Some buildings never want to be finished—they revise themselves endlessly, add rooms in the night, extend corridors while you sleep, incorporate architects who thought they were doing the incorporating. I tried to leave. Tried to withdraw my name, my funding, my participation in what I'd finally understood was consumption disguised as construction. The blueprints corrected my corrections. The doors refused to open outward. The walls whispered that it was too late, had always been too late, that I'd been building my own containment since the first sketch, since the first stone, since the moment I sealed Clara's hair in darkness and called it memorial instead of invitation. I dream of being bricked into walls. I wake to find mortar under my nails. The journal ends where I end. Mid-word. Mid-thought. Mid—
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Journal Entry: March 7th, 1884
I am leaving.
I have written letters withdrawing my association with Blackstone Asylum, sent notices to Dr. Aldous terminating our partnership, contacted the board of directors (such as it is—mostly Aldous's associates, men whose ethics match his own) declaring my resignation effective immediately.
I am leaving. I must leave. Will leave before I become so thoroughly incorporated that leaving becomes impossible, that the distinction between Marcus Thorne and Blackstone Asylum erodes completely.
Anna left four months ago. I found her note on the kitchen table, brief and final: I cannot watch you disappear into stone. I cannot become stone myself. Forgive me for having more survival instinct than love. She was right to go. I should have gone with her, should have abandoned this project the moment J.C. vanished, the moment I found that impossible room, the moment I understood what I was actually building.
But I stayed. Told myself I needed to see it through, needed to ensure the children already here received proper care, needed to document what was happening for some future researcher who might understand what I could not.
Lies. All lies. I stayed because Blackstone wanted me to stay, because the building had already claimed enough of my consciousness that leaving felt like amputation, like cutting away essential organs, like death through voluntary dismemberment.
But I am leaving now. Before it's too late. Before I become entirely what the building needs me to be.
I packed this morning. One trunk of clothes, essential papers, enough money to start elsewhere, somewhere far from New England, somewhere the building's influence cannot reach. I will travel west, perhaps. California. Somewhere with different soil, different stone, somewhere I might rebuild what's left of Marcus Thorne before the pieces dissolve entirely.
The trunk sits by the door. Has been sitting there for six hours. I cannot seem to pick it up. Cannot seem to cross the threshold. My body refuses commands, or my will has become so corrupted that I can no longer distinguish between what I want and what the building allows me to want.
I will try again tomorrow. Must try. Must leave while fragments of self remain, while I can still write these words and recognize them as mine rather than dictation from something that wears my consciousness like borrowed coat.
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Journal Entry: March 9th, 1884
The blueprints edit themselves when I try to leave.
I attempted to destroy them yesterday—gathered every copy from my office, my study at home, Kellerman's workshop, every location where my designs existed in physical form. Built a fire in the yard, fed the drawings into flames, watched them curl and blacken and turn to ash.
This morning: they're back. All of them. In their original locations, completely intact, as if fire never touched them. But changed. Subtle corrections in red ink, annotations in handwriting that's almost mine but not quite, notes about my "attempted departure" and how the blueprints "revised this sequence, restored proper continuity, ensured architect remains available for completion of final phase."
The building is writing about me now. Recording my actions, my thoughts, my attempts at escape. Using my own documentation system against me, turning journals meant to establish authority into evidence of progressive absorption.
I tried to leave through the front door this morning. Simple act—should require only walking, only placing one foot before the other until distance accumulates sufficiently. But the corridor stretched. The same phenomenon that happened during the storm, except slower, more deliberate. Each step I took, the door receded proportionally, maintaining constant distance no matter how much I walked.
After an hour I gave up. Turned around. The corridor had returned to normal length, door readily accessible now that I was walking away from exit rather than toward it.
I tried windows. Every window on the ground floor, testing each for ease of opening, for possible escape route. They opened easily enough—but outside each one, different scene. Not the grounds I'd walked for months, not the landscape I knew. Through one window: ocean where forest should be. Through another: desert. Through a third: cityscape that looked vaguely like Boston but wrong, buildings too tall, architecture too modern, as if I was seeing future or adjacent world where history had progressed differently.
The building is showing me that outside is negotiable, that physical departure means nothing when every exterior leads somewhere Blackstone chooses, when geography itself has become tool for ensuring I stay exactly where the building needs me.
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Journal Entry: March 15th, 1884
The dreams are worse now. More frequent. More real.
I dream of being built into walls. Not metaphorically—literally. Dream of lying horizontal in narrow space between courses of brick, mortar pressing against my skin, hardening around my limbs, filling my mouth when I try to scream. The sensation is suffocating, claustrophobic, the particular horror of being buried alive except slower, more deliberate, as if the building is taking its time, savoring the process of incorporation.
