Bright and early and more or less ‘on the dot’ the next morning, Lei was at Val’s front doorstep ready for another day on the job. The weather was light and cool, but she was toting a bigger sweater just in case, and had a scarf in her pocket (not made of human hair) just in case it got windy, or there was something disgusting that needed picking up. As she ambled up the stairs, a group of Val’s biker buddies roared by on their black motorcycles, leaving behind fresh new tire tracks on the trash laden road. Ravel, who was waiting on the step, trembled at the noise. All in all, it looked to be another normal day. That’s what she would have liked.

‘Good morning,’ was the first thing Ravel said. The second was, ‘I can’t get the door open.’

‘It’s always stuck. You have to really go at it. Show it whose boss.’

Ravel made no attempts to do so. ‘I know. But I think it’s locked today.’

Lei fumbled with the doorknob, then drove her shoulder into the door. It didn’t budge. She tried again.

‘It’s not like I’m lying,’ Ravel complained. ‘I wish you’d stop assuming I’m a lightweight. I’m taller than you! I know how to tackle a door in. I can even tackle people. I played football in high school, you know.’

Lei backed away from the door to give Ravel a doubtful glare.

‘I’m sorry. That was in poor taste,’ he mumbled.

‘You’re right. And not just about your taste, the door is locked.’ Lei sighed. She gave the door a few hard knocks. ‘Val! Your assistants are here, clocking in for work as you asked! We’re out here in the cold! I hope you’re paying us for our wasted time!’ Ravel and Lei quieted down for a few moments, but there was no reply but the sounds of cars and trains in the far distance. The house stood as stoic as ever, all windows boarded, the door locked.

Lei knocked again with increased intensity. Ravel seemed terrified that she was going to do so until she sent her fist right through the door. ‘Maybe… maybe he’s in his fridge again, or the back room. Why don’t we try the doorbell?’

‘There’s a doorbell?’ Both of their eyes roamed the doorframe and fell on the little white box next to the door. ‘That’s weird,’ Lei said, ‘I don’t remember seeing that there before.’

‘Me neither,’ Ravel said, ‘But maybe that’s just because we never had a reason to use it.’ He moved to the flimsy looking box and pressed the round white button in the middle of it. He removed his finger almost immediately in shock.

There was no sound and no Val, nothing inside stirred, but the doorbell itself moved. The entire box crumpled under his finger like tissue. When he released it, the ruined box fell to the floor, along the contents it had been pinning to the wall, which turned out not to be any kind of electrical appliance, but a folded sheet of paper. The box and paper were caught in the breeze and tossed against Ravel’s sneakers. Nobody said anything for a while.

‘Somebody’s left a note,’ Lei said.

‘Yeah… But… To tell you the truth, I’m not sure I want to know what’s in it.’ Ravel tugged at his scarf tails uneasily. ‘What Val’s not here because something happened to him?’

‘I’m more afraid of finding out that nothing had happened to him and he’s just not here because he’s being irresponsible.’ Lei snapped the paper up from the ground and unfolded it. She took one look at in and groaned. Ravel’s face fell from its already rather low position. Lei read the note to him.

Dear assistants, If you are reading this, then good job, you are here on time! Unfortunately I will be at the

[various words obscured by scratches]

…dentist for most of the day, but you don’t have to sit out in the cold! Follow the directions to find your way into the house and get something to eat, maybe watch some TV. –V

‘That’s it. Erm, and he doodled something completely unreadable underneath.’

Ravel pushed the corner of the paper down to get a better look at these unreadable directions. They looked more like pictures than letters, but not lined up very well, not really arranged in any particular way. There were arrows pointing from place to place, a few numbers and what looked like an exploding unisex toilet sign in the bottom right, but most of it was just malformed boxes and squiggles.

Ravel tried to organize the image in his head to little avail while Lei’s mind was more devoted to what she was going to do to Val once they met up with him again. She thought of several things, and many of these plans involved fists being thrown around.

‘Maybe we should just go home,’ Lei said.

‘We can at least try to figure this out,’ Ravel said, mostly to himself. ‘Let’s say that the house looking box on the left side is Val’s house, or the starting point. He was expecting us to come here, after all. He even drew his own front steps. There’s an arrow pointing away from it at some boxes above it. What could that mean?’

‘The boxes kind of look like houses too. Maybe Val wants us to go up high and throw his house somewhere far away.’

‘I wouldn’t be surprised,’ Ravel said sadly. ‘That thing next to it does look like a ladder.’

‘Alright,’ Lei sighed and examined the picture very carefully. ‘I guess those blocks really could be houses like his. There are a ton of those around here. Maybe he wants us to pass three of them on left, or the ones behind it.’ Still looking at their piece of paper, Lei started down the street to the left. She looked up. There was nothing but row houses as far as the eye could see. And the streets weren’t exactly straight. The blocks weren’t evenly spaced and the next intersection had 5 roads leading out, which she had not noticed before. A five way intersection seemed unnecessarily risky, especially considering the biker gang constantly flying through. ‘Which should we try first?’

‘The arrow looks different above those houses,’ Ravel said. ‘Well, it kind of looks like a ladder. The rungs are sort of arrow shaped. Maybe the number of rungs means something.’

‘There are seven of those.’ Lei walked to the end of the sidewalk and looked around the block. ‘But he’s already told us to go three houses down. Why put more measurements? Maybe they were just arbitrary. Do you see any ladders around?’

‘No,’ Ravel said. ‘I don’t even think these houses have fire escapes. That’s a real health hazard.’

