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CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Entry 1
I no longer determine time by clocks or available light.
My new world is now completely oriented by the comings
and goings of a single sinister man. I don’t know his real
name. I’m not sure that knowing it would do me a bit of
good, anyway. I’m not one hundred percent certain the
guy’s even human. But he’s definitely one of those Noctu-
psychotics—persons affected by a Post-Darkness insanity
that has taken them almost completely out of the human
category. Let me assure you, this fella is as far from your
Average Joe as it gets. Not to mention, he’s also one of the
nastiest serial killers you’ve likely never heard about.
He assures me he’s over one hundred years old, and that
he lived through the original Wasting House Tragedy—by
the way, he doesn’t look a day over thirty-five. He doesn’t
look like much of anything really, just an ordinary guy,
maybe a tad on the thin side. Lean might be a better word
for him, now that I think about it. He’s got a predatory look
to him.
While he looks innocuous enough, he completely
switches gears when he’s on the hunt. On those occasions,
he wears a ragged moth-eaten suit, something you’d expect
to find hanging off the bones of a late-eighteenth-century
corpse. He also balances this shabby stovepipe hat on his
head, which adds six inches or so to his height. He insists the
entire outfit was made for him by a “wildly talented tailor of

272 | Mark Anzalone