Break in at the Ardent

recorder starts

Kat: Okay.  On site incident report.  The Ardent…

Nijal: Wish it was longer before we had to say that again.

Kat: Yeah… sigh the body appears to be an adult human male, late twenties, early thirties.  Dressed all in black, a matching black backpack with typical breaking and entering kit, prybar, assorted tools, and… huh, a glass cutter, suppose that’s more on the professional side of things.

Ingram: Mundane… I mean, that’s how he got in.  This place is warded mystically more than anywhere on the planet other than The Pillar, especially after last year…  This guy is just some guy, nothing otherworldly.

Nijal: If you’re accusing me of letting my earthly wardings slip, I’ll have to take it personally.

Ingram: It happens man, no one can keep shit up all the time… beat  Come on no takers?  I left myself wide open.

Kat: Pass.

Nijal: Pass.

Ingram: you nerds are no fun.

Kat: Hey, what does that look like to you?

Nijal: That is… definitely a ghost wax cylinder.

Kat: In the intruder's bag.

Nijal: God. Dammit.

Kat: That definitely moves things into a higher bracket of fuckery.

Nijal: I’ll call the suits.

Ingram: I was hoping for a long weekend.

Kat: What's a weekend?

Ingram: Yeah… hey… what killed him?

Kat: No signs, but if you think I’m touching the body after a cadaver-explosion almost took out the whole building last year you’re dumber than people say you are.

Ingram: Yeah… wait, who says I’m dumb?

Click

Cid: You found the body just like this?

Kat: yeah, Nijal was on call and circled the body right away, we found him face down, arms out like that, bag there.  The only thing that got moved was the cylinder in his bag, Ingram and Nijal took that into containment.  It’s the only active thing on him.  Totally mundane otherwise.

Cid: I see.  There have been a few incidents, over the millenia, of robbers, criminals… the overly curious, making their way into the Ardent.  They have almost never made it inside… but we have had a lot of investigative explorer teens give it a try.  Many a charming “Scooby Doo type situation” … a lonely manor looming in the forest has been a siren song too strong for the charms that make the eye pass over the place.  We took turns coming up with ways to deter them.

Odai: Oh, halloween.  When all veils get thin and the morbid curiosity reaches its peak.  I still think the trick with the hedgemaze was the most inspired and so creepy… who knew Emea had it in her.

Cid: oh I did.  It’s always the soft spoken ones you have to watch out for.

Odai: Something tells me that this… is not that.  The timing and presence of a ghost wax cylinder essentially rules it out.

Cid: Indeed.  Do we have an ID on him yet?

Kat: Window says his name is “Harry Brewer” career criminal, thief, private investigator.  Most recently did four years for breaking and entering, apparently to plant evidence in a messy divorce custody case.

Cid: I’d wager he took a job from the wrong person…

Odai: How in the world did he get a hold of a Ghost Wax cylinder?  Chain of custody needs a rework?  None are reported missing, yes?

Cid: No, all accounted for… which means it’s a copy… or… someone made their own and tricked this poor soul into bringing it here.  

Kat: I’m getting a lot of messages from people asking why this wing is closed off… Do we have anything to tell them?

Cid: No.  Don’t tell anyone anything.  When the sweep is done I’ll have the body moved to the Cells for interrogation

beat

Odai: So… it’s them.

Cid: Who else?

click

Cid: Hello Mr. Brewer.

Harry: That fucking asshole…

Cid: You have no idea.

Harry: If something seems too good to be true.

Cid: It is.  

Odai: I’ve been wondering… I’d expect them to be more upset.

Cid: The dead?  Well… in a reclaiming we endeavor to help them process their emotions.  It all happens very quickly and unconsciously, as taxing as that is for the reclaimer.  If done properly we will see some sadness, some slight and inevitable anger, sorrow and regret as they give their account, but the… grander theatrics are meant to be kept private.  Ida, the modern refiner of the technique said once “We will not have the dead perform ghoulish spectacle.  The emotional catharsis and information gathering are to be kept separate.”

Odai: Wise.

Cid: She was, very.  But in this case I’ve skipped the emotional processing and cut out the more therapeutic elements.  Other than numbing the shock so we can get on with it.  Brewer here is a professional, no civilian victim.

Odai: But… he was still a man.  He is a victim, Cid.

Cid: And we are at war with madmen, so forgive me not ringing the bells and lighting the incense for him.  I have plenty of my own emotional burden at the moment… Mr. Brewer, tell us who sent you to the Ardent.

Harry: I… I can’t not tell you, can I?

Cid: You could try, but the more you do the more unpleasant this evening is going to get.

