Bender Inn - exterior

Journal Entry – October 02, 1871

I stood before the inn tonight for the first time—dirt in my hem, the train’s whistle still echoing in my bones. The journey west has unraveled something in me. Or perhaps revealed what was always there. My feet ache, but it is not from travel—it is from arrival. There is weight in the stillness here, not of welcome, but of warning. The Bender Inn is no home, and yet… I felt something reach for me as I approached.

The house does not look like much—two stories of worn timber and quiet windows—but it watches. I am certain of it. The lanterns on the porch flicker in defiance of the wind, as though lit not by oil, but by will. Every board, every nail seems older than it should be, as though it was built upon something long buried and never blessed.

I did not knock. I simply stepped inside.

The parlor met me like a memory I’d never made—soft light, voices low, a fire whispering secrets to itself. A hymn was rising from someone’s lips, but it felt untethered, like it had been drifting here long before the first guest arrived. Abigail sat nearest the hearth, one hand open on her lap like a waiting cup. She tilted her head at me, not in greeting—but in recognition. I wonder what it is she thinks she sees.

There is something beneath the pleasantries here. A pattern. A rhythm. The way the innkeeper’s fingers trace invisible lines on the countertop. The way the guests laugh just a beat too late. I glimpsed a folded cloth behind the stairs—its stitching formed a spiral. My own pulse changed when I saw it.

They speak of rain tomorrow. They speak of harvests and roads and neighbors. But I feel a ritual in how they stir their tea. In the pauses. In the firelight that refuses to dance in one corner of the room. Something old is circling here, and I am not merely a visitor. I am a key.

They do not know my name. Not yet.