Her father didn’t have that much to say when he was driving to her grandma’s bungalow, neither did she. It had an odd sense of finality to it, like this was truly it. And in some way, it was. Keira had brought herself a backpack in case all of what she was interested in didn’t fit in the tiny woman’s bag she usually carried with her. It was black however and didn’t do much to help the feeling that they were stealing. Eventually they got to a street she recognised and soon after a house she recognised. Despite the fact that her grandma had been gone for two months now, the garden still looked as pristine as it always did, putting almost everyone else on the street to shame. Keira couldn’t help but smile at that thought.

The two pulled up to the bungalow, with Keira getting out the car first to open the gate and allow her dad to bring the car in. Her grandma's car had already been sold, so there was plenty of space for her father, though there was a close call with one of the plant pots by the front door. Her dad got out of the car and walked across the brick driveway to unlock the front door, struggling a little with the lock as it was on the old side. Keira mused as he took a step into the house and stayed on the welcome mat for a time and breathed in the air, that it may be a more difficult for him than she originally thought. Even if this wasn’t his childhood home, even if she had spent way more time there than him, it was where her grandma had spent the last half a decade of her life. And where her grandad spent the last year of his. It seemed like her father had finished his moment when he kicked off his shoes and made for the kitchen. Keira frowned. That wasn’t something he usually did.

"Why did you take your shoes off?" Keira called after her father, also taking a brief stop on the mat. "She isn't here to get mad about it anymore."

"Respect mostly. She still worked hard to keep this place spotless and me and the rest of the family have decided to respect that." Keira considered it and then kicked off her trainers, leaving then in a slightly messier pile beside her dad's shoes. Then she poked her head into the closest door, which was on the left and the living room as she remembered. A lot of the family photos had already been cleared out, as well as the porcelain plates and statues stacked in a cupboard in the corner. The decently modern TV, however was still plugged in and ready to be taken.

"Hey, Dad? What was that about having a TV in my room?"

"Your mother would murder me if I let you?"

"Then what's the plan with this?" Her Dad paused his rummaging in the kitchen to poke his head into the living room and survey the scene. He then hummed.

"You know, I don't know why she even has this. Always hated them when I was younger, for whatever reason. A lot of people her age did."

"Is that your way of saying it's yours now?"

"No, we'll most likely sell it and split the money." Keira hummed in agreement and moved down the hall to the two bedrooms at the back. On her way to the end of the hallway, she passed a table with a mirror above it. Keira diverted her gaze downwards to avoid looking at that butterfly again and then noticed something on the wooden table. Aside the book of names which listed names and telephone numbers, was a group of five crystal trinkets. She remembered playing with them when she was younger, though her grandma would huff and tell her that they weren't toys. Now though… they had a captivating quality to them. How the light separated into a rainbow once it touched them. They were so different to how she remembered them, even more so the two nudged slightly to one side. One of them had been completely reduced to a pile of quartz like rubble and another, a bird, had been cracked with an inky black seeping into the crystal through the opening. Keira frowned and picked it up, and with a moment’s hesitation she slipped the crystal into her bag. She almost moved on, but then decided to take the rest sans the pile of crystal dust.

The only place that she was truly interested in searching was her grandmother’s room. She had spent many nights in the spare room, and while it may hold many memories special to her like staying up until the early hours watching videos and hiding beneath the covers lest her grandma checked on her. Keira was familiar with it and knew that aside from a wardrobe of spare cloths that she would definitely never wear, there was nothing in there. She walked to the main bedroom and stopped when she reached the door. The calendar that was hung on the front of it read 30th of Angal 1379, a couple of months behind. Keira flicked it forward to the correct date and then entered the room.

From the trinkets on the bedside table on the right side of the bed, she could guess that it was her grandma’s, so she moved to the other side to investigate what would have been her grandad's draws. On her way over she noticed that she stood on something sharp. Looking down she saw a very small pebble nestled in the rug. It had been comfortably hidden by fluff so she hadn't noticed, but it caused her to kneel down and inspect it. She picked it up and threw it out of the window before beginning to search through her grandad’s things. Keira started on the small bedside table that only had pictures of him and her grandmother on it and rummaged through the drawers. All they had were more pictures, mostly her grandfather standing in front of cars and heavy machinery, but there were a few from his wedding and family holidays that she could barely recall. She frowned and decided that the draws were a bust before turning her head to the wardrobe that sat at the other end of the room, facing the bed. It… might be reasonable to check all avenues, she supposed.