Harry: Sure.  Whatever, honor among thieves ends with my heartbeat I guess… we met in a bar in Queens.  This guy… he was obviously nuts.  Wily as a bag full of weasels, a bad moment away from serious violence, but he was dressed real high end which meant real money was at least potentially in play so I let him ramble.  He was huffing the shit out of some big silver vape device, was rocking something harder than nicotine and fruit flavoring that’s for damn sure.  Sat next to me and asked my name, when I told him, Harold, he said.

Herald: Oh, that’s my name too… sort of.  Herald, pleased to meet you

Harry: Yeah.  What do you want?  I’m not big on small talk.

Herald: Oh. I’m a bit of a chatterbox myself.

We hear Herald take a hit of vapor.

Herald: Sucking in vapor and emitting it in a deeply, offputtingly pleasured hiss. He is manic and altered by  the substance over the next lines, savoring every word.  

Words are like magic-No, they are magic.  You can terrify, and inspire and alter… trans-mu-tate.  If that’s not magic, I don’t know what is.  I use my words to change people-change people’s minds. 

Takes another drag

I can get what I want.  Sometimes I shock myself with how easy it is to get what I want.  If you asked just the right way, you could change the whole world. 

Harry: So ask then.

Herald: losing focus  Hmm?  Right, oh right.  I hear you’re a man who… does things.  

Harry: Yup.  I do lots of things.

Herald: And if I paid you fifty thousand dollars to deliver something into a locked manor home in the woods, would that be a thing you’d do?  Just put it in any big room with books.

Harry: Say less.

Herald: Lovely.

Odai: Him again.  Why would he provoke us like this?

Cid: He’s mad, petulant and, wrongly, thinks himself untouchable.  We’ve dealt with his kind before.  

Odai: Yes… it just usually didn’t take this long to get to the dealing with part…

Cid: ignoring When I gaze through Harry’s eyes into the memory of his employer’s face I just get a hood, pulled up… glowing red x’s where eyes should be and a lot of shiny teeth… the voice could be altered too.

Odai: Almost certainly.

Cid: Well… tell us what happened then.

Harry: Yeah… It was just like the guy said.  Big old house smack dab in the middle of the woods.  It took me a while… I was reconnoitering the perimeter and had made it all the way around before it hit me how weird it was.  

No driveway.

Just trees, then a clearing, then a house.

So odd I didn’t realize it at first…

The roof was copper…

I was having trouble counting the number of windows…

When the job paid as well as it did for something even a three striker like myself probably wouldn’t do much time for, I knew it would be one of the Odd Jobs.

I’d gotten a couple of jobs the guys and I called “Odd Jobs”.  A lot of the time things don’t line up, you can’t square shit, but that’s mostly a lack of full information right?  Odd Jobs are stuff you can’t square even with all the info.  Like, I got paid to take pictures of this lady.  Typical kinda private eye shit, follow them around, get me proof she’s banging the neighbor so the divorce is cheaper kinda thing.  But this lady… jesus, watched her for three hours with a telephoto… just staring at the wall.  Didn’t move.  Didn’t blink.  Just inside the house after her husband left… three inches from the south wall of the house, just staring at it… like she was waiting for something to happen… Then I saw her moving around upstairs… not, not like later, but at the same time.  She was downstairs staring at the wall still, but now she was upstairs taking curlers out of her hair… same lady.  So like… fuck, did she have a twin?  Did this guy know he was married to twins, no wonder he was suspicious…

Odd Job.

Another one was some insurance fraud thing, or that’s what he said, I dunno, staged hit and run.  The guy wanted me to clip him, drive off…  None of my business.

I did what he wanted.  Clipped him while in a crosswalk, lots of witnesses, pulled into a blind alley around the corner to change my license plate out… and… I mean, the grill or like air intake on the car must have caught him and he was a bleeder and… it was like… fizzy.  His blood seemed… I dunno carbonated?  It was like peroxide kinda fizzing and… fuck if it wasn’t taking the paint off the car… I had stuff to clean up and the rag I used was… like all dark brown and burnt looking by the time I was done and jesus it stank… i left it in a dumpster, swapped the plates and tried not to think about it.

Odd Job.

Anyways, I knew this was gonna be an odd job when I had to try to count the windows the third time and couldn’t shake the feeling that the house was a giant spider and that all the windows were eyes glaring at me.  I watched it all day and all evening until those spider eyes started glowing… but I noticed all the lights came on at once, seemed automated and I hadn’t seen ANY sign of life and it was night now.  Nobody is gonna come home traipsing through the woods in the middle of the night, nobody could come driving up the driveway it didn’t have and a helicopter made plenty of noise for me to scram to- I decided we were a go.