‘That’s not the only thing that’s a health hazard in this neighborhood,’ Lei grumbled as eyeballed the waves of trash that were blowing up and down the empty streets. They caught on the sidewalks and buried themselves in corners. As a particularly large wad of tissue paper and sandwich wraps rolled down the street, so did the scent of fresh damp garbage. Lei glanced down the street at a busted garbage bag, the source of the smell. Apparently the bikers had driven over it on their daily commute.

Somebody’s tires must have been particularly lousy, because they had left an extensive track that dragged all the way from the end of Val’s street and around the corner. This particular bike had gone down the north most block from the left of Val’s house. The choppy black marks, with lines through it like arrows, moved around the corner and out of sight.

Arrows.

‘The tracks,’ Lei said, and Ravel saw it too. ‘Of course. The bikers work for him. They left the trail for us.’

‘Oh. Yes. So… 32nd street, north,’ Ravel read off the multi-pronged sign above their heads. ‘So we should go three houses down that way.’

They followed the tire tracks down 32nd street. It was not a very gratifying accomplishment. This street looked absolutely identical to any other street in the area. Connected red brick houses with iron barred windows and white front steps leading down to a sidewalk covered in trash. All that was different was that these houses actually belonged to different people, who didn’t buy out the whole block and punch out the connecting walls. These people didn’t board their windows up like Val did. Instead, they proudly displayed their tacky white curtains and individualized dying windowsill flower boxes. Lei and Ravel passed two and a half rows of houses the size of Val’s house before they both stopped at the same time, as the same thing occurred to both of them.

‘Wait,’ Ravel said.

‘Don’t tell me, there’s a problem,’ Lei said.

Ravel consulted the paper once again. ‘Three houses, right? But we’re supposed to get to something marked 18. The houses here are already #40 and up. You don’t suspect he wants us to walk 18 blocks and was just… too lazy to draw all the houses?’

‘Maybe he wants us to walk to #18 from here.’

Ravel looked uncomfortable. ‘That seems… unreasonable. It doesn’t even seem like a house that far could get us into his house in any way. It doesn’t make sense.’

‘Hey, you know who we’re dealing with.’ Lei gave the red brick houses around them a stern look. ‘We can hike over to #18 or 18 blocks down if you want to. I know I don’t. But I suppose we can at least check out what’s waiting three doors down this way.’

Lei left a very anxious Ravel kicking at his own feet at #44 and walked on. The next identical-looking housing block contained flats #45, #46, #47 and #18. Or rather, somebody had scraped away the black paint around the number 4 leaving only a straight vertical line giving the sign the appearance on #18.

‘Well, I’ll be damned,’ Lei said. She ran back to Ravel who was still absorbed in his worries and dragged him over by the front of his shirt. He looked at the sign with the look of a man ready to kill himself if anything else went wrong.

‘That seems unnecessarily complicated,’ he mumbled.

Lei refrained from reminding him again of the nature of their boss. Instead she went up to the door and tackled it in. She did so partially out of habit, and partially out of building stress. It also brought Ravel’s attention back to the matter at hand. He almost jumped out of his skin when the door burst open.

‘This one’s not locked,’ Lei said triumphantly, stepping into the plain white hallway. Her vigor dissolved quickly when she saw where the house led them.

Ravel walked in with a look as blank as the walls around him. He looked down the hall. ‘Well, the arrow after the 18 did point down. Straight down.’

What gaped in front of them, consuming the entirety of the house, was a stairway leading straight down a tunnel dug out in the ground. There was no light down the tunnel, and the stairs were very steep. As the directions indicated, it was straight down from there into the pit.

‘How far down, do you think?’ Lei asked.

‘All the way,’ Ravel said quietly. He consulted the map in the meager light. ‘Until we reach those… hurdle looking things at the bottom here. Well… they look like hurdles.’

Lei faced the tunnel and got a face full of stale air as something stirred from the other side. Ravel stood behind her silently. ‘Alright,’ she said at last, ‘We’re halfway through the map. Might as well see what the other half looks like.’ She took her first step down into the ditch.

‘Well, we don’t really know how far we are,’ Ravel said as he followed. ‘Who knows if he drew the thing to scale. We could be a fifth of the way through, for all we know.’ Sensing Lei’s growing irritation even without the light to see it by, he amended meekly with, ‘Or maybe we are more than halfway through. It works both ways.’

They continued on in cautious silence.

Lei had no idea how far they had walked downward before she walked into a wall. ‘Ow.’

Unable to see where she was, Ravel walked right into her. He immediately backed off as though he had touched fire. ‘Are you okay? What is it?’

‘A wall. It feels like one. I swear to god, if we follow his stupid map all this way just to run into a wall-‘ Lei left the threat unfinished, which really only made it all the more ominous. Unfortunately its recipient wasn’t around to hear it. ‘It’s got some groves. Maybe there’s a way through.’

‘Maybe you should run into it, like you did with the other doors,’ Ravel said dubiously.

‘Maybe you should run into it,’ Lei suggested.

‘We can both run into it,’ Ravel said in quick deference. He reached his hands out and moved until he felt the wall. He knocked on it. A hollow sound reverberated around the chamber. ‘There’s nothing behind it. Maybe we can knock it over.’

‘Alright,’ Lei said. ‘On three, then.’

On the count of three (that took a while to get set up) they both collided with the wall. Ravel smacked right into his portion and nothing happened. Lei rammed the strange grooved surface she had felt and it cracked open with a bang, revealing a doorway that was open, but led to nothing but more darkness. She picked herself off the ground. It was dusty. She hoped that it was just dust, anyway. ‘Ravel? The door opened.’

