4. Aggravation
Rude woke up with a stiff neck. It took him a few moments to figure out that this was because his pillow had slipped out from under his head at some point in the night. What he was unable to figure out, though, was how the pillow had ended up beneath his feet.
As his mind shed the remnants of slumber, this fact began to sink in properly. The back of Rude's neck began to crawl. His pillow had not moved itself. Someone had been inside his room, had taken the pillow from under his head and slipped it in under his feet. Someone... or something.
It took Rude a minute to dare open his eyes. It took several more for him to move. When he swung his legs over the side of the bed, he planted his feet as far from the bed as possible and bounded several steps away. Once he was clear, he dropped to his knees and bent down for a peek under the bed.
On the other side of the bed, something dashed up and out of view.
Heart pounding in his throat, Rude shot back up to his feet. Nothing. He lunged for the chair and fumbled his gun out of the holster. Keeping the pistol trained on the bed, he circled over to the door, where he got down on one knee and leaned down far enough that he could cover both the top of the bed and the floor below it. Crouched down just so, he crept sideways until he had checked every inch of the bed, above and below.
Nothing.
He had still been waking up, Rude told himself. It had just been a trick of the eye. He'd let himself get all worked up over nothing.
Yet he didn't turn his back on the bed for a single moment as he got dressed. He even shrugged into his shoulder holster, with his gun still drawn. Guns mean distance, and in this case... Rude wanted all the distance he could get.
Reno wasn't in his room. Cissnei wasn't in hers, either. Rude tried to keep it together as he tromped down the stairs, yet he couldn't stop glancing over his shoulder. Everything was so damned quiet. Against his own will, his pace quickened; by the time he reached the ground floor, he was almost stampeding to the kitchen.
Rude threw the kitchen door open. Reno was sitting at the table, his hands clasped behind his head as he balanced his chair on its back legs.
"Mornin', buddy! Sweet dreams?"
He grinned up at Rude as he slowly rocked back and forth in his chair, jacket hanging open and shirt barely buttoned. The coffee machine was sputtering away, filling the kitchen with the scent of fresh coffee. Four mugs were waiting beside it on the countertop, along with a bottle of milk.
Rude felt a bit woozy. It was such a sudden drop back into normalcy.
"Did you..." He wet his lips. "Did you notice anything this morning?"
"Like what?"
"Anything... unusual."
Reno stilled his chair and lowered it to the floor.
"It's been quiet around here. Why?"
"You didn't see anything? Hear anything?"
"Nah, man. Went out for a smoke a lil' while ago, tho'." He tilted his head to the side and studied Rude's face. "What's this about?"
"I think someone's been in my room." The word something was awfully close to slipping out instead.
"Like, this morning?"
Rude nodded. "Earlier, too. They've been moving my stuff."
"Anythin' missin'?"
"No."
With a pensive frown, Reno pushed himself to his feet and strolled over to the coffeemaker.
"Look, you sure about this?" he asked as he poured himself a cup. "I mean, why would someone come all the way up here just to move your stuff around?"
"I am certain," Rude ground out. "We should search the house."
Reno paused with his mug raised halfway to his face, staring in disbelief.
"Seriously? Like, the whole place?"
Rude nodded sharply.
"C'mon, man," Reno groaned. "We looked all over this shithole yesterday with Gubbins. None of us saw nothin'."
"We haven't cleared the north wing."
"Yeah, 'cause we didn't need to. The floor's covered in an inch of dust, remember? Untouched dust, yo."
Rude wanted to say that tracks meant nothing if the intruder could flicker in and out of existence and travel through locked doors. Saying it out loud might make it real, though. Make it a tangible something he didn't know how to catch or defeat.
Rude crossed the room in two quick strides and slapped his hands down on the table.
"Someone has been in my room," he forced out through clenched teeth.
Reno's eyebrows disappeared under his messy fringe.
"Hey, man, ease up, all right? You say we gotta search the house, we search the house." Reno reached into his jacket. He paused, staring at the floor. Then he let his hand fall. "You call Ciss," he muttered as he turned to face the coffee machine. "Tell her to get down here."
The call was brief. Kitchen. Now. Rude didn't miss the snort and the shake of Reno's head, but he didn't care. He was in no mood to waste words.
Despite his curtness over the phone, Cissnei greeted him with a smile when she entered the kitchen.