Opening the wardrobe she saw that it was mostly empty, having been cleared out after her grandad's death like she thought, but it wasn’t completely empty. There was a single greying suit on the hangers, and beneath it a pile of boxes. Keira knelt down on the floor to inspect them and while they initially looked like shoe boxes, searching through them showed Keira that they were filled with journals, pictures and memorabilia. She flicked through some of the photographs, noting that most of the sported her grandad when he was younger, a couple had her grandma in them and a few were her grandad and an older man that she didn’t recognise. She set some aside and then began to look through the journals. It wasn’t really an invasion of privacy if the man was dead, after all.

The first one listed the date as the 28th of Ouran 1314, and a quick read through showed it as being on the mundane side, but there were a few interesting mentions of a business and a large purchase but nothing world changing. Other entries followed the pattern, but they didn’t go day by day, or even week by week. It went by interesting event by interesting event, or what her grandad constituted as interesting anyway, so it was mostly mundane. Until she got to the entry 4th of Mor 1321, and her eyes were suddenly glued to the text in front of her.

I’m unsure whether or not this could be counted as paranoia, but I have been warned that they have spies everywhere and their interest may grow with time. Quite frankly the only reason I’m writing this within my journal instead of making notes in a separate book, whether one that I start or the one that I was gifted, is that this is less likely to be found if my possessions are every rifled through.

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

Keira felt a little guilty at that, but quickly pushed it aside so she could continue reading.

My first experience with the… perturbed was actually on a different date, roughly three years ago later this month. When the snowfall was just settling in. My boss had hired me to look after his truck while we went off terrain through steadily worsening weather…

It went on to describe an interaction between the people who had hired him and some others who had arrived on scene for some event. Then it went into a description of what happened next, with one of the others with him describing what an ancient ritualistic sword did and then… something being released into the night. Keira stopped at the end of that and took a deep breath. Then she frowned and reread the beginning of the encounter, when the man mentioned mutation beyond humanity. It was the way he phrased it as well. In their previous conversation Palotl had mentioned places of power, and that Keira had no need to worry about getting to one as her town at the moment functioned as one, however temporary.

The way he brought up those places though… were those the permanent places of power that Palotl had also mentioned? And if so, would anyone just hanging around them mutate or gain powers, or did something specific need to happen. And would that power mutation happen in places that were temporarily places of power.

Everything before her initial meeting with Palotl was like a dream, whenever she tried to remember it, it felt like she was an outsider observing a different person. Or otherwise she was reaching at those memories through a thick fog. The day of her death was a different beast. Every single moment of that day was etched into her mind, including the start where she found that forsaken corpse that had somehow stayed warm despite it being dead long enough for its blood to go black and stain the flagstones beneath it. Or maybe it had been freshly killed and its blood was just that vile. It didn’t matter to her though. Both of those possibilities are equally unnatural and lead her to the same conclusion. Somehow, whatever that creature had been before, had mutated with the power that was temporarily leaking into the town and now it might have latent power.

The unfortunate other requirement, the one that prevented this from being the solution to all her problems, would be the fact that it had to be human. Keira reflected back onto her initial meeting with Palotl. It had said that the vessel needed intelligence, at a human level. That requirement was branded into her memory the most, she believed. She knew that it never had her best interests at heart, she had expected it, yet finding that out felt like such a large betrayal that it remained clear in her mind. Hm. Now that she thought about it, couldn’t animals reach human levels of intelligence? They could never be capable to the same degree as an adult, but it hadn’t actually given much of a benchmark beyond capable of a certain degree of sentience.

Off of the top of her head she knew that crows were amongst the smartest, but no amount of perversion of nature will allow for what she scraped off of the ground to be classed as a crow. Keira opened her phone and began doing some research, typing ‘smartest mammals’ into the search bar and leaning against the foot of the bed whilst waiting for the results to roll in. A couple of websites came up and she clicked on the first one that wasn’t an advertisement and scrolled down, matching the pictures provided to the hairless corpse that had turned up on the stone.

