By the time Layton stopped feeling like the bottom had abruptly fallen out from beneath the world, Desmond was impatient to move on with the enquiry. The hours were blithe and had proceeded apace without them, the vigour of the day dying down to a sedate sort of murmur. No longer blindingly brilliant, the sun was a lazy, golden eye, lidded by cottony clumps of thin cloud, watching their trek back with an idle sort of interest that both men felt searingly on their backs. Something was watching them.
The path remembered their feet and let them pass swiftly; the journey from the house seemed much shorter than it had that morning.
Unfortunately for their prospective case, the village itself was not half as welcoming as the road that lead to it. More so than that morning, the meagre streets were awash with people, all moving at an industrious pace, even those that walked in earnest conversation with their neighbours. But, despite all logic of an idle crowd, none of them ever ventured quite close enough to the professors for what they said to be cleanly audible, but moved about as though some invisible divider separated them by a foot; never once did the villagers come closer than that. They were a bead of oil in a stream, carried along by the current but intrinsically separate from that which could be called the whole. If one were prone to fancy, they might have called them ghosts, and such an assumption may have proved plausible if it weren't for the stares.
The singular, glaring focus of before had divided itself into a thousand needle pricks of curious eyes that did not perform the customary flicker of abashment when confronted, but continued their vigil on that direct front. From a hundred different angles, the dark, damp daggers of stranger's pupils pieced through Layton, the microscopic details of him laid bare, not by skill of observation, but by the sheer power of that many eyes, multiplicity divining what intention and intellect could not.
If he dedicated himself to listening, he could divide the general babble of the staring clusters into its individual voices, sifting scraps of conversation out of the clamour. What resulted was largely unhelpful, and gave the distinct impression of a poorly tuned radio.
"—Only showed up this morning. Not what we were expecting—"
"—Understand? It's odd that they should appear—"
"—Right now no one's sure where they are. Irving said—"
"—Letitia thinks she's at the castle. What these two are doing here, I don't—"
"—Apparently they're here to look around. It's—"
"—Damnable, really! The last thing we need right now is—"
"—You getting involved, Connie. They'll figure it out and go soon enough, just let them be—"
"—What we expected, are they?"
"—A red car? No, I felt certain it wouldn't be—"
"—In to? I mean, it's not exactly safe to meddle—"
"—That's nothing new, can't expect that to stop anything—"
"—Spoken to him? Well, no I haven't. Not in a long time, at least—"
Those few gleaned threads disappeared swiftly back into the tangle by virtue of the fact that Layton had to keep up with Sycamore, who hadn't paused his stride, despite the unease that was blatantly obvious to anyone who knew him. None of what he heard left The Professor any the wiser to the situation, or enlightened him to the cause of the stares, but left him drifting in the wake of a very specific uncertainty that he couldn't put a name to. It was an animal instinct, the bones left over after a thousand years of evolution had boiled off much of the animal in mankind, something far older, far more clever, and more fundamental than human thoughts.
Nobody here knows you, but they all hate you. They're all waiting.
Layton risked a glance at the tense line of Sycamore's shoulders; his brother knew. He had likely noticed the second they set foot inside the circle of eyes. But little was to be done now except to keep walking until they were beyond the unwelcoming scrutiny of those watchful, waiting strangers.
"Would you be amenable to our continuing enquiries, now that everyone is out?" Sycamore asked, sounding as though submerged in honey. There was a slightly puzzled glaze to his brother's eyes, a glassiness that, for once, didn't speak of distance between the man and his dual consciousnesses, but between them both and the world, and Layton would wager that he looked much the same; this street, for all that it was identical, for all that it's physicality bore every aspect of similarity, was not the same one they had walked down that morning. It couldn't be. Neither could have said exactly why, but that was the way of things. With people walking through it, the village looked like paper, the vibrancy of their lives drowning even the stone.