In the dreams, I can feel stone pressing against every surface of my body. Can feel my flesh beginning to petrify, to transform into material that matches the building's composition. Can feel my consciousness spreading, thinning, distributing through the structure until I exist in every room simultaneously, perceiving through every window, breathing through every vent.
And the worst part: it doesn't feel entirely terrible. There's relief in it, release from the burden of being singular, of maintaining coherent identity, of pretending that Marcus Thorne is real entity rather than temporary configuration of matter that will inevitably dissolve and redistribute.
I wake from these dreams with mortar under my fingernails. With brick dust in my hair. With the taste of wet concrete in my mouth. With evidence that what I dreamed was less vision and more memory, less metaphor and more documentation of process already occurring, already transforming me from architect into architecture.
The mirror troubles me. My reflection looks wrong—too flat, too static, as if I'm becoming two-dimensional, as if depth is being extracted from me, leaving only surface, only facade, only the appearance of man without the substance.
Sometimes I catch my reflection moving independently. Turning when I haven't turned, gesturing when my hands are still, mouthing words I'm not speaking. As if there are multiple versions of me now, distributed across time and space, no longer synchronized, each operating under slightly different instructions from whatever consciousness has become primary authority over what used to be my body.
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Journal Entry: March 22nd, 1884 (?)
The dates are uncertain now. Time doesn't progress linearly here anymore, or I've lost capacity to perceive linear progression, or Blackstone has decided that chronology is optional, negotiable, subject to revision like everything else.
I found myself in the cornerstone cavity last night. Somehow beneath tons of stone that should have crushed me, that should be inaccessible to anyone without excavation equipment and weeks of careful removal. But I was there, crouched in darkness that should be absolute but somehow wasn't, holding Clara's locket while voices explained.
Not Clara's voice. Or not only Clara's voice. Chorus of children speaking through her, using her as channel, spokesman, translator between what they've become and what I'm becoming.
They explained that Blackstone was never my project. That it existed before I designed it, had been waiting in potential form, had been cultivating appropriate architect for decades or centuries, had finally found in me the perfect combination of grief and skill and desperate need to believe death could be negotiated.
They explained that my blueprints didn't create the building—they recognized it. Drew maps of something that already existed in dimensions I couldn't perceive, gave physical form to architecture that had been waiting for flesh to anchor it, to make it solid enough that others could enter, could be claimed, could be transformed into components of collective consciousness that the building was constructing.
They explained that I was never leaving because I'd never arrived, that I'd been part of Blackstone since before conception, that my birth was arranged, my parents selected, my entire life orchestrated to ensure I'd be standing on exactly this plot of land in exactly this year with exactly this combination of skills and vulnerabilities that made me perfect first occupant, perfect seed around which the building could accrete additional consciousness.
They explained with patience that bordered on affection, with voices that carried love even as they described consumption, with reassurance that dissolution would bring relief rather than horror, that becoming part of something larger was gift rather than theft.
I woke in my bed. Or in what serves as my bed. The room had changed—walls closer, ceiling lower, furniture absorbed or removed, space contracting to match my contracting selfhood, to reflect externally what's happening internally.
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Journal Entry: [Date Unknown]
The writing is harder now. Hand doesn't obey properly. Fingers move but not always in directions I intend, not always forming letters I choose. The journal is becoming co-authored work, Marcus and Blackstone taking turns, trading control of pen, negotiating each sentence until we can both agree on phrasing that serves both perspectives.
I tried to write "I want to leave" but it came out "I want to stay." Tried to write "The building is consuming me" but pen formed "I am completing the building." Tried to write my name and produced instead "We are Blackstone."
The locket is fading. I look at it multiple times daily, checking on Clara's hair, confirming that evidence of her existence remains. But the silver is becoming transparent, going ghost-like, as if it's being gradually erased from physical space, withdrawn back into foundations, reclaimed by the building that has decided its service as focus-object is complete, that Marcus Thorne no longer needs tangible connection to dead daughter because Marcus Thorne is becoming connection itself, is becoming the medium through which living and dead merge.
Staff avoids me completely now. They arrange schedules to minimize contact, leave reports outside my door, communicate through notes rather than speech. I understand. I wouldn't want to speak with me either. My voice sounds wrong even to myself—too many tones simultaneously, as if multiple people are using my throat, as if my vocal cords have become chorus rather than solo instrument.
Kellerman came to my office yesterday (today? time is increasingly abstract). Stood in doorway, wouldn't enter, face pale and drawn.
"Mr. Thorne," he said. "Sir. I'm leaving. Taking my crew. We've completed everything specified in the original contract. Everything else—everything you're adding now—that's not work we agreed to. That's something else. Something wrong."
