Story Codex

To be anywhere but this trip.

Being his father's project.

Secret / Buried Pressure

He answered his name from the dark on the first night, and ate the cornbread in Sweetwater while his father prayed upstairs. He is marked; the pull sits in his stomach like a hook.

Secret / Buried Pressure

Sweetwater took him, breaking the truce. A ghul wears his face, with his silver lauburu, and calls itself "Jake": it meets the campers in the street on arrival and sits at the diner's long table.

Josu knows him in Dana's supper photographs; the voice calls "Aita" from the dark during the siege. In the warren the thing in his face begs "Aita, again, it hurts"; Josu strikes twice and is killed, and Wes puts it down with one shot (The True Dawn). What was left is buried at Iturri beside Josu.

Steer them to Sweetwater.

Secret / Buried Pressure

Never unlaces his boots. Mostly looks normal; in flashes he looks like he is acting: a smile that comes a beat late, stays a beat long, aimed at the wrong person. Dana excuses it kindly; Wes doesn't buy it.

Found by Duke at the end of the deep tracks in The Survivor; laughs too long at "you'd call them ghosts" in Convergence; at home with Mae and Earl in Sweetwater. At Iturri's stones in Iturri he bares a hoof, drops his face, invokes the agreement and threatens "the boy at the creek in April". Josu's one barrel drops him; he pleads, then goads, for a second blow while Leah argues, and burns out within minutes to a black husk by the stone.

A story she can't tell.

Secret / Buried Pressure

She has never lost someone she brought along.

Jumps early, each leap resting on a case she covered (the Uintas, 2009: a man luring hikers with a tape recorder); Hassan pokes the hole. Reads the Theo at supper as concussed and goes back to her case in the barn. Strikes one that begs in Theo's voice and lets it burn (One Hand). Airs the sheriff's version and keeps the valley off the air, because the search is how it feeds (North and a Little East).

Keep Mae's town fed and warned.

Secret / Buried Pressure

Awake in daylight. Nobody can see under the blanket.

Gives one of three reasons for the empty town on arrival and says the last deputy "never did leave" (ch7). Takes the Theo-ghul home from supper (Boots at Supper). Watches the strangers walk the town by daylight; unsure he is one of them, they leave him, and the rocker is empty when they drive out (Rules Without Reasons). Counts Iturri's axes from the ridge before dawn (Mae's Offer), so Mae knows the raid is coming.

Taken from the Sweetwater Pens in the first week ("we take the oldest first") and eaten. Eight days later a ghul wearing his face walked past the barn door, smiling a smile that wasn't his. His wedding ring is in the smokehouse.

Bring his son home and get him back.

Losing Adam the way he lost Rania Haddad.

Secret / Buried Pressure

He has never told Adam how Rania died.

That the creek didn't take Ander.

Meets the fugitives on the ridge and makes every stranger bare their feet at the stones. When Caleb threatens "the boy at the creek in April", Josu fires one barrel; Wes stops the second. Knows "Jake" in Dana's photos as Ander. Learns that his father Mikel killed Yusuf Nasser for Mae, and from Hassan that a worn face means the dead. In the warren the thing in Ander's face begs for another blow; Josu strikes twice and it kills him (The True Dawn). Buried at Iturri; the report calls it a drowning.

Not being in control. Afraid the way hunters are: cleans the rifle twice, won't sleep, holds on to "lion" because a lion can be shot.

Answered a voice on the first night, thinking it was Wes. Lets go of the lion against the evidence; carries the rifle "in case" to Sweetwater and calls the county from the diner; shoots the painter twice and is taken alive, legs broken, chained in the barn and then the cellar under the church. Holds the cellar stairs with single shots, once each, while the others climb out, and dies there in Every Prayer.

The day a rule fails.

Secret / Buried Pressure

Her grandmother, a Jewish woman from Bayonne who married into Iturri, was 97 when Sweetwater first came to the stones in 1971; she called them shedim, said they couldn't die and gave the rules. Everyone said she had lost her mind. Leah, then 23, believed her. Since 1971 Iturri has kept a truce with Sweetwater, sending marked strangers back over the ridge, nine in all. In 1987, on Mae's threat of a child every winter, her husband Mikel killed Yusuf Nasser on the path at the dawn prayer; she has known for thirty-nine years and kept his prayer beads on her door nail. She rings the Angelus because it is Iturri's dusk-and-dawn signal; she married into a Catholic village and keeps its ways.

