MR. HARRISON, – What a pleasant surprise I had opening the post the other day! Seeing your letter amongst the daily humdrum of invoices was a joy. I made sure that I had a cup of my favorite earl grey tea and was sitting comfortably in my study before opening it. After reading the article in the Times and seeing your smart looking portrait there I had been meaning to write you, though life has its curious way of delaying the things that are truly the most important and we end up struggling against the daily slings and arrows instead of focusing our attention on what matters for our spiritual well-being.

I’m still managing the bank and now my eldest son, Reginald, has begun taking over many of the duties that I performed. The accident has made it difficult to move about and in my condition the long hours are too much of a strain. His youth and determination more than make up for my loss of capacity. If you come back to New York you must meet him.

The mustache! I had pleasantly forgotten that ridiculous feature of my upper lip, but no, I leave the sharp fashions for the younger generations. I am very fond of my, now very grey, beard which seems to be the mark of older, wiser individuals whom I would like to be associated with, even if merely by appearance. Have I always been so vain? We can curse the toll the years take upon our faces but in the end we must accept them. No amount of scolding or gnashing will smooth our countenances. Though, if I’m to believe my doctor, thinking younger thoughts reverses some of the trends of aging. Have you heard such nonsense, my friend? I think I need a new doctor!

My disability brings me to the library quite often to set my mind free amongst the writings of Chaucer, Poe, and James. I have also gotten to know one of the librarians well enough to get unsupervised access to their rare books collection. Let me tell you, Harrison, you would be in Heaven here, leafing through the old tomes and first editions; the smell of decaying paper somehow breathes life into my soul. The restricted section is still barred to me, though I would hate to revisit that room and relive the memories.

Five days, you say? It pains me to tell you of his passing then. Charles was found dead in his home early on the 6th of this month, but the constabulary have refused to tell anyone how he died. If it was anything ordinary I’m sure they would have said. I’ve included a clipping from the Tribune of his obituary. The funeral was held at his home with his family and a few members from his lodge. It was a nice service. Morbid as it sounds, curiosity got the better of me and I took a long look at Charles in the open casket, covertly lifting up his collar and checking his hands while the rest of the attendants mingled around the refreshments, but didn’t notice anything irregular except that his clothes smelled faintly of incense. Harrison, I don’t think I need to tell you what the scent was because you know it well. We burned so much of it when we were all together in the old days. It was a cold shock to smell it again and it sent shivers to my toes and stood my hairs on end but I thought it nothing more than coincidence or a strange trick of my nose. That is, until I received your letter.

Webster and I had begun speaking again only a few years ago and we’ve had lunch a number of times since. How was he when you spoke with him? He was always a paranoid but what we did scarred him and my guilt has only been slightly assuaged by helping his wife with a modest monthly stipend. She’s told me that poor Charles had never been able to keep a job and his seizures and hallucinations drove all away; it causes such a strain on Gail. I feel we were responsible, in a way, for his condition pushing him further than he was comfortable and when we were done he was a shell. During our last lunch, he stopped mid-sentence, the blood drained from his face, and his expression screwed into a manifestation of sheer terror. Then looking off into the distance as if he were witnessing some unearthly horror rise up over my shoulder he began to chant, softly at first growing steadily in intensity and urgency. His hand, still clutching his fork, began to shake making a rattling undercurrent to his verbal madness. The chanting drew the frightened stares of the other restaurant clientele and if that was the first time I had seen Charles do this I would have been up in arms and yelling for a doctor. Sadly this was normal. I turned and reassured the other patrons that this was just a mental episode and it would pass and to please continue their conversations as if everything were normal. My back was to Charles and I could see the maître d’ rapidly approach our table when Charles yelled out, “Aufwachen! Aufwachen! Seine Augen sind auf uns!“ and he abruptly fell silent; his fork hitting the floor was the only sound in the stunned parlor. That was the last line in one of the diary entries I made. What right did we have in pursuing this madness? How irresponsible we were in our youth and still have not yet truly faced what we have done? We should have stopped our research when Charles wanted out. And when his sanity began to fade we should not have trusted him to burn the diary. I do not know what he had done with it these past decades or how it ended up in your mother’s village, but from the smell of his old suit he must have still been using it. I fear that others might have seen its contents and since reading your letter that thought keeps my nights restless and my days frought with worry. May God have mercy on us and on poor Charles.