"Hey, Rude. What's up?"
She and Reno exchanged nothing but wary looks before he turned away and slapped his mug down on the counter. When he faced them again, he wore a crooked smile. His poker smile, Rude recognized.
"'Kay, so, we got a bit of a situation," Reno began.
He recapped what Rude had told him in about three times as many words. By the time he was finally done, Cissnei was frowning.
"This place is huge, though. How are we supposed to do a proper sweep?"
"At this point we're just lookin' for signs of an intruder. Unlocked doors, broken windows, tracks in the dust... you know the drill. There's three of us, four with the custodian. We oughta be done in a couple of hours."
"The custodian?" Rude asked.
Reno gave him a searching look. "Got a problem with that?"
He shrugged.
"Ain't like I'm a personal fan," Reno said, "but she knows the place, and working in pairs is better than havin' one of us go alone."
Rude was tempted to suggest they not split up at all, but he knew better. One group was easier to avoid than two. Sweep in from one end of the house and the target might just slip out through the other.
"'Kay, I'm gonna give the ol' bat a call. We can check the first floor while we wait, then pair up for the top floor when she gets here."
"Sounds like a plan," Cissnei said.
As Reno stepped out into the hallway to make his call, she squeezed her eyes shut and rubbed her temples.
"Problem?" Rude wondered.
"No. Didn't sleep well, that's all."
She offered him an anemic smile, which didn't reassure him.
Rude poured them coffee while they waited. It was too bitter and did little to ease the dull thudding in his head. He'd forced half of it down his throat when the door swung open again.
"All right, she'll show up in an hour," Reno said as he strolled up to the table. "Time to figure out a plan." He sank down in his previous seat and clasped his hands behind his head. "Rude here seems to think the sweet ol' custodian is fishy. Can't say I disagree. Mind pairing up with her, Ciss? Get a read on her?"
"No problem."
Her smile was different from the one she'd given Rude a few minutes ago; it was wider, brighter, more. He was beginning to recognize her game face too, he realized.
When she looked over at him, her smile faded.
"Rude," she said, "your disappearing phone yesterday... Do you think it's related?"
He nodded. She lowered her gaze to stare into her coffee, eyes narrowed in thought.
"It doesn't make sense," she mumbled. "If someone is snooping around, why draw attention to themselves like that? And if they're trying to mess with us, why stick to something as pointless as moving our stuff around? Why not take our stuff? Hell, why not put a bullet in our heads?"
"That's what a Turk would do, Ciss," Reno piped up. "Maybe we're just dealing with a prankster."
"Takes one to know one, huh?"
"Hey, I'm just sayin' that if I'd spent my whole life here in Boringheim, I'd be pretty desperate to liven things up. Maybe someone just wants to watch us foreign types lose our shit."
He was rocking his chair again, balanced precariously on two legs. It wouldn't take much to knock him over, Rude mused. Reno was little more than skin and bones. Just a little nudge would send him over, skinny limbs flailing.
Rude squeezed his eyes shut and pushed a couple of fingers under his shades to rub his eyelids. Where the hell did that come from? The past few days had left him in a terrible mood.
"Wouldn't that mean they'd have to be here to watch us do so?" Cissnei asked.
"Uh huh."
"Well. That's just great."
"What is?" Rayleigh's voice cut through the room like a whip. She stood with one hand on the door handle, back ramrod straight and eyes piercing as she watched Cissnei.
"In this neck of the woods?" Reno grinned. "Not a damn thing."
She remained by the door and eyed each of them in turn. She wore a green dress with random swirls of white and yellow – Rude couldn't help but think that Turk black would have suited her better at that moment.
"Reno thinks we might have a prankster on our hands," Cissnei explained. "We've had some... odd incidents since we arrived."
"Not more 'ghosts' in the mirror, I hope?"
Rude felt a rush of heat surge through his veins and curl his hands into fists. Of course Reno's fooling around would end up biting Rude in the ass. Of course it would.
Reno rolled his eyes and unfurled himself from his seat.
"C'mon, Ciss, let's check out this floor. Now that the Prof is here, Rude can stay with her."
"Professor," Rayleigh corrected him.
Rude picked up on a note of exasperation in her voice. He also noticed the sly look that Reno gave him.
"No. I'll go."