Argues at the stones that shedim don't die and the strangers must go back, until Caleb burns out in front of her: "They die." Confesses the truce and then Yusuf's killing. Gives Hassan all of Iturri at first light. Stays up top when the raid falls into the warren, watches the marked walk circles, and brings the herders to break the old ditch at dawn. Strikes Mae once with a lambing knife at the grave mouths (One Hand). Rings the Angelus herself afterward, for the nine too, and brings Peio to Reno to return Yusuf's beads.

Winter stock and an unbroken cover story.

The call to prayer, and anyone who can read the ground the way Yusuf did.

Had Iturri kill Yusuf Nasser in 1987 because her people couldn't reach him. Urges every stranger to call for help; breathes in Adam's hair at supper. Builds Rania's face to bargain with Hassan at Iturri's stones, a feint: Earl has already told her the raid is coming. Puts the old and weak in the top graves as decoys and springs the warren, meaning to keep the marked in Sweetwater until dark. At the church door in the night she finds Adam. At dawn she comes up last and fastest and goes for Adam; Leah strikes her once; she begs in Rania's voice and burns (One Hand).

Secret / Buried Pressure

Her husband Erik was eaten. Eight days after they took him he walked past the barn door, smiling a smile that wasn't his.

Moved from the barn to the cellar under the church after the first break-in; freed from the cellar in Every Prayer. Goes home to Gothenburg from the hospital in Elko and tells Wes to come in the summer.

Present as memory, and as a face the ghula wears.

Her stories come back to Hassan in pieces: the jinn of wild places (ch1, ch6), the caravan walking in circles behind a pleasant guide (a dream, ch3), smokeless fire and why they burn (ch12), and the man who struck the ghula once and wouldn't strike again, "My mother didn't teach me that" (ch14), the line Hassan gives Mae in ch20.

Dana's producer and sound man.

Secret / Buried Pressure

Taken from the fire in Taken from the Fire and eaten. A young ghul wears his face in Sweetwater from Boots at Supper on, but doesn't act like him (calls Dana "ma'am", eats with his fingers, wears boots) and goes home with Earl. Its gray hoodie lies folded on a raked mound in The True Dawn; after the flood that grave is empty and its tracks run into the hills (One Hand).

Get his brother home.

Shows it the way hunters do: stops talking, keeps the fire too big, sleeps in his boots, asks Kurt quietly if they're getting out.

Secret / Buried Pressure

On watch at camp he timed the voices: they never started while Hassan was praying aloud. Kurt said he was making it up.

To finish what his grandmother only warned him about.

Gave the call to prayer from his door at every prayer, five times a day, and recited at the door between the night prayer and dawn; he never missed one and never once saw one of them in the dark. Watched Sweetwater from 7 to 26 October and wrote down how its people can be killed (Yusuf's Ledger). He began to suspect the bell village was the town's own, or served it out of fear.

Secret / Buried Pressure

The visitors who took his bread and stood at his door at night were Leah's husband Mikel and two men from Iturri, sent to frighten him off after Mae threatened to take a child every winter. When he came down the draw to ask Iturri for men, Mikel struck him once from behind on the path, where he had stopped for the dawn prayer, buried him under the hut floor facing the direction of prayer, and kept his father's prayer beads.

Harrow Creek Trailhead

Strangers bare their feet at the stones before crossing.

Rope posts: from the dusk bell to the dawn bell every child is roped by the waist to a timber post in the house. The posts are worn into pale rope-polished grooves at waist height, with a coil of rope on a nail beside each.

Lived since 1971 under a truce with Sweetwater, sending marked strangers back over the ridge, nine in all, until Caleb burned out at the stones.

The old ditch: a dry cut along the hill above Sweetwater's cemetery, with a gray wooden headgate at its top, that brings the creek down to the hay meadow below the playa. Iturri's herders open it every June; in One Hand they break it into the warren.

