In Time's Corridors

What I am about to say, I have no doubt I have said these selfsame words before, and that I will always be waiting, somewhere and sometime, on the moment when they will be spoken anew. There is this suffocating, enthralling sense of falling, and of having found myself trapped in the skein of so many impossible, interwoven tales. Since the accident in my father's lab when I was only a human girl of seventeen...and then the second accident, seven years later and a scant thirty-two days ago, when I was torn free of the universe I so long believed to be the only possible universe...I have had this persistent sense of falling farther in, though into what I cannot say. I feel as though I exist somehow always only on the cusp of actuality. These words stream from me like the ravings of a madwoman, and it may be I am somewhere only a madwoman. I can not say. But I have chosen to act, here, in what seems a real world, rather than hide in the folds of my fear and confusion, thinking myself only insane or dreaming.

I have just passed an extraordinary, wonderful, and terrifying evening, and I must write something of it down, some scrap, though I must also soon depart Babbage for a fearsome city where, I hope, I will learn more of the creature — this so-called werewolf — that haunts this hamlet and all of Caledon.

A few hours ago, just before sunset, Mr. Lucius Sin — the alchemist and occultist — paid a visit to my flat here in Babbage. I asked him here, and he came willingly, though the man seemed uncomfortable the entire time he was in my company. I hoped only to obtain some meager bit of hair or flake of skin against which I might test the blood sample I believe to have come from the beast. It was my belief, my hypothesis, that despite transmutation some essential particle or compound would remain behind to always link the two. We spoke briefly and of nothing in particular. As the sky grew red with dusk, our conversation was interrupted by the fortuitous arrival of Miss Paine. And only a moment later, my faerie talisman, supposedly crafted by Mr. Sin, began to glow fiercely!

He wore one himself. Immediately, Mr. Sin begged our pardon, claiming to suffer from a sudden headache, and gladly did I excuse him. And there on my sofa he left behind a single strand of hair, and it has proven a positive match with the hemoglobin sample! I know now that Mr. Sin is the creature, even if he himself does not know this to be the case. I hastily composed a note to Capt. Susenko, informing him of my discovery and warning him to watch the man closely, though, it should again be noted, the beast may not have actually attacked anyone so far.

And there is more...oh, so much more...but I must put it down later, upon my return home. I may at last have met a man capable of unraveling the terrible mystery I have become, and I am not speaking now of the very peculiar Mr. Sin. I will return to the typewriter later and make a full account. My hands are not steady, but, by the gods, I will not drink to-night. My head must remain as clear as it may yet ever be.