Day 399

I had to find the tiles because he had written on them.
He had inscribed an entire novella on them, every single detail surrounding his work.
A lifetime's worth of studying the root of all disease and the bastard had hidden it all.
Not for much longer though, not if this latest tip finally paid off.
I'd had several "tips" that turned out to be pure nonsense but this one held promise.

An old office block in a long forgotten industrial estate up near Rookhope.
Looking at the place you'd never think one would be anywhere near the quaint little cottages.
Each one made of the same type of stone except for the pub which was whitewashed.
Somewhere near this nothing of a town was the answer to curing all disease and I wanted it.
The tip said to "look past the church façade and name it right".

I hated riddles but this one seemed straight forward enough when I got there.
The façade turned out to be a a door hidden behind a painting of St Thomas, easy find.
It had his signature just underneath the uppermost hinge - that unmistakable scrawl.
The door pushed easily inwards (no handle in sight, nor lock - strange for someone so secretive).
I remember hearing shuffling sounds as I looked down the well used steps.

I thought for a moment that he might even be down there, that he'd faked his death and escaped.
An orange light shone down the stone hallway, the steps leading down were short and worn.
As I stepped closer (quietly as possible) the shuffling noises were clearer, no longer echoing.
They sounded more like something was scraping along concrete and came from a side passage.
Peering around the corner and into the passage I saw that I was not alone.

I had never been alone, I remember having seen these things throughout the village.
They weren't statues, they were never statues.
The plaques had dedicated them to names that meant nothing to me, here they moved.
Dragging themselves along the concrete floor, picking up a slab only to fill its place perfectly.
They moved so fluidly like flesh bolted onto a tile but their faces meant the most to me.

Every statue had this book at the end of their neck instead of a head, always closed too.
Down here all of the books were open and his words were on every lazily flipping page.
I had found it but there was no way to obtain it... so I did the next best thing.
I convinced the paster (a key figure in the village) to seal the statues down there.
The old fool was easily persuaded "for the moral good of the people".

I've spent years since finding ways to pin down these creatures and extract the pages from them.
To my absolute frustration they were far more fragile than they seemed.
One prick from a needle and they shrivelled up, books sealing themselves forever.
Nothing in his previous works talked about them or how to fix them, whatever they were.
The only pages I have were painstakingly copied by hand and spoke of some kind of root.

This root was said to exist somewhere underground, perhaps in one of the tunnels under Rookhope.
All of the major details are currently on a particularly stubborn creature, it refuses to let me see.
My last attempt involved threatening to kill another subject in front of it.
They are as heartless as they are stubborn, I need to know what they're hiding from me.
This root could be mere metres away from me, tomorrow I'll drag them with me til I find it.