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“Allegedly.” Nathan Wodehouse opened the nearest box and peered inside. “I say, what is this?”
“Lionel’s papers and diaries,” Charlotte said. Her father raised his brows. “Oh, don’t give me that look. His sister is taking up residence for the next year and she’d burn all this given the chance.”
Charlotte herself had fought the urge to destroy her late husband’s diaries but decided against it. The information was too unique and too valuable to be destroyed out of some misguided attempt to protect the family name. Lionel had written faithfully in his journal for years, starting when he entered military service as a young man. He had been bitten by his commanding officer. His entire unit had been turned. Some held onto their minds. Some could not. The survivors hunted rogue beasts and monsters in the West Lands.
They had good intentions. Charlotte had to believe that. Whatever monster Lionel became, he started with the goal of helping keep people safe.
His military career was filled with success, commendations, and medals. She knew that. Lionel made his fortune in the military, a fortune she now possessed.
“Have you read these?” Nathan flipped through a leatherbound journal.
“Yes, I have.” Of course she read them. She pored over them, searching for some clue as to how her husband had turned out so wrong. A young soldier, full of promise and good intentions, ended up twisted into a monster that killed indiscriminately.
One that tried to kill her on their wedding day.
“It’s rather interesting if you want a firsthand account of the transition.”
“Seems to be nothing but military jargon,” Nathan said.
“Lionel was a military man,” Charlotte replied. The military life had suited the beast in him. Countless journal entries supported that. Structure kept him grounded. Human. When his commander and half of his unit were killed in a skirmish, Lionel’s control began to slip. He grew erratic. Angry. The beast lurked just under his skin, ready to claw its way out.
Whether Lionel was forced out of the military, or he chose to leave, the journal was unclear. What was clear was that the beast inside him had control. He killed for the fun of it. His transformations were no longer limited to the nights of solstice and the equinox. He was dangerous, a beast wearing a mask, and no one suspected.
Her father picked up another journal, this one just as beaten as the other.
“No matter what we think of him, his journals are valuable,” Charlotte said.
“I suppose they are useful for research purposes,” he admitted.
She seized the opening. “Then you admit that research is important.”
“Charlotte—”
“No, Papa. There is only so much I can research from here.”
“You can request books you need from the university in Founding.”
Charlotte shook her head. She wasn’t being stubborn about the issue. A year ago, the subscription fee to the university library was a luxury beyond her reach. Now that she was a wealthy widow and could easily afford to buy any book she wished, books were not good enough. She could buy a house in Founding and visit the library daily. That wasn’t the issue. She could buy her way back into the university with a generous donation or fund a new building, but she would never be accepted.
Papa spent the family fortune on a fool’s mission into the mountains.
In the process, he destroyed his academic reputation and ruined any chance of Charlotte making her career as a historian. The sudden change in fortune resulted in Charlotte quietly withdrawing from the university and returning to Boxon.
Academia was a small world, and when one’s father was a known eccentric who famously financed a doomed expedition, one’s opportunities were limited. Even if she returned, her work would never be taken seriously. She could pour every cent Lionel left her into the university and rebuild it brick by brick, but she’d forever be an amateur historian, the daughter of the disgraced professor with outlandish theories.
“This is your book, isn’t it, dear?” Nathan handed her a well-worn copy of Captain Beckford’s memoir.
She turned the book over in her hands. Captain Beckford’s memoir, written in the last year of her life. She had read and reread her copy enough to wear away the gilded lettering on the spine. This copy had suffered the same abuse though the colonial logo embossed into the leather binding remained. Three stars streaked across the front of the book, leaving a fiery tail.
Charlotte brushed a thumb over the stars. Three stars for three ships.
Her father often repeated that phrase, so much so that the words barely registered. The same design was all over Founding, stamped into the structures built from the carcass of the original ship and carved into subsequent buildings. The design even graced the metal streetlamps.
Three ships left Old Earth. Only one made it to Nexus. The others were lost. Everyone knew that. Only crackpots—and her father—believed that the other two ships landed safely and somehow remained a secret for centuries.
A familiar resentment stirred in her gut. Her father had wasted the family fortune chasing the myth of the lost ships. He ruined his academic career and prevented her from even finishing her studies. For what? An obvious fantasy.
Just the logistics of having to scrub the ships’ existence from every recording and data entry was a nightmare. Yes, a lot of digital data was lost, but people had pen and paper. They wrote letters and memoirs, kept personal journals. There would be evidence. Solid evidence, not the flimsy supposition her father found.