I tried to begin this letter with a happy heart but it sank quickly as I wrote. If only our renewed correspondence started before this tragedy we’d have much lighter and frivolous things to write. Jefferson, please do not read the diary. Do not reopen the wounds that we caused so long ago. I implore you… burn it and scatter the ashes over water and let the vile secrets we discovered vanish in smoke and wave. Then we can only hope that no one else dares follow the same dark path we did.

Warm Regards, H.H. Alberts

MR. HARRISON, – Nowhere in the letters I have received from you do you mention that you have burned the diary. Quite to the contrary it seems, and the fact that it is an action you have so far refused to take speaks volumes. Did you mention it to Webster when you met him? I do not know what Webster was engaged in with Price, but if he was still using the Diary then the origin of whatever documents he has is suspect. Completing whatever experiments are there may yield results that are not readily visible! Hadn’t we enough of this other-worldly dabbling in our youth? How many people had to die, Harrison? Do you remember? I do, and it haunts me every day! As the years pass I have needed more and more tipples to soothe my guilt – the Prohibition Party be damned! Even when my dear Isabel was taken from me during Anne’s birth I didn’t turn back to the sickness in which we immersed ourselves. Do you have no guilt or shame, or has the life of an academic and your lectures on William James turned your morals into malleable convictions to be changed or discarded when they become impediments to Science? Please do this, if not for me, then for your sanity and the sweet memory of our dear friend Charles.

Though I am still shaking with rage at your naivety please do not mistake me, my friend, I deeply value our friendship. My harsh words are not meant to drive you from me, but to plead for common sense in this matter. My goading is truly only out of a fraternal love for you. As for Mr. Price, I have not yet been paid a visit by him, but will send you any details from our conversation when he arrives. We must find out who else is on the list to receive these packages and stop them from having the same thoughts that run through your mind.

I passed on your greetings to Anne by way of post as she has just started at Radcliffe this past month, and from what she has written she is enjoying her first term there. It’s been difficult on Anne and Reginald since Isabel died; the house has never been right and it’s been rough raising children on my own with my injuries, but I have been thankful for their governess and my maids. Anne’s transformation into a most capable woman now on her own at university has given me such happiness. I do not want my children to inherit the mistakes of their ailing father. You and I are inextricably linked in these happenings and I fear that if you go down this ignominious path I will be taken forcibly with you.

I do not know what to make of your dream, but from the description it must have been terrifying in the least from which to wake. Dreams to me seem to be just the mind running wild when the eyes close and darkness descends. My doctor, however, believes that nonsense from Professor Freud at Harvard, that dreams have some deeper meaning and provide a clouded window into the soul. Every time I visit him I must put up with relaying my ridiculous dreams of being crushed by massive ledgers, drinking champagne with President Taft in the library, or my terrier Huxby in a smoking jacket asking if I would like cream or sugar in my tea! Nonsense I tell you, Harrison, pure drivel! I really must find a new doctor.

I feel I must disagree with you on your musings of Death. Death is not kind, for He is like a child with a hammer who crushes the nail but leaves a dozen craters in the wood. This is to say that for every moribund man or woman He pounds into the Earth, He leaves many more in sorrow and tests the faith of those who face it. Do you recall what we did to the Wharton boy? This memory plagues me so. We had meant to cure that poor child of typhus, but what he was twisted into was surely a result of some mistake we had made in our ritual. That death was not sweet or kind just a relief from the agony we inflicted. His death tainted many lives with the lingering, blood-soaked finality of its noisy thrashes and rattles. You seemed to handle tragedy the best out of us all, save for Eliza. Her cloak of callousness and cold indifference was that of the strongest steel, though I view her extreme quality as a fault and not commensurate to your stalwart heart. It is no surprise how hard it had impacted Charles, for all of his brilliance in chemistry he lacked in fortitude of spirit.

