by Lucas Alpay
He swallowed. Shoot me dead now. He suddenly could feel someone was looking at him, as if there were entities in the landmarks, the playground and all the creepy places, insidious and unchallenged. But wasn’t that the nature of every old mansion, an unkempt mansion? Yes, that’s it, nothing more, Fritz thought and convinced himself that it was all in his mind. Although he wasn’t sure he succeeded.
When they were close enough to see the whole property, Fritz hadn’t expected what he saw. It was all clean. In fact, it could be considered as a picture in a magazine for the real estate. Its outer walls were covered in marble, its windows tainted black. There was a small fountain in front of it that had immaculate statues of Greek gods and goddesses (or were they Roman), of small cherubs, and odd looking fishes. And in this point there were no trees, welcoming the light from the sun for him to see every epic detail of the mansion. All of it was plethora nonsense.
It was like a dream in front of him, and the nightmare behind. The Giant Man remained frozen behind him as he stood in front of the big oak door that shouted embossed initials of E.D. Before he could knock, the door immediately opened by itself. Inside there was only darkness and a few glimpses of furniture. He suddenly wished he had his gun.
He entered and the Giant Man finally moved around outside the mansion, leaving him be. Then he heard steps capping the floor, they were gentle steps, small taps against the ground, like a slow tip-tapper. Light suddenly illuminated the place and revealed a wide staircase a few feet from his left, and a big receiving area on his front, and then finally an unlit hallway on his right.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Fritz,” said a woman after she’d emerged from the anteroom. She was wearing all black, a blazer covered her upper body that sent a message to Fritz that she was smarter than her looks. She was wearing a skirt that cut half an inch above her knees that said she was fun if she were in the mood. Fritz was suddenly terrified at the thought that he was sending a bad first impression of a message with his clothes; for him, his clothes said “I’m a man forced to do something by his boss” which was basically true.
He walked closer to her and found her pony-tailed black hair. “Yes, I’ve been sent by Mr. Wilder, our head in one of the offices in San Francisco.”
“I know, so if you don’t mind following me, I would be sending you to your room.”
“Am I supposed to meet the elect?”
“And he would be happy to meet you, but not today. I’m afraid he has been talking with all the head offices in California, and he is now in an exhausted state. I could give him a message from you if you want.”
He was suddenly pissed. “Is that so…” I’ve hurried myself here for nothing?
“Do you have any message for him?”
Fritz shook his head and then the woman said to follow her again. They then went upstairs and moved through a couple of hallways before reaching the right room for Fritz. The woman opened the door and offered him a “gentleman’s first” hand inside. So Fritz, without gratitude, entered and saw his room. It was big, that was all he could think of as he walked on.
“I’d like to say that you could call me if ever you need something, but I regret to say that it won’t happen, because as you can see, you are an employee in this mansion, working for an employer. If you want to eat I suggest you go downstairs and pass through the first hallway you could see. Beyond that you would see the kitchen. The food would suffice you, I reckon.” She then turned her back and started to walk towards the door.
“Wait,” Fritz called, the woman stopped but didn’t face him. “I didn’t catch your name.” He was trying to be friendly, he was trying to have someone to talk to, so he wouldn’t go insane, someone to distract him from the events of yester night. Anyone would do, even this girl that was starting to show her fiendish attitude. Woman, I beg you to be friendly… please…
“Because I haven’t told you.”
“So I’ll ask for your name—what’s your name?”
She said: “I would be introduced tomorrow.” She continued to the door, “Good afternoon, Mr. Fritz,” and then she was gone.
Bitch.
He found out that he didn’t need to go to the kitchen if he was hungry. There was already a small refrigerator inside his room and more (yet there were available snacks in there, it wasn't sufficed as what Fritz had first thought). There was also a wine cooler that was filled with what was expected. On the far side of the room there were also bottles of whiskey and bourbon that were made in the early 19th century.
He made a glass of one of the whiskeys and watched the moonlight rise from his balcony. And as he sat there, the sight was shared by the trees that were like nightmare, and in them he could also see the playground, the tower, and the well. And if he watched them long enough, he swore he could see shapes moving, waving, smiling—
Insidious… unchallenged.
Chapter 12
It was already 5:30 in the morning, and Fritz couldn’t take it anymore. He hadn’t given a wink, the only thing he had given a chance was an ice cold drink. He wanted to go out, he wanted to do anything other than staying in this room. It would be forgivable if he had books available around, or any kind of entertainment to kill the time, but the only thing that was close to entertainment was scaring himself by looking at that view of the nightmarish scene beyond his window. It was that bad. And practically, to make it worse, he was all left with his mind and thoughts of what was happening to the San Francisco offices. For those countless reasons, he left his room and tried his luck in finding any uplifting concept hanging around the mansion.
But as he moved in the hallways of the mansion, it was no better than staying in his room. Everything was in gray, and the whole place wasn’t humble of darkness, of that imaginative abyss. He could now see some portraits that hung on the wall, all of them inside gilded frames that had complex curves and designs that Fritz had only seen during the olden times, they were extravagant; they were tacky. But other than that, everything was empty. The only pieces of furniture that he’d seen there were in the anteroom. Nothing, not even a simple chair was revealed to him in his short exploration.
