Chapter 21 : The 1864 Papers
The Mystic Falls Historical Society occupied a Victorian house on the edge of the town square, all gingerbread trim and dusty windows. The sign out front promised "Preserving Our Heritage Since 1912," but the real treasure was in the basement.
I'd called ahead, claiming college essay research on Civil War-era Virginia. Mrs. Chen, the archivist, had sounded delighted. Apparently, teenagers requesting archive access was rare enough to be exciting.
"Most young people just use the internet," she said when I arrived, leading me down narrow stairs into the basement. "It's refreshing to see someone who values primary sources."
The archives were exactly what I'd expected: rows of filing cabinets, shelves of leather-bound journals, boxes labeled with dates going back to the town's founding. The smell was old paper and dust and the particular mustiness of secrets kept too long.
"The Founding Family records are in section C." Mrs. Chen gestured toward the far corner. "Civil War materials are mostly in the Gilbert and Salvatore collections. The Lockwoods donated their papers in 1952, but they're less... detailed."
Less detailed because the Lockwoods have werewolf secrets to hide.
"Thank you. I'll start with the Salvatore collection."
She left me alone with a promise of tea and a reminder that the archives closed at five. I waited until her footsteps faded up the stairs, then got to work.
The Salvatore collection filled three filing cabinets. Most of it was mundane—property records, business correspondence, the paperwork of a wealthy founding family. But tucked between tax documents and livestock inventories, I found what I was looking for.
Personal Journal of Giuseppe Salvatore, 1863-1864.
The leather binding cracked as I opened it. The handwriting was cramped, formal, the script of a man who'd learned penmanship as a discipline rather than an art.
March 14, 1864 The attacks continue. Three more bodies found near the old mill, drained of blood. The Council convened in emergency session. We have identified the source: the creatures masquerading as human among us. Katherine Pierce and her companions.
My hands were steady, but my heart wasn't.
April 2, 1864 We have obtained a supply of verbena officinalis from the Bennett witch. The herb repels the creatures, prevents their mind control. Distribution to Council families has begun in secret. My sons remain ignorant. Stefan is too trusting; Damon too enchanted by that Pierce woman.
The entries continued, documenting the gathering paranoia, the secret preparations, the slow realization that vampires had infiltrated Mystic Falls' highest society.
September 24, 1864 The roundup is planned for tomorrow night. Twenty-seven creatures identified, including the Pierce woman. We will burn them in Fell's Church, seal the survivors in the tomb beneath. The Bennett witch has agreed to ensure the seal. My sons—God forgive me—must be protected from themselves. If Damon has been turned by that woman's blood, I will do what must be done.
I photographed every page.
The journal painted Giuseppe Salvatore as a zealot, a man who'd led his town in vampire hunting and been willing to sacrifice his own children for the cause. Stefan and Damon had been human once, turned during the chaos of the roundup—whether by choice or force, the journal didn't specify.
But they had been there. They had been part of this history.
And Katherine Pierce had been their connection.
I moved to the Gilbert collection. The Gilbert family had kept more detailed records—multiple generations of meticulous note-takers, probably a family trait that explained Elena's journaling habit.
Council Minutes, October 1864 The tomb beneath Fell's Church is sealed. Twenty-six vampires contained, held in suspended state by the Bennett spell. The creatures will neither die nor wake unless the seal is broken. Katherine Pierce was not among those captured—she escaped before the roundup. Her current whereabouts are unknown.
Twenty-six vampires. Sealed for 145 years. Starving.
I thought about what that meant. A century and a half without blood, without movement, without anything but darkness. Whatever emerged from that tomb wouldn't be the people who went in. It would be monsters, driven mad by deprivation, desperate for anything that could feed them.
And Damon is coming to open it.
In the show, Damon had believed Katherine was in the tomb. He'd spent decades trying to free her, only to discover she'd never been there at all. The tomb had opened anyway, releasing the starving vampires into Mystic Falls.
The Council's protocols couldn't account for that. They were preparing for individual threats, random attacks. Not two hundred and sixty years of compressed hunger erupting all at once.
Mrs. Chen appeared at the stairs with a cup of tea. "Finding everything you need?"
"Yes, ma'am. This is incredibly helpful."
The tea was lukewarm and too sweet, but her kindness was genuine. I thanked her warmly, and she beamed before returning upstairs.
I spent another two hours photographing documents. Council meeting minutes. Founding family correspondence. Maps showing the location of Fell's Church and the tunnels beneath.
The tomb entrance was in the church basement, accessible through a door hidden behind the altar. The Bennett spell required specific conditions to break—a comet, Bennett blood, and something else the records didn't specify clearly.
Emily Bennett's crystal. That's what Damon needs. That's what he's coming to find.
The show's plot crystallized in historical fact. Emily Bennett had been Katherine's handmaiden, a witch who'd sealed the tomb at the Founding Families' request. She'd hidden her grimoire—probably containing the spell to open the tomb—somewhere in Mystic Falls.
Damon would come looking for it. Stefan would follow, drawn by Elena's resemblance to Katherine. The brothers' century-old conflict would play out in Mystic Falls once again, with Elena and everyone else caught in the crossfire.
Unless I change the script.
I gathered my notes and headed upstairs. Mrs. Chen waved goodbye from behind her desk, already absorbed in another dusty volume.
The drive past Fell's Church was deliberate. The old building sat on a hill outside town, white-painted, traditional, the kind of church that appeared on postcards. Nothing about it suggested the horror sealed beneath.
I slowed as I passed, studying the structure. The basement windows were boarded up. The grounds were overgrown. No one had held services here in decades—the congregation had moved to a newer building in town, and Fell's Church had become a historical landmark.
A historical landmark with twenty-six starving vampires underneath.
Fifty-seven days until Stefan arrives.
The countdown felt different now. Heavier. I knew more than I had before—more about the history, more about the threats, more about what the Council had been fighting for generations.
But knowledge without preparation was just worry. And I was done worrying.
The truck headed home through the summer twilight. I had photographs of 145-year-old documents, a map to a vampire tomb, and a timeline that was running out faster than I wanted to admit.
Tomorrow: find the tomb entrance. Assess the seal. Create contingency plans.
The war was coming. But at least now I knew where the bodies were buried.
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