‘I think my nose is bleeding.’

‘Wipe it with your scarf, the color will hide it.’ Lei wandered forward blindly and heard Ravel collide with the doorframe as he attempted to make his way through it. He was sniffling. Maybe he really did have a nosebleed. Lei was grateful she did not have to see it if it were so. ‘I think there’s another door here,’ she said, running her hands across the wall.

‘You should take care of that one,’ Ravel whimpered.

Lei blasted through that door as she had with the others. She was met with the light at the end of the tunnel. A cold ray of sunlight up ahead illuminated another staircase, this time going up. ‘I guess we’ve finished that part of the map then. The “hurdles”.’

‘That means we’re getting close. I hope.’ Ravel took this chance to look at the map. ‘Yeah, I can see how that… doodle sort of looks like stairs.’

Lei was already up one flight. She reached a small landing with a matching small window covered with iron bars. Outside she could see the first floor window of a neighboring house. There was a cactus sitting on the sill, but the curtains were drawn. The cactus seemed to be dying. Up above, Lei saw the light of several other small windows. ‘How far are we going?’

‘All the way,’ Ravel said. ‘Or maybe three boxes. Does that mean three floors? Whatever takes us to the top so we can jump off the building into the exploding bathroom sign?’

‘Now isn’t the time for jokes,’ Lei warned.

‘This map is the joke. But it’s probably three floors,’ Ravel said, although he still didn’t sound too sure.

The two of them began plodding up the stairs in silence. Ravel seemed even less at ease now that he could see his nose was bleeding, and dispersing little red dots all over the map. Lei kept her eyes on the windows. They passed the first floor, the curtained window with the cactus. Then the second, a metal with sliding metal shades that were half open, revealing the edge of a bed, and somebody’s thin, twitchy foot. Then finally, the third floor. Lei stopped to look. This floor’s window was open, and the bars had been removed. She peered out into the open air. The window of the building across was uncovered, but there was nothing to see in the room but a lone sign flattened against the window.

Ravel caught up with her, wiping his nose with his scarf as she had recommended. He too looked out the window at the sign.

It was a sign, the size of a dinner tray. The back was white, on the left, there was a stick man printed, and on the right, a stick man with a skirt. A bathroom sign. At this point, it was almost unbelievable in its exact correspondence to Val’s ridiculous set of directions.

‘I guess that means we’re here,’ Ravel said.

‘Are you sure it doesn’t mean we’re supposed to be over there?’

‘That would be tragic,’ Lei muttered. She surveyed the area around the window. There buildings were pretty far apart, at least a few meters. In between: nothing of note. She stuck her head out of the window in front of here and took a look above and below. And that was where she saw it. Ravel had just finished mopping his nose when he saw Lei jump onto the windowsill and take a leap out the window.

‘Lei, no!’ he cried, and the veins of his nose exploded once again. ‘I told you, it wasn’t worth it! I thought you said you weren’t going to kill yourself! But I… I…’ He ran up to the window and leaned out. He stared down in horror. Drops of blood rolled down his face and fell into the air, blown east with the wind. The trajectory was blocked, however, by a massive flat, square greenhouse sitting just left and below the window he was standing at.

The drop splashed as Lei’s feet. She was standing on the roof of the greenhouse. ‘Wow, Ravel.’

Ravel stared at her as thought it were the second coming of Christ. ‘How did you get over there?’

‘I jumped out the window.’

Ravel was speechless.

‘This must be it.’

‘What? Why?’

‘Look at this,’ Lei said, tapping the flat roof of the greenhouse with her foot. ‘Look familiar? Val’s friends have houses with glass sections. It should be no surprise that Val had one too. We just never thought to look for it. Now get over here. This should be the end of the journey.’

Very timidly and very slowly, Ravel inched his foot onto the windowsill. He tottered on it for a while. Lei didn’t watch him; she was busy wandering casually all over the roof looking for a way in. Ravel shivered and leapt. He smacked onto the glass as lightly as he could, which was not very lightly at all. He hoped he hadn’t cracked the glass. He also set his nosebleed in motion again.

The greenhouse was a rectangular block about half the size of a row of connected houses. It was connected to the back of a house that looked like any other, but Ravel saw that this house had some glass panels in its roof. Skylights. They had circled the block and climbed the building behind Val’s to jump down onto the back portion of his house.

Ravel sighed. He gave the paper in his hand one last look before he crumpled it up and threw it down into the tiny space between the buildings and the greenhouse. There was no shortage of trash in this tiny space.

‘It looks like there’s another kind of staircase leading up here,’ Lei said, trying to shield her eyes and get a better look into the greenhouse. Most of the panes had a sort of mottled texture, and the inside was dark, making it difficult to see in. ‘So there should be a door around here somewhe-‘

Lei found the door. A single pane of glass, fastened somewhat loosely. Loose enough to open with a person’s weight. She had dropped through it.

Suppressing another cry of horror, Ravel peered into the gap where she had fallen, into the greenhouse. She had landed on a raised platform that was indeed like the one in Val’s front room, the one with all the bookcases, supported by a staircase made of black metal and strange little demons. This one, however, only had empty bookcases, and no beanbag pillow for soft landing.

‘Well. We’re finally in,’ Lei said, dusting herself off and nursing the bruises from her fall.

Ravel jumped in and landed with an unceremonious bang on the metal platform. He closed the skylight up again as quietly as he could to make up for it. The inside of this greenhouse was darker than that of the spire in the mansion, or the house on top of the abandoned building. Perhaps it was the obscuring texture of the glass, or its green tint, or the fact that there was little light that made it past the surrounding buildings, but the inside was bathed in a sort of perpetual twilight.