The strangest time to feel one's own mortality is in the centre of a crowd, surrounded on all sides by other people's blithe oblivion. Layton was suddenly certain that the sheer vitality of these people meant to devour him, his own impermanence magnified tenfold. In that moment, he was convinced that he could return his ghost to this spot in a thousand years and find the same scene, these same villagers in this same street. They did not feel like people that could die.
This impression of strangeness, and awareness of his own inexplicable ghostliness did not fade any as they began to question passersby. Sycamore bore the brunt of it, with Layton stepping in whenever his brother's assertiveness ruffled feathers. Occasionally they would approach someone, become distracted by the melee, and find the person gone but for the scent of laughter on the air. Other times the opposite would happen, and a stranger would jovially accost them, having appeared from thin air to ask them who they were and what they were doing.
He listened, feeling quite sure that what he was hearing was very different from what the man said. Concentration revealed the distinction, but he would forget mere seconds later, words like so much smoke. A glance at Sycamore's notepad revealed reams of scrawling; Layton wondered if his brother thought himself to be jotting down ordinary statements instead of this bizarre diatribe, which he was momentarily convinced had something to do with tying a rat's tail about each of your fingers and one about your tongue so you never lost any of your secrets.
The sun blinked. Once more it was a perfectly ordinary day. The man introduced his wife, Edith, and both expressed how great a pity it was they weren't able to help before moving away. Desmond's frantic writing didn't cease, and the two professors carried on.
"Perhaps you'd like me to take over writing notes," Layton murmured tactfully, after witnessing a particularly violent foray of the pen, one that splattered yet more ink over the rest. This didn't improve it's legibility any.
"I'll thank you to keep comments on my handwriting to a minimum,"
"I didn't make any," Layton told him dryly and, after a second of Sycamore's angry silence, accepted the notepad which was thrust at him.
By the time they had made their way through the gaudy rabble of picturesque houses, having spoken to everyone who didn't seem to melt away at their approach, the sun was beginning to announce its radiant decline; the sky was of a darkening shade that slowly lent itself towards red, though red is perhaps too subtle a word to really convey the hue that the broad expanse of evening horizon was taking on. The Professors felt none the wiser to the precise nature of their situation bar the fact that they both felt it to be an innately precarious one, and neither had much liking for it. They entered the inn with a tension they had not carried on entering earlier, not even a full span of a day ago.
The inn, when at last they entered, was significantly quieter than the street, with only a few patrons sequestered in its darkening quarters. Here at least, the natural strangeness of the place diminished to a manageable degree; perhaps that was the virtue of being able to see no more than a few feet in any given direction. There were lamps, blossoms of warm coloured glass in the corners of the room, but they were not enough to do more than provide colour to the undersides of people's faces and lit the ends of their hair. The fire in the grate created more shadows than it dispelled, and hundred of long limbed shadows crisscrossed each other over the flagstones.
Here, at the mouth of the inn, the two men briefly parted, and their experiences split down the middle.
Sycamore paused by the doorway, disoriented beyond anticipation by the dark warmth and crowding of the interior. Everything has a very physical warmth to it, even the air, which painted itself across his face so thickly he felt momentarily unable to breathe. He had spent what felt like a lifetime trying to avoid any and all detection, perfecting the art of being unseen until he could move through the world like a man made of glass, and now he stood, pierced by the endless suspicion of strangers like a butterfly beneath a Lepidopterist's glass, wondering distantly where things had gone so wrong. He watched Layton as he moved through the bar, watched the light dance rosily over the raised corduroy of his brother's jacket, and wondered if he could get away with not leaving the absolving quiet of the cloakroom.
"Don't mind the staring, I'm sure jealousy's to blame; someone did a very good job with you two...whoever you are..." The voice came from behind him, as though the coats hanging on their pets had decided to comment on his thoughts. Sycamore didn't jump, but it was a close thing; he slid a hand to the knife he had hidden in his sleeve, affirming to himself that it was indeed still there, before turning around, his affable mask back in place.
