The Forsaken Page of Waldenau
A solemn police report from 1893 on a missing prayer in a decaying East Prussian hunting lodge
Police Report on the Incident at Jagdhaus Waldenau, 1893
In the somber month of October, in the year of Our Lord 1893, under a sky utterly still and bereft of wind, the undersigned was dispatched to the remote hunting lodge known as Jagdhaus Waldenau, nestled within the ancient forested hills of East Prussia. The lodge, once the proud retreat of the Hartenberg line, now lay shrouded in melancholia—its timbered walls rotted, its hearths long cold, and its corridors thick with the heavy scent of forgotten prayers and ghostly silence.
The summons was prompted by the discovery of a most peculiar object found on the uppermost shelf within the lodge’s chamber of supplication: a weatherworn prayer book, bound in cracked black leather, that had evidently suffered the ravages of time and neglect. Yet the archivist, a solemn and discreet figure whose name is withheld by order of the crown, noted at once a most singular anomaly: the absence of a solitary page, one whose excision betrayed a secrecy most profound.
Upon inspection, the archivist recorded the following particulars:
- Location: The hunting lodge at Waldenau, a structure dating from the late 18th century, abandoned for at least ten years, and situated miles from any village.
- Condition of the lodge: Debilitated by decay, the woodpanelling groaning under its own age; windows clouded with the dust of many winters; the air oppressively still, as though the very forest awaited an unseen portent.
- The prayer book: A volume of traditional Catholic devotion, printed in Gothic script, its pages browned and brittle. Most pages bear stains of water and smears of something dark that could not be identified.
- Missing page: Noted to be the seventy-fifth leaf; its absence manifest by the uneven raggedness of the binding thereabouts. Of peculiar note is the absence of any torn or crumpled remnants nearby.
- Archival annotations: The archivist, drawing upon his considerable experience within noble ecclesiastical collections, speculated that the removed prayer was of such import that its excision was intended both to conceal and to protect unspecified knowledge.
The archivist's report further elucidates that during his examination, the stillness within the lodge weighed heavily upon the senses, as if the air itself clung to some spectral secret. The hearth’s ashes bore no trace of recent fire, yet a faint odour of burnt wax lingered inexplicably, as though the absent page had once been set alight in secret ritual but had vanished before destruction was complete.
Witnesses included the archivist and a local constable, whose notes concurred with the archivist’s observations but refrained from conjecture. Testimony from villagers in the adjacent hamlet related rumours of a curse afflicting the Hartenberg family, whispered as a malediction born from pacts with forces beyond mortal ken. However, these are hearsay and thus remain outside official consideration.
In conclusion, the police record states:
“The mysterious absence of the prayer page within a sacred text at Jagdhaus Waldenau remains unexplained. The solemn air and the silence unbroken by wind or wildlife suggest more than mere accident or theft. Archivist’s opinion advises that such an excision is bound to an act of concealment believed by its authors to guard against forces best left unnamed.”
Further investigation is impeded by the lodge’s remote location and the increasing rumours that surround the fate of those who pry too deeply.
Archival preservation efforts recommend guarding the remaining text with utmost reverence, and forbidding the careless inquiry which may awaken that which slumbers still within the halls of Waldenau.