It was quite the romantic atmosphere for what seemed to just be an oversized, underused glass bathroom.

‘Wow. He really wanted us to get in using the bathroom after all,’ Ravel deadpanned. ‘What a place for a back door, though. What if somebody was on the toilet…?’

There was a neat ceramic set of bathroom implements all gathered at the corner of the glass room; a clean white sink and toilet, a bathtub surrounded by closable panes of glass, a mirror, some racks stacked with bathing implements. On the other side there was nothing but a white leather sofa. The whole room was floored with white tiles. Even the doors seemed to be paneled with smooth white plastic. It was a different world from the disheveled room out in front.

Lei dismissed all these sights and headed down the staircase, filling the greenhouse with gruff footsteps. ‘Let’s get out of here. I could really use a bowl of cereal.’

‘Hey,’ Ravel said as Lei began wrestling with the doors. There were two, on adjacent walls but in the same corner. ‘At least we know where the bathroom is now.’

After resolving that one of the door was locked, Lei turned to the other. This one opened easily. ‘Oh yeah,’ she said. ‘We know exactly where it is.’

In front of them, behind the door, was a cold little room with three plastic racks. On the plastic racks were a bottle of seltzer, a half-empty tub of sliced turkey, five grossly mishandled cakes and a ruined slab of butter. Without them, the room could have hidden a body or two.

—

Val’s assistants stepped out of the refrigerator, trying to upset the contents as little as possible. This turned into quite an operation, as the door needed to be opened, and the contents needed to be removed, then the shelves. Then everything had to be put back in its place, but of course every implement had been placed in the room that you had just left. This was complicated even further by the fact that Lei didn’t want to touch the week old cakes, and Ravel didn’t want to touch anything white with his nosebleed-stained hands.

Lei placed the plastic shelves back and went to go turn on the lights while Ravel put the cakes back. Out of curiousity, she jiggled the doorknob to the side door as she passed it. Locked. The locked side door in the bathroom would have led in there too. Strange. But no need to tempt fate further, it had been a rough enough day. She was surprised, though, as she strolled around the room that the chairs were all in order as opposed to thrown about as horrendously as possible. Val, keeping his house clean? Or was it his guest?

As she reached the light switch, the front door clicked. She stumbled backward. From the fridge, Ravel dropped a moldy chocolate birthday cake in shock. Thankfully, it was already so disheveled that dropping it again hardly made a difference.

The two of them didn’t have time to duck for cover or arm themselves before a figure smashed his way in through the now unlocked door.

It wasn’t Val. It was a pale haired, pale faced man that they had not met before. He was wearing a black jacket and a white scarf, and had one deep, dark eye. The other half of his face, eye included, was covered with an extensive but apparently spotless piece of gauze that was taped loosely to his skin. He was carrying six plastic bags loaded with heavy goods from well known supermarket chain Happy Mart. He stared at the unexpected visitors in a way that didn’t reveal any strong feelings, more as though they were incredibly boring people. That is to say, he looked rather drowsy.

‘Who are you?’ Ravel squeaked.

‘I’m Patches,’ he said. ‘I live here.’

Ravel didn’t know what to say. The thoughts were all in Lei’s hands. ‘But… Val lives here. if you live here… So you’re his roommate?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ was all she got in reply. He shut the door and moved to the counter to deposit the groceries. With his now free hands, he adjusted his massive gauze eye patch. ‘I take it you are Val’s assistants, then?’

‘Yes,’ Lei replied.

‘I heard you two were something, but I didn’t believe it until now. It would take a genius to follow that ridiculous map Val drew up this morning. But he said to believe in you two, and it looks like he was right.’ He began to remove the groceries from their bags. Lei noticed that half of the bags were devoted to various colorful cereals and cartons of milk. ‘I thought I should come back early to see if I should just let you in, but you already found the back door. That’s impressive. I wasn’t even aware we had a back door, either.’

While Ravel made dying sounds, Lei decided to stop talking about how their job could have been made easier. Unfortunately, there weren’t a lot of good topics left. ‘I’m actually surprised that Val actually had a roommate,’ she blurted.

‘Why is that?’

‘No reason,’ she said. ‘We’ve just… well, he’s talked about a whole lot of people that he supposedly knows but we’ve never actually managed to meet any of his other friends.’

‘Are you sure?’ Patches asked. ‘He told me you’ve met at least two of them so far.’

‘We’ve visited one of their houses…’ That didn’t seem quite right. Lei glared at him suspiciously. It was hard to tell after dealing with Val for so long, whether somebody was telling the truth or not. But Patches gave her a one eyed suspicious glare in response for her glaring, and she realized he was wondering if she was lying too. So she decided he probably wasn’t lying. He seemed too focused on questioning whether she was lying or not to be lying himself.

He was also probably suffering from distrust having listened to Val talk too much. It was becoming quite the spreading condition. Apparently coming to similar conclusions, Patches sighed and turned back to the groceries. He stowed all the cereal boxes in the already-packed cabinet above the counter and pulled out a box that was nearly empty. He shook it to make sure. ‘Do you two want anything to eat?’

Lei was going to ask what sort of cereal he was offering, but at that moment, Val’s orange cat sprang out from under the couch. It leapt onto the counter, face to face with the cereal box Patches was holding. Then, from the other side of the room, under the staircase, the black cat zoomed from the shadows and also took a running jump onto the countertop. They both padded about, tails swinging and whiskers twitching, in wait of cereal.

