~1~ a Fake Estate
[POV: 1st Person]
***
Day One:
This is… Detective Kazinty of the OSS. I’ve already scoured the entirety of the downstairs. The kitchen had strange claw marks all over it. Those were what drew me to the scene of the crime immediately.
Lifting up the dishes wasn’t too great for my mental health, though. Nothin’ but a soppin’ puddle of ol’ eyeballs. Up above the kitchen sink’s window, a cuckoo clock ticked. And, boy, did it tick… me off!
I’m dictating into my recorder right now so that the Bureau will at least get the chance to hear my examination of 6116 Elmwood Circuit. I’ve had to put my hand down onto my holster numerous times. There are… noises in this house. Blood dripping, maybe? There’s no shortage of that in the bathrooms, either.
On the whole, whoever lived here definitely came from ‘old’ money. I mean, come on. Four bathrooms downstairs? They must’ve expected guests quite often. The kitchen’s wide with molded floorboards. A dining nook to the right, and the stove, sink, and washer to my left. There’s a chalkboard by the nook. It just has a bunch of weird symbols on it. I’m taking photos for the Bureau now.
Beyond that, there’s a weird middle room with a bunch of historical memorabilia. A fake draft of the Constitution of the United States. A pile of old smoke pipes. White dust flew up when I swabbed them from just a few feet away. Whatever they were smoking, I don’t think it was legal. To the top corner of the ceiling, I see what looks like--
Sweet mother of God. Imprints… where bodies once were. I swab a sample, run it through the Genetic Dating Tablet, or GDT, and come back with the results of… a young adult male. If the cards were dealt any differently, he could’ve been me.
The legs, the arms, and the head-- It was all a perfect outline. The ash and the dried blood made a solid imprint on how the body was placed. It’s at moments like these I like to play dumb and ask, ‘What kind of sick monster would do something like this’? But I already know the answer to that one.
Revellichs.
Or so the Attorney General likes to say. Ya see, over the past year, there’ve been sightings of strange creatures with sun colored eyes and long fangs. They’ve gone and made this house their base, so proclaimed the locals.
The beasts called themselves ‘Revellichs’, according to a husband who barely made it out of here the other month. To this day, previous Field Agents have been unable to retrieve his poor wife. That’s what I’d like to do today. Ideally.
I put my camera back in my backpack, my rubber gloves now covered in sweat. My feet practically carry me headlong into the next room. What awaited me… was nothing short of brutal. A Christmas Tree, with the room smelling of pine and frasier-fir.
Nothing out of the ordinary, save for all the stuffed animals. They had their heads torn clean off. Puffs of their cotton had gathered around their sewn-up feet. I pulled my camera back out, ready to snap a picture…
… when I heard it.
Upstairs, a loud procession of banging shook the whole house. I tore off in a sprint. The staircase, that led upward, was on the whole other end of this damn McMansion. A patch of blood had pooled up in another corner of the ceiling. Old books and cassette-tapes sat strewn about. The cassette tapes grew redder, and wetter, as this house’s plumbing-system didn’t treat them too kindly. Not too kindly at all.
Nonetheless, I booked it upstairs. This damn house had two split-landings. Over the railings, I thought I could see a black apparition hunched over a bed in one of the guest-rooms. That old smell of hydroxide, plums, and cotton -- yanno, the signature Grandma smell -- wafted throughout the wooden railings.
Oh, and how could I forget? Piss and mothballs, too. As I cleared the steps, I turned to my left. Outside, the window showed a tall streetlamp, right by the street’s sign. As I approached it, I felt a pull. A deep, long desire to be out there… rather than in here.
But I’m a Detective, god damn it. I’m here to solve the disappearance of six whole families. So, I may bellyache, but I ain’t quittin’. I put my hand to my holster. Behind me, in the window’s reflection, that damn dark apparition floated between one room and another.
At the further end of the hallway, I saw its ghostly, ghoulish arms reach out into the other room. I held my gun up with both hands, but still watched the streetlamp outside. It was the only source of illumination for me at the time.
It was too bad, then, when it started to flicker.
On cue, the apparition behind me levitated out of the room it had originally entered. With a claw-like hand, it dove straight for me. Damn thing looked like a wraith, but I didn’t ask it for any ID. Instead, I spun on my heel, ready to use the 2nd Amendment on this bastard.
