Elmer was not sure exactly how he was to feel at this moment.

Was he to be relieved or afraid?

Relieved that he would finally be able to get some clues as to where to find the mystic artifact that had been on his mind for weeks, or afraid due to the sheer number of situations disguised as coincidences that he had found himself in today?

What even was happening to him today?

Elmer’s thoughts were an unending wave and they kept crashing against a large castle that swept across to block their movements—a castle that was none other than his inability to provide himself with any answer.

His eyes were still pinched together, while he gazed down at the walkway he was standing on, when the sound of hooves clattering approached him.

He looked up almost immediately, as soon as he heard the snorts of a horse, and saw the guard who had gone to announce his presence to his employer reining the horse he was riding to a stop.

The guard dropped down from its back then, and pulled the side gate open for Elmer.

“I’ll take you to the mansion,” the guard said, and Elmer had no choice but to put his thoughts aside and reply with a nod, even though it was a stiff one. Then, after forcing himself to relax with a sigh, he walked into the vicinity beyond the gate.

Usually, he would have loved to take in the sight of what actually made up the scenery here, since he had not seen it well on that night, and as well not from outside the gate, but of course he couldn’t. Not at this moment.

He was restless, and all his mind could think about now was how to piece together the coincidences that had befallen him so they’d make even a little bit more sense. But it was to no avail.

The guard took onto the saddle of fine leather strapped neatly across the back of the horse after bolting the gate shut, and Elmer followed suit.

He had never climbed onto a horse before, so he relied solely on his instinct and what he had seen the guard do.

First, he stuck the point of his left foot into the stirrup, then he put his right arm on the horse’s back before taking hold of the guard’s outstretched hand which had been offered to aid him. After that was done, he lifted his body weight onto his left foot and swung his right leg over the horse’s back, placing himself firmly behind the guard.

It had been fairly easy but at the same time somewhat hard. A little less force to push himself up and he would have met his body lying flat on the ground in disgrace.

“Okay?” the guard asked. “You can grab on to me if that would make you more comfortable.”

Elmer wanted to say that it was fine, but in no way would he be caught dead falling from the back of a horse. That would even be more shameful than if he had fallen while trying to climb onto it.

He gently wrapped his arms around the guard’s waist, and with that the horse was spurred to ride toward the mansion.

…

The ride to the mansion would have been longer and more daunting on foot, so bearing that in mind Elmer could not complain despite the slight soreness that had come to be on his thighs through the little journey.

“Thank you,” he said to the guard as he dropped down from the horse, inciting the young man to nod before riding back to his shack at the gate.

He turned around rigidly then, due to the tender itches he was feeling beneath his waist, and beheld the sight of a man who looked to be in his mid-forties bowing a tad at him with his hands neatly tucked behind his back.

“Welcome, Mr. Elmer Hills. I am the butler of this mansion.” The man had a gruff voice and a sense of professionalism, and with that Elmer immediately knew who he was. “Master Reginald awaits you.” The butler straightened himself and used his left hand, which was covered in a white glove, to gesture at the large door of the mansion that was designed in a fairly byzantine way.

With the man’s bow now receded, Elmer saw a butler’s dressing for the first time.

The man was wearing a black tailcoat tailored perfectly to fit with his black trousers, along with a crisp white shirt fastened with a high collar, which was beneath a double breasted waistcoat, and a black bow tie.

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His whole attire bespoke dignity and sophistication. And just like every other time Elmer had experienced or seen something new, it left him astounded, especially the black gleaming shoes the man was wearing.

How is it possible to polish something to such an extent…? It’s literally a mirror…

Elmer took a moment to glance at his own boot, dirty and rough looking as it was.

He was almost of the mind to just take them off and go into the mansion with only his socks, but instead he let out a demeaning sigh directed at himself. After all, he’d already stepped into the building once with them, it mattered little if he did it again.

Elmer hesitantly climbed up the stairs of the mansion’s front porch and followed the butler’s lead in through the opened twins that came together to make up the front door.

