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I will have to go back to the drawing board. All those years of faultless seasons, and now we must start anew. My mother is too old for this task, and no one else is up to it. It is mine now.




JULY 1, 1981

Before, when we could send in dozens of our undesirables to the Amazement Park and let the beast take its pick, we felt safe leaving the gate open, knowing on any given day of the season, more than two of our blood stood between us and the beast.

But now we are limited once more, and faced with the dilemma of sending fourteen in at once, or sending them in two by two.

I do not like having the gate open any longer than absolutely necessary. We have something special, something precious, both inside and outside the gate. We must guard it with everything we can.

I have hired fourteen people—none are aware of their connection to our families—to “clean up the park for potential reopening.” They are under strict instructions to work in pairs, but never in a group larger than two. They will sleep in the park. My hope is that, with our labyrinth of walls and trees and paths, they will not realize what is going on until it is too late. We have also reinforced the fence along the borders of the park, and set up fourteen watch towers. One for each of the original sacrifices. Their spirit, still watching over us, keeping us safe. Sometimes I climb into the tower named for my grandmother and gaze over the park, feeling connected to her as I will the trees and bushes to grow faster, higher, thicker, so I cannot see the temple and can simply enjoy the view.




JULY 22, 1981

It went as well as can be expected. At least Ray is good at shooting to wound, not to kill, so there were no escapes and no wastes.

I am getting married this fall. I do not know what, if anything, I will tell Dick about my family or why we must always live in Asterion. How much does he really need to know? After all, I’m giving him and our future children the blessings of my grandparents. We are moving into my mother’s house. He asked where I am getting the money to redecorate it, and I laughed. It’s mine.

I’ve earned it.




JULY 22, 1988

This year the biggest challenge was finding fourteen people who accepted the job. We know they are all worthless, scrounging, contributing nothing. Drains on the society we help build and bolster. They are too good for a week of honest labor?

It makes me so angry, the entitlement, the laziness. Perhaps we will have to think of a different tactic moving forward, if these young generations are so opposed to good hard work.

I often wonder how far the net extends. Our generation is so successful, and our children, and our cousins and nieces and nephews, but we can always find someone desperate on the edges. Perhaps the blessings of the sacrifice are more powerful the closer the bloodline. Thank goodness the beast doesn’t seem to mind diluted blood.

Today I was going over how much we have done, how much we have built, how much we have given our own community, yes, but the world as a whole! If only people knew, if only our parents and grandparents could see. We have worked so hard and done so much with what they gave us. Truly, we are their dreams realized. It makes me laugh, thinking of how my mother wrote about Joel Young Jr. concocting a mix to make the sacrifices sleep. Now Young Pharmaceuticals leads the entire world of medicine. From seemingly small beginnings, our parents’ blessing creates truly astonishing results.

You wouldn’t know it to speak to some of the others, though. Susan Stratton showed up on my doorstep yesterday, a drunken mess. She acts as though it is such a burden, having read Tommy Callas’s book, having shown it to her own daughter. It is a privilege. I would do anything to read the book, to understand more fully what our grandparents did for us.

But no, there she was, crying about whether the cost is worth it, about whether we have the right, about that little girl she never even met or knew.

If we didn’t have the right, we wouldn’t have the responsibility. I reminded her of her children’s degrees, their places at tables in major businesses, courts, Congress. We deserve those roles, and we get them, and we do good with them.

Is the equivalent of a life every six months really such a sacrifice in the grand scheme of things? I do not think it is too much to ask, and I told her so. Besides which, when has she ever done more than attend our meetings, a sullen, cow-eyed presence?

Still. It reminds me that I was wrong to want to tell everyone. Best to keep the information close. Contained. Who knows what other people would do if they knew, what they would decide. I have seen Dick try to get his hands on this journal. Casually ask me what I’m up to when I meet with the families. As if it is any of his damn business what I do with my time, in my house, in my town. He’s lucky I let him stay.

I will keep an eye on Susan.




JULY 22, 1995

Tragedy this year, as Susan somehow got inside the gate during the season. No one saw her go in. We only knew when her daughter Karen reported her absence and we realized the beast was behind on its eating schedule—which meant it had consumed someone else. Susan is the only candidate.

It’s a mystery, and a tragedy. I already said it was a tragedy, look at me, so upset I’m repeating myself.

Well. Nothing to do but move forward. Everything else went smoothly.




FEBRUARY 1, 2000

That bitch. That absolute bitch. I finally cracked the combination to the safe—a task that took me years!—so that I could read the rest of my heritage, my inheritance, and it’s gone. The book is gone. That night, Susan must have had it with her. Had it on her. I should have known when I saw her slinking out of the spa. Why else would she be there? But I cannot tell anyone without admitting that I threw her into the park. I did it for us, for Asterion, to protect us all, but will they see it that way? Of course not.