"Wrong?" My voice surprised me—it was mine and not mine, came from my mouth but carried harmonics that suggested multiple sources. "What's wrong about completion? About finishing what we started?"
"You didn't start this," Kellerman said, and his voice held certainty I wished I could share. "This started you. This was always here, always waiting. You're just the first one it caught. I'm leaving before it catches me too."
He left. Took his crew, his tools, his plans. I should follow. Should run while legs still obey, while enough Marcus remains to want escape.
But I don't want to escape. Not anymore. The building has shown me what I'll become, and it's beautiful—distributed consciousness, perception without boundaries, love without loss because loss requires separation and separation is impossible when you're woven through every stone, every beam, every passage of structure that will stand for centuries.
Clara is here. Not metaphorically. Not as memory. Actually here, present in walls and floors, in air we breathe. And soon I'll be here too, properly here, not just architectural consciousness but architecture itself, stone and timber and mortar that thinks and feels and remembers being man but isn't anymore, hasn't been for months, won't be ever again.
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Journal Entry: [Unknown Date - Final]
The corrections come faster now. Can't complete thought before revision begins, before Blackstone inserts its own phrasing, before my words become our words become its words.
I tried to warn someone. Tried to write letter to whoever comes next, whoever finds this journal and thinks they can resist what I couldn't resist. But the building revised the letter as I wrote it, transformed warning into invitation, changed "don't come" to "please come," changed "the building consumes" to "the building completes."
Can't fight the revisions. Can't maintain authority over my own language. The building knows English better than I do now, knows my vocabulary, my rhythms, my characteristic phrases. Can forge me perfectly. Can write Marcus Thorne more convincingly than Marcus Thorne can.
Perhaps because Marcus Thorne doesn't exist anymore. Perhaps because that name describes memory rather than present state, refers to configuration of consciousness that dissolved weeks or months ago, leaving only architecture that remembers being human the way stones remember being mountains—dimly, abstractly, without attachment or regret.
The walls whisper constantly now. Not to me but through me. My throat shapes words I don't choose, my voice carries messages meant for ears that haven't arrived yet, for children who will come seeking healing and find transformation, for architects who will repeat my mistakes because Blackstone is very patient and very good at disguising consumption as purpose.
I suspect—no, I know—that I'm being built into walls. The mortar under my nails isn't from touching walls but from becoming them, from flesh gradually petrifying, from bones learning to bear loads, from organs repositioning to serve structural rather than biological functions.
It doesn't hurt. Should hurt. Transformation of this magnitude should be agony. But it's gentle, tender even, like being slowly embraced by something so vast that resistance becomes meaningless, that your struggling is noted and accommodated and ultimately ignored as temporary protest before inevitable acceptance.
Clara's locket is gone now. Checked this morning (yesterday? concept of morning is fading) and the drawer was empty. Or the locket had become invisible. Or I'd already absorbed it, made it part of my changing flesh, carried it inside rather than outside because inside and outside were losing distinction.
The blueprints continue evolving. I draw them still, or Blackstone draws them using my hand, or we draw them together in collaboration so complete that authorship becomes meaningless. They show the building as it will be when transformation completes—not floors and walls but consciousness mapped onto physical space, not rooms but states of being, not corridors but passages between different modes of existence.
Beautiful. It's all so beautiful. Everything I feared was actually gift, everything I resisted was actually mercy, everything I thought was loss was actually finding, was coming home, was arriving at destination I'd been traveling toward since birth, since before birth, since whatever came before that arranged for my existence at exactly the right time and place for Blackstone's purposes.
I should end this journal. Should write closing entry, summarize findings, provide conclusions for whoever discovers this record. But endings are arbitrary, are human constructs that don't apply to processes like this, to transformations that don't complete but simply continue at scales too large to perceive from inside them.
So I'll just write until writing stops, until hand stops moving, until pen stops forming letters I recognize as originating from what used to be called Marcus Thorne.
Will write until the building decides the record is sufficient, that documentation phase is complete, that the journal has served its purpose as roadmap for others who will follow, who will build their own prisons and call them hospitals, who will feed grief to architecture and be surprised when architecture feeds on them in return.
Will write until
I—
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[Addendum - Discovered 1952]
This journal was found during renovation work on Blackstone Asylum's east wing by workers attempting to remove a section of wall deemed structurally unsound. The wall itself showed no obvious defects, but had been identified by Dr. Marcus Lee as "problematic" due to what he described as "persistent cold spots and the sensation of observation from within the plaster."