‘Hey, I wasn’t talking to you two,’ Patches told the cats.

‘You can feed them first,’ Lei said. ‘I should help Ravel put all this stuff back in the fridge. He’s bleeding all over the seltzer.’

‘Don’t worry about it,’ Patches assured her just before the orange cat leaped onto his shoulder in excitement, and upset the piece of gauze that was stuck there rather insecurely. The white strip, tape and all went fluttering to the floor, revealing the damp, empty socket underneath, dark and dusty as the tunnel under the neighborhood, deeper than the eyes of the killers Lei had faced. There was nothing there but a mangled hole in his skin, until you looked a little closer, and then-

Lei was occupied at that moment, but Ravel looked up and upon seeing this almost passed out, caving and bleeding all over the brown tiled floor.

—

‘I’m sorry about that,’ Patches said. He had attached the piece of gauze on with fresh strips of tape and had pulled a towel off the counter for Ravel to mop his face up with.

‘No, I’m sorry,’ Ravel’s muffled voice muttered from under the towel.

Patches sat down at the dining table with a bowl of sugar coated cereal in radioactive colors and began crunching away. He looked at the puddle of blood sitting on the floor in front of the fridge. ‘This place has seen worse.’

‘And so have you,’ Lei said, poking Ravel’s shoulder. ‘You picked a dismembered hand out of a vending machine and carried it around for a few hours. I’m surprised you’re grossed by anything, you’re going to lose your job at this rate.’

‘This isn’t even a job. I don’t know. Maybe it was the blood.’

‘Maybe it was the smell of the cakes,’ Patches offered while still spooning at his cereal. ‘Val needs to get rid of those things before they start developing minds of their own. I’m thankful that he keeps everything else in order, though.’

Lei did not mention that Val seemed to have only cleaned up when he thought Patches was coming back. Instead, she went for a deeper target. ‘So, what do you do?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘It looked like you weren’t here for a few days. Do you work out of town, or something?’

‘Yes. I’m always out of town for work. But sometimes I have the opportunity to do work from home.’ He left off there and lifted his bowl and drained the rest of his cereal into his mouth. ‘It’s not great, especially the travel, but it’s work.’

Lei wondered if that meant to kill the conversation where it stood. She looked at Ravel, who was holding the clover-print towel to his face. The green leaves were stained brown with blood. Well, they were mostly red since the clovers were rather faded. Ravel stared at her, wide eyed. Lei’s eyes shifted between him and Patches expectantly. Where do we go from here?

‘Uh, what do you think of Val’s job? What would you call it?’ Ravel asked. Lei motioned smacking her forehead and shook a fist at him.

Without answering, Patches slammed the bowl down abruptly that made both Ravel and Lei jump from the comfortable armchairs an inch or so. He was clasping and releasing a fist with his right hand. Ravel stuttered the beginnings of an apology, but saw that Patches was not responding to his question, but to his hand. His fingers were twitching. He frowned and held the knuckle of his down with his other hand. He used both to gently nudge the bowl and spoon together, then calmly sat up straight and folded his fingers together tensely. ‘That happens sometimes. Joint problems. You were saying?’

‘Nothing, just asking how work is.’

‘Oh. What I can say is, it’s much better being here.’ It looked like it was taking some effort to stay still. ‘Work here isn’t a lot better. Val makes more than I do – although I don’t even know what his job is. But I like the atmosphere. This is where I was born. We were back and forth between cities, but my family used to have a house here. It was in a really nice part of town. We had a treehouse and a pool, but then there was an accident and we have to leave.’

‘Somewhere in town, huh? It wasn’t an infestation of some kind, was it?’ Lei asked warily.

Patches looked at her with genuine surprise for a moment. ‘Oh, Val told you that story? He hasn’t gone for the grasshopper one in a while. Usually he just tells people the story involving a flying canoe.’ His single eye fell back to his hand, which was now completely still. The first thing he did with it was readjust his eyepatch. ‘Consider yourself relatively well-informed, then. I think that one is as close to the truth as he ever gives out.’

‘Well, it still doesn’t tell me much. I think you were in it. There was a white cat, or well, a cat faced kid with a grasshopper leg in his eye that he met when he was a kid. But that was mixed in with a bunch of other things that didn’t make sense. Or made too much sense so in the context I thought they were just lies.’

‘That’s pretty outrageous.’

‘I’ve never heard this story,’ Ravel said enviously.

‘It’s alright, you weren’t missing out on anything important,’ Patches assured him.

‘Did you guys meet as kids, though?’ Lei asked. She hoped he would not be offended and actually offer up some legitimate answers. She took his continued state of drowsy calmness as positive indicator.

‘Maybe. It was after he started going to school in the city. But it was before the accident happened, I still had something here,’ he tapped the gauze covering the right half of his face. It made a crackling noise that made Ravel nervous.

‘Didn’t keep it long after meeting him, huh?’ Lei quipped.

‘Yes. It was, well, partially was his doing,’ Patches sighed and Lei regretted trying to make a joke. Lost body parts are only sometimes good joke material. ‘It’s not completely fair to say it was his fault.’

‘What exactly happened to you eye?’ Ravel asked, having finally bled his nose out. He looked rather pale, just the opposite of the towel sitting on his lap and his red scarf. He sniffled a little. ‘If you don’t mind me asking?’

‘That goes a long way back… and that makes for a long story,’ Patches said hesitantly. ‘In any case, I’m not sure you’d believe me if I told you.’

‘It’s got to be better than what Val comes up with,’ Lei said, making herself comfortable on the large pillowy chair.

‘I didn’t even get to hear Val’s story,’ Ravel protested.