The speaker was a dark-haired woman lingering just inside the door of the inn, swathed modestly in shadow. She was not pretty, per se, but she was strikingly bold in both dress and manner, and these attributes complimented her nicely. She was someone you would remember long after parting, confidently seared into the memory. Something about the set of her mouth lent itself, knowingly or not, to condescension, and her eyes were of a singular, feline smugness that didn't invite much trust. She had not been there when they entered.
Sycamore sent his eyes flickering to find Layton and determined that his brother could come to no trouble standing at the bar; he would survive missing out on one interview.
"Good afternoon, madam. My name is Desmond Sycamore. I'm here with my...friend, Hershel Layton." He would never be entirely sure how he was to address his relation to Layton, and this was what he deemed least problematic. Layton politely never mentioned it. "Would you mind if we asked you a few questions about Erasmus Holt?"
The eyes of the mysterious woman widened, the whites almost luminous in the velvet dark. For just a second, she looked as animate as a plaster model, before the pinkish knife-slash of her smile returned to split the association. But in that brief interim, something tense had slithered into her manner, and it lurked beneath the languid interests of before; it did not feel like worry, but whatever it was, it was too sharp and had too many edges to be mere curiosity.
"Oh, now why would you want to know about our founder?" She purred, leaning in close, conspiratorial and alluring. The air surrounding her smelt consumingly of what can only be described as grey roses, dry and suffocatingly heavy. Hidden beneath Desmond's sleeve, the blade of the knife was bitingly cold. "Come to think of it, I've not seen the man in weeks."
"He's disappeared. We are currently investigating." If his tone was cold, Sycamore rather thought he could be forgiven, for the woman's face was far closer than he would prefer, or than what would be considered tasteful between strangers. There were no lines in her countenance, but her skin was not smooth, instead featuring a texture like cross hatching. Even her lips bore this odd consistency, coarsely textured but without lines, which at close quarters made her smile frightening, the supple stretch of her mouth without give as she whispered:
"Are you now?"
"Might I ask your name?" Sycamore asked, the bite to his voice very deliberate now, an unspoken, silvery threat. Perhaps she sensed his tolerance of her running short because her smile withered to a smirk and she conceded a step, eyes flashing appreciatively.
"Constance, dear, Constance Throckmorton. I moved here recently. But I don't think I've seen you two before," she murmured, and she boldly reached out a hand as though to brush Sycamore's cheek, stopping just a centimetre shy of touching.
Now, most people, upon meeting someone new, will say something similar, so the statement on its own was not anything of note. What was concerning was her intonation, for Constance said those last words with an air of complete surprise and fascination. Surprise on its own may not have been notable, for the village was insular, and newcomers had to be in rare supply, but the sheer intrigue of her tone seemed to suggest that for her to not recognise anyone was an irregularity, as though she were creator of all things looking for the first time at something she had not made.
"No. No, I'm quite certain I've not met either of you." Constance withdrew her exploratory fingers, looking quite delighted by his apparent strangeness. She looked to where Layton stood, and the expression sharpened to something giddy that set Desmond's teeth on edge, something sharp and harsh flaring deep in his chest. "So, how did you fine gentlemen come to be here, then? Were you commissioned?"
"We're investigating alongside the Ellchester police department; they are the ones who sent us."
"Did they really? Odd. Very odd..."
"What is odd, madam?"
"Oh, just you dear, but please don't take it personally." Desmond opened his mouth, intent on divining some meaning—anymeaning—out of that, when a calamitous noise was raised at the bar, as though someone had managed to successively drop a thousand china plates upon the flags, and he whipped about to see if Layton were somehow involved in such catastrophe. In doing this, he removed his focus from Constance.
Under the general sounds of the bar, and that awful broken-note clatter of dropped plates, a low voice chuckled, close to his ear, near enough to stir his hair, if indeed the voice had possessed any breath. But it did not, and may not have been there at all, even as something whispered "In any case, it was a pleasure meeting you both" with all the genuine cordiality of a short but warm acquaintance. It sounded like Constance.