When he reached the kitchen, the incompetent hostess had been talking about, what he first saw was an islet that had a big bowl of fruits and various knickknacks for kitchen use. This time there were chairs around the only table there. And it was normal. Nothing odd, and especially nothing scary.
He searched for the light switch, found it, and flipped it open. And there was a sound.
“Hello…”
She was wearing white. The little girl was wearing white.
Fritz jumped and froze. His mind couldn’t decide if he would run or he would fight, apparently his flight or fight response was out of order. He cursed silently and studied this apparition. She was sitting on one of the chairs around the table. He couldn’t see her face because of her black hair, like black blood waterfall.
This is so fucking typical… But with that courageous thought, his knees were shaking, and his nape sweating. It was true that he had lived for so long, but that didn’t exempt him in being scared at the ghosts of the pop-culture of this decade. This could be actually an Asian-inspired ghost, because Fritz could see the drear pallet around it just like in those brilliantly petrifying Asian horror movies, as if it were almost black and white.
The girl tilted her head slightly and moved her palms over her glowing white dress. And for a moment as Fritz watched this act, he felt something familiar, something that was hiding inside of him for a very long time, a memory untold, unforgiven. He closed his eyes and pushed that memory back, you have no business here anymore.
But he was still scared.
He removed the compass from his pocket and opened it. Its hands started to move towards the girl. He looked up and blamed the only thing that could be blamed. The elect.
Fritz looked for a kitchen knife and prepared for a killing. But he stopped. This nightmare could be a property of the owner of the house—
Fritz decided he would go back to his room, “Goodbye,” he said and pulled out a kitchen knife.
Just in case.
As the sun rose up, he was finally called by the woman to meet the elect. They were now in the hallways, turning and turning in a mazelike fashion.
The woman in this light of day was very, impossibly, beautiful, and as a man, Fritz couldn’t help but to notice and drool in the inside. Her eyes were freakishly big but just right for her heart-shaped face. Her lips, where Fritz immediately concluded that he wanted to kiss, were thin and had this permanent smile that wouldn’t go away even she was angry. He loved to fuck her. Fritz couldn’t push down the urge, it was wired in him; lust is in every man’s heart whenever he sees a beautiful woman. That is the truth, one of the things in this world that couldn’t be broken.
She was now wearing a white blazer and black slacks. Her feet on the other hand were wearing nothing. Too bad he had no fetish on such things.
“Nice morning, isn’t it? I like mornings,” he said and then wondered if she could be in to him, if he had a chance.
“I’d like to say the same thing, but no,” she said, there was no irritation in her tone, just sadness and exhaustion.
Fritz remembered. “Has been there any attack on San Francisco?” there was no flirt in his voice now, just pure business.
“Fortunately for you there wasn’t. Here on Los Angeles there was. The attack killed a hundred sandmen.”
“I’m sorry to hear that…” He wasn’t. “What killed them?”
“Swords, stabs—weapons wielded by dreamed assassins based on the report.”
Fritz found his throat closing. “Have they extinguished these assassins?”
“Not all, they’re still hunting them down, the day-shifts.”
They then took a right, leading them to the garden—if garden was even the right word.
They walked past tall trees and stepped on wet soil that made Fritz question himself if it’d rained earlier. He just sighed to this and thought if he would see another white dressed girl once more, standing a few meters from them, scaring him like a child lost in a forest. There was a tang in the air that he couldn’t identify. Could be blood? But it didn’t smell of iron. It smelled toxic, something that would kill him in a single drop. He could also hear animals above the trees, away: monkeys shouting, a tiger roaring. But he chose not to question any of the oddities. He just took them all in and kept in mind that this was a place of an elect.
Then there was a couch.
“There,” said the woman who now moved gracefully, seductively on the thick and dirty ground.
An old man was sitting on it. He was reading a book but when he heard them, he looked towards their way over his eyeglasses. He didn’t smile, he just stared, no expression had been shred, been given.
“You can sit,” said the woman.
As Fritz did, he just noticed now that the Giant Man was standing behind the trees, breathing. He could feel its nonexistent eyes behind that thick helmet.
“What name do you want to be called, sir?” the elect asked, his eyes returned in reading.
“Fritz.”
“Call me Erik. My whole name is Erik Delskag. Please to meet you. And… I’m to inform you that we’re the only ones who’d be here. Another investigator I asked for has been killed in an attack… sad.”
Silence.
Fritz waited for him to say the main reason why he had been called, but… more silence.
“Sooo… what do you want us to do exactly?” Fritz asked.
Erik then pulled out something behind him and put it between him and Fritz. It was a silver knife, and on the edge of its hilt, a compass.
“Only a hundred of those had been made. It’s called fantasia. It hunts dreamers through the dreamed entities.” He paused. “I want you to use it in finding the one who is doing all of this. The one who is killing your kind.”
