Sarah Benadine is Dead

Excerpt I

The following is an excerpt taken from notes discovered in the wreckage of Briargate School, July 14, 1962.

August 16, 1955

Emerson called me this morning. Gave me the news. A girl is dead. Killed in the middle of a library before night had even fallen. And that other little girl, who'd said she'd seen a monster...

I suppose I've always known that Clearwater is not a safe place. I don't think it ever was, right from its founding. But it's getting worse. I wonder if this has been coming since Alfie's death...or even perhaps Kitty Sinclair's disappearance...but then, I think perhaps I have been willfully blind. This has been coming since my days Briargate.

It is risky to trust the girl given she is so young, but I do, and I think Emerson does too. I know Genie does. Young children often have the clearest minds for what they see. I'm not ashamed to admit that it scares me; only a fool would not be afraid. If the girl was correct, something is here that should not be here. Something old has returned to Clearwater, if it ever even left. It has been quiet for nearly seventy years. Or has it? Has it been working all these years, from my awful last days at Briargate, to the day of Kitty Sinclair's disappearance, to the day of Alfie's death? It is hard to distinguish sometimes what is the work of a man and what is the work of a beast.

I wonder if I've been chasing the wrong thing ever since I graduated. Ever since two of my classmates were murdered. No one speaks of that like they do other things in this town. Perhaps because it happened in the school. Briargate often seemed like its own world. I suppose if they admitted someone had been murdered even before Sarah Benadine it would shatter their delusions of safety. No one talks about the massacre at the old woodworking factory, either. I may not be the only one who has been willfully blind.

Genie and I should get home. This work can wait. We should check on the kids, see them off on their first day. We missed the first day last year...Ollie's first year...

I pray to God that awful town doesn't swallow them whole.

Abraham O'Brien

***So my internet decided to sort of work with me so I could get out the last bits of Part One. Hooray!***