“O.S.S! Hands where I can see’em!” I shouted in my gruff, somewhat-Bostonian accent.
Unfortunately, nobody was there. With a huff, I kept my gun to my side. I slipped into one of the guest rooms. The smell of clean cotton was as strong as my car’s carburetor. I kicked over a nearby treasure chest. Pearls and rings fell out. As I put a gloved hand down, I squeezed some of them in my hand. Fakes. All fakes! They bent with the flexible bounce of a plastic toy.
I took a picture. The snap echoed across the entire upstairs. I sighed, not wanting to draw any attention to myself. Any further than I had already done, that is. When I got to my feet, peacocking my back out in a stretch, I pulled the covers back on one of the beds. Two guest-sized mattresses had sat with their covers still in good condition. Beside them, a digital clock had still read ‘4:38AM’. Weird.
Of course, I wasn’t afforded the liberty to think for too long on that one. A knock at the window startled me upright. I stomped over the wooden floor. Surprisingly, it was one of the floorboards at the other end of this room that cracked open and snapped off into the downstairs.
I had to shake my head at that. When was the last time these people fixed up this damn place? I guess ‘Revellichs’ aren’t exactly Interior Designers. With a snort, I spin the curtains open to the window. The smile I wore at my own joke immediately flew south for the winter.
A hanging head with lifeless eyes and a bloodied neck-joint stared back at me. I raised my gun once again. Somebody knew I was here, didn’t they? Lest there wouldn’t be such a show of jump-scares.
I immediately slithered my gaze over to the door to the room. Strange, I didn’t notice it before, but… the rim and frame have mold and blood around them, too. That’s the third spot in this house where I’ve seen blood stuck to the walls somehow.
The head continued to look at me, a weird hook jammed into the back of its scalp. I followed up the hook to see an array of chains. What, was someone just standin’ on the rooftop, danglin’ this thing for me to shit my pants? It looked like a prop, too! Ugh, kids. I walked back out into the upstairs hallway.
The dark apparition was there, again, in full view. It put its hand out to me, pointing with a kind of sickly warning. It seemed to breathe, its ghostly outline rising and falling. It had a strange head, like that of a hood within another hood… within another hood. Perhaps, that’s exactly what it was? I walked forward, my blood both boiling and excitable.
“Detective Kazinty of the O.S.S! Show yourself, come quietly, and nobody else has to die here tonight. Anything you say can and will be used against--”
But instead, the weird figure let out a horrific shriek. So, I did what any wise Field Agent would do. I shot the fucker over and over. Shoot first, ask questions later. Just like any old traffic-stop, am I right? Hah, no. The O.S.S holds themselves in higher regard than any local cop ever would. But I digress. For now, I just kept shooting, and shooting, and shooting.
And, of course, the damn thing just kept walkin’ over to me.
Alright, you win this round, bud. With my sense of fear and danger overpowering my enjoyment of shooting at this damn psycho, I jumped down the stairs from the side. I crashed into the damn wood, my foot jammed between the steps railing. I tried to lug it out, but the jaggedness of the hole in the steps also seemed to suck me into it. Welp, this wasn’t any fun.
“Shit! Come on, god damn it!” I hollered.
When my leg didn’t come loose, I simply looked up. The apparition stood at the top of the steps. Its very outline had shimmered and rotated around like a black sun. I raised my gun, ready to fire again. But as I pulled the trigger, my weight must’ve gathered at my bottom. Because I fell through the staircase, deeper into this damn house.
Not gonna lie, I let out such a nasty scream for quite the grown man. For a second, it felt like I was gonna be in free-fall for a long, long time. A dank, dusty air had started to kick up all around me. Darkness continued to surround my sight, however. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say this house was… Hell.
After a loud *THUD!*, I had the wind knocked right outta me. I slid off of a long, oak table. I put my hand to my hip. Limping up, I staggered to get some breath back into me. My eyes adjusted, and faintly, I could see a whole new world. Red candles, bronze trims around painted portraits, old communion-bowls of mildew-water, some Jesus crackers, and a bookshelf full of… billiard balls?
I ain’t got nothin’ against Pool, but I don’t think it really adds to the Feng-Shui of the Church vibes, is all.
