Alex looked around the small room. The air was thick, musty, dust hanging everywhere. It had begun to choke her, and she used the crook of her arm to cover her mouth. She stepped back into a corner, reached for one of the books, and—
The whole box slid forward, then toppled to the ground. She froze, waiting for someone to come. The hall remained empty. Quietly, her mouth bone-dry and her heart pounding, she knelt down and picked up another book. When she saw what was there she breathed in sharply, the shock of it hitting her like a blow to the chest.
Names.
The encyclopedias contained names, each entry the name of another girl. And they were all girls, Madeleine and Mary and Marybeth and Marissa. Last names too, and . . .
Yes. Addresses.
These were real. As real as she was.
Alex leaned down and flipped through one of the books. Its binding was crude, red string looped through holes, but it was there. Physical. She could pick it up and flip through it in the semidarkness. And this she did, the dust clogging her airways and making her gasp silently, but she kept on turning, flipping through the pages and taking in the names of these girls. There were hundreds here, perhaps thousands, each of them arranged by the name of the town. When she was at the end she flipped back to the title page and saw what the book was called. And this, too, struck a kind of wild fear in her. A blind terror at seeing, at knowing what these books were. What they contained.
The books were called The Encyclopedia of the Dead.
Their author was Paul Fallows.