Empty by day, the graves raked shut. From sunset to dawn it runs as a working town; the townspeople come in to supper with dirt in their knuckles, on their knees and in their hair, from "the fields".

The warren: dug over fifty years under the cemetery, the church and the street. The graves are its doors, not its beds. Mae keeps decoys, the old and the weak, in the top graves. Below ground it is always night, and the ghuls are at full strength.

Earl watches the street by day from the porch rocker across from the diner.

The diner phone works when the town wants someone to call for help.

A green board over the door reads, in Arabic, "In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful."

A prayer niche is chipped into the wall opposite the door, exactly toward Mecca.

Cot, oil-drum stove, a tipped tin water barrel, a tin trunk under the cot holding Yusuf's Ledger.

Yusuf lay under the floor until the first week of November of the novel year, when two of Leah's herders lifted it for Hassan.

أعوذ بالله من الشيطان الرجيم (aʿudhu billahi min ash-shaytan ir-rajim, I seek refuge in God from the accursed devil)

التعوّذ (taʿawwudh, seeking refuge). Related: the last two surahs, al-Falaq and an-Nas (113, 114), called al-muʿawwidhatayn.

It works when it rises from real refuge and sincerity, not as a formula deployed mechanically.

The Basement: spoken involuntarily by Clara in the basement, by Zayn during Clara's childhood exorcism, then deliberately by Clara.

When the call to prayer is made, Shaytan flees (Bukhari 608).

"When the ghilan take shape before you, call the adhan" (attributed to the Prophet through Jabir, in Ahmad) and a similar report from ʿUmar. Both have weak chains. See ʿUmar Report.

Only a living, sincere call holds. A recording doesn't, and a ghul can mimic one back out of tune.

It is a call to prayer, not a weapon. It works best when the caller is calling to prayer because it is time, not aiming it at the enemy.

One protective presence is enough to make a hostile jinn flee.

Describe it through pressure, effect and the jinn's reaction, never as visual spectacle.

Protective presences around a devoted person are a real restraint on jinn.

Shaytan counts food lawful for himself when Allah's name isn't said over it (Muslim 2017).

When a man names Allah as he enters his house and as he eats, Shaytan tells his own: "No place to stay for you tonight, and no supper" (Muslim 2018).

Tradition (keep in characters' voices)

A man ate without naming Allah until his last mouthful, then said "bismillah, at its beginning and its end". The Prophet ﷺ laughed and said the devil had been eating with him, and vomited up what he had eaten once Allah's name was said (Abu Dawud 3768; graded weak by al-Albani, hasan by al-Arnaʾut).

Recited at bedtime, a guardian from Allah stays with the reciter and no devil comes near until morning (Bukhari 2311, Abu Hurayra's account).

The Basement: researched by Clara.

Lā Ghūl: recited by Hassan through the night outside Iturri, and learned by Adam for the walk out.

Pharaoh's sorcerers "bewitched the eyes of the people" (Quran 7:116), and their ropes and staffs only "seemed to him, from their magic, to be moving" (Quran 20:66). Sorcery works on what people see, not on what is there.

Shaytan "flows through the son of Adam as blood flows" (Bukhari 2038, Muslim 2175), and whispers (Quran 114).

The ʿUmar Report (weak, characters' voices only) says the ghul's changes are sorcery like human sorcery.

It bends the walker, not the trail. A marked traveler (see Calling by Name) sees the trail go on where it really turns, takes a curve for a straight line, and feels downhill where the ground climbs. Near landmarks trade sides, and distances stretch. Every step feels right.

Two ways to a face. A ghul gets a face by building it or by eating it.

Built: some ghuls can build a face from a qareen's description: the person's own qareen, or the qareens of people who knew them. It takes skill. A young ghul gets it wrong: eyes set a little off, a mouth that doesn't move with the words, a face that looks right across a room but not across a table. Only an old, experienced ghul builds a face that holds up close. Ghuls rank each other by it.