“Ugh! I’m gonna find that damn thing… and shoot it to bits.”
“Not in that condition, you aren’t.”
I jolted to the side, surprised by a strangely sudden accent. It was a cross between Bostonian and Middle English. Maybe a bit of Scottish, too? The lights in this weird basement flickered on. They had an old, dusty glow to them.
So many dead spiders sat in the ceiling above, suffocated from the stuffy heat in their own webs. I scraped a couple of webs away, arching my back. A desk with a red lamp had sat a few feet away. And… a man with a more European hairstyle eyed me down from his behind a desk.
“Good evening, Detective. You and I have a few things in common.” The man said. He then stood up, givin’ me an adventurous grin. “I’ve been meaning to find a missing family, too. The Cysteines. Sherline Cysteine was a local--”
“Was a local bartender here, yes! Who the hell are you? How did you know I was a detective?” I asked, my black bangs falling into my face.
“A-- Are ya pullin’ my leg?” The man’s forehead creased. “You’ve been spewin’ into that Recorder all night like it’s American Idol.”
I looked away. I clenched my hands tighter around the Recorder, examining the nearby bookshelves. My cheeks went a little rosy, like I was some sorta dame. “Are you… one of them Revellichs?”
“What?” The man asked, chuckling. He slicked his thick, caramel hair back as he stood in a yellow trenchcoat. It was almost colonial. “For Pete’s sake, no. I don’t think a Revellich has been in this house for a number of moons, now, anyhow. Now, Krillies, on the other hand… continue to haunt this place, but they won’t come down here, for some reason.” He looked up. “I wonder if that Krillie is the collective energy of all the dead spiders--”
“Look, I’m with the O.S.S, and right now, you look like Unsub Numero Uno. So I suggest you start talking. Why are ya here, bub?”
The man put his hands up, smirking. “What does it look like I’m doing? Singing? Look, I wanna find out about what happened to Sherline Cysteine as much as you do, and so I snuck into this place through its cellar door outside. The Krillie upstairs is staying upstairs, though, so I’ve made a little campout down here. I’ve been reading through the books here, and snacking on all their biscuits. Did you know they make a Chesapeake Cream Biscuit? Sounds cliche enough, I’d just never heard that exact name before--”
“You mean to tell me that that thing upstairs… isn’t gonna come down here? Why?”
The man continued to smile some sort of shit-eating grin. Like he knew somethin’ I didn’t. It kinda pissed me off. He still held his hands up, actin’ faux-defensive. He had a chummy and playful smirk. A little too playful for someone from Boston.
He continued to tease me. “Why? ’Why’, the man asks. I don’t know, but if I had to guess, I’d say it must be all the weird Catholic decorations. Maybe the Krillie isn’t too big on Marti Gras?”
“Hmph. You’ve got a sense of humor, I see.” I sighed, sheathing my gun. “Alright, well, what’ve you found from these books? Actually, first: What’s your name? I’ve gotta document just about every interaction I have for the Bureau. It goes into a Case Log and-- Ya know what? Just tell me your stinkin’ name. It’s important, bud.”
With a knowing smirk, the man put a hand out to shake. “Dr. Samwane Bastailk. And you look like you could use a potion for that hip injury there. Keep close, my friend, and together… you and I are gonna find this Sherline. Mardi Gras Orleanean King’s Cake be damned.”
I nodded, noting his old-fashioned clothing. “Yeah, alright. Normally, I’d be the one to say that, but… you seem like you know your way around this house.”
“Place is just another one in a million. Haunted Houses are all too common an occurrence when you get around like I have. By the way, what’s your name, sunshine?”
I closed my eyes. What a smartass. “Detective Kazinty. Alphonse Kazinty--”
“Think fast!”
“What the--” But my hands went up all the same. I caught a vial of eerie, blue liquid. From the hard throw, it began to fizz and leak out underneath a wooden cork. I shook it around some more, looking at the sparkles inside the liquid. “Uh, what exactly is this swill, bud?”
At this, the man stood up. “Consider it a token of my trust. Drink it, and your hip-injury will be well on its way to getting fixed. Like I said, Detective, I want the same thing you want. To find those missing families. You could say I have… experience with the occult.”
________