Big garden grounds all around.  The statues all looked… off.  My brain was a few hitches behind because it took me a while to figure that out too.  They were painted.  Looked just like shit you’d see in a museum size and shapes wise, but they were all bright colors… so weird.

There was a side door tucked under an eave, pretty near the tree line.  Good spot to get inside.  I hadn’t seen anyone come in or out for an hour, no movement in the windows.  It was hard for me to imagine anyone lived there, felt like it had maybe been a nut house JFK closed down or the lodge of some rich freaky cult that had petered out in the seventies.

The door was stubborn as shit.  My usual tricks didn’t cut it which was weird since it was so old.  Wood was heavy though, metal lock was too, no way I was breaking in without making a shit ton of noise.  The door had a literal keyhole and I couldn’t pick it, I didn’t know how that was possible…  This thing was gonna be over before it started, but just as I started to contemplate the logistics of silently busting a low level window…

KEYHOLE CLICK

Harry: I don’t know, my fussing with it must have moved things around and then, you know, when it settled the mechanism let loose.  Sure enough when I tried it- thing opened.

ABSURD DOOR CREAK

Harry: JESUS christ the fucking door… You wouldn’t believe how squeaky the fucking door was, I almost laughed.

Cid: Oh, I believe it.

Harry: Yeah… sure, well, so the door leads into this real big pretty, pristine kitchen and immediately i’m realizing - like I tighten right up because people for SURE live there.

Counters are clean, appliances are new.  Big copper pots hanging everywhere… like its homey, window herb garden, artwork of flowers and bugs and stuff, like anatomical drawings I guess?  And like kids artwork on these big corkboards, but its bigger, and has a lot of big heavy appliances like you’d see in a professional kitchen… I mean those copper pots aint cheap… I remember my mom talking about how bad she wanted, uh, wanted those.  “Like a real professional chef” she’d say all dreamy…

I got her some when I had some money again, but uh, yeah, trailing away by then she didn’t really care-

So the guy who gave me the job had said it had to be a big room with books which this definitely wasn’t, but if people lived here… I weighed the risk vs. how scared of the client I was and, trying to think of him, couldn’t remember his face… just like a big smile.

The shiver down my spine settled that and I creeped into the kitchen.

There were interior windows that looked over this big seating area with lots of tables, and even some booth seating.  Looked like a lounge or a restaurant.  Was this some kind of secret resort?  Health spa?

I was heading toward one of the two ways out, not the way that went into the dining area, the other one when I had this… tension?  Hit my stomach.  It wasn’t pain or like gas or anything it was something else- stirred up a lot of memories somehow, this… familiar kind of pain.

Didn’t have time to think on it much since I heard footsteps, slow, comfortable, not hurried like someone coming to shoot a burglar, but I only had a few seconds and opted to duck behind the center kitchen island rather than tucking into the pantry.  Whoever this is, they’re probably here for a midnight snack, headed for the pantry.

This is the kind of super fast thinking you have to do in my line of work, process a lot of variables really quickly.

Cid: You’ve spent more time in prison than someone I’d take burgling advice from.

Odai: and he’s died doing it.

Cid: yes, there’s that.

Harry: I’m pretty big but I can move real quick and quiet and I slipped back around the kitchen island, careful with my reflections and line of sight.  The person came in all breezy, nothing wrong, floors were tile… I could hear the clack of a lady’s heel, they started to head around the island to one of the big fridges and so I countered around.  They took a bunch of stuff out and then headed back towards the pantry- knew it- and so I countered back and saw an opening, as soon as I heard them head into the pantry, I slipped through the swinging door into the dining area and popped under a table.

Through the interior windows I saw remembers and stumbles a little bit Some lady… It was just a lady.  Looked familiar to me and that cramp in my stomach started back up, but uh… so this woman, kinda ginger blonde hair that uh… yeah she was sweeping all around the kitchen… cooking.  Not just a midnight snack, but like real cooking.

distant happy humming

Harry: she was kinda singing and humming.  She was SO happy, like really happy.  She pulled down those big copper pots and like… marveled at them like she hadn’t ever seen them before and “weren’t they neat” uhhh…

So the smells, real nice… gets a little choked up over the next lines these really nice smells start coming out of the kitchen and I realize what that feeling in my stomach is the familiar hurting… I guess the two parts of my brain had a conversation I wasn’t aware of and then connected it for me.

The pain was guilt.  Grey, achey, guilt.