“And you need an investigator for this? As I can see it, you can let anyone do what you want us to do.”
“Hmm-mm. But only a very few hunted a rogue elect down. And you did it without even using one of these,” he looked at the fantasia.
The name William echoed in his ears. “I have a small tower back then. A good place to look at. A bird's-eye view. I eliminated the false point of origins for a few weeks, that's why I caught the rogue. But this is different. The attack started at my city, then here. It seems to me that the elect is moving. And this is definitely a premeditated attack.”
“And how can you explain why the sandmen in San Francisco and in LA haven’t felt these dreamed assassins? The elder-compasses should be spinning out of control if ever such things exist for a period of time, don’t you think?”
The elder-compasses were things that could feel dreams in a limited but long distance, they had none in their building, but the office where Gordon was head at had one. If there was out of the ordinary in their area, Gordon would have informed them, but that didn’t happen.
“What are you saying? This person, or persons, created those murderers in one night?”
“For someone who can create nightmares like, let’s say, Frank, it is very possible.” Erik sighed. “I’ve read the reports… All of them…” He looked at Fritz straight in the eyes. “It’s not ‘persons’ I think. It’s singular. Take this as a professional opinion. Few dreams that have been dreamt in the previous attacks were similar to Frank. There’s no elect in our history who achieved such improbable feat. No one… If ‘they are’ and not ‘she’ or ‘he is’, then I doubt that a hundred percent.”
One is extremely rare, two of them are flat out laughable. Fritz crossed his arms and looked furtively down on the woman’s feet and considered what he had said. “What can you tell me about Frank?”
“He is the first of his kind,” Erik said. “Not really. He is one among many.” He paused. “Basically two types of dreams appeared last night, one of them is Frank’s kind, the other is the assassins. Frank’s kind is the unique one. And they appeared very suddenly in various locations, all in different forms and personalities. What I’m saying is that they are all complex, and complexity couldn’t be done in just one night.” He nodded to himself, as if some voice in his mind told him to nod. “They also have… they have…” he couldn’t say it.
“Souls?” Fritz finished. Silence. That means yes. “I thought so… this special compass considered Frank as human. Freaky…”
“That is why we need special help, not just an ordinary sandman, we need somebody like you.”
Fritz didn’t think about it that long. The reason was he had nothing much to do; and if he went back to the San Francisco office, then what would his use be but another sandman that had the possibility of dying by murder every night. The only trick here was trying to forget William, to stay in the ‘now’ and not in the past. It would be hard, and based on his life experiences he would later on regret his decision, but he would try his best to find the asshole who was doing this. This decision was absolute.
“Very well…” he looked at Erik. “Wilder said you have another investigator in your disposal. A third one.”
“Fritz, meet Natasha.” Erik presented the barefooted woman.
Chapter 13
“Natasha has talents I added to her some years ago,” Erik said. “I added them because I was bored, I cannot talk sense in some of my creation,” he Looked at the Giant Man, “so I did her.” There was some pervasive tone in his last statement. He looked at Natasha and smiled. “She has been modeled from my late wife, but she came out different…” he licked his lip, “She turned out to be more… perfect.” He sounded disappointed now.
Fritz looked at her and found that this was true. Natasha was one of the most beautiful girls he’d seen, prettier than the women in his office who had supposedly come from the likeness of goddesses and succubuses. But somethin
g in Natasha’s eyes made Fritz think that there was something wrong deep inside of her, something psychological. He wished this wasn’t true because he couldn’t think how cliché was that; it seemed that whenever a solid 10 girl fell on his lap, she had drug issues or alcohol or daddy and mommy problems. Boo-hoo. He reckoned that it was one of what Erik had been saying “talents” of hers. To look problematic? Maybe.
“I didn’t know you can do that, I didn’t know any elect can do that,” he said. Because it was unheard of. You couldn’t just add something in your dreamt-creation by will, because if it was already dreamt, that dream would stay as it was always been, free to make his or her own choices. Dreams are like babies. “Can I ask how?”
“There are things an elect could do if he reaches certain maturity,” he removed his glasses, “Besides, I can only do it in one dream. There’s nothing fancy and extraordinary about it.”
Fritz looked at Natasha and asked, “I’m curious, what are your talents?”
“Let’s just say I’m a shrink,” she said; even those words seemed music to Fritz’s ears now.
“I would like for both of you to start immediately,” Erik said.
“Where? I need the details of the attack last night, I need witnesses.”
Erik looked at Natasha. “She has all of the files, as I believe.”
Natasha nodded and asked Fritz to follow her.
They went at the library of the mansion. It was small, but it was enough. And when Fritz entered, he found out what happened to the missing furniture; they were all stacked in one corner of the area. Most of them were broken down, but the others, the beautiful ones, were still serving their purpose. They were mostly chairs, some were tables and cabinets. And dusts, they had all crowns of dusts that made Fritz sneeze and his eyes watery.
“Does Erik dream scary little girls in white?” he suddenly asked as Natasha rummaged at the file cabinets near the library entrance.