But when Desmond turned back, the woman was gone; he stood alone in the shadows of the doorway.
•~*~•
"There's something wrong with this place. Something deeply wrong."
Layton hadn't protested when his brother seized his arm and pulled him away upstairs, eyes flickering madly between rowan and red, and Sycamore was thankful for that; opposition would have made little difference, but a gentleman does not like to cause a scene. Returning to their rooms had provided a small reprieve from the intensifying discomfort of outside, but the oak door was a tissue-paper comfort, liable to tear the second a careless fingernail chose to worry it's edges. Persecution seeped through the cracks, bled over them in cloying, misty tentacles that felt like jarred nerves. In the centre of the room, Sycamore paced back and forth in restless agitation. Caught in the eye of this conflict, Layton was a source of indomitable calm, fraught nerves safely ensconced beneath a stalwart sense of security he could neither name nor place, but wished he could somehow transfer to the Other Professor.
"I agree. But we can't leave. Not yet." Sycamore made a small, sharp noise which was both agreement and rejection, and which finally spurred Layton to reach out on one of his return circuits and catch his brother's elbow in what he hoped was a comforting fashion. "Now, I was under the impression you had found something to show me?" For some several seconds, Desmond looked blankly down at him, implacable, with the overhead light obfuscating any expression. Then, with a sigh heaved from the blankest depths of his being, he sank down to sit beside Layton. Finally able to see the other man's expression, The Professor was concerned to see the bitterness there.
"Oh, I found many things," Desmond said grimly. "Either Holt's been being obscurely threatened by someone, or he's gone completely mad. These must have been what Alice was talking about."
From one of the innumerable pockets inside his blazer, Desmond produced a thick envelope that, when opened, was revealed to be full of sheets of paper, each one covered in writing of varying styles. In all, it constituted about a half inch of what seemed to be, on closer inspection, letters, which Sycamore spread out on the table. Letters that had, if Alice were to be believed, appeared from thin air to nest in bushes and under rocks, and indeed many were scuffed with dirt, or had moss speckling their edges, or twigs littering the pages with their bark.
"Look," Sycamore murmured, touching lightly at the missives. "I read through them—they're all rather insistent that he complete some 'masterpiece' of his—but that's not what concerns me. Not primarily at least." Selecting two letters with different signatures at the bottom, Sycamore passed them to Layton. After a second of study, he could see quite clearly what had disturbed Desmond enough to warrant it's mention.
"It's the same handwriting," Layton concurred quietly. Though the names at the end would allege different senders, the handwriting in both was identical, in every curve, every flourish, even down to the thickness of the ink. Every letter, no matter its length, indifferent to date and sender, bore the same calligraphy. Well over fifty letters, all in the same hand, all lyingly attributed to different senders, the earliest dated close to a year ago. There was an insistence, a sinuous forcefulness to them in their obsessive repetition, and the paper seemed to whisper as Layton picked through their number; the painting, they said, you promised us you'd make her, you said she would be great...
"If I recall, his letter to you mentioned some artwork in progress?" Wordlessly, Sycamore produced the missive from yet another pocket. I've been working on a new project, it said smilingly, and there was a dark irony in seeing it alongside its fellows and their inscribed insistence. Something about the two letters side by side unnerved Layton for reasons he couldn't quite place...
"Speaking of my letters," Sycamore said quietly, so quietly Layton, in his focus, could have missed it altogether. In a movement that was deft yet filled with disdain, Desmond plucked another paper from the table. "Apparently this one's fromme."
"You said you lost contact with Holt years ago." Layton ran a thumb over the date inscribed on the page, wishing it would flake off and become sensible. It did not; if paper and print was to be believed, the letter had been sent three months ago. It was not Sycamore's writing—it was immediately legible, for one thing—but it read like one of his letters.
"I did." Sycamore smiled tightly, his pupils mineshaft dark. "So it bears asking; who sent this? Look at the handwriting," he continued, before Layton could attempt to answer, pointing between the two letters associated with him. "It's also identical." So it was. "Whoever wrote this letter to me also wrote to Holt under these pseudonyms."