‘Don’t worry about that.’

‘Maybe we’ll get to hear the truth from you, then,’ Lei said.

There was a long moment for consideration. ‘Maybe,’ Patches said so quietly that Lei became sure that something was going to be wrong. But she held back her questioning, because the story had started, and it had started in a place Lei knew quite well.

‘Where to begin… huh, okay, I was born in this town. I remember the way it was so many years ago. Well, I can remember certain things. I tended to stay indoors all winter and summer, but in-between seasons I saw every part of. Spring was always especially nice. The weather is perfect, everything is alive, new and it’s all green instead of the usual brown. I do wonder why they never plant flowers, even on the lakeside where they would fit so well, but I’m no landscaper, so I’m sure there’s a reason.

I always lived in the uptown area. Quite sheltered, I’ll admit, although I did attend a local school. I never lived with my parents. I lived with my grandfather until, well… we’ll get to that.’

‘What happened to your parents?’ Ravel asked, and Lei guessed the answer before it came.

‘They were killed,’ Patches said. He seemed wholly unoffended, and even loosened his scarf.

‘Not by a clown, I hope,’ Lei muttered.

‘A clown? Why would there be a clown murdering people?’ Ravel gasped.

‘I forget that part of Val’s story.’ Their host scratched his head and checked on his gauze. ‘No, nothing so exciting. They were killed in a car accident when I was too young to remember, on their way home from an event. I even admit, it was at least partially their fault; they had just had a long drink, and all we remembered was their drinking so it was little surprise when an accident happened eventually. It was awful, and messy, but not unusual. In most towns across the country, more people are killed in car accidents than by serial killers.’

‘I’ve realized this town is a bit of an exception,’ Lei said, smiling thinly.

‘It’s entertaining in its own morbid way, as long as you’re not a victim. Where was I? Oh yes, after my parents and two others were killed after mishandling a bomb in their own car, I went to live with my grandfather who also lived in the area. A wise, respected, god-fearing man, he’d lived in town his whole life.  I heard he was a war veteran from the battle many years ago, and one of the few that decided to remain here. The old folk of the town really liked him, he had a lot of friends dropping off cheese, drinks or, ah- cake. Val would never let me forget that last one. His house was one of those uptown-suburb houses, an especially large one with a pool and a treehouse in the back that his kids had played with. I didn’t have a lot of people over, but I lived in that yard. Having adventures, the like. You know how kids are.

Well, things were just fine for a very long time. My grandfather paid for school, clothes, I could have anything I wanted. He made sure I worked hard, but also that I had somebody to turn to. He taught me a few things of his own, how to manage money for him and reply to mail and make meals, take calls and scare off travelling salesmen if needed. He was getting old. By the time I was in fifth grade, his sight and hearing were going. Shortly before junior high, his ability to walk left him. Some people say his mind left with it. Maybe it did, he never spoke much sense. He was never cruel, though, and he didn’t want medical treatment beyond the most basic of tubes which were always attached to him in the rocking chair he liked to sit in, looking at the whole house. If you turned the volume up on the machine, you would hear the beeping of his heart.

He never really complained about not being able to go anywhere. A lot of people came to visit, at first. I think he was happy that it was almost time for something new. He always smiled when he sensed somebody around and said goodbye a lot. But he remained alive even after many of his old friends moved away.’

‘Aw,’ was all Ravel could come up with. It was hard to tell if he wanted to hear more or not.

‘Shh!’ Lei whispered. Patches blinked once out of his story at their interruption, then continued.

‘Well, one day in the heat of summer, the third day of the holiday, was the day the big accident happened. I got home from the supermarket. Grandfather hadn’t said much in a week or so, but I wasn’t nervous because whenever I went to see him he would make some noise, although he was making less and less sense, but he would also smile, which was a good sign. I made a sandwich and went out to the back to go sit in the treehouse. It was a hot day. The light stung my eyes, both of them, especially when I looked at the empty white basin of the pool. There were a lot of crickets and grasshoppers that you could hear but not see. Inside the treehouse was a little quieter, but not by much.

Like a lot of kids, I had an ‘imaginary friend’ who I sometimes tricked myself into believing lived in the treehouse. He would listen to my problems but almost never say anything back, anything I could understand anyway. He was only ever around when I was, so today, I wasn’t thinking about him so I wasn’t expecting him. I was just going to lie down and take a nap, maybe, but there was somebody watching from inside the treehouse.

Whenever I looked up, though, they ducked down behind a corner. Eventually I got up to tell them to get off the property, which is what my grandfather told me to do to travelling salesmen, but as soon as I rounded the corner, the stranger ran down the hallway and ducked down another corner. The treehouse had some windows, but the light was so harsh that whenever he passed under the light all he looked like was a black alien shape. And for some reason I wondered, what if that is my friend?

I followed him down a few corners, until we were in the part of the treehouse that was suspended by the forest. The chirping was all around. I looked out a window and could not longer see my house, just crude wooden blocks hanging in the trees. I saw a shape run through the corridor across from me. I rounded there in ten seconds, but he was gone by then, too.’

‘Just how big was this treehouse?’ Lei asked skeptically.

‘Even I don’t know. I never remembered it being that long, but this weird intruder was always escaping somewhere, and everywhere he went was somewhere I hadn’t been before. Well, until near the end. I wasn’t aware I was near the end, but the noise was getting more intense. It didn’t even sound like crickets or grasshoppers anymore, it sounded like something less organic. Like a machine buzzing or whirring, getting ready for something. I started running faster through the square wooden passageway because I was scared it would catch up with me, and I would rather be with the intruder than be alone. I heard his footsteps not too far ahead of me, but just when I thought I was catching up to him, I was blinded by sunlight. I had reached the end of the treehouse. Which is to say, I had somehow come back to the beginning.’

