508: The Pilgrim

Synopsis

Flipping through Emily Marnsarn's ledger, the group finds an entry dated February 8, 1914: a long-term room check-in under the name Fiona Druncard, with no check-out. But when the others look, they see "Edward Furrow" or just a blur. Dom holds up the black mirror and the true entry appears between Edward Furrow and Henry Teach. He is struck by a splitting headache and flashes of fire, screams and a green rift of light, and collapses. Simeon talks him down with psychoanalysis. Passing the mirror over the briefcase in Ezra's hand reveals more: a galaxy swirling inside it, an old leather-bound journal at its center, and combination wheels marked with strange symbols. Opened normally, the case is empty. Worried that the mirror is wearing on Dom, Billy takes charge of it.

Simeon makes an extreme success on his Latin and translates Hannah's parchment scrap. It is an excerpt from a commentary on an older, unnamed text that speaks of a pilgrim tasked with finding "the hollow," a realm or condition of great power and danger. Reaching it demands a sacrifice whose form is unclear and "may shift with the seeker." The unprepared find "only death, madness, or their hopes undone," and the pilgrim's path "seems less a journey than a riddle, its solution known, if at all, to one alone." He also reads the title Fiona mentioned, Proverbia Peregrini, as "Proverbs of the Never-Whence Pilgrim." Dom privately reads Fiona's letters. They are full of sorrow and apology: she is sorry it took her so long to reach out, Sam is still not safe, and she asks him to hold on until she can safely tell him where she is.

After leaving Hobo Joe, who has moved into their room at the inn, the group heads through heavy snow to the Witch House. There Maloney reopens the shop for the burnt desk they had bought along with the briefcase. Seen through the mirror, the desk appears whole and new, with six symbols carved into it. Entered in order on the briefcase's six wheels, they open it onto a dark void. A coin dropped in lands on solid darkness about ten feet down. Dom is lowered head-first and spots a small lit desk with a journal on it. Timeon then "scoops" him into the case, and he falls and hits his head. Dom reaches the desk, but a glance through the mirror at the edge of the light breaks his mind and he flees in terror. Timeon puts on the gauntlets of ogre strength and lowers Ezra on a rope. Ezra tackles Dom and slaps him back to his senses. The two grab the journal, the pen and the ink well as silhouettes in black patent-leather shoes, with pinprick firelight eyes, close in, creeping forward whenever they aren't watched. Gray, soot-covered hands grab at them, and calm, conversational voices urge them to stay. Timeon hauls them both out, and Dom slams the case shut and spins the dials. Back in the quiet Witch House, Dom opens the journal. Its first page reads "[Applegarth?] was here... but I fear there is something here, something real, there's a truth here that haunts me." Beneath it, in handwriting Dom recognizes, is the title Proverbs of the Never-Whence Pilgrim.

Funny Moments

• The ledger name the others see becomes "Edward Furlong": "Oh crap, the Terminators got him."
• Timeon jumps into the open, empty briefcase: "Get out of there. I paid $150 for that thing." "And a desk."
• "Show me the beast."
• "Should we totem pole into the briefcase?"
• Timeon's idea of lowering Dom is to drop the case over his head "like the absolute best magicians," and Dom falls ten feet onto his head. "So that's what it felt like to push someone into another dimension."
• "What the hell are you doing at the bottom of a well?"
• "Where's Tallahassee when we need him?"
• Wearing the gauntlets, Timeon lowers Ezra "like a small boy down a well."
• "Born from the case like a baby boy."

Notable Quotes

• "The pilgrim's path seems less a journey than a riddle, its solution known, if at all, to one alone." —Simeon's translation of the scrap
• "The unprepared, it warns, find only death, madness, or their hopes undone." —Simeon's translation of the scrap
• "You saw the monsters at the fall of New Jerusalem, but those are things of flesh and bone... this is just wrong." —the Keeper, to Ezra
• "It's not like a creepy evil voice, and it almost makes it worse. It's just like normal conversation." —the Keeper, on the figures in the dark
• "There's a truth here that haunts me." —the journal's first page