Recovered Journal Pages
Author: Thibodeaux “Tib” Landry
I ain’t no scholar, me - just a fighter what knows the swamps and the old places folks smarter than me don’t come back from. Name’s Thibodeaux Landry. Most just call me Tib. I been guidin’ folk through this bayou most my life, an’ I thought I seen near every kind of ruin what sink or rise outta this land. I was wrong ‘bout that.
I came here wit two others. Lucien - quick hands, quicker smile, best lockpicker I ever seen. Said there ain’t no door made he couldn’t open. An’ Mireille… Lord, that girl had fire in her veins. Real magic. Not tricks. Not hedge-work. The kind that make a man step back an’ mind his place. They was good people. Better than me, if I’m speakin’ true.
We followed talk of Ythéra stone risin’ out the marsh. Same as always - broken shapes, half-drowned walls, roots growin’ through things that shouldn’t be there. Looked like any other ruin at first. Bayou breathin’ on it, same as everything else. Wet, thick, alive.
But once we stepped inside, cher… it stopped bein’ the world we know.
Them rooms ain’t made for livin’. Ain’t no beds, no hearth, no sense to how folk would stay there. Everything shaped strange - floors dip down or stretch long, walls curve wrong, like the place built for somethin’ that ain’t shaped like us. All across the ground, you see markings laid into the stone itself, clean lines like they was set there yesterday. Symbols, I guess, but not the kind a man reads. An’ the stains… Lord help me, the stains don’t sit on top. They in the stone. Like it drank somethin’ and kept it.
Lucien went first.
He saw somethin’ in the floor - said it looked like a seam, maybe a hidden catch. Told us to hold back. He always said that, even when he was grinnin’. I remember that grin. He crouched down, tools out, gentle as a man touchin’ glass.
There weren’t no sound when it happened. That’s what I can’t forget. No click. No snap. Just… him there, then not whole no more. Stone opened where there weren’t no line before, quick as breath, an’ closed just the same. No echo. No scream. Just quiet. Too quiet.
We didn’t speak for a long time after that.
The light - that’s what got Mireille next.
You see fixtures, little housings, places where light ought to be. But there ain’t no flame, no glow, nothin’. Still… you see shadows. They move same as if there was light there, flickerin’ soft like a lantern dyin’ slow. Mireille said it was wrong. Said it wasn’t absence - it was somethin’ else pretendin’ to be light.
She started watchin’ ‘em close. Too close.
One of ‘em moved before she did.
I swear to you, cher, it moved wrong. Reached where she hadn’t. Touched her shadow first. She gasped like she felt it, like somethin’ cold got hold of her from the inside, yankin' her soul. Then her body followed where the shadow went - twisted, pulled, like she was bein’ shown how to stand different.
She told me not to come closer. Said she could fix it.
She couldn’t.
When it was done, she was still breathin’. Still lookin’ at me. But she weren’t right no more. Not in her bones. Not in her eyes. She moved... wrong. Came at me. I did what I had to. Ain’t no words for that part.
After that… I kept goin’ alone. Don’t ask me why. Maybe anger. Maybe guilt. Maybe I just didn’t want they deaths to be for nothin’.
Sound go strange in there. You talk, you hear it plain. You step, you hear the step. But it don’t come back. No echo. Not even in them big rooms where it ought to roll right back at you. It just… stop. Like the walls swallow it whole. Makes a man feel like he already gone.
An’ every now an’ then, you hear voices. Not close, not far. Just… driftin’. Soft like wind through reeds, but there ain’t no wind down there. Ain’t no words you can catch, but it ain’t noise neither. It’s speech. Has a shape to it. Like somethin’ tryin’ to say what it used to say, long after it forgot how.
Past a certain point, the wet just… gone. Not less. Gone. Air turn dry like old bone. Your throat crack. Your skin pull tight. Nothin’ rots. Nothin’ molds. Even the mud stops at the stone like it scared to go further.
That’s where I turned back.
I ain’t ashamed to say it. I seen enough to know when a place don’t want me, an’ I listened. I carried what I could of Lucien. Said words for Mireille the best I knew how. Left the rest.
If you readin’ this, you thinkin’ of goin’ in.
Don’t.
Or do, if you got that kind of need in you. But hear me, cher - hear me real clear:
Them ruins ain’t dead.
They just waitin’ for you to make a mistake.
