1.

Mo unlocked the back door, and entered the kitchen. He shrugged out of his jacket, carrying it over his shoulder, and passed into the main room.

Wade sat on a stool, his tall frame hunched over a bowl of cereal. He wasn't wearing a shirt, and there was a splotch of blood on his left forearm.

Looking up at the cook, he gave a polite smile and nodded, before returning to his breakfast.

“Why are you undressed?”

“There's blood on my clothes.”

“The department of health won't like it,” Mo said, shaking his head.

Climbing the stairs, Mo knocked on Algernon's door.

“It's open,” came the reply. Mo clicked the door open.

Algernon sat behind the desk, hunched over his computer and eating a sandwich. Crumbs pooled in his lap, and his face had the greasy look of someone who'd been awake all night.

The detective reared back when he saw his visitor, and squared his shoulders.

“Hey, Mo,” he said.

“Hey, Algernon.”

“What...uh...what's up?”

Mo sighed, and pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Mari called. Said she was feeling sick. Won't be in today.”

Algernon nodded.

“Yeah. Thanks.”

Mo looked down at his feet, shook his head, and then back at Algernon, who arched an eyebrow.

“I talked to my cousin a couple days ago,” Mo said, “You know, Jose?”

“We've met,” Algernon said, guardedly.

“Well...while in the pen, some of the revivalists got to him. He converted, joined the First Penal Brotherhood of Dumuzi. Said he wants to go straight.”

Algernon nodded, waiting for Mo to get to the point.

“He told me 'Mohamed, life is short, a grain of salt in the ocean of eternity. Dumuzi wants penance. Dumuzi wants forgiveness. Tell that thief-finder-man that I'm sorry for my crimes and forgive him.'”

Algernon nodded.

“Thanks, Mo. How's Jose doing?”

“He's a fucking Kafir. That's how he's doing.”

Mo turned on his heel, and left.

2.

Unmanageable as history: these
Followers of Tammuz to the land
That offered no return, where dust
Grew thick on every bolt and door. And so the world
Chilled, and the women wept, tore at their hair.
Yet, in the skies, a goddess governed Sirius, the Dog,
Who shines alike on mothers, lesbians, and whores.

What are we governed by? Dido and Carrie
Chapman Catt arrange themselves as statues near
The playground and the Tivoli. While warming up the beans,
Miss Sanders broods on the Rhamnusian, the whole earth worshipping
Her godhead. Later, vegetables in Athens.
Chaste in the dungeon, swooning with voluptuousness,
The Lady of the Castle weds pure Christ, the feudal groom.

Their bowels almost drove Swift mad. "Sad stem,
Sweet evil, stretching out a lion's jaws," wrote Marbode.
Now we cling together in our caves. That not impossible she
That rots and wrinkles in the sun, the shadow
Of all men, man's counterpart, sweet rois
Of vertew and of gentilness... The brothel and the crib endure.
Past reason hunted. How we die! Their pain, their blood, are ours.

Wade emerged from the bathroom, having scrubbed the blood from his arm and dressed in a flannel shirt and black chinos.

“Nice shirt. Going somewhere?” Algernon asked, a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth.

“Mari picked it out. Made me buy it.”

“She's got good taste, doesn't she?”

Wade nodded, and sat in the chair Algernon usually reserved for clients.

“What're you working on?” he asked.

Algernon looked at the computer and back at him.

“Well. Theft's at a low, after this.”

Algernon unfolded a week-old copy of the Tribune, and slid it across the desk, causing several sheets of scrap paper to flutter to the ground.

On the cover, a photograph of a warehouse exterior. Blood splattered the walls, and police tape sliced across the middle of the photograph.

The Caption:

“A BRUTAL ATTACK AT A 'SCORPION' SHOW IN PALLADION HOSPITALIZES THREE. POLICE STATE THAT SOLVING THE CASE IS 'UNLIKELY.'”

“There were only two,” Wade said, without thinking, before finishing as the realization set in, “At the show.”

“It was you?” Algernon asked, glancing down at the paper.

“Well, kinda. Yeah. I mean, I didn't start it.”

“But you finished it?” Algernon said, laughing.

“It was during that vandalism case, remember?”

“The one where you...” Algernon ran a finger across his left palm.

“Yeah.”

“Wow.”

The older man paused to think for a second, glanced over at Wade, then down at the paper, and back to the computer screen.

“This would be great advertising,” he said, in awe.

“What are you working on?” Wade asked.

Algernon snapped out of his reverie.

“Well, like I said. Theft is down. It got out that this was done by a detective working with an insurance company, so other sorts of crime haven't dropped nearly as much. We're going to start consulting for the police.”

Wade nodded for a moment, then stopped.

“Wait, what?”

“My license is Class B, which allows me to work as a consulting detective. You're a Class E, which is apprentice-level. Like a driver's permit. You can tag along, but you're not officially allowed to directly handle evidence.”

“I see.”

“You aren't sore about it, are you?” Algernon asked, arching an eyebrow, “I would've expected you to be thrilled that you get to just tag along and collect a paycheck.”

