TIME SEEMED FICKLE TONIGHT, especially with the lack of light in the hallway, but judging by the amount of cigarette ash caked around my feet, I must’ve been standing outside my office for a little over an hour. It was quiet, save for the low angry buzz-thrum of the broken light fixture a few feet down near the stairway window.

I'd been out of town for a while, chasing old wives' tales up north across the border in Vancouver. I was meant to only be gone for a month, but rumors about red-eyed devils and speaking shadows had surfaced while I was poking around, of things twisted and turned, that had me extending the stay out of town for an added three weeks. Of course it all just ended up being hokum, but it paid to be diligent these days. These were monstrous times after all.

The drive back home after a month of nothing had been an odd six hours, with the stink of sweat and car leather having come to cling to my skin like a rancid new coat so thick I wasn't sure a hot shower could get me to take it off again. Going up the stairwell earlier I ran into old Mrs. Flick out of apartment 23; at first I thought it may have been the smell of me that left her screaming for Christ and scrabbling back to her door, but now… now I wasn’t too sure.

I took one final drag, the taste bittersweet: just the way I liked them. But this was my last smoke and I was all out of excuses.

I ground what little was left of my Cocky beneath my heel and wiped the ash from my collar.

Time to say hello.

Rope had been unceremoniously strung across the closed door to my office. From it dangled a sign, wooden and worn with extensive use.

"NSPD SCENE OF CRIME - TRESPASS ILLEGAL AND WILL BE MET WITH GRAVE LEGAL PUNISHMENT".

As good a welcome back home as any.

I used my old army knife to cut through the rope, the sign clattering on the floor breaking the silence that had crept up on me for the past hour. Later, much later, I would come to attribute an almost religious significance to that old piece of rope: a boundary broken, a line crossed. The fraying demarcation between ‘before’ and ‘after’.

So callously, foolishly cut.

Past the rope I saw Horus' unblinking, exotic eye vaguely backlit against the murky glass of the door. Beneath it: "Paixley & Co. Weirds Eye Investigations".

I tried the handle. Unlocked.

The door creaked open, blanket darkness painting the familiar outlines of my office. I fumbled for the light switch to my right, bathing the interior in a soft, warm glow.

Whatever I’d been expecting, it wasn’t this. The scene was mayhem, or what was left of it at least. A few specks of dried blood were usually signs of a good party in my book, but the silhouetted chalk outline beside my desk - the latter distinctly *not* in the position where I had left it the last time I was here - implied that the type of red spilled here recently hadn’t been the drinking kind.

That explained both the sign and the smell of lingering murder.

My cabinets to the left looked ransacked, a few loose sheaves of paper on the floor being toyed with by the wind coming in from the open window on the other side of the desk. It looked like someone had violently shoved it to the side, strewing my possessions across the room at one point, but someone afterwards had taken the bare minimum of time to place them back on it. The Blues?

I stepped inside for a closer look. To my right, the couch doubling as my bed looked relatively untouched, despite the rest of my office looking the victim of a hurricane. I ignored the chalk outline on the ground for now, stepping over it to reach for the window. Despite the summertime, the midnight wind blew in cold from the west.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Having shut it, images flashed through my mind, of Nancy’s righteous rage, chucking her bible at my head, missing, hitting the glass. The crunch of shards days after. I had had the pane replaced before I left town and kept the exorbitant bill to prove it.

So why were there cracks in the window? I counted three distinct points of impact on the outside glass that were not there before I had left town, spidery tendrils bleeding across the outside surface. I pressed my thumb against the points of impact from the inside, exerting pressure. No give. Birds would’ve done more damage. The cracks would’ve been bigger at least.

I opened the window again carefully, stuck my head in the cold to look outside.

I saw a dimly lit cityscape defying somnolence. In the far distance blazed the neon signs of downtown New Seattle, calling all comers, all night, every night. Closer by I saw dark streets light-speckled by mystical street lamps. Closer still, right outside my window however, I saw only black.

The street lamp that used to be only a few feet opposite my window wasn’t turned on. Hmm.

I shut the window again and spotted a pair of drinking glasses on my desk. They seemed to have survived the original onslaught of whatever had transpired here. I picked one up, inspecting it: clean.

A travesty.

The other one had the tell-tale smell of fruity sweet. Holding it up to the light, I saw a mottled trace of an amber residue coating the bottom. Peaches? Something I’d only drink if it was free.

Two glasses, only one poured.

I moved over to my next worry, the safe in the corner of my office. I sped on over and knelt beside it, reaching for the combination lock. My blood ran cold, seeing a sliver of light hug the contours of one of its corners a bit more intimately than I was used to seeing. Someone had left it open.

I jerked the door open further. My army Colt was gone. A pang of pain pinched me in the soul, feeling like an old friend had been taken from me. I reached inside the safe on touch.

Nothing.

The Peruvians were gone, too. Those would be a lot harder to replace on short notice. Damn it.

Checking the rest of the shelves, most everything of value that I had inside was gone. My savings, my works, everything except what looked to be my war medals seemed to be missing. I looked around my office again, trying to get a read on the situation.

Had someone robbed me while I was gone, managed to get into my safe? But why take everything but my medals? There was real gold and silver in these, even if you couldn’t find a way to pawn them off on the streets you could smelt them down and sell what was left for a lot more money than what I knew I had kept in my safe. I glanced towards the chalk outline again, remembering my priorities.

Looking about further, my eyes fell on the calendar hanging from the back wall. Something didn’t look right.

I stood up, walked over towards it. The year read 1952, the month, July. Strange. I left in early May.

It should’ve been void of anything other than Liza’s birthday on the 11th of June. No man makes appointments in his own absence, right? And yet scraping my eye over the calendar’s contents of the past few weeks when I knew I was out of town, I saw that someone had been marking the whiling of days with a combination of numbers on dates, although there didn’t appear to be any rhyme or reason to them. The first one was on June 2nd, Monday, 53, crossed out. June 5th, Thursday, 17, crossed out. Hang on.

June 9th, Sunday. Not a number this time, but a word. A name?

Cleo, accompanied by a time and a symbol I couldn’t quite make out the meaning of: ♔.

Looking further down the entries, I saw more crossed out numbers appear at random throughout the week, but the same entry for Cleo repeating itself every following Sunday for the rest of the month of June.

A steady appointment every Sunday at 8:30 PM.

I reached behind me for the phone askew on the desk, opposite where I liked to keep it, then dialed the first number that came to mind.

Silence, no pulse. Disconnected from service.

What the hell was going on?

Dead receiver on my ear, I took one last look around my office to see if I may have missed anything. If I had, it would have to wait for daylight. I put the receiver back on its stand, then finally took the time to inspect the chalk silhouette just behind the desk, kneeling down beside it.

Dried life’s red ink had been scattered around the wooden floorboards of my office, spelling the story of a dark deed done. In the midst of it all, demarcated with cheap chalk, the hollow outline of a person.

I knew the Blues tended to let reporters snap shots of crime scene bodies if they got wind of one, but whatever had happened here must’ve left the body in a pretty bad shape. They usually only went through the effort of outlining a silhouette if the body was in a deplorable condition, unfit for pictures in the evening newspaper.

Can’t upset people’s dinner.

Judging from the outline, the victim must’ve been male, five-ten, slightly overweight.

Funny.

Sounded familiar.