Nolan managed to hold on to his breakfast through the remainder of the “autopsy”, which turned out to be less of an autopsy and more of a point-at-mangled-lumps-of-flesh-psy. The victim's body held little if any useful information and virtually nothing that wasn't already known having captured the creature responsible. Even identification of the victim was impossible given the extent of the damage. Following the examination, Basil had taken Nolan down another series of narrow hallways that eventually led to an underground garage. They left the garage in a predictably nondescript, black sedan, heading for what Nolan assumed was the next stage of their investigation. The whole thing still held a sense of surrealism for him. It was almost impossible to believe that less than forty-eight hours had passed since he'd stepped out of his cab and into his bizarre new existence.
Basil silently navigated the car through the streets with a certain grim determination. He did not seem to enjoy driving even a little bit and continually cursed his fellow motorists under his breath. After driving in silence for nearly twenty minutes he began to speak as if he were continuing a conversation that had previously been interrupted.
“While you were making up your mind about us,” he said, “we've had teams trying to backtrack the path of the EDH that attacked you.”
“'EDH'?” said Nolan.
“Sorry. Stands for 'Extra Dimensional Hybrid'. Fancy name for the offspring of things from outside this dimension. It seems that body in the morgue wasn't its only victim. Unfortunate for them but it did allow us to link it to a previous incident out in the suburbs. Bill's team thinks they've managed to nail down where the whole thing started, though we've still got no leads on whatever crossed over. That's what you and I are going to follow up now. Hopefully we'll be able to dig up something on the source of all this.”
Basil brought the car to an abrupt, somewhat jarring, stop and opened his door.
“And here we are,” said Basil, “lucky us.”
There were worse neighborhoods in Inlet City, Nolan mused as he examined the dilapidated, crumbling structure that was their destination, but he was hard pressed to think of any at that particular moment. The apartment building looked deserted and Nolan had a hard time believing that anyone actually lived in it. The scant lawn in front of the building was an overgrown jungle of browning city weeds that had invaded the pavement leading to the entrance as well, he couldn't see any signs of movement or habitation in any of the windows, and the exterior of the building had clearly long since been abandoned to the elements. This sense of desertion was further reenforced by the unusual silence that pervaded the entire area. It was another unseasonably warm day, the sort of day people usually take full advantage of in temperate climates, yet the streets were eerily deserted. He couldn't even hear any birds or insectile buzzings. Basil walked up the sidewalk, brushing aside a few unruly grasses that slapped at his face, and pushed open the front door of the building. They were immediately beset by a startling miasma of urine, mold, and assorted garbage. The only source of light was what little could pierce the translucent yellow film that coated the two thin windows in the front door. Overhead an empty light socket peered at them through a thick scrim of cobwebs. Basil briefly scanned the bank of mailboxes on the wall. Most of the little windows meant for the occupants names were empty and the ones that weren’t contained tags that had long since faded to illegibility.
The address they sought was on the third floor and Nolan found, much to his dismay, that the building’s condition did not improve the further they journeyed into it. As they climbed the stairs Nolan could feel things, mercifully unseen in the gloom of the stairwell, crunching, breaking, and occasionally squishing beneath his feet. There were occasional sounds of movement through the refuse and more than once he was certain he felt something scurry across the top of his shoe.
The third floor hallway was even darker than the entryway, having no windows and only one fluorescent tube that sputtered dimly from a canted ceiling fixture. If not for the occasional muted sounds of movement from within the other apartments it would have been easy to believe that the whole place was abandoned.
As they exited the stairwell into the hall Basil suddenly froze and stuck his arm to halt Nolan as well. A second later an enormous man wearing tattered jeans and a badly stained, white tank-top came striding towards them out of the shadows. He was so tall and horribly thin that Nolan's mind initially rejected it as a hallucination, and even after he accepted its existence as an actual, living create, he could still hardly believe that such a man was capable of standing let alone walking. His sunken eyes stared at them with blank, unfocused rage as he bore down on them. Basil took a step forward and the man stopped just short of colliding with him. He stood virtually motionless, breathing in a thin, wheezy rasp, hunched over slightly so he could stare directly into Basil's eyes. Basil stared calmly back for a moment and then, in a single fluid motion, raised his right hand and smacked the tall man square in the forehead while uttering a low, gutteral noise in his throat as if he had an unpleasantly large hunk of mucus stuck there. The tall man blinked, shook his head, nearly fell over, and placed a skeletal hand on the wall to steady himself. He looked from Basil to Nolan and back again several times, as if encountering other humans for the first time in his life. Then, without a word, he walked shakily through the stairwell door and was gone.
“Enthralled,” said Basil, looking over his shoulder at Nolan, as if that explained everything, “that's promising.”
Basil strode off down the hall, staring at the floor as he walked. Nolan got the impression he was following some sort of trail, though what it might be and how he could possibly see it were a mystery. Finally Basil stopped in front the door for apartment 305 and tried the knob. It didn't turn.
