundreds of years to reach its destination, and with it, it heralded The End.

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About the Authors

Guillermo del Toro was born in Guadalajara, Mexico, in 1964. He is the director of the films Cronos, Mimic, The Devil’s Backbone, Blade II, Hellboy, Hellboy II, Pacific Rim, Pan’s Labyrinth—which garnered enormous critical praise worldwide and won three Academy Awards—and The Shape of Water, which won the 2018 Oscar for Best Picture.