Eaten: a ghul that eats a face and fully digests it can reproduce it perfectly, in the flesh, down to scars and pores, whatever its age or skill. The likeness is carried in the body it ate, not in anyone's description. Until digestion is done, the copy is only as good as the ghul's skill. An eaten face means the person is dead.

A face has one owner. Once a ghul has claimed a person, by building them or by eating them, no other ghul wears that person. One ghul can hold one face or several, but two ghuls never wear the same person. An eater's claim beats a builder's.

Never answer your name from the dark.

Answering your name, or eating from a ghul's hand (see At Their Table), marks you as prey, and the party you travel with along with you. One fool closes the road for the whole family.

A marked party isn't lost: holding one direction together with sincerity keeps the path (see Qibla).

The pull (house rule)

Shaytan "wishes to lead them far astray" (Quran 4:60).

Misguidance needs an open door: pride, absence of mind, answering the wrong voice, eating from the wrong hand.

A ghul's oldest work is literal misguidance, leading travelers off the road.

Allah takes the souls of the sleeping and returns them until a set term (Quran 39:42).

Dreams are of three kinds: good news from Allah, grief from Shaytan, and what a person tells themselves; whoever sees what he dislikes should stand and pray and not tell people (Muslim 2263).

"The good dream (رؤيا, ruʾya) is from Allah and the bad dream (حلم, hulm) is from Shaytan." On a bad dream: spit dryly to the left three times, seek refuge in Allah from Shaytan, and it will not harm (Bukhari 3292, Muslim 2261), and turn onto the other side (Muslim 2262).

A man told the Prophet ﷺ he dreamt his head was cut off; he was told not to speak of how Shaytan plays with him in his sleep (Muslim 2268).

A ghul can take any face, a beautiful woman, a kind old man or someone's dead mother, but it can't change its feet. They stay donkey hooves.

So in the tales a ghula wears long dresses and never sits with her feet showing. In Lā Ghūl, Sweetwater never unlaces its boots.

The "any face" belief is what characters say. In our stories a ghul's face is built from a qareen's description or eaten; see Borrowed Faces. The tell in the feet has parallels in Jewish and Christian lore (Jewish and Christian Parallels).

Hostile jinn weaken after fajr. It is the time of the decisive calls in The Basement and Lā Ghūl, but it is a context, not a switch that defeats them.

The Basement: Zayn's adhan at fajr; James later tracks fajr as his possession worsens.

Lā Ghūl: the adhan on the playa at fajr; Adam wakes for fajr in Reno.

Jinn were created "from a smokeless flame of fire" (Quran 55:15).

Jinn used to sit in the heavens to listen, and are now driven off by flames (Quran 72:8-9, 67:5). Listening in on what comes down from the sky is the jinn's oldest theft.

Only ghuls. Other jinn don't have it, for now. It comes with the body that sets (see Ghul Life Cycle).

Near a ghul at night, batteries drain far faster than they should, lights flicker, and phones lose service. Radios hiss, or carry a voice calling a name (see Calling by Name). Cameras still work: a grown ghul's face is flesh, and a photo shows it as it is.

Folklore (keep in characters' voices)

In Arab folk tales the ghul is bodily, more than other jinn. It eats, sleeps, marries, has children, and can be killed with a blow (Strike Once).

Jinn are often credited with knowing things men don't, cures among them; folk healers in some places claim remedies learned from jinn. Research needed before a character cites a specific tale. Seeking such cures from jinn is sihr territory, never a lawful remedy.

In some Levantine tales a hero who manages to suckle at a ghula's breast becomes her milk-son, and she can't eat him. Research needed: find the tale collections before a character tells it.

Doctrine and tradition

The hadith "la ghul" (see Lā Ghūl Hadith).

Reports that ghuls can't truly change their created form, that their changes are trickery like sorcery, and that the adhan answers them (see ʿUmar Report, weak).

Folklore (keep in characters' voices)

Pharaoh's sorcerers "bewitched the eyes of the people" (Quran 7:116), and their ropes and staffs only "seemed to him, from their magic, to be moving" (Quran 20:66). Sorcery works on what people see, not on what is there.

Shaytan "flows through the son of Adam as blood flows" (Bukhari 2038, Muslim 2175).