…

Now standing in the foyer brightened by the light of day creeping in from the two rooms flanking it, Elmer confirmed the thoughts he had had of its vastness on the night he and Patsy had snuck into this home.

The space was so wide and spread out so far that it could almost be a standalone house by itself, and probably even harbor a little over thirty peasants from the countryside and still have enough room for easy movement.

Also, if the grand stairs at its center, which seemed to be ever rising to the upper floor, was removed there might even be more space to host a parking lot for two or three steam cars, a well furnished kitchen, and even the type of bathroom he had seen at Lev’s.

Of course, this was majorly him exaggerating, but the sheer grandness of the sight before him almost plunged him into a madness the whispers from the talisman had not even scratched the surface of.

He did not want to think the owner of this mansion as mere, but if a random person could own a place as this then he would not even bother himself to imagine what sort of homes were owned by the magistrate of each city and the emperor of Fitzroy.

Money really was the best thing to ever grace humanity. He wanted it—a lot of it.

“You can wait in the living room.” The voice of the butler appeared out of thin air to pull Elmer from his wallowing, causing him to shuffle to his side to see the man gesturing at a certain partition to his right. “I’ll go upstairs and bring Master Reginald with me.”

Elmer nodded, allowing the man to diligently make his way up the stairs with his gloved arms still tucked behind his back.

With a heave of breath, Elmer decided to head into the living room he had been shown. But just as he was about to make his way past the door-less entrance, he took a moment to glance behind himself toward the opposite room that was the kitchen.

He glimpsed the long chopping table of dark wood that had left him in a lesser sort of awe compared to the other things he had seen, and on the other side of it a young lady dressed in a black and white maid attire with an apron strapped across her waist. She seemed to be going about readying ingredients for meal preparation or something of the sort.

Elmer was about to turn away from looking at her when, out of the blue, she stopped and sent her gaze toward him.

A strange sensation suddenly washed over his body then, causing him to jerk his head backward as his eyebrows furrowed at the bizarre scenery that had come to be before him.

The bright light of day, which was pouring in through the kitchen’s window, dimmed slowly, but abruptly in an eerie manner, and painted its space in a veil-like darkness that caused shivers to crawl upon Elmer’s skin.

He had not moved an inch but it felt as though he was now further away from the kitchen across the foyer. Like the mansion had become elastic and some invisible force had unnoticeably pulled the opposite side far away to an infinite but accessible distance.

All of a sudden, the maid’s figure grew hazy and started to flicker in the darkness, glitching in some sort of sinister manner that made it seem like she was there but at the same time not.

At this moment, Elmer could barely feel air entering into his lungs any longer.

This was another strange supernatural incident just like the countless he’d faced, he knew, but somehow he could not shake away this feeling of dread that was pouring over his body like the waters whooshing out of a shower head.

Catching him off guard, Elmer saw the maid exchange her features for that of another. A person Elmer had never once forgotten.

Gripped by an unexpected enigmatic disorientation, Elmer instinctively shuddered backward, his steps only being stopped when his back came into contact with the wooden frame of the partition that led into the mansion’s living room.

What in the…?

Where the maid had been now stood a tall man who was dressed in a thick brown trench coat, and cradled in his hand an holder with a halfway melted lit candle firmly placed on it.

He was unmoving, so much that he almost seemed like an insignificant statue built near a roadside, one that anyone would simply ignore if they came across.

But Elmer knew the man was not.

He remembered the face. A face that was split in half, with one side perfectly human-like, and the other half rotten like spoiled meat with maggots crawling everywhere about it.

Elmer could not believe what he was seeing. His heart was pounding hard, and his palms had grown sweaty.

What in the world was happening?

He struggled to put together anything that would curb his confusion and the shivers that his body was having, but as usual with these sorts of encounters, he failed.

Then suddenly, the lips on the human-like half of the man’s face moved, and with that action a soft wind warm and cold alike blew against Elmer, queerly relaxing his tension and bringing into his ears the words,

“Help me, please.”