Wade shrugged.

“Eh. I can take it or leave it. It was kind of exciting, last time.”

Algernon shrugged.

“Not all work is exciting, kid. Besides, we can charge more for this. I got it all figured out last night.”

“After that party? How was that?”

Algernon smiled thinly.

“It was good,” was all he said.

Wade laughed, leaning forward.

“You have fun? Carver didn't give you any trouble?”

“We had fun for a while. Met Carver, seems like a bit of a creep but an alright guy. He asked about you.”

Wade crossed his arms, and said nothing.

“Honestly, the butler bothers me a bit more, something about him seems off. Maybe he just wants to look like a secret service agent.”

“Butler?”

“Yeah. The guy who dropped off the invitation.”

“Well, did Mari have fun?”

“Yeah. I think she might've eaten something that disagreed with her. She won't be in today. We were talking to this woman—looked kind of like Mari's older sister, you know? Maybe a few years older than me, but still good looking—and she got this look on her face, like some bit of her insides had gotten twisted around. So I started making excuses to get out of there, and this woman starts playing footsie with me. God...weird night.”

Wade nodded, there was something in his eyes, a glint of recognition or interest. The wheels in his head turned, and the mechanisms of thought outside of conscious control began to spit out ideas and emotions.

“Sounds like it. You say she looked like Mari? A Palestino woman, maybe a little on the older—”

“Mature,” Algernon insisted.

“—mature side? And she was spending time over in Grimsby with Carver?”

“A lot of people were there, Wade. What are you getting at, Wade?”

The other man shook his head.

“I don't know. You ever have that feeling where a memory is just on the tip of your brain? Where you might be remembering something, and might be imagining it, but can't quite tell which?”

“Sometimes, I guess. Usually when I can't find my keys.”

Wade smiled.

“That's what I've got. I think I'm going to find this woman and ask her a few questions.”

With that, Wade stood, and turned to return to his closet and prepare to leave.

“You intend to come the city for one person?” Algernon asked.

Wade grinned broader, “I do.”

3.

The bus from Little Masyaf to University Hill pulled away, and Wade stepped away from the crowd of people to light a cigarette. He pocketed the book of “Unreal City” matches, and looked around.

The walls had been covered in graffiti:

On one wall was a large symbol in red spray paint. It consisted of two parallel horizontal lines, with a small circular loop on either end. Two curving vertical lines cut through them, pulling inward into coils on the bottom. The top of it had four baroque loops, two connected to the vertical lines, and two in between. Each of the four had a small circle atop it, and formed a curlicue on the left-hand side when it met the topmost of the lines.

Another, farther up the hill was a five-pointed star with strange letters between each arm. Onto each point of the arms was nailed an envelope.

Near the apex of the hill, on the side of an academic building, stood a line of reversed swastikas, a dot in the crook of each arm. He approached it and examined it closely—someone had lightly stenciled a scale onto the wall, and the uneven placement of the symbols actually seemed to trace out a line of music.

Wade stepped back, and tried to make it out, but couldn't.

He heard a puff of breath from behind him.

“They got it wrong, dammit,” Theia's voice said.

He turned and looked at her. She said nothing, just standing with her hands in her pockets and a look of consternation on her face.

“Did someone actually trace out music from The Legend of Zelda? Goddamn amateurs.”

She had a messenger bag over one shoulder, and he could see large manila envelopes sticking out of it, as well as the wooden handle of a hammer.

“Hey,” Wade said, pulling the cigarette out of his mouth.

“Hey,” she replied, not looking at him.

The wind blew, and a plume of dust passed between them, both looked away, and squeezed their eyes shut, to protect their vision.

“What is it?” he asked.

“It's Nov thing. Happens once every three years or so.”

She walked up to the graffiti, glanced back and forth, and began taping the envelopes she carried to the walls with a thick roll of duct tape.

“Why?” he asked her.

“Enough people meet up who've had bad dreams with similar elements. Didn't used to be that way. Used to be that certain symbols had to show up. Now, it's just any bad dream. Poseurs.”

She stepped back from her handy work.

“Someone will come by later with a screwgun for those.”

“You all seem pretty organized,” Wade noted.

“Nah, more like we're all enthusiastic about getting involved with something like this. It gives us something of a sense of being part of something larger.”

She turned, and began to walk away.

“Mind if I tag along for a bit?”

Theia looked toward him, considering. She shifted her weight back and forth, and moved her chin from left to right while keeping her eyes on Wade's.

“Okay. You can come along, but don't touch anything, okay?”

4.

“What are you doing here?” Theia asked, as she hammered on the nail Wade was holding in place for her. They were affixing three envelopes to a triangle painted on the side of a building, and from what he understood, this one contained twenty-three dead wasps.

“Working on something. Mari and Algernon went up to a party in Grimsby—”

“Grimsby? Why?”

“—an invitation came from Carver. They went up the hill, and now Mari's sick. I think it might be tied to a particular person they encountered there. A woman. Palestino, maybe late thirties, early forties. Supposedly looks kind of like Mari, at least Algernon said so.”

