Fiction
The Diary
I never meant to kill anyone. I need you to understand that first.
When I found the journal, I thought it was just some old diary. You know the kind — yellowed pages, worn leather cover, the thing that’s more valuable as an antique than for whatever’s written inside.
I picked it up at the flea market, glanced at the price of five dollars, worked it down to three, tossed it in my bag, and forgot about it for weeks.
It wasn’t until the power went out one evening that I finally opened it. I was bored, alone in my apartment with nothing but candlelight to keep me company. I knocked my bag on the floor from the table because of the dimness of the unpowered night, and it fell out, splayed out to the first page.
The journal felt… heavy, like it had a presence of its own. Most pages were filled with strange symbols, some I didn’t recognize, and others that looked like twisted versions of old runes. The writing was cramped and urgent, like whoever wrote it was in a hurry, or scared.
The first thing I read was a name. Just one name, scratched into the margin like an afterthought. Jeremy Crawford. I said the name aloud, wondering if this was the…