Just as we thought we could end death and cure those whose throats Death had already wrapped His osseous fingers around, are you implying that Charles and Price thought to do the same with alchemy? Whatever the route, these veins of research or conjuring should both be forgotten, for nature cannot and should not be subverted; it is beyond the territory of mortal man. The feverish impetus we had called up in our work never truly went back to whence it came but lived on and thrived in Charles eating his mind and soul to madness. Another death delivered handily to our doorstep, Harrison. We are all haunted each in our own lonely crater.

How could you not remember when we burned the Diary? Do you even remember when we all decided that the Diary should be destroyed? We knew it needed to be done but we had left it around for weeks with none of us being able to commit the final act, only stare impotently at it unable to carry out our consensus. Its weighty presence seemed to have a life of its own, pleading for survival. Maybe this was just our timidity in destroying two years of exacting effort or was it us refusing to believe that all of the sacrifices made were entirely in vain? As for my memory of Charles and the Diary, I can call up when he took it and the night it was destroyed.

I believe it was the end of the summer of 1881, the night before Cecilia Penning’s annual dinner party. We had retired to our third floor apartment in the evening. This was after you had left, though I do not recall the reason for your departure. After our evening tea, Charles’ mood drastically changed, anger and venom boiled to the surface as though he were a bell suddenly struck. I had never seen him like that. He was breathing heavily and the corner of his upper lip lifted and quivered in a look I could not mistake for any but pure contempt. His presence filled the room as he stood over me, and that was the first and only time I could say that I saw in him a complete manifestation of his bellicose father. With his arm outstretched as if to pull me from the chair he growled, “This has gone on long enough! Give it to me, Alberts!” and I quickly took the Diary from the side table next to me and handed it to him. I was fearful as I had never seen him so enraged and dared not anger him further, especially after hearing what his father had done to him weeks before. The moment his fingers closed around the leather book his arm snapped back to his chest and he began to back out of the room. He descended the few steps to the stairwell door never taking his eyes from me. His final words that evening were harsh and have stayed with me since, “We were never meant for this work; no man was meant for this! We have taken ourselves for God and look what we have left along our bloody path of notes and diagrams and symbols! If we only had used ourselves instead of the sick and the wretched, we would be burning right now, but at least those innocent victims, yes I say victims, Hendrick!, would have passed peacefully instead of the agonizing torment we subjected them to! I mean to destroy this,” he said, waving the book at me, “We will abandon our goal and I will make sure no one picks up our sputtering torch.”

He yanked open the door with such force that the knob left a dent in the plaster and stormed out. I couldn’t move until the stairs were quiet and I heard the outer door close. It was then that I felt a euphoric sense of relief wash over me now that the Diary was out of the room. I was glad that one of us had the strength to finally take our decision to action. I am sorry that I did not discuss the details of that evening with you previously, but I thought that Charles’ outburst was so uncharacteristic that it would have been a source of embarrassment for him.

I didn’t see him again until the next night at the dinner party, but the fire he had shown had completely left him; he was the nervous, fidgety Charles once more. After the final course and a few cocktails, the three of us were huddled in the corner of the dining hall when he whispered, barely lifting his lips from his glass, that “our work will be finished” and to meet him in the back garden, then turned and left toward the garden balcony. By the time we said our goodbyes to Miss Penning and made our way to the garden, the outdoor stone fireplace was lit and Charles stood squarely before it silhouetted with a flickering, orange aura. We stood there for only a moment before he walked to us with the Diary in his hand. The brief silence between us was profound and the sharp crackling of the fire sounded as gunshots in the empty night air. Charles held up the Diary to us as in some final admonishment, then slowly walked back across the garden and cast it into the fire. He didn’t come back to us, but instead walked off into the darkness. For a few minutes we stood and watched the Diary warp and hiss as it was consumed, and waited for Charles to come back, but I knew he wouldn’t; he was gone to us, chased away like the long shadow that had leapt and lurched in front of him. Concerned that you would have trouble negotiating the stairs, I helped you back to the apartment. I started packing for New York City that very night.

The conviction and fervor he displayed that night in the apartment made it clear that his will would be done and the Diary burned. There was no doubt in my mind that his path would have taken him anywhere else except a roaring fire with which to incinerate our profane scribblings. Does this bring back any of the memory for you? How could this infernal book reappear in a curio shop after being immolated decades ago?

