Doctor Marcel wasn't as confident as he would have liked anyone to believe.
He stared out his window, deep in contemplation as he rapidly puffed from his pipe. His hand twitched against the wood of his chair. It was all he could do to settle his nerves. Earlier he had gone out to check on Edna again, only to find a young man laying unconscious at his door. Puzzled, the doctor inspected him, and his blood ran cold upon finding the officer's badge in his inner jacket.
The message was clear: the police were finally coming after him. The REAL police, not the local morons he could play like a fiddle.
His mind was racing with questions he didn't have answers for, when his concentration was suddenly broken by the sound of someone wailing. He could hear it coming down the hall, closer and closer to where his office was. The sound of shuffling, stumbling feet accompanied the grunts and whimpers he slowly started to recognize.
"Help..." It cried faintly. "It hurts... someone help...!"
Marcel's brow furrowed. Why now, of all times? He was in the middle of a crisis.
A sharp bang on his door startled him. "Dad...?" The voice called wearily. Another bang. "Dad, it's me! I'm hurt!"
The doctor clenched his eyes shut, mentally preparing a routine he'd done time and time again. It was simply trauma, nothing more. He just needed to breath, and remain focused on now. The past was in the past, and nothing could change it.
"I'm hurt!" It cried again. "Please, open the door! Please, father!"
"The past is in the past." Marcel whispered to himself, starting to breath funny. "They're both gone. Alfred is gone. Reuben is gone. You need to let go."
"LET ME IN!" The voice roared suddenly, the banging on the door increasing at a furious rate, almost as if something was trying to break it down. "LET ME IN, YOU SON OF A BITCH!"
Marcel began to tremble. "It's not happening. There's nothing there. Control yourself, Horatio. There is nothing there."
"LET ME IN! LET ME IN!" The voice continued to scream, until it broke with the sound of a sob choking through. "WHY WONT YOU LET ME IN...?!"
He heard the voice break into tears, followed by a soft thump of something falling to the floor. Marcel's heart was pounding. He could hear the ghost crying for a good number of minutes. It would stop. He knew eventually it would fade away. He just kept concentrating.
The crying dissolved into a series of sniffles. After that, a single "thump" against his door, and it was done. Silence had returned.
Dr. Marcel let out a long sigh of relief. He took out a handkerchief to wipe away the sweat that had accumulated on his brow.
After all that, he decided that he had done enough worrying for one night.
"The oven seems to be made of Kevlar, which would explain why it was able to contain the explosion to such an extent that it didn't blow up the entire school itself." Junior Officer Kornelia Katzenburg noted, shining her flashlight inside the dark chasm of what remained of the convent's stove. She was a stout woman with short brown hair that parted in the middle, allowing a stray set of bangs to cover one of her eyes. Even in the dark, one could make out the number of freckles that dotted her face.
Her companion, and the one she was relaying all this too, stood in the corner listening carefully. The only light coming from him was the flashlight's reflection off his bald, black head. For whatever reason, he wore a set of sunglasses despite the fact that it was the dead of night. Anybody else would look like a moron, but somehow Philipp Phelps managed pull of looking totally badass.
Yes, everybody in this division has alliterative names. Yes, it's a total convenience.
"Bombs buried in the garden, carnivorous termites, that lunch lady..." Phelps shook his head in disgust. "Why the hell didn't we shut this place down years ago?"
"Where the hell was Gerret during all this?" Kornelia asked, picking a few hair samples from the broken casing. The whole cellar still reeked of guts and whatever else was left of Memphis, yet not once did she bat an eye. "I thought this was his station."
"You know how he is." Phelps grumbled. "He thinks he can do everything by himself. Well, it came back to bite 'em in the ass this time."
"You gotta admire his tenacity." Kornelia quipped. She picked up what looked like the remains of a perfectly intact finger bone and stared at it in fascination. "Besides, you told me he's got some kind of lead on Marcel. That makes Gerret closer to catching the bastard than either of us ever have."
Phelps said nothing, but even he begrudgingly had to admit that Gerret put more energy into his work than most of the other junior officers of the Child Protection Unit. He just wished the kid wouldn't overestimate himself so much.
"Either way," Phelps continued, looking at the cellar door bitterly. "I think he's gotten himself into more trouble, and we can't even lift a finger to help him. It'll take a miracle to finally make a move against Doctor Marcel."