He headed for the door before Reno could come up with a more convoluted excuse to make him stay. As he opened it, Cissnei slunk past him and out of the kitchen.
"Thanks," she mumbled under her breath.
It wasn't what he'd had in mind, but he swallowed his surprise and hurried out after her. She was waiting for him at the turn of the corridor.
"So," she began as she fell in beside him. "Are you avoiding Reno or the professor?"
"I could ask you the same thing."
"Nice dodge," she chuckled softly. "Don't get me wrong, Reno and I are friends. On this mission, though, he's been a bit... much."
"I could say the same thing."
Cissnei smiled. Not the sugary-sweet smile she'd worn the day before, but a shy one that barely raised the corners of her mouth.
Rude and Cissnei had the same training, and they soon fell into an easy cooperation. He would take up position near the door, and keep an eye out while she swept any closets and other hiding places. He even began to relax into the methodical rhythm of it – until they reached the ballroom. The moment he heard the double doors click shut behind him, a chill came over him. Despite Cissnei's presence, despite his own reassurances, he couldn't focus on the task at hand. He had to try one of the doors. It opened.
It became a little easier after that. A little. Rude kept an eye on the dust as the parquet gave way to simple wooden floors, and then to the rougher boards of the storage rooms. He made out his own footsteps, along with those of Reno and Mrs. Gubbins. He identified the uneven smear that wove along the back hallways to be the sack that she'd dragged behind her during her vermin rounds. He made note of all the tracks and compared them to what he remembered from the tour with Mrs. Gubbins. Apart from a few rat trails, he didn't notice anything new.
They heard Reno's chatter long before they reached the end of their round. Rude couldn't make out all the words until they reached the storage rooms behind the kitchen. He doubted he'd missed anything of importance.
"Hey, guys!" Reno greeted them when Rude opened the door at the back of the kitchen. "What's the verdict?"
"Nothing," Rude replied.
Rayleigh whipped to her feet.
"In that case, I shall finally get back to my work. If you need me, I'll be in my room."
"We can trust you to stay put, yeah?" Reno called after her. "Lock the door, and don't open it unless it's one of us? Not that this is somethin' you need to worry about, really, it's just the usual–"
Rayleigh huffed out a theatrical sigh and turned to stare at him.
"Why are you still talking? I already told you what I'm going to do!"
He smirked.
"I'll take that as a 'yes', then."
The hinges croaked as she yanked the door open and left.
"No sign of Gubbins yet?" Cissnei asked.
"Nah, but she should be here any minute. If you guys want breakfast, now's the time, yo."
The ingredients of a sandwich were spread out on the countertop behind him. Rude made a beeline for the loaf. He had been too wound up to even think about food before, but now his mouth watered at the sound of the breadknife rasping through the thick crust.
He had just taken the first bite of a thick sandwich, laden with butter, cheese, ham and tiny sour pickles, when the door moved again. It swung open in silent slow motion, until a gaunt face fell into view.
"Good morning, kids," creaked Mrs. Gubbins, and peeled back her desiccated lips into a rictus grin.
Rude could barely swallow his bite of sandwich. It had become a ball of damp sawdust in his mouth.
"Come on in, Mrs. Gubbins," Reno said. "Let's go over the plan before we get started."
He must have explained the situation over the phone, because he launched straight into the pairing up and the division of the floor above them. Gubbins stood next to Reno's chair, stooping slightly. Her arms were gnarled twigs poking out of the threadbare sleeves of her pastel blue cardigan, hanging stiffly by her sides as she loomed over him. Rude didn't seriously think she was behind all this weirdness, yet he couldn't shake the mental image of her, by his bed, in the middle of the night... looming.
He forced down another mouthful of sandwich in a dry, painful gulp.
Cissnei headed out, with Mrs. Gubbins following her like a bad omen. Rude watched them leave, and tried his best to ignore that insistent prickling in the back of his neck, telling him to do something before someone got hurt.
Wood scraped harshly against wood. Rude flinched and turned as Reno pushed back his chair hopped and to his feet.
"All right, buddy, let's get this show on the road." He paused and eyed the half-eaten sandwich in Rude's hand. "You gonna finish that?"
With a sigh, Rude handed it over.
As they reached the second floor landing in the foyer, Rude looked over at the low stair to the north wing. Cissnei and Mrs. Gubbins were searching that end of the house – the lit parts of it, anyway. They would all meet up together afterwards, to search the dark zone.