Whoever was in the kitchen was making my mom’s stroganoff or I’m crazy.  It was unmistakable… I’d come home and my mom would try not to ask a lot of questions and feed me something delicious and slowly fail to hide her disappointment.

I’d fill up my stomach with delicious food and quiet guilt.  

I didn’t think there was any way looking out of the lit kitchen into the dark dining area… they couldn’t have seen me, but… I heard a ding, like a dinner’s up bell and… the lady, I could half see them… the glass made their face blurred… but they were just standing there… staring into the dark though the glass… 

Then they just walked out.

I waited a few minutes and went to check and… yeah… there was this big plate of noodles and beef sauce stinking like twenty years ago when she still recognized me enough for me to disappoint her.

Odd jobs teach you to shake stuff off and move on, but… I admit, I was pretty rattled.

The hall outside the kitchen was dark and I headed further in.  Had to be a study or a library, probably several, where else would the cult keep their weird alternative bibles right?

My eyes adjusted and… I did a double, maybe a triple take… i all but rubbed my eyes and went “huuuuh?” like a shitty cartoon. The interior… it was huge… like… they must have dug out, like excavated out because I walked right up to a marble railing and looked down and and… there were floors, many floors… columns and pillars and and in space in between, these huge, like giants… giant detailed metal sculptures of human bodies that held onto the pillars and stretched between floors, their bodies kinda wrapping around each other like dancers.

It was like some crazy art museum or like an opera house in a sci fi movie or like some crazy take on like gotham city… it was so jarring, immediately jumping all the way to the top of most surprising fucking thing i’ve ever seen.

Oh shit and it wasn’t just down it was up too which was… like completely impossible… had to be some kind of optical trick, mirrors or… I don’t know… something, because it went up and up, would have had to be a building five or six times taller than the one I went in, at least and… 

There was this woman.  I was caught, totally caught.  I’d stood out in the open gawking like an idiot, so shocked by the shape of the interior that I just got caught… but…

There was something wrong with her eyes.

I realized it was still totally dark, she hadn’t turned on the light… and her eyes…

She was blind.

Whats that expression?  The Devils own luck?

So… I just held still.  Held my breath.

Pip: singing a funny song to comfort herself

Ok… nothing to be scared of right?  Course not.  Just going for gram’s blondies… totally worth a little trip, being brave, except not, because to be brave there would have to be danger and there’s no danger right?

jinx meows

Harry: She was talking to a cat, this little slinky black cat was walking right by her side, so inky it was no wonder I didn’t see it until it… responded?  Huh, yeah, anyways this cat trots right over to my leg and I don’t dare move and i’m like… jerking my neck like, ‘get the fuck outta here cat don’t blow this’, i’m like DESEPRATElY trying to like will this cat to go away.

“I’m not doing anything bad, I’m just an idiot in over his head, no harm, i’m not harm”

And the cat like sniffs my ankle and looks right up at me. 

I looked right into its shining yellow eyes and… it blinked once and trotted past over to the girl, who at that point was close enough i could see… someone had done a nasty knife job on her pretty face.  Made me think of some awful shit I saw in prison… who the fuck would do that to some pretty girl?  It’s a sick world, man.

And… I don’t know how to say this… but… after the girl is in the kitchen, from the way she came… something else… something is there… following.  Something just slowly slowly following…  Someone?  I don’t know I can’t get a good look at it, maybe it was the dark… light playing tricks, but it was like my eyes couldn’t get a hold of it?  My vision kept slipping off… no, shit that doesn’t explain it well…

You know when you get REALLY high?  Like WAY too high or WAY too drunk and you kinda… can’t remember stuff even a few seconds old?  That kinda processing error you get when you just can’t hold onto the moment to moment and the lizard “i’m just here reacting to things happening” takes over?

It was like that, whatever it was following this girl just kept slipping out of mind even as I was looking at it… but i do remember… I remember it making a “Shhhh” gesture… and laughing… or… giggling maybe… and then i don’t remember…

Odai: Why isn’t he saying anything?

Cid: We understand, you saw the young blind woman and the cat and then what?  Why have you stopped?

Harry: I… what? Sure whatever, I uh… So once they go by I go the opposite way, and I find this huge curving staircase and as I look down at it i’m thinking of those scary paintings of like Dante’s inferno my friend’s dad used to scare all of us with like… “you boys straighten the fuck up if you don’t wanna wind up here walking on people’s faces” because as I look down the effect of all those copper and gold colored statues in the dark… fuck that.

So I just duck into the next door I can find.

Rows of seats, the smell of popcorn, a big silver screen glowing out of the darkness.