“Of course not, that would be too easy,” said Basil.
Basil put his hand in front of the door knob key slot and snapped his fingers three times in rapid succession. Tiny blue sparks jumped from where his fingers met and bounced off the the face of the lock. There was a faint click from inside the the lock and when Basil tried it again it turned easily.
Basil smiled at Nolan’s perplexed expression. “I know it doesn’t seem like it but you really do get used to this stuff after awhile. Just roll with it.”
Basil pushed open the unlocked door and stepped inside. Nolan followed.
Nolan had expected something a bit different than the utterly normal looking home they entered. There were no arcane books on the tables or snarling statues of tentacled beasts or pentagrams drawn on the walls in blood. Nothing about anything he saw seemed out of the ordinary, it was a simple apartment, perhaps a little threadbare. The worst he could have said was that it was a tad boring.
“The trick,” offered Basil, as if reading his thoughts, “is to purge from your mind any notions of what you’re ‘supposed’ to be looking for. This isn’t ‘CSI: Miami’ or whatever. If you were to bring any conventional forensics team in here it’s doubtful they would find anything significant and anything they did find wouldn’t mean much to them.”
Basil walked to the center of the room and gestured at the area around him.
“Use your instincts. Let your eyes slide over everything and try to pick out the things that don’t fit. That’s what we’re looking for. If there’s anything here that can help us that’s how we’ll find it.”
“I'll try but I don't know if I'll be of much help.”
“Don't sell yourself short. Your a smart guy, I can tell. Besides, sometimes the best eyes are new eyes.”
Basil walked over to a set of bookshelves and looked over the volumes and knickknacks resting there. Nolan decided to start with the small kitchen area off the living room. It was clean but had clearly been in use recently. Toaster, microwave, spice rack, stove, nothing any normal person wouldn't have. Nolan opened the refrigerator and found nothing unusual there either, apart from it being nearly empty; a half gallon jug of milk two weeks past its expiration date, a small container of yogurt, half a sliced tomato in a plastic bag. He closed the refrigerator door and walked out of the kitchen.
Nolan walked down a short hallway, stopped briefly to look in the very tiny looking bathroom (toilet, sink, toothbrush holder complete with translucent red handled toothbrush) and continued through a doorway at the end. It was a bedroom and, like everything else, it appeared unbearably average. A bed, a beside table, pale green table lamp, a short dresser that was clearly well past its prime. He pulled open a closet door and shut it again quickly. Jeans, t-shirts, a couple pairs of shoes on the floor. Nothing of consequence. All perfectly normal.
In the living room he could hear Basil rummaging around, opening drawers, flipping through books, apparently finding nothing either.
Because there's nothing to find, thought Nolan hopelessly, everything is perfectly normal.
The idea rolled around in Nolan's head, in particular the single phrase “perfectly normal”. He'd thought it several times since they'd entered the apartment and he couldn't shake the feeling that it meant something. Nolan looked back at the bedroom and was suddenly certain that he was wrong. There was something there, something literally sitting right in front of him, that he just wasn't seeing. What was it? He went back into the kitchen and opened one of the cupboards over the sink. Some glasses, a stack of plates. Perfectly normal. He opened one of the drawers. Forks, spoons, knives. What the hell was he missing? And then it was there, so clear and obvious that he couldn't believe he'd missed it. Nolan left the kitchen and stood in the middle of the living room. He turned slowly, taking in everything; t.v., sofa, curtains, coffee table. He stopped and faced Basil, who had been flipping absently through on book on medieval farming practices, and was now watching him intently.
“Well?” Said Basil.
“Do you see it?” Replied Nolan. Basil responded with a faint smile.
“You do, don't you? You were just waiting to see if I would see it.”
“Maybe. What do you see?”
“It's normal, all of it. Perfectly normal. Absolutely, completely, and utterly normal. It's like a film set. Everything single thing is exactly as someone would expect it to be.”
“Which means?”
“It's a lie. It's hiding something.”
Basil's smile widened. He slammed shut the book and tossed onto the couch. “Nicely done, and I don't think it's just a cleverly arranged setting either. I have the feeling that if you and I were to compare notes on what we're seeing right now we might find some interesting inconsistencies.”
“So this is all some kind of illusion to, what, keep people from looking too closely?”
“Precisely. It's not the most imaginative camouflage in the world but it would probably work on most people.”
“Now we just have to figure out what it's trying to cover up.”
“Actually, I think I already have.”
Basil walked across the living room and stood in front of a blank wall on the other side.
“I noticed it when we were out in the hall but it didn't really register until I realized the same thing you did; there's a door missing.” Basil continued.
“What?”
“There were four doors on the opposite side of the hall, four apartments, but on this side... only three. And I believe that missing apartment would be on the other side of this wall.” He ran his fingers over the blank face of the wall. “Ah, here we are.”
