After the night of the Manuscript party, Darlington awoke burdened by shame. Alex Stern showed him the murky report she had filed, sparing him some humiliation, and he felt relieved not to face Dean Sandow with the worst details. He showered, made Alex breakfast, and returned with her to the Hutch to collect his Mercedes, then drove the old car back to Black Elm. There, he busied himself with chores—composting pumpkins and raking leaves—feeling the house’s growing emptiness.

Darlington reflected on Black Elm’s origins and the Arlington family’s rubber-boot fortune, which had withered as New Haven’s industries bled out. He recalled trying on the old, dust-choked boots as a boy and later linking their pallor to his first sight of a Gray after taking Hiram’s elixir. The house, built as an imitation English manor, had grown authentic in its decay. His childhood centered on his grandfather, Bernadette the housekeeper, and rigorous tutoring intended to make him a capable world citizen.

His parents—whom his grandfather called the Layabouts—visited irregularly, angling to sell Black Elm as Westville gentrified. Dinner debates escalated from feigned consideration to bitter arguments. Darlington later understood his grandfather prolonged these encounters out of loneliness. After each visit, his grandfather warned Darlington that his parents would try to take the house and urged him to prevent it.

As his grandfather grew ill, the Layabouts moved in, replacing Bernadette and filling Black Elm with diet foods, cleaners, and real-estate schemes. The house filled with medical equipment as his grandfather declined. Paranoid and fearful, his grandfather claimed others were listening and insisted the family meant to keep him alive to control the estate. Soon after, he slipped into a coma and died, triggering whispered conflicts and frantic logistics from Darlington’s father.

Darlington immersed himself in the Peabody Museum, Yale’s libraries, and the Beinecke’s occult holdings, chasing a belief that there was more to life than death. The attorney explained the estate’s constraints: the money would go to his father, while Black Elm would be held in trust for Darlington until he turned eighteen. His mother pressed to sell the house to Yale and move him to New York, arguing the structure was a financial drain and that his college funds were meager. Darlington refused, determined to keep Black Elm.

Left alone when his parents abruptly departed, he maintained a sparse routine, paying bills, attending school, and surviving on cheap food. When the power was cut, he endured six weeks in the cold, sleeping under piles of blankets and old clothes. At Christmas, he barred his returning parents from entering. He found multiple small jobs—at the luncheonette, in the park, at Lyric Hall—and sold attic items to keep the lights on, never inviting friends and feeling bound to keep the house alive.

As fear about the future mounted, he dove deeper into occult studies. In early July, after weeks of research and procurement, he brewed an elixir over thirty-six hours. Aware of the danger but bereft of other beliefs, he drank it. The next morning, the UPS man found him collapsed, bleeding from eyes and mouth. Darlington awoke in a hospital to Dean Elliot Sandow, who offered him an opportunity. Magic had nearly killed him, but it ultimately brought him into Lethe’s world.