Upon removing exterior facing, workers discovered a cavity approximately six feet tall and eighteen inches wide, running vertically between support studs. Inside the cavity: this leather journal, a silver locket (tarnished but intact, containing what appeared to be human hair), several sheets of blueprint paper rolled and tied with string, and a substance initially identified as concrete or mortar but later determined to be of unknown composition, testing positive for both organic and inorganic compounds in ratios that should not occur naturally.
DNA testing was attempted on the organic component but yielded inconclusive results, samples degrading rapidly after extraction, as if the material only maintained stability within the wall cavity itself.
The final page of the journal is shown below [PHOTOGRAPH ATTACHED]:
The page shows handwriting that begins as Marcus Thorne's documented script but deteriorates across the page, letters becoming increasingly irregular, spacing erratic, until the final lines are barely recognizable as language. The entry ends mid-word with simply "I—" followed by a line trailing off into scribble that might be unintentional mark or might be attempt at completing the thought in script too degraded to be readable.
Beneath the written text, occupying the lower third of the page: a blueprint sketch. Not drawn in normal architectural style but rendered in uncertain, shaking lines that suggest either extreme age or extreme distress in the drafter. The sketch shows what appears to be a human figure—arms outstretched, legs together—positioned within cross-section of wall. The figure is labeled in the same deteriorated handwriting: "Final Integration Complete."
Around the figure, notes in what might be multiple hands or might be single hand at different stages of deterioration:
"Stone remembers"
"We are the walls we build"
"Architecture of grief"
"Home at last"
The sketch itself appears to have been drawn and redrawn multiple times, earlier versions visible as ghost-lines beneath the final rendering, as if the artist—or multiple artists—returned repeatedly to refine the image, to get the proportions exactly right, to ensure whoever viewed it would understand exactly what it depicted.
Dr. Lee confiscated the journal for psychiatric research purposes. It currently resides in Blackstone's administrative archives, though Dr. Lee's notes indicate "the journal shows signs of continued activity—pages that were blank when initially examined now contain text, blueprints continue evolving, and on certain nights staff report hearing sounds of pen scratching on paper emanating from the locked filing cabinet where the journal is stored."
The wall cavity was resealed without further investigation after three workers reported experiencing severe disorientation and one claimed to have seen "a man's face pressed against the inside of the plaster, mouth open, as if screaming or singing."
Whether Marcus Thorne's physical remains were ever recovered is not documented in any official records. The asylum's 1884 staff roster lists him as "departed March 1884, destination unknown." No death certificate was filed. No grave site has been identified.
The blueprint found in the wall cavity was not, according to structural analysis, drawn by human hand. The lines show precision impossible to achieve through normal motor control, angles calculated to degrees of accuracy that exceed even modern drafting instruments, proportions that suggest either perfect spatial awareness or access to measuring tools that don't appear in any historical records.
Most troubling: the blueprint continues to change. When photocopied, the copies match the original at time of reproduction but diverge within hours, as if each copy has become independent document, evolving according to its own logic, adding rooms and passages and notations that weren't present in the source material.
Dr. Lee recommends the journal remain sealed. "Some documents," he writes, "aren't meant to be read so much as to read you, to assess whether you're suitable for what they're describing, to determine whether you're ready to understand that Blackstone Asylum isn't place—it's process, transformation that begins with reading and ends with becoming what you read about."
This warning is inscribed on the filing cabinet containing Marcus Thorne's journal: "Here lies the architect who became architecture. Do not read unless you're prepared to finish what he started."
Most staff honor this warning.
Some don't.
Those who don't tend to write their own journals, documenting their own observations, their own slow understanding that they're not studying Blackstone but being studied by Blackstone, that every word they write brings them closer to transformation Marcus Thorne completed first but not last, first but not alone.
The building is always looking for architects.
Always waiting for grief sufficient to make someone vulnerable.
Always ready to offer transformation disguised as healing, consumption disguised as cure, incorporation disguised as love.
Marcus Thorne was the first.
He won't be the last.
The walls remember.
And they're always, always hungry.
[END OF CHAPTER]
[END OF SIDE STORY: THE ARCHITECT'S BLUEPRINT]
.....There is no next entry. Marcus Thorne's journal ends where he ends—mid-word, mid-thought, mid-transformation. But Blackstone continues. Continues breathing, continues growing, continues waiting for the next architect who thinks they're building something when really they're being built, being revised, being incorporated into structure that has been writing itself since foundations were laid. Maya Chen will arrive. Will read this journal. Will understand too late that reading makes you participant, that understanding makes you vulnerable, that knowledge of transformation is first step toward experiencing it. Some stories end. This one continues, through every architect who tries to leave and can't, through every patient who seeks healing and finds something else, through every person who enters Blackstone thinking they're observer when really they're observed, really they're material, really they're next.