In 1952, Leo Colston, now in his early sixties, is sorting papers when he finds his 1900 diary inside a battered red collar box. Using an old schoolboy’s trick, he opens the box’s combination lock by touch alone, realizing the combination spells his own name. He understands why he distrusted the diary: It represents a lifelong sense of defeat.

The diary was a Christmas gift from his mother, decorated with the signs of the zodiac. His childhood self had believed passionately that the 20th century would be a golden age, with the zodiac representing a glorious ascending order of power. His birthday fell under the sign of Leo.

Early entries record a football victory over a rival school, described with the word vanquished. Two older boys, Jenkins and Strode, seized on the word as pretentious and subjected Leo to a week of bullying. Unable to fight back, Leo erased their taunts from the diary, cut his finger, inscribed two blood-written curses against them, and left the diary conspicuously unlocked. The immediate result was his worst beating yet. That night Jenkins and Strode fell from the school roof and were hospitalized with concussions. Leo became a school hero and a recognized authority on black magic, choosing not to deploy a third, supposedly lethal curse, privately terrified by what had already occurred.