Day Five-Eighty-Six: Roundup

I went into the jungle to find my son.

I did not mean my other son. I can safely say I was not looking for him at all.

The search for Fynn did not last very long. After a single night of combing the jungle we woke up to an immense fog, a fog that seemed to swallow up the search party one-by-one. I'm told I was roughly the middle mark in the disappearances.

For a week thereafter, I had dreams. Terrible dreams. And not the usual kind of terrible dreams I have. There were very pointed dreams, meant to torture. Many of them involving Fynn. And Robert.

Grayson watched over them all. He kept poking at my psyche, bothering me, looking for a way to break me. I think he would've, too, if he weren't so bogged-down by... something. Another presence. Judging by what I saw when I awoke, in those brief, conscious seconds with my elder boy, I'm pretty sure it was Philip. But I'm not absolutely positive.

He wasn't the only source of those dreams, though. He also watched my own dreams. And they... they consisted of more images. Of executions on the Neck, carried out by me. Of... a woman... a woman in a veil... watching. Watching as row after row of people walked forward, and I pulled a lever, and they all died.

Grayson liked what he saw. He very much liked what he saw.

But something happened. Something I believe has to do with Plato's rat. He saved us... but I don't think he's able to tell us how in any great and lasting manner. This... diary... whatever it has become... won't let him.

We ran through what I now assume is a city of ghosts for at least half an hour. Despite the exhaustion of having slept for a week, despite our heavy loads of equipment, despite being utterly lost, we ran. We only stopped when Edmund fell and hurt his ankle.

That's when the last member of the party strolled up. The diary. This diary. On four tiny, waddling legs. As if my day hadn't been weird enough already.

Using the diary, Plato's rat explained what had happened. The trip, the deal with the ghost king - which freaked me the HELL out, because Fynn is with a bunch of deadheads - the would-be poisoning, everything. Or I think it was everything.

I might have learned the truth. Except, when the rat referred me to the entries it had written, we found that they'd vanished. Gone. Completely. And, like previous sections of the diary, I can't write on those pages. Another big gap. The rat seemed as flabbergasted as I to watch newly-written letters fade into nothing, so... I doubt it can explain this weird flub.

A walking diary. Huh. I... I just don't know what to think of that. My diary walks. What the hell.

There's so much more to discuss, but for now, I need to save my strength. I have to retrieve my son from a bunch of ghosts, and I don't know that they'll be willing to give him up. Cripes, I'm gonna get it hard when Libby gets her hands on me.

Sincerely,

Dragomir the Wanderer