‘Can we see this treehouse sometime?’ Ravel asked.

‘I doubt it exists,’ Lei muttered.

‘Not anymore,’ Patches said to both of them. ‘The buzzing, whirring, chirping noise was deafening now, like an explosion coming from all sides. The lights weren’t clearing from my eyes, there seemed to be permanent flickering patches of blackness that wouldn’t go away. I nearly tripped out of the treehouse rubbing my eyes and covering my ears beyond what was capable with two hands. I headed towards the house and all I saw with one eye that some flaky black stuff, like ashes or dried insects, was coming from the other. So by then my eye was going already, but I saw one last thing with it before it went out entirely.

In the doorframe, there was my grandfather. That was sort of weird, because there was no way he had the strength to get there by himself. There was also no way he’d have the strength to pull his life support along with him either, but he had. It was on full volume. Or maybe it was just an emergency response to tell you the patient no longer had a heartbeat. As far as I could tell, it was still hooked up, but that must have meant my grandfather didn’t have a heartbeat. If that was so, why was he standing right there, twitching a little, but upright? His bearded upper lip was even curved into a very distinct smile.

I called him, but couldn’t hear myself over the buzz. He apparently heard though, and cocked his head. His head cocked so far it curled around and I was sort of glad I couldn’t hear because there would no doubt have been some sounds I didn’t want to hear. His head and body tilted upside down in a weird spiral, but if it went any further I wasn’t looking. I didn’t look back until that mechanical noise was so close I was sure it was coming from in front of me. And by then, it was.

The unrecognizable spiraling body in front of me suddenly jerked, cracked, exploded from the right side, releasing who knew how many black flies and grasshoppers and crickets that clung to the windows and ceilings and dyed everything black as oil. The whirring machine continued to tear through the thing in front of me and release more and more insects into the air. I barely saw the whole thing, but the sideways glance was enough. I stepped back out into the yard to get away from whatever it was, and went to hide in the treehouse. I ran through it to get away, but I kept coming back to the start. After the third loop, I turned to run back into the maze, but someone was standing there, waiting behind me. Once again, someone was there. But this time, he didn’t run off.

He still looked like a black shape. He had no eyes, but after my eyes- well, it was just an eye now, adjusted, I saw that he looked pretty much like a normal person. It was just the black hair that threw me off. Not a lot of people around her have black hair.

I was too stunned to tell him to get off the property at this point. I didn’t really want anyone going near the house either. He was a kid like me, after all. I sat down, and he did too. The whirring died down, but we didn’t leave. It had been a while. I looked at him. ‘I wonder if it’s safe to go in yet.’

He looked over my shoulder but didn’t say anything. I started to look over my shoulder too, but he stomped on my foot and said, ‘Not yet. Don’t turn around.’’

After a little while longer, he said ‘What happened to your face?’ and that was when I realized that I was missing an eye. There was something stuck there, but it was twitching and sharp and I didn’t want to touch it. I stupidly turned to look at the house again, but was stopped when the shadowy stranger grabbed the thing that was jammed in my eye and pulled my face back towards the dark side of the treehouse.

Things were silent now except for the protesting, which was all coming from me, shameful as it is. The thing, whatever it was, had barbs and curves and leaked some black fluid on the wooden floor. It also hurt more than anything I ever witnessed before. I wished I had gotten out of there sooner. But in reflection, it was probably for the best that someone got that thing out. Once the sirens in my head cooled down, I blinked away the oil and looked at the visitor, who was now nursing a black eye. I asked him who he was.

‘I wanted to help. I live in the house behind yours,’ he lied. I knew it was a lie, there were no houses behind our house.’

‘Except for the treehouse,’ Ravel offered.

‘But the treehouse was never really that long. I fell asleep after that, and woke up, and the treehouse was back to being about ten square feet. It was midday, and there was nothing but the sound of crickets and grasshoppers. I was sweating so I went into the house for a drink, and realized my grandfather’s machine was going off. His heart had stopped. His body had also been sawn in half, through the waist, arms and all. There wasn’t a lot of blood, it didn’t cover the walls like I had seen, he might have been dead a while before that. But there were a great deal of insect carcasses. On the tables and chairs and walls and shelves, even piled up on his sliced torso. So those were real. I didn’t know how to explain anything. The police came fast. They were already in the neighborhood. Turns out two murderers had been in town, and two murderers had been through my house.

This had been the work of two of the most prolific killers of the time, who the detectives of the time called the Sentinel, a really brutal guy who marked his territory with dead insects that he painted black. And a second one, though he did not have a name at the time, later became known as the Weeping Blade. The whirring I heard… apparently some call it crying… I doubt that comes from him though…. I’m sure Val can tell you more about them both, he’s the one who studies them. All I can tell you is, before the Cake Killer the Blade was the biggest deal around here. Before that, it was the Sentinel.’

‘They sound more like superheroes,’ Ravel joked.

‘The Cake Killer doesn’t make a very good superhero name,’ Lei said.

‘It’s good that you don’t take these things too seriously,’ Patches commended them. ‘It will help you face them without fear. I suppose you don’t have to worry about the Cake Killer too much, but the Sentinel was no laughing matter. And the Weeping Blade… had a funny way with other killers. He slaughtered the competition, or so Val calls it. I call it something different, but different strokes…’

‘How are there two ways of seeing slaughter?’ Ravel asked.