Basil produced a small knife with a curved blade from within the folds of his coat. Nolan noticed there were tiny runes etched into the surface of the blade. Basil raised the knife and plunged it hard into the wall. The blade disappeared through the surface and sunk into something that sounded like wood beneath it. The wall began to ripple where the knife pierced it, as if it were an image mirrored on the surface of a pool that had just been disturbed. Slowly the image of the wall faded away, revealing a heavy wooden door with Basil's knife stuck in its surface. There was a line of raised metal discs set into the wood along the door's jamb, to Nolan they looked like brass, each with a red symbol painted on it's surface. Basil ran his finger along each one and they sizzled as the painted symbols were smudged away.
“Alright, knife's done its job then, else touching those probably would have killed me.”
Basil plucked the knife free and returned it to its place within his coat. A thin line of spoke drifted up from the spot where it had been.
“There are more elegant ways to do that sort of thing,” he said as he turned the door's knob, “but I always say: 'why fuck around'?”
Nolan had about a million question about what had just happened but thought better of asking them. Hopefully there would be time for that later. Basil shouldered open the door and stepped into the room. Nolan followed after him and stood in the doorway, uncertain of what he was seeing. The room was filled with electric fans of every size and description. Nolan coughed as the smell of burnt plastic and wiring washed over him.
“Good lord,” he said, covering his mouth and nose. Basil didn't seem to notice.
“I'd stay there if I were you. It looks like the party's over but you can't always tell for sure.”
Basil walked across the room, weaving his way through the obstacle course of defunct fans, and knelt next to a white circle drawn on the floor in chalk. In the middle of the circle was a metal bowl that had been partially over turned. It's contents, a pile of black ash, had spilled out onto the floor. Basil took a pinch of the ash, sniffed it, and put it in his mouth.
“Shit,” said Basil with a deep frown.
“I hope you don't mean that literally.”
Basil stood and wiped his finger on his coat. “Thankfully, no. Though honestly it might be better if it was.”
“What's all this for?”
“Smoke drawing. Old, old magic; some of the first that humans ever learned to perform as a matter of fact. Hard to control, very dangerous if you get it wrong, but quite effective in the right hands. I can think of only a handful of people with the talent and skill to use it and even fewer who would be crazy enough to try.”
Basil squatted there for several minutes, scanning the room, and clearly thinking so hard Nolan could almost hear his synapses firing. Finally he stood and walked around the circle, being careful not to smudge it, and stood over what looked to Nolan like a large pile of burnt plastic melted onto the floor.
“Looks like we've definitely found the source of our problems. And from the looks of it those problems may be considerably worse than we thought.”
Basil took his cell phone from inside his jacket, pushed a single button, and spoke into it.
“Bill? Basil here, we're at 305 Waterside as you suggested, and looks like you were right on the money. Nolan and I have found the point of entry and it does not look good. Something serious crossed over here and I have a nasty suspicion about who's responsible. I think that a certain extremely dangerous lunatic is not nearly as dead as we were lead to believe.”
Basil turned and made his way back through the fans, waving his hand absently at Nolan for him to get moving, listening closely to whatever Bill was saying on the other end.
“Not a hundred percent but sure enough. I'd suggest you get a team over here quick as you can and start processing the evidence. If it is him then we need to get on his trail immediately.”
Nolan stepped back into the apartment and let Basil pass. He was glad to get away from the smell of the room, it was starting to make him feel light headed. Basil shoved his phone back into his coat and headed for the door. It was clear to Nolan that he was extraordinarily agitated. Whatever information he'd gleaned from the room had changed his mood completely. He hardly even seemed to notice that Nolan was still there. Nolan followed him out the door.
“Basil, would you mind telling what's going on?” Said Nolan.
“We need to get moving. Forensics will be here soon and I'd rather not be in their way. So, while they're doing their thing, we're going to see if we can't dig up some answers of our own.”
“Before, you told Bill you thought you knew who was behind all this.”
Basil shoved the door to the stairs so hard it slammed into the wall, producing a loud bang that reverberated through the dark shaft of the stairwell.
“His name is 'Gang'. He is unquestionably my least favorite person on the face of the earth and easily in the top five of anywhere else. He's also supposed to be deceased.”
Basil descended the stairs quickly, unhindered by the darkness, and Nolan was barely able to keep up. Several times he nearly tripped on something in the gloom and went sprawling. Once they finally reached the bottom and Nolan was able to focus less of his attention on not falling down, he continued their conversation.
“If he's supposed to be dead then how can you be sure it's him?”
“Because he's the only person who's smart enough, talented enough, strong enough, and insane enough to pull off something like this. Whatever came through into that room was not your average unspeakable horror from beyond. That looney found something really 'special' out in the wherever and decided to let it loose on the world. Whatever it was we need to find it and him or else a whole lot more people are going get dead.”
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