Jason, as expected, reached the school first. He stood in front of the mutilated porch and tilted his head to the left, approximately the same angle it leaned. "Don't look like much," he observed.

Manny had a gift for understatement. If the schoolhouse was decayed at the end of Kyle's dream, its current state was absolute disintegration. It leaned almost twice as far to the left as Kyle remembered, and the imposing bell tower had actually careened the opposite direction, laying almost on its right side as the attic threatened to swallow its remains. It was as if someone grabbed the whole building and shook it until it collapsed in upon itself. One more good jolt, and Kyle wondered if it would resemble the other collapsed houses and shops. Just a pile of nails and planks jutting from an overflowing basement.

Jason shrugged and strode boldly onto the second porch step, which promptly snapped in a plume of dust, leaving him awkwardly straddling the remaining risers. "Shit!" he yelled, before falling backwards and landing on the first step, which also collapsed under his weight. Prone on the ground, he coughed twice and said, "guess they don't make 'em like they used to, eh scruff?"

Kyle couldn't help but laugh. He leaned over and grabbed Jason's hand, dragging him unceremoniously from the light wreckage. "Wanna try again, Hot Shot?"

"Gladly!" he said, spreading his legs wide and putting his weight on the vertical guides instead. Using the handrails for balance, he rowed himself to the deck, sawing back and forth until he reached the top, carefully putting weight only on boards directly over joists he could see through the slats. A few more carefully placed steps, and he stood in the tilted doorway, where he turned around. "After you, sis," he taunted.

Kyle emulated Manny's innovative technique and soon he too, crossed the threshold. For fun, he braced his feet and hands in the door-jam and threw his weight left and right, as if riding a swing sideways. The school lurched and groaned dangerously and Manny yelped in fear, lunging toward the opposite wall for a handhold.

"Sis, huh?" Kyle said as he stopped rocking the unsteady structure. "That must make you my little sister. I always wanted a little brat to push around."

"You got me, kid!" Manny said, his voice echoing from deep inside. After the building stopped jiggling, he immediately wandered into the central room.

Kyle lifted his right hand from the door jam and peered curiously at some scratches he felt pressing against his skin as he alternated his weight. That says something... He turned fully toward the words and attempted to read them. But it was no use, too many cracks and years of weathering rendered the scratchings illegible. He sighed and slid his back down the doorway until he sat sideways in the threshold, staring at the lost words.

Then he noticed that, like a good thermometer, the text darkened and gleamed from different angles as it scrolled down the jam. After a few tightly packed chunks, he found the words easy to decipher. So, he read.

The Wraith doth watch jealously,
and drink of silent woe.
Your soul he'll sup and swallow,
his teeth will gnash and glow.

Ash to ash, and dust to dust,
or so the story goes.
In death there is but blackness,
where sin or goodness flows.

So demon done, and faith smote twice,
the fearful and the bold.
The kind Wraith offers freedoms all,
immortal lives are sold.

Kyle wondered at the inane babbling. Jealous wraith? Blackness in death? Immortality? At first glance, it almost seemed like an offer. He shook his head idly. Some kids at this school apparently didn't have enough homework.

Jason turned back to Kyle. "Hey kid, what ya sittin' around for? Let's look around!"

"Sure Dad."

Jason scoffed and wandered further into the room, assessing the mild devastation. A couple dozen wooden desks were scattered along the floor, most bunched along the left wall, having slid over time with the building's increasing tilt. Some lay on their sides, top partially open, spilling out papers, writing quills, and old inkpots like disemboweled soldiers after a terrible clash of thundering weapons. Again, the impression that the building was shaken into its current state, seemed inescapable.

"This place is worse than my brother's room." Having a brother known far and wide as Hayloft, though he'd never worked a farm, made that an impressive statement.

Kyle barked a short laugh. "Yeah, you should see my dad's study. If hurling a desk into a corner made something easier to find, he'd do it."

"Think we could read any of that stuff?"

"Maybe." Kyle shrugged. "Can't be that much different. Dr. Z said this place was abandoned in 1888. Not quite sixty years ago, but what's a couple generations?"