"Are you suggesting Holt did not write this to you?"
"If he did, then the correlation in handwriting would suggest he also wrote upwards of sixty letters to himself under what seems to be the names of old friends. To be honest, that's not a suggestion I want to immediately accept."
Without quite meaning to, the Professors had drawn close together like elms in a storm, voices dropped to murmurs like broken bells, dull and flat and clicking against their teeth, unconsciously vigilant against intruders that were not there. Outside, the sun finalised its descent with a startling crescendo of lurid violet shot through with gleaming streaks of magenta, strands of lingering gold, thick as honey, catching on clouds that had not been there earlier in the day. Crepuscular shadows lay on the floor and crawled towards them with necromantic diligence.
"We could ask Lillian if she recognises the writing," Layton suggested, drawing together their small collection of leads in a distracted fashion, mind elsewhere. "We should also inquire further about this painting; its come up three times now. That can hardly be a coincidence." Sycamore hummed a brief agreement, fixated on the door and the thing he had intended to do since leaving the Holts' residence. Neither noticed the other's preoccupation, and they sat in silence for a few minutes. Finally, with a heaviness that suggested he would rather do anything else, Sycamore rose to his feet.
"I have to call Raymond. There are a few things I want him to look into back in Ellchester. I advise you not to admit anyone in. I...I don't trust what's going on here."
A small crease appeared in Layton's brow at the extent of his brother's paranoia, but he acquiesced quietly and didn't comment further. The door closed between them with a relishing snap.
•~*~•
In many ways, Maidenhull was a place completely divorced from the rest of time, cast adrift in a sea of bracken and heather and left to its own devices as the world soldiered on. As such, the few technological innovations they did have seemed an imposition on someone's personal rural idyl. Chief among these aberrances from complete pastoral tranquility was the telephone, which held court in a room no larger than a cupboard hidden in one of the many passages downstairs, and whose shrilling tones could be heard, quite implausibly, through stone.
Perhaps in muted deference to the standards of anachronism surrounding it, the design of the phone was antique, a candlestick variety dressed conservatively in shades of black and ivory. If it were at all possible for an inanimate object to look irritably inconvenienced by a person's intrusion, the phone had not only managed, but mastered it.
Sycamore avoided breathing too deeply as he wrestled with the rust-stubborn rotary dial. The velvet walls of the phone booth were fibrous with a decade's worth of dust, greyish and feathery, as though every sound attracted and trapped by its proofing were doomed to linger there in ashy purgatory. It was an unpleasant place to be, no matter the importance of your venture.
Hearing Raymond's voice again was more reassuring than Desmond would ever willingly admit, warm, familiar, and welcome, for all that it was slightly staticky. They spent a pleasant few minutes (as pleasant a few minutes as there could be in that room) discussing idle affairs at Avengaurd. The business of Lillian Holt, however, could not be avoided, and eventually the stream of conversation ran dry and Sycamore's reason for calling reared its head; Lillian was an unknown quantity, and to the mechanics of his thoughts, that was intolerable.
"I need you to do a background check on Erasmus Holt's wife, Lilian. Contact the police, they should be able to obtain a record of the marriage. Use her maiden name, find what she did, where she came from, anything you think I would want to know. I trust your judgement."
"I wasn't aware Holt had a wife, sir." Raymond's voice, so very far away, lilted in mild surprised. "I'll look into her, don't you worry."
"Thank you Raymond. Call back as soon as you find something." With that, he hung up, but no sooner than he had replaced the earpiece on its mount than it began to ring shrilly. Confused, but convinced of it being a mistake, Desmond answered.
But there was no one on the other end of the phoneline. Just silence, that was not the quiet of absence, but the quiet of listening, and silence was deafening in that little room of dust. Even after he had hung up, and returned to Layton's company, Sycamore still reckoned he could feel the presence on the other end of the phone listening.