“You can let go now,” Theia said, as she finished hammering the nail into the wooden side.

They moved on to the next symbol, in an alleyway across the street. Theia produced a grease pencil, and began to touch up the sigils spray-painted on the walls.

“I didn't even know there was a Carver living up there. Why were they invited?”

“I didn't tell you? When I came to Valley City, I got a ride from a man who turned out to be Victor Carver. He had a servant of his come up to Unreal City and deliver an invite. When I refused to go, Algernon and Mari went in my place.”

Theia added several long, jointed spirals to the outside of the design, and began to write a sequence of four symbols in a circle around it. After a moment, she stepped back, and examined the resulting design. It looked more like an abstract ideogram for “hangover” than an occult symbol, but Wade said nothing.

“Carver's bad news, Wade,” Theia noted.

“I know. That's why I didn't go.”

“I don't mean just 'he'll get you hoked on coke' bad, or 'he'll run over your dog and laugh about it' bad, I mean, the kind of evil you don't just fuck around with.”

Wade said nothing, and kept his gaze fixed on hers, completely level.

She held up another envelope, and smelled it before resealing it.

“Pencil shavings and cigarette ash. Help me with this, would you?”

He moved to hold the nail.

“I know. I told them not to go. He stuck a syringe in me after he picked me up. I fell asleep, and woke up in a parked car with a pain in the back of my head.”

She suppressed a laugh.

“I'm sorry. So why are you looking for this woman?”

Wade thought for a second, and almost jumped when she hit the nail, beginning to drive it in.

“Well, her appearance in Algernon's narrative seems to coincide with the time Mari gets sick. I think that a possible connection can be drawn between the two occurrences. And there's something else I'm having trouble remembering. Like something I knew just days ago but isn't coming back anytime soon, you know?”

“No,” she said, peppering the head of the nail with three quick taps, “you can take your fingers away, now.”

“How do you not get that.

She began to hammer quickly and gently, in a way that created comparatively little noise.

“I've been training my memory to work better ever since I started in on the journalism program. I know memory's not reliable, but it helps. Algernon taught me all about it.”

Wade nodded.

“Suppose it's useful for a Private Eye, too,” Wade noted.

“He learned it while he was a journalist,” Theia said.

“What?”

“He used to work for the Trib.”

5.

Wade walked up into Grimsby, the crowds of University Hill and Venburg did not follow him. Between the immaculate lawns lay the pencil-line streets, down which he walked. Rod-iron fences wreahted him in, giving him two options: go back, or go forward.

Standing outside the Carver place, he lit a cigarette, and pretended to check his phone.

After a good ten minutes of pretending to check his calls, he sighed and looked at the manor again.

Standing there, on the front steps, was a man in a dark suit, wearing white gloves. He patiently watched the near-intruder from his position on the front steps.

Something in Wade's stomach tightened almost painfully. The man was wrong in a way he'd never experienced. His very existence was a violation.

He put a hand to his stomach and walked away.

As he neared the edge of Venburg, a police care pulled up behind him, and rather conspicuously followed him for almost three blocks before he turned around to meet them.

“Slowest damn car chase I've ever heard of,” Wade muttered before the window rolled down.

“You say something, son?”

“I said good evening, officer.”

The police car idled for a moment, as neither spoke.

“You have any ID, son?”

Wade nodded, and slowly reached into his pocket for his wallet. He removed both his license and the permit Algernon had bought for him.

“Wade Larkin? You're far from home. Been working around here?”

“In Valley City? Yes.”

“Grimsby,” the officer said.

“Not recently, but you know, a trail sometimes heats up,” Wade said, thinking quickly, “I was checking on something related to a job my employer accepted from the college. The theft of a number of library books.”

The Officer nodded.

“I think I heard about that. Get anything?”

“Only the police called on me,” Wade noted.

The Officer sneered.

“You got a problem, Mr. Larkin?”

“No, sir. None I didn't leave home with this morning.”

The Officer blinked, then allowed himself a “heh.”

“Mr. Maxwell up on the hill says you were standing outside his house for a while.”

“I was checking my phone. The damn thing died on me, but it's done this before. It's a simple but time consuming process to fix it, so I did.”

“Okay, then. You stay out of Trouble, Mr. Larkin.”

“Will do, Officer. Thank you, sir.”

Wade spat on the ground as soon as the police car turned the corner.

6.

As he walked through Venburg, he went into a convenience store to buy a pack of cigarettes. Standing outside, he packed them, thinking about last night.

A payphone rang.

He still didn't know how to process it. The alleyway and the unexpected scene of carnage.

The payphone rang again.

Had that thing been a cannibal, an honest to god person, or some kind of monster?

And again.

And the Arafel, that shadowing, dark cloud hadn't come when he'd called.

And again.

Had the monster inside of him vanished? Was he alone?

And again.

Shaking his head, Wade left, heading for the bus stop.

The payphone rang once more, but died as soon as Wade left earshot.

Return