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I have been dreaming of my friends. I can call them that now, I think: hindsight creates a kind of affection and besides, the dead can’t hold anything against anyone, least of all grief.

I dreamt mostly of Rowan at first; then it was Gracelynn and Kevin holding hands as they wandered through endless corridors; then Johanna, who no longer had a face, only a bleeding fissure where one should have been.

I even dreamt of Delilah and Sullivan as he was before the faculty unmade him into bones and effluvium.

The night before this, I dreamt of all of them at the same time, coming together to sit in an open-air auditorium.

The chairs were the color of fresh blood and the sky above was starless and black.

Their faces were a bloodless white, cauled with a pink-tinged vernix.

They looked like a wedding party on their high-backed, gore-red chairs, staring down at an empty stage.

They looked like your judgment, a jury of dead waiting for the executioner to arrive.

If the arc of the moral universe truly bent toward justice, I’d be nothing but a honeycombed corpse right now. But such things like decency are nothing but human inventions. The cosmos bends nowhere except toward annihilation.

You showed us that.

By the time you read this paragraph, I should be at your door.

I advise you to stay there instead of evacuating.

Otherwise, I will have to look for you and in doing so, I will have to eat through everything and everyone you love.

I will devour all of it. And as they die, I will make sure they know you’re the reason for their agony.

So, for their sake, stay for me. Commune with whatever you hold holy.

Leave instruction on what to do with your earthly belongings. Make peace with yourself.

Give me a moment and I will show you everything you taught us at Hellebore.