He couldn't hear anything. That didn't mean a thing, but he didn't like it. If only he'd hear a few steady steps or a snippet of conversation, he could assume everything was proceeding as planned.
"What, think you should've been the one keepin' tabs on the ol' bat?" Reno asked, stepping up beside him. "Trust me, if she ain't who she claims to be, Ciss has the best chance of us three to figure her out."
"But she's–"
She was what? Rude couldn't think of a solid argument. She was young – as far as he knew, she'd been pulled in straight from high school barely a year ago, when the Turks were desperate for more agents – but Reno couldn't have been much older when Rude partnered up with him for the first time. She was a junior agent, but clearly no rookie. And as creepy as the custodian was, he had nothing but a bad gut feeling to go on.
Reno chuckled.
"Glad your mama raised ya right, but you gotta let it go on the job. Ain't no damsels in the Turks, buddy. Ciss can handle herself." He clapped Rude on the shoulder and turned toward the south wing. "What you oughta be worryin' about right now is what might be lurkin' in the shadows 'round here."
Rude tore his gaze from the north wing and followed his partner.
They swept through bedrooms, and storerooms, and stuffy studies crowded with empty bookshelves. The second floor was in better shape; the corridors were swept free of dust, and while most of the rooms still lay covered in drifts of the stuff, they showed fewer animal tracks and other signs of disturbance. More light reached the windows here than on the ground floor, filtering in through wispy curtains yellowed by age. It made the place feel less ominous, and more simply... abandoned.
"Yo, look at this! "
Rude cringed as Reno's echo boomed through the empty rooms. A search like this should have been well-honed routine for them, conducted with nothing more than a gesture and a look.
"You're giving away our position," he warned, keeping his voice low.
"Yeah, whatever. Check this out."
Reno stood by the carved leg of an ornate sofa, holding up a corner of the sheet that covered it and pointing at the seat. A ragdoll sat on the plush cushion, wearing a blue satin dress. The thread of its embroidered eyes and mouth had faded and worn thin, turning its features into a mere shadow of a face.
"Y'know, I can't decide what's creepier," Reno said, grinning. "A kid growin' up in this place, or a kid growin' up with this fuckin' thing."
Rude gritted his teeth.
"We're working."
"Oh, c'mon. We haven't seen a damn thing so far. Why are ya takin' this so damn seriously?"
Reno hadn't seen anything. The problem was, Rude hadn't exactly seen anything either.
"Because we're working," he said, biting off each word.
"All right, all right." Reno rolled his eyes and let the sheet fall back down. "Sheesh."
And just like that, he slipped back into acting like a proper Turk. Considering the amount of bullshit that came out of Reno on a daily basis, he could be remarkably quiet when the occasion called for it. As they advanced, he crept through rooms and corridors without a sound; he even bothered to sidestep most of the creaky floorboards.
More than once, Rude caught a private grin on Reno's face. He wasn't surprised; after a couple of days of the quiet mountain life, even the merest whiff of action was bound to get Reno fired up. It was for the best, he decided. Reno's grins kept the morning's lingering fear at bay.
The main corridor ended in a cylindrical chamber. They had taken a peek through the door with Mrs. Gubbins the day before, but this was the first time Rude had set foot inside. A wall of heat engulfed him the moment he stepped over the threshold; tall windows covered half of the room's circumference, and at this hour the abundant sunlight flooded every inch of it.
The air was saturated with the musty smell of warm soil. Rows of old terracotta pots and planters ringed the circular wall. Most of the pots still contained earth, and several of them sprouted slender stems and fresh green foliage. This had clearly been a greenhouse once, but Rude doubted this vegetation had been planted by the former residents. He spotted several weeds he'd seen by the roadside on his way into town, and a few pots even housed stunted versions of the pines outside.
"How the hell are these things still growing?" Reno muttered as he strolled along the innermost row of pots.
"Leaky roof, maybe."
"Maybe. Would've thought Gubbins would fix that sorta thing, tho'."
"Maybe she waters them."
Reno snorted softly.
"Speakin' of, we should link up with the others. See how Ciss is doin'."