Jason wandered over to an overturned desk and snatched a few papers from the ground. The paper was unmarked. A few more attempts yielded similar results. "Must be some kinda backup papers, eh kid?"

Kyle didn't know. "What do I look like, a historian? Maybe the sun just bleached it off. I dunno." Even while he admonished Jason, his eyes were drawn to the teacher's desk. Somehow it skidded at an angle, and stabbed viciously into the mass of overturned desks without toppling itself. A thin book sat precariously atop it, buried in dust. "Hey Jason! C'mere!" he called.

He wandered past Jason to the larger desk with thick drawers and dry, cracked cherry wood. The finish was splintered and mottled, essentially destroyed from exposure. He wondered why so much furniture was left behind. Desks like this in good condition were heirlooms. Few examples of modern furnishings reflected such careful detail and quality of materials. But that no longer mattered. For now, he was interested only in the book. He picked it up and blew, expelling the entire contents of his lungs in a mighty blast, dislodging a significant amount of dust directly into Manny's face, as he'd just arrived to Kyle's previous summons.

He coughed wildly. "Thanks, kid!" he said between fits of sneezing, tears streaming down his face as his body fought valiantly to expel every speck of airborne particle.

Kyle had already opened the tiny tome, flipping past a couple pages that announced "Diary!" and "Do not read!" But this too reflected countless ages of weathering and abuse. Some pages were simply illegible. One in particular carried the signature of the author in heavy, bold lettering. Unfortunately it was indecipherable, an impromptu game of hangman, but nobody knew the answer. "A_ri_n," was the best Kyle could manage. Alright then, Arin it was.

Jason scoffed. "A diary?! C'mon, if I wanted to read a diary, I'd grab my sister's. You know, she admitted having sex in that thing a couple weeks ago..." Positively scandalous. Kyle admitted a laugh, but wasn't interested. A diary almost sixty years old was a treasure-trove of information. Dr. Z would flip his lid if Kyle returned with such a find. Direct evidence of Old Town!

"Hey kid, I said 'she had sex,' don't you care?"

"No way, man. Who do you think I practiced on before your mom? That was me, I don't gotta read about myself. I was there!"

Nobody could accuse Manny of being a poor sport. "Ouch! You're brutal, Cemtes! If it were anybody else, I'd be jealous." He continued giggling and wandered to a remote corner of the room, searching for anything else interesting.

Kyle thumbed the pages, sending a blurring flutter of yellowed paper past his eyes. The pages weren't brittle, but most were blank or splotched with mildew. Only a few remained readable through the damage. Surprisingly, quite a few full pages boasted several paragraphs of detailed prose. He looked around for the teacher's char, which was bound to be somewhere in the room, hopefully bearing all four legs. He could sit on the floor, but he figured something must have survived the rampant aging exposure wrought.

He found it toppled in a distant corner, near a window and at least twenty feet from the desk itself. He picked it up and examined it for life-threatening defects. It was a little creeky, but was strong enough to hold his weight—at least for a little while. He still had a couple hours before his rendezvous with Adriana for his tour, so why not spend some time reading? He'd already justified his trip to Old Town, knowing Dr. Z would positively drool at a genuine historical artifact removed directly from a schoolhouse. Proof positive the village not only existed, but some part of it at least, remained intact.

"Hey bookworm! You gonna read that while I do all the work?" Jason inquired. But it was obvious Kyle wasn't paying attention. Jason rolled his eyes and peered around a corner leading to a stairway into the basement. He chewed his lip and glanced back at Kyle, before digging in his pack and pulling out a Bright Star flashlight. He flicked the switch as a test—satisfied as a concentrated beam lanced out into the blackness—before descending down the steps.

All the while, Kyle skimmed the diary, trying to make sense of hurried phrases, spilled secrets, and emotional outbursts. The girl who wrote this was definitely articulate, exhibiting a skill almost imposing in its depth. Did people write like this back then? Her diary sounds like a frigging essay on pelt imports. Of course, Kyle didn't know that, even in the 1700s, educated gentility often presented daunting conjecture in philosophy and literature in mundane daily letters to friends, so he can be forgiven for underestimating the past. But he was no less amazed as he read. No less frightened at what transpired in the innocuous girlish scrawl.