A vanishing is a veil. The object never leaves the room. The jinn makes the people present unable to see it, so it seems to vanish from a locked drawer or a sealed room. It is still on the table.

An appearance is a veil lifted. Something that turns up in a closed room got in earlier, through a gap or an open door (see Swift Carrying), and was kept unseen until the jinn let it be seen. The appearance is the reveal. The arrival happened before.

Jewish and Christian Parallels

Demons with bird feet. To see the demons' tracks, sift ashes around your bed: in the morning there are marks like a rooster's feet (Talmud, Berakhot 6a). Ashmedai, king of the demons, has a rooster's feet too. A demon can look human, but its feet give it away. Echoes Faces and Feet.

Don't greet a stranger at night. One may not greet someone at night without recognising him, in case it is a demon (Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi, Megillah 3a; applied in Sanhedrin 44a). Tosafot limits it to outside a town. Echoes Calling by Name, turned around: here you must not call out.

One, two, three. Alone a man is in danger from demons, two together are safe but must stay alert, and three need not fear (Berakhot 43b, as summarised by Trachtenberg, Jewish Magic and Superstition). Echoes Strength in Numbers.

Jinn eat. The believing jinn were given "every bone over which Allah's name has been mentioned," and dung as fodder for their animals (Muslim 450).

Shaytan shares food over which Allah's name is not mentioned, and spends the night in a house entered without it (Muslim 2017, 2018).

On the Day of Judgment the jinn's human allies will say "each of us profited from the other" (Quran 6:128). Trade between jinn and humans is real, and it is a loss.

"Men of mankind sought refuge in men of the jinn, so they increased them in burden" (Quran 72:6).

Created from "a smokeless flame of fire" (Quran 55:15), before humans (15:27).

Created, like humans, to worship Allah (51:56), and accountable for their choices.

Some are believers and righteous, some are not (72:11, 72:14).

They see humans from where humans don't see them (7:27). See The Two Sides.

Two readings (classical commentary)

1. The ghul doesn't exist. The Prophet ﷺ was rejecting a superstition.

2. The ghul exists but has no power to change a person's path or fate. That belongs to Allah.

The stories land on the second reading: there is no ghul over the one who knows which way he faces. Present both readings through characters, and never let narration rule between them.

Devils spread out at nightfall (Bukhari 3304).

The hour when a hostile jinn's reach begins. It is a time anchor, not a mechanism.

The Quran describes one "whom Shaytan has driven to madness by his touch" (2:275).

It starts with attention and study. Then come lost time, physical evidence (bruises, waking in wrong places) and bodies trained through repeated postures.

It can imitate retreat and use relief as a weapon.

It flees protective presence and can be forced back by sincere refuge, not by performance.

Prayers at Dusk and Dawn

Judaism. Three daily services: שחרית (Shacharit) in the morning from dawn, מנחה (Mincha) in the afternoon, and מעריב (Maariv, also Arvit) at nightfall. The Shema is said morning and evening, "when you lie down and when you rise up" (Deuteronomy 6:7), and again at bedtime as a request for protection through the night (Berakhot 5a). See Jewish and Christian Parallels.

Catholic and Orthodox Christianity. The Liturgy of the Hours keeps Lauds (or Matins) at dawn, Vespers at sunset and Compline before sleep. Compline's readings and hymn ask God to guard the night against the devil and the "phantoms of the night".

The Angelus. A Catholic devotion said at dawn, noon and dusk. A church bell calls it with three strokes, three times, and then nine strokes. In parts of Europe it was called the "peace bell" and prayed for safety.

"There is none of you but has been assigned a companion from among the jinn" (Muslim 2814).

In the same hadith the Prophet ﷺ says of his own qareen that Allah helped him against it, فأسلم (fa-aslama). Scholars read it two ways: "so it submitted" (became Muslim), or فأسلمُ (fa-aslamu), "so I am safe from it". The doctrine states this only for the Prophet ﷺ.

"The believer wears out his devils as one of you wears out his camel on a journey" (in Musnad Ahmad). Grade not verified: keep it in a character's voice until checked.

The qareen is eager to speed a person's ruin and willing to share their secrets, fears, cravings, embarrassments and useful wounds with hostile jinn.