They had agreed to meet up at the first T-junction beyond the entrance to the north wing. When they found the other two already waiting for them, both in one piece, Rude breathed out in relief. They stood in the hallway that led to the rear of the house, right at the edge of the swept floors; beyond them was an even layer of dust, marked only by Reno's boot prints from the day before.
"Now, this part of the manor is a little... different from the rest," Mrs. Gubbins warned as she handed them a couple of heavy flashlights. "It was tacked on a couple decades after the main house was built, and the layout here has its own ideas, compared to the side you boys were on. Just keep that in mind as you barge around. Wouldn't want to lose anyone... now would we?"
She grinned, and Rude really wished she hadn't.
There were two routes through the back half of the north wing, she explained, connected up by certain rooms. She and Cissnei would head right, to search a series of interconnected rooms along the northern wall. Rude and Reno would head straight ahead along the side that faced the inner gardens. At the back of the house, they would meet up.
The sounds of the women's hushed conversation faded fast once they split up. In less than a minute, it was as if the house had swallowed them whole.
Or maybe the house had swallowed him and Reno, Rude mused. Every step took them deeper into the dark, impenetrable were it not for their flashlights. Every step made the dread in his gut grow a little stronger, squeeze a little tighter. He glanced over his shoulder. The bright hallway shone behind them like a beacon, beckoning him to safety. Rude stifled the urge to run back, run now, run while you still can, and followed his partner into the darkness like a solid shadow.
Rude peeked into the first room and swept his flashlight around in a slow arc. Like everything else in this town, the light was an old-fashioned thing; weighty, chunky, and covered in thick black rubber that felt sticky in his gloved hand. He hoped the batteries were made in this decade.
It did shine brightly, though; not like the warm rays of the sun, or the golden glow of the manor's incandescent bulbs, but a cold, hard brightness that leeched the life out of everything it touched. Its harsh light fell across faded wallpaper, mottled here and there with little dark spots. Dull and flat and lifeless. If he shone his light on Reno, would it drain away his youth until he was nothing more than a grinning skull like Mrs. Gubbins?
The thought crept up Rude's spine like a chilly breeze.
The room was empty, with another doorway diagonally across from them. Cissnei would check the room beyond it. An airtight sweep wasn't necessary; they were only looking for tracks at this point.
As they stalked onward, Reno coughed into the crook of his arm.
"Man, fuck this dust," he grumbled. "I'm gonna be hackin' this shit up for weeks once we get back."
It was thick here, covering the floors like filthy snow, and every step they took kicked up more of it. Reno coughed again, hamming it up into a wheezing display of wretchedness.
"Keep it down," Rude growled.
"Gee, thanks for the sympathy."
The hallway led them into a large chamber, with a second doorway gaping in the center of the opposite wall. Rude looked back as he followed Reno across the room, but he could barely make out the door they'd come through. So much for their beacon.
Their flashlights glinted off gilded plaster and crystal chandeliers; it had to be the fanciest room Rude had been in so far. As he panned his torch around it, something darted away from the beam. A tiny, sudden thing, scurrying up the wall and into a gap in the ceiling trim. A thing with far too many legs for his liking. Rude hurried through the rest of his sweep, and hastened to follow Reno out of the chamber and into the hallway beyond. It wasn't that he feared spiders; he just didn't much care for sharing a room with them in absolute darkness.
For it truly was absolute, now. Had the dark grown darker?
"Hang on," Reno said, peering into another room on the right. "I gotta take a closer look."
"What is it?"
"Not sure. Lemme check real quick."
As Reno skulked inside, Rude shone his flashlight into the room after him. He moved in a cautious circle around the doorway, his beam making Reno's shadow leap and dance along the walls. He had nearly completed his circle when he felt it – a wispy touch on the back of his head, like the lightest brush of a shroud.
He froze to the spot. The sensation was gone... or was it? There was still something – something skimming along the edge of what he could sense.
Rude spun around, his light wheeling across the faded walls of the corridor. He saw nothing, but the prickling in the back of his head didn't stop. It repeated in quick little waves, like the pattering of a dozen tiny legs.
He threw his hand up, but just as he flattened it against the back of his head, the sensation skittered down his neck and in under his collar. His heart leapt into his throat as he felt it burrow down between his shoulder blades. He thrust his arm down his collar, frantically clawing at his back – only to feel another critter land on his head, then another.
Rude smacked both hands onto his scalp. His flashlight thudded against the floor and went dark. Plunged into