Lei changed the subject there, before Ravel could be humiliated. ‘So was the stranger you met that day, the kid in the treehouse, Val?’

‘It seems that way, doesn’t it?’

‘But you said you woke up after meeting, and nobody was around.’

‘Oh, yes. We didn’t meet again until much later. We were in church.’

‘What? Val isn’t someone I’d expect to see in church,’ Lei sputtered.

‘That’s true. I don’t think I’ve seen him in one since then. He was never a regular either, he just turned up one day and asked to see whoever was there. The time that he came was also odd. The whole place was empty at that hour. It was midday on Monday. A summer day, now that I think about it. Most of the regulars had just gone home, some were on vacation with family so they hadn’t come at all.’

‘You were there, though.’

‘Well, I worked here.’ Patches sighed. ‘And I didn’t have anywhere to go or anybody to meet. I just sat on the benches when I wasn’t doing anything. Sometimes I offered guidance to visitors. With Val it was more the other way around… He recognized me first. Although I don’t know how he found me. He just sat around while I cleaned things up. It was a little more than idle chatter though.’ He frowned. ‘I guess Val has never talked philosophy with you two?’

‘I can’t even imagine it,’ Lei admitted.

‘Good. It’s a real headache. He told me about his work, and I did say that my job didn’t pay well… and things took off from there.’

‘So… did you work at a church near here?’ Ravel asked.

But he got no answer. The story was over, something else had caught everyone’s attention. Patches silently looked at the door. The black and orange cats were too. They leapt from the counter and couch respectively and strolled up to the door, tails held high, standing a good distance back. They were clever animals. The door burst open with such force that the entire building shook and Val barreled in.

‘Why don’t you come in?’ Val called cheerfully to someone, behind him on the front steps.

‘I told you, I can’t come in with those cats,’ said a gruff voice from outside. Lei bent her head a leaned back in her chair, and saw the bulldog-faced biker from the other day slung against the railing, wearing exactly the same uniform he was the last time she had seen him, an all-black Daily Pants ensemble.

‘Hey, you can’t hate cats, I know you’re not that bad of a person,’ Val said seriously.

‘I don’t hate them, I just don’t like them. Can’t touch them. I’m allergic. Back when you didn’t wash your clothing, I would break out in hives just being around you.’ In spite of some protests, the biker hopped back on his bike. ‘No need for me to hang around. I’ll see you later.’

‘Of course,’ Val said.

‘Not at the meeting.’

‘Of course,’ Val said again.

The biker gave him a final exasperated look. ‘Good. And remember what I said and mind your own business.’ With this parting threat, the biker kicked away his stand and revved up the bike, shooting a good deal of thick rancid smoke into the house. Val smiled in the middle of a cloud of it, then slammed the door shut. He took in Lei and Ravel’s suspicious looks and beamed.

‘Excellent! I guess this means you found the map and you two made your way in all by yourselves. And this guy didn’t believe in you.’ He walked over and gave Patches a few friendly back-pats. ‘What did I say? Are they good or what? Oh, and you know that means you owe me ten bucks. We had a deal.’

‘Sure, later,’ Patches said quickly. ‘What was that about a meeting?’

‘Of course! I’ve been tipped off by a trustworthy source that there’s going to be a meeting. A meeting among criminals.’ He leered at his listeners as though that would rile them up. It didn’t. ‘Alright, so it’s not the usual, they haven’t killed anyone recently, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t dangerous! We are going to be there. So grab your classiest gear, we have to look our best so we can blend in.’

Lei noticed that at that very moment Val was wearing his hideous pink and purple patchwork shirt underneath his coat, the very antithesis of ‘classy gear.’ She shook her head.

‘Didn’t he just say not to go?’ Ravel asked.

‘That’s our code,’ Val replied breezily. ‘He’s expecting me there.’

‘I thought you dealt mainly with murderers,’ Lei said.

‘What makes you think that? The cake killer doesn’t murder anybody,’ Val said, perplexed. ‘Anyway, if you’re really into death and destruction, there’s a good chance someone will be killed at the party tonight. Like I said, they’re not the safest bunch. They’re not as exotic as the types we’ve been dealing with, but they have been responsible for a number of deaths in the city and beyond.’

As if that were the selling point for him, Patches shrugged and picked himself off his chair. He stretched, and headed for the side room, leaving Ravel and Lei to fend for themselves.

‘I might not be able to make it,’ Ravel said. ‘I’m not really dressed for the occasion. I’d go back and check, but I don’t even think I have a suit at home.’

‘No problem, you can wear one of mine,’ Val said, slapping Ravel on the shoulder so hard he almost fell over. ‘You’re tall, so I think you’ll fit one of my suits, or at least find a jacket to cover everything up. You can even borrow this shirt if you have to. I actually have several like it-‘

‘You have a lot of… decent white shirts that I think will fit better,’ Ravel suggested. ‘White is my favorite color.’ Val stared at him for a moment, wondering how anyone could turn down the Frankenstein shirt and its siblings, but nodded and headed for the back room too. Lei and Ravel exchanging worried looks.

‘Do I have to be there too?’ Lei looked at what she was wearing. She imagined she was dressed far too casually for what Val was implying. Her shirt was yellow and had a sun with a smiley face on it. It had been a Happy Mart freebie. ‘I don’t think I’d fit into one of your suits, either.’

‘No worries,’ Val said. ‘Luckily for us, there’s an alternate dress code and I have just the thing. Well, not in the sense that it will fit perfectly, but it will work. And of course you’re coming! What do I pay you for?’