Knowing which way you face is what misguidance can't bend: the trails bend, the qibla doesn't. It is orientation held in sincerity, never compass magic. A compass needle can be dragged off north, but the qibla set from it still comes out true.

Facing one direction together is what a ghul can't break. This holds even for a party that has been marked (see Calling by Name).

From western North America the qibla is roughly north-northeast (great-circle bearing).

The Basement: the qibla marker on Zayn's prayer rug. James connects the jinn's forced postures to worship aimed in the wrong direction.

"There is no harm in ruqyah as long as it involves no shirk (associating partners with God)" (Muslim 2200). Healing comes from Allah, not from the words or the raqi.

Ruqyah used as research, performance or technique fails for that reason.

A possessing jinn can resist for a time and turn the host's body against the host or the people present (see Possession).

They whisper (waswasa) into the hearts of people and withdraw at the remembrance of Allah (Quran 114).

They spread out at nightfall: "When night falls, keep your children close, for the devils spread out at that time" (Bukhari 3304, Muslim 2012).

Their tools are time-wasting, confusion, denial, missed duties and training the body through repeated postures.

They work through doors that people open: pride, absence of mind, despair and borrowed rituals.

Sihr and Occult Bargains

Sorcery is real and taught by the shayatin. It harms no one except by Allah's permission (Quran 2:102).

Occult power can be real and still corrupt and predatory, and it is never refuge.

Helper jinn bound by a bargain serve their own appetite first.

Sincerity Over Formula

A character who uses faith as a technique, for research or as a borrowed rite fails for that reason. That failure can carry a plot.

Objects (a prayer rug, a compass, tapes) preserve discipline and testimony but can't replace living devotion.

Narration never states a weak report as a ruling. Folklore stays in a character's voice.

The Shaytan stays with the one who is alone, and keeps further from two. From ʿUmar's sermon at al-Jabiya, in the chapter on holding to الجماعة (al-jamaʿah, the gathered community): Tirmidhi 2165, graded sahih.

"The lone rider is a devil, two riders are two devils, and three are a travelling party": Abu Dawud 2607 (hasan), also Tirmidhi 1674 and Malik's Muwatta. It is a rule for travel. A traveller alone or with one companion is exposed, and three make a proper company.

"The wolf eats only the sheep that strays from the flock": Abu Dawud 547, on praying in congregation.

When a man and a woman are alone together, the Shaytan is the third: Tirmidhi 1171, and in the same sermon of ʿUmar (Tirmidhi 2165). The Shaytan counts himself into a small number.

The hero's answer in the tales: أمّي ما علّمتني (ummi ma ʿallamatni, my mother didn't teach me).

The motif is widespread in Arab folk tales. Classical poetry attributed to Taʾabbaṭa Sharran describes his encounter with a ghul.

House rules (all ghul stories)

One blow drops it. For a few minutes it lies there and pleads, then goads, for a second blow, from anyone in reach; a second blow from any hand brings it back, faster and stronger. If no second blow comes, it burns out from within and is gone (see Ghul Life Cycle).

An ifrit of the jinn offered to bring the Queen of Sheba's throne to Sulayman "before you rise from your place" (Quran 27:39). Jinn can carry great weight over great distance very fast. The throne still had to travel.

Jinn see humans "from where you do not see them" (Quran 7:27).

"Close your doors and mention Allah's name, for Shaytan does not open a closed door" (Bukhari 3280, Muslim 2012).

Speed, not a jump. The jinn wraps what it carries in the same shell of compressed air and water it uses to move things unseen (see Jinn), then crosses the distance in a blink. Witnesses see the thing there, then gone. A camera catches it in one frame and not the next. At high frame rates you get a smear, like heat haze.

What it is. A blanket-sized cloth that lets a jinn take a living thing through the fire. Wrapped in it, the passenger is held inside the jinn's fire without burning. The cloth takes the burn in their place.

What it is made of. Fire-silk: thread a jinn draws from its own flame, a hair's width at a time, over decades. Spinning it costs the spinner strength it never gets back, and few will give that. The thread has to be woven before it cools, in one sitting, with no iron near and no break, or it falls to ash. A cloth large enough for a person takes the life's work of several spinners.