I do not want to water down the stuff of this letter by discussing any of the personal and jovial events I wish to relay. I will save those for the next time I sit down to write to you. Better times are ahead if we wish it, my dear Harrison. I can smell them as Huxby can smell the bacon fat now rending in the kitchen, and I salivate for it.

Warmest Regards,

H. H. Alberts

MR. HARRISON, – I saw Gail at church this past Sunday and I conveyed your sympathies. Her reaction was polite but strained and her brief smile never managed to reach her eyes. I must say that Gail looks younger, some of the wrinkles seemed to have gone from her face and though she wasn’t happy, her eyes became bright and unclouded as if hearing some joke moments before. Her expression caught me off guard since I did not believe that she had the capacity for such a morbid streak of humor. I wonder if, now that the strain of taking care of Charles has been lifted, the stresses of her daily life have receded bringing her a youthful appearance and upsetting her usual emotional moderation. I am not diminishing her grief or mean to insinuate that she has ceased her mourning prematurely for she still wears the black veil and thick fabrics of a newly made widow.

Mr. Price paid me a visit yesterday, and he indeed, presented me with a package. I had tried to talk Price up while he was in my foyer but he seemed reluctant when I questioned him about the package and his relationship with Webster. I don’t believe his reticence has anything to do with Taxil, but because he fears whomever or whatever is watching him. It was strange, but I felt the air become noticeably heavier when he crossed the threshold of my front door, as if something larger had come through with him. I know it must have been the wet air rushing in from the rain storm outside, but the ominous feeling it caused did not go unnoticed.

The parcel contained five well-worn pages that, like yours, were mostly in Egyptian and Greek, and all of which I have the very mind to cast into my study fireplace. From what I can tell without delving into my library, a few of the pages deal with embalming and the formulation of the liquids used in its process. To be honest I have not heard of half of the ingredients. The final page had four familiar diagrams on it. They described the points on the hand, back and front, where blood should be drawn during the rituals of conjuration. Our hands have felt the sharp edge of a knife many times, though in these diagrams there were many more such places described, with hieroglyphs that hint at how and for what the blood should be spent.

When we spoke he had the delivery list in his hand and I was able to catch two of the names on it. The first name was Samuel Wesselhoeft, of whom I have never heard. The second name will chill your bones – Elizabeth De Quedville. I had truly hoped that we had seen the last of her in university. She was one of those people we associated with because we were young and did not know how to properly choose our company. I never understood how you could have such an attraction to that girl. When she looked at us her cold stare and drawn frown measured us bit by bit weighing our worth against whatever damnable currency in which she traded. She held herself above us and never degraded herself by performing any of the work that we executed; she never sliced her hands but was the first to hand over the knife and point to where we should cut. My hands are still slow to heal.

Why have out the list of names? I do not believe that a man of Mr. Price’s intellect would be unable to keep one name and address in his memory long enough to deliver a small parcel. I will tell you why – because we were meant to see the names. This is bald and brazen manipulation and conspiracy, Harrison! He or they mean to pique our curiosity, have us seek each other out, and continue the work they could not, or do not want to, finish themselves. I say to you, without any equivocation, that I will not cooperate with any part of this plot. I have many things to be happy for and I tire quickly of this connivance.

Reginald has been spending quite a lot of time with a young lady and, you will be happy to hear, has finally proposed marriage! I have only met her once briefly, but she will be coming to dinner this Saturday. I am looking forward to getting to know this lovely woman and see all the smiles and joy of youth in love.

For the past two weeks the city has been lit up for the Hudson-Fulton celebration and the local pubs clogged with sailors. It has been quite fun despite the few spots of fisticuffs in the streets. I was able to get out and see the flotillas and fireworks, and try some of the food the vendors are selling at the fairground as well as witness the Wright Brother’s flying machine. It was magnificent, Harrison. Its flight a low, buzzing swan passing just above the bow of the new liner Lusitania, then in a drive south it circled the great Statue of Liberty. I can't think of a greater blessing for a ship than to be christened by a marvel of our age. The captain must be so pleased at such a fine and profound portent, not to mention the capitalists waiting for their purses to fatten. In fact, I will inquire upon any investing opportunity with the owning corporation.

Watch yourself, if we were shown the list of parcel recipients then the others will have seen our names as well.

Your Friend,

Alberts