Kornelia began scraping some red gunk off the wall and into an oversized sample bag. "I don't get it," She said. "Gerret said he knew where the other students were, right? So isn't that enough to get the squad moving?"
"They need a warrant to search the asylum. I explained that Marcel essentially kidnapped one of them, but they wrote me off for having 'no real proof.' " Phelps huffed.
Kornelia put a hand to her chin. "It's like they're adamantly trying to stay away from Marcel."
Just then, the cellar door squeaked open. One of the town policemen poked his head in, shining a flashlight down at them.
"Pardon me, officers..." He said, sounding a bit jittery. "There's, uh, something you might want to see."
The two looked at each other inquisitively, before gathering up the evidence they had collected to follow the young cop out.
Outside was a real spectacle. Cops where everywhere, going in and out of the convent so that no area was left unchecked. Lights had been set up to better inspect the quarantined areas, which had been blocked off by police tape. Phelps and Kornelia followed the man inside, where more police officers where gathered. They stepped over the dead clown nobody cared about and headed to the kitchen.
Inside, another cop was speaking with two men sitting at one of the tables. They were both draped with blankets, sipping tea with shaking hands. One was short, balding and fat, the other taller and thin with a lousy mullet. They both wore glasses and white uniforms under their blankets.
"So let me get this straight." The officer was saying. "You were attacked by the phantom of the asylum..."
"Uh huh." The short one muttered.
"Only to run right into a sabre-toothed boar's territory..."
"Yeah." The tall one whimpered.
"Which then started chasing you all through town and up the mountain because you wet yourself, making it mistake the scent for a female of it's species."
The short one pulled his blankets around tighter, grumbling miserably. The two investigators stared at the scene dumbfound.
"That's definitely one for the books." Kornelia remarked, taking out a pack of cigarettes from her back pocket. Phelps frowned at her as she lit up.
"Real respectful, Ellie."
"I was just scraping a child's remains off the wall not five minutes ago and now you think I'm being sacrilegious?"
"No, I think you're forgetting that one of the dead kids asphyxiated himself."
She shrugged. "It's not my fault he couldn't handle his smokes."
"Hey, can I bum one off you?" The short man interrupted. "Any price is worth it after the day I've had."
"It's on the house." Kornelia handed him the pack and her lighter. The man gratefully took them, fumbling with the lighter as his hands still shook. "In fact, take the whole thing. I'm trying to quit."
"Sure you are." Phelps murmured.
"I'd LOVE to quit." The tall man spoke up. "Not smoking, I mean. I'm talking about my job. I'm done with phantoms and boars and loonies and...!"
Kornelia's ears perked up. "Loonies?"
The tall man stopped, realizing what he had just said. Apprehensively, he looked back at his companion. The short man considered him for a moment, then let out a tired grunt.
"Just tell them. I'm fed up with all this, paycheck be damned."
Hearing this, the tall one looked back at the officers, who were waiting patiently. Gulping, he spoke.
"We... work for Doctor Marcel." He said, taking out a badge from his shirt pocket to show the agents. "And listen to me when I tell you guys: he's gone flipping nuts!"
Phelps was speechless. His partner turned to look at him, beaming. "I think we've found our miracle."
The policeman, who had been listening all this time, suddenly became very flustered.
"Uh, n-now gentlemen..." He stammered, raising his hands. "Let's not throw accusations around like that..."
"The man said they're both under Marcel's employment," Phelps interjected, checking the man's ID closely. "That gives them a first-hand account of the doctor's actions. I don't think you can have anymore proof than that."
The officer kept looking like he wanted to say something, but clamped his mouth shut. Kornelia watched him from the corner of her eye as he started to sweat profusely.
Phelps handed the ID badge back to the orderly. "Well, looks like it all checks out, my friend. We'll need everything you know, so start as far back as you can."
The man pondered this for a moment. He seemed to be recollecting his thoughts, as if he was considering what to say. With a deep breath, he made his decision.
"Do either of you remember Mattis Konrad?"
A/N: Not every scene, particularly the ones with Reuben, are happening necessarily in the exact order they appear. As with the rest of the story, they're meant to 'fill in the empty spaces' the game left behind. Of course, this is just me trying to justify my poor writing technique. XD