I took half a second to try and make it work, books are stories, movies are stories, therefore movies are books?  Naw, too much of stretch, even for as out of sorts as I was, so I decided to give it a second and try the other way

We hear the sound of the projector kicking on

All the seats were empty… the theater was dark, no beam of light was shooting out of the projection booth, I could see the whole upper level was dark… but the screen lit up, flickered, started playing…  I figured it was some kind of rear screen projector or something and the booth was… for something else or… it didn’t matter… just back out into the hall.

I was willing my body, my head and shoulders were starting to turn, but my eyes felt… fixed - stuck on the screen.  

This little kid with a shitty bowl cut and an oversized yellow shirt laughed and threw his head back.

Harry’s Mother:  Oh is that so so funny Harry?

We hear a child laugh hysterically

Harry’s Mother: is that so so funny baby?  

More laughter

Harry’s Mother: Mommy loves you baby.  Mommy is so proud of you.  You’re mommy’s good boy.

Harry: I don’t know what, or who, or why some fucker was doing this but I realized I’d been set up for some kind of prank, some kind of game. Mr. X Eyes and Big Smile thought they were fucking funny.

But I didn’t think this shit was funny.

I got kinda hot.  All the blood was rushing to my face and ears and that growling angry ocean drowned out my good sense.  I found myself wielding my prybar in oneand storming back out into the hall.

We hear a vase smashed off a table.

Harry: You think this is fucking funny you fucking creep?  You fucking with me?  You saying I let my mother down you piece of shit?  You ain't wrong but you’re still getting your teeth knocked out when I see you, yeah?  This Red Ron got you after me like this, chicken shit asshole pulling some mind game crap again?

beat

I’m like, kinda losing my shit and I go stomping down the hall and kick open the next door and… I mean… it’s my childhood bedroom.  Small, rectangular, window looking down out on Arthur Avenue.  Mr. Pupper Fluff laying sideways, staring at me with his one glossy black button.

I kick open the next door to the shitty little yellow box they stuck my  mom in when she didn’t know where she was anymore and where I never went to visit… I’ll never forget that cheerful, peeling yellow paint.

The next room’s the funeral parlor full of empty folding chairs.

I can’t figure out why my face is so wet.  Why I can’t breath.

I shoved the next door open.

It’s empty.  White walls and a dirty floor. 

beat

We hear the sound of chains and guttural groans

Harry: I heard it before I saw it.  Back the way I came… this huge chunk of the darkness filling the hallway… detached from the gloom around it and… shuffled towards me.  It-this chunk of the dark room- moved and I heard this wet thump of a foot.

We hear a heavy step and chains rattling

Harry: The darkness had arms… long arms, dragging on the ground… 

It had hooks… curved metal hooks in its hands… the darkness was holding hooks and I couldn’t move, these little hateful pinpricks were staring out from under the shadows like a hood and it groaned, half in pain, half almost excited… excited about what it was going to do to me…

We hear a soft buzz

Harry: gasps gently It… it only hurt a little bit-the sting- and uh… yeah I don’t know, it was dark so… I’m pretty sure it was a bee- of all the- I mean there was this fucking reaper come to judge my sins with metal hooks and, then a bee stung me- indoors- so when it rains I guess it pours and… I just was so sleepy I guess… I had an allergic reaction?  I don’t know… I don’t even remember falling over… I uh…

I’m sorry I broke in, but, you know, just a job… a weird ass job that didn’t pay nearly e-fucking-nuff.

Cid: thank you for being forthright. The phantoma spared you the ministrations of our more… zealous guardians, so I suppose you are forgiven.

Odai: beat This didn’t need to end in a death. 

Cid: You can save it, he was swinging a prybar around in the dark.  The handmaid behaved perfectly reasonably to its function.  These are dangerous times.

Odai:  My objections are noted.

Cid: withered of course, as always.

Odai: our foe tossed this man’s life away to deliver a cylinder to us.  He had to know this man wouldn’t walk out of here.  

Cid: He shouldn’t have been able to walk IN.  Extremely troubling.  They want us not to feel safe - speaking of which lets contain the information - he crossed Phillipa’s path, she was never in any danger and she’s only just started coming out of the vault… this would be a troubling setback.

Odai:  begrudging Agreed beat but… wasn’t there something else?  

Cid: Phillipa passed him, she was in the company of Master Jinx, so she was perfectly safe.  What else do you mean?

Odai: Wasn’t… huh, nothing I suppose.  So… would you like to go have a listen to the cylinder this man died to deliver to us?

Cid: Not at all.  But when do we get to do what we want?

recorder off