June 20th, 1983
Jasper and Dorothea wandered through the endless halls of the library, moving in careful silence as they searched for their records.
Every aisle looked the same.
Every turn bled into the next.
The place felt less like a room and more like something alive—something vast enough to swallow them whole and never let them find the way back out.
They needed their books.
They needed an exit.
They needed this nightmare to end.
After a while, Dorothea glanced sideways at Jasper.
"Hey," she whispered casually, though her eyes stayed alert. "Do you think Wren's a good leader?"
Jasper blinked at her, surprised by the question.
"She was," he said after a moment. "But after what happened with Arlo…" He let out a quiet sigh. "She's not really all there right now."
Dorothea nodded grimly.
"Her whole plan was shaky too," she muttered. "Pairing people off like this was already risky. Nicholas and Eliza are exes, so that's just begging for drama. And Wren going off on her own?" She shook her head. "That was just stupid."
Jasper winced slightly.
"When you put it like that… yeah," he admitted. "It wasn't exactly the best call."
He shoved his hands into his pockets, trying to sound more relaxed than he felt.
"She's been trying to hold it together," he said. "But it's obvious she's a wreck on the inside."
Dorothea didn't respond.
They kept walking.
Then both of them stopped.
A corpse lay ahead of them between the shelves.
Dismembered.
Cleanly.
The body had been cut into twenty-four separate pieces, arranged in a grisly scatter across the floor as though whoever had done it had taken their time. There was very little mess, which somehow only made it worse. No frenzy. No sloppiness. Just deliberate, precise destruction.
Jasper felt his stomach tighten.
But the most disturbing part wasn't the dismemberment.
It was the mouth.
Every tooth had been removed.
Jasper stared at the corpse, his grip tightening around the knife.
"I'm guessing the librarian did this," he muttered. "But the teeth? That's a whole different kind of freaky."
Dorothea was about to answer when she froze.
"Wait," she whispered. "I think someone's coming."
They both went still.
Footsteps echoed from somewhere deeper in the shelves.
Slow.
Measured.
Unhurried.
Not the frantic stumbling of someone trying to survive. Not the skittering scrape of a monster hunting prey. These footsteps belonged to someone with all the time in the world.
Then the figure rounded the corner.
Jasper and Dorothea's eyes traveled over him from the ground up.
Black dress shoes.
Black slacks.
And above them, something like a cloak—or at least it should have been a cloak. But the texture of it was wrong. Too smooth in some places, too taut in others, like black skin had been stretched, tailored, and draped over his body with unnatural care. White gloves covered his hands, clean and immaculate.
At his throat sat an orange bow tie.
Pinned beside it was a bright orange flower.
Dorothea's breath caught.
She knew that flower.
She had given one like it to someone before.
Then she saw his face.
And all other thoughts died.
His skin was pitch black, so dark it seemed to swallow the light around it. His open mouth consumed nearly the entire shape of his face, stretching from chin to forehead in a grotesque gaping maw. Inside were countless rows of sharp, perfectly clean teeth, packed together with impossible neatness.
And deeper still—
past the teeth, down inside the dark wet cavern of his throat—
two brown eyes rolled and sloshed against the flesh, staring out from somewhere they should never have been.
His hair was white, streaked through with strands of black like rot spreading through snow.
And in his gloved hands, he held a book.
Its spine read:
Dorothea Rose — Personal Files
"I need to give this to her…" the Curator muttered as he drifted past them. "I need to…"
He kept repeating the phrase under his breath, again and again, like a broken record trapped inside a ruined mind. And yet, for all his obsession, he didn't seem to recognize that the very person he was searching for was standing right in front of him.
Dorothea's eyes widened.
"Hey—wait," she whispered, reaching out and grabbing his hand. "I need that book."
The Curator stopped.
Slowly, his massive mouth shifted, the rows of teeth inside glinting as the brown eyes buried in his throat rolled wetly in their sockets.
"I need to give this to her," he murmured. "My one beautiful friend. I need to save her."
Dorothea froze.
"Elijah…?" she asked, her voice quieter now. "Is that you?"
Elijah Neuman.
The facility's dentist.
A gentle man, kind in the ordinary, forgettable sort of way that only became precious once it was gone. He loved flowers—always admired their colors, their shapes, their names. And among them all, his favorite had been the one Dorothea gave him herself.
An orange marigold.
The flower pinned neatly to his chest.
"I need to give this book to her…" the Curator muttered again, pulling weakly against Dorothea's grip. "I need to save her…"
Then he stumbled forward.
A few steps later, he stopped beside another corpse lying between the shelves.
Without warning, he bent down.
Carefully—almost tenderly—he set Dorothea's file on the floor.
Then, with horrifying precision, he reached into the dead man's mouth and began removing the teeth one by one.
No frenzy.
No hunger.
Just quiet, methodical work, like a professional performing a familiar task.
Jasper felt his stomach lurch.
Dorothea didn't waste the chance.
The moment Elijah's hands were occupied, Dorothea lunged forward, snatched up her book, and clutched it tightly against her chest.
For one brief second, it worked.
Then his head turned back toward her.
Not normally.
Not naturally.
It twisted a full one hundred and eighty degrees with a sickening series of cracks until that vast, tooth-filled mouth faced her again.
"I need that book," the Curator said. "Give it back."
The brown eyes sloshing in his throat fixed on her.
"Stealing from library staff is not very beautiful."
Dorothea's grip tightened.
"This book is mine," she snapped, though fear was creeping into her voice now. "It has my name on it." Her eyes searched his ruined face. "Elijah, please… recognize me."
But there was nothing in him that truly recognized her.
Only obsession.
Only instinct.
"I need to return that book," the Curator muttered. "I need to give it to my friend."
Then he moved.
His white-gloved hands shot forward with horrifying speed.
Before Dorothea could recoil, his fingers forced their way into her mouth.
Dorothea's eyes widened in pure panic.
"Get off her—!"
Jasper lunged, but he was too slow.
There was a sharp, wet crack.
The Curator tore a tooth free from Dorothea's mouth.
Pain exploded through her.
Her scream ripped through the library.
Loud.
Raw.
Uncontrolled.
And the moment the sound left her throat, all three of them knew exactly what it meant.
June 20th, 1983
Within the library, Dorothea Rose and Jasper Quinn encountered the organism later designated:
The Curator
Alongside The Librarian, it would be classified as a core member of the library's contaminated staff.