One use. The cloth burns away in the passage. The passenger arrives wrapped in fine grey ash that keeps the weave's pattern for a moment, then falls apart at a touch. It can't be mended, reused or unpicked for thread.

Why it can't be copied. Fire-silk can't be spun from anything but a living jinn's own flame, and nobody can spin it for another. There is no stock to draw on. Each cloth that exists is known by name to whoever keeps it, and spending one is a decision, not a habit.

Folklore (keep in characters' voices)

In the tales the ghul eats the dead and digs up graves (see Ghul).

Arabic calls children "pieces of my liver". An old woman who knows the tales may say a ghul goes for the liver first, because that is where love is kept.

The face. It cuts the face away in one piece, from the hairline to under the chin, eyes and all. This is the eaten face of Borrowed Faces: once digested, the ghul can wear it perfectly.

"He sees you, he and his tribe, from where you do not see them" (Quran 7:27).

The jinn don't know the unseen: they kept working for Sulayman after his death because they didn't know he had died (Quran 34:14).

Jinn who tried to listen at the heavens now find them "filled with stern guards and flames" (Quran 72:8–9).

The screen between the eyes of the jinn and the nakedness of humans is saying bismillah when entering the toilet (Tirmidhi 606).

Jinn are created from "a smokeless flame of fire" (Quran 55:15), a substance unlike human clay.

Shaytan "flows through the son of Adam as blood flows" (Bukhari 2038, Muslim 2175). A jinn's body passes where a human body can't.

"Close your doors and mention Allah's name, for Shaytan does not open a closed door" (Bukhari 3280, Muslim 2012).

The object goes into the fire. For the length of the passage, the jinn holds the thing inside its own substance. It stops being solid to walls while it is held, then becomes solid again when it is let go. The wall, lid or glass is left untouched.

Weak chains. Keep it in characters' voices ("my grandmother said", "an old imam said"), never as narration's ruling.

Exact wording and grading, from Ibn Abi Shayba and Ahmad with a hadith scholar's grading.

Near the ghuls the needle wanders (it leans toward the floor, toward the town below, while he prays upstairs in Boots at Supper) and spins in the warren (The True Dawn), but the arrow for Mecca always comes to rest in the same place.

At the noon prayer in Rules Without Reasons the arrow points up the north draw to Yusuf's tin roof; it points true into Yusuf's prayer niche (The Last Entry).

The lid clicking shut breaks Mae's spell in Mae's Offer.

Dated entries, 7 to 26 October 1987, then blank pages.

7 October: how Yusuf heard of the valley (a herder from Bizkaia near Bakersfield) and his arrival up the north draw.

9 October: the town by night from the ridge; thirty-one people counted.

12 October: the graves raked shut at noon; they sleep in the ground by day; they have become flesh and can die. One blow, never two; it will beg for the second. Let it beg.

Timeline - Chronological

Before The Novel Present

1894: Basque herders from Bizkaia found Iturri; the Angelus is their own.

April 1971: the real Mae Pruitt vanishes from Ely; the ghula has worn her face since.

Timeline - Manuscript Order

2. Other Fires: In daylight the valley's other campers appear, a podcaster and two elk hunters who have all been lost for days and dread the night voices, and the hunters find an elk eaten from the inside.

3. The Trail Bends: Hassan tries to hike Adam out of the valley, every trail brings them back into the same basin, and that night, after a dream of a lost caravan, he wakes to find Adam gone from the tent.

4. Taken from the Fire: Theo vanishes from the fire during his night watch, his recorder holds Dana's own voice calling him into the dark while she slept, and the dawn search finds nothing a lion would leave.

Chapter 1 opens on the saying "There is no contagion, no evil omen, and no ghul".

Chapter 14: Yusuf's ledger gives both readings, the herders' (only coyotes and bad luck) and his sheikh's (no power over the one who knows which way he faces).

Chapter 15: the walk toward the direction of prayer to the pass.

Chapter 17: Hassan recalls the ledger's line against Mae's bargain.