There were a lot of apes but on the third item on the list she paused. Weren’t otters supposed to be smart? Having the intelligence of a five-year-old child if she remembered correctly, so they could be classed as having human like capabilities in some sense. And it would be the closest match physically to what she had found. There was still the issue of whether or not it matched up with the local wildlife though, as the town was fairly landlocked with the closest large body of water being a lake a few miles away. The canal that ran through the centre of town may be quiet but it got a lot busier before reaching the coast so she doubted any would have swum up from there. It was mutated however, so perhaps it didn’t follow the behaviours of a traditional otter. But also her theorised place of mutation was the town itself. With a sigh she switched off her phone and ran a hand through her hair. There was no point in agonising over this. She should just fish the body out from whatever corner of woods she threw it in and try the ritual. If it works, it works and she shouldn’t think about it anymore, and if it doesn't, she’ll just have to go with her original plan of procrastination and maybe murder.

“Keira! I’ve got the tea set, are you ready to go?” Keira grimaced and checked the time, realising that she had spent far longer there than intended and that her dad was probably done with what he had come here to do.

“Give me a minute!” She shuffled the photos back into the boxes and put the journal with the trinkets in her bag. Then she quickly took out the other boxes and bagged any journal she saw, grateful that she brought her black backpack, so every one of the books actually fit. Once she had gotten every journal of importance she put the boxes back and went to head out the door, where her dad was leaning, shoes already one.

“Find anything?”

“Yeah, there’s a few shoe boxes of photos and diaries in the bottom of Grandad’s wardrobe. I took the books but I’m not sure what to do with the photos.” Her Dad frowned and glanced back into the house before sighing.

“I’ll put a message out into the family group chat. I’m sure they’ll get taken before the sale of the house.” Keira nodded and followed him back to the car, once again in charge of making sure that the gate is opened and shut properly. On the journey back she found herself once again reading the journals, disappointed to find that the entry after the one described a mundane event similar to the ones beforehand. Maybe it was to reduce the chance of someone finding something important when flicking through it, or if it was opened on a random page. In the end she did end up slowly flicking through it, skim reading for anything that stood out to her as important. The only other entry of interest was towards the back end of the book, far enough that if one were to open to some random page in the middle it wouldn’t be found, but not so much that if someone went back to front it would be found immediately.

It appears that adding entries under these false dates has become a little habit of mine, albeit not one I shall curse. My previous entry of note was planned when I began to write this diary, it was the reason why I started in the beginning, this one as well was planned, but I expect that the next entries of this nature will not. It may make the strategic placing of these recounts more difficult if I were to continue writing the journals as they are meant to be written. Not doing so would be the reasonable response, but alas the niggling paranoia is still in the back of my mind. Recent events have done nothing to help. The death of my previous boss, Mr. Gallagher, was unexpected and a tragedy to many, but I suspect that it occurred under suspicious circumstances. I felt that I may be safe, as my involvement in his schemes was minimal at worse, but I still feel as though I have a target on my back. From the book that I was given at the funeral, one which has compiled a vast amount of knowledge on the strange, I have deduced that his enemies may have devised a supernatural way of killing people, and a way of framing it as an accident. Those who live in blissful ignorance of the world around them have no way of knowing of what would be a result of supernatural inference and what would truly be an accident, but the same does not go for the initiated. More and more I find myself wondering whether those at the funeral believed that it was truly an accident, or whether they stay silent due to the fear that they would be next. I suppose this secret has stayed hidden for so long in no small thanks to the trail of blood left by those at the top.

Keira shut the book after that, feeling that there would be little else to gain from it, even if she could stomach more. A quick flick through the other journals showed her that they were all written in the same style as the first, nothing like what he described as having in the entry. She could have missed it in the bedroom, but why wouldn’t he keep it with his other journals? Excess paranoia maybe, something which she may benefit from asking her grandma about or putting a message out in the family group chat. She sincerely doubted that anyone in it would be interested in it quite like she was, so it wouldn’t be that much of a risk. Or at least that was what she hoped. It would take time for responses to come in however, and even more if it was still in the bungalow, so in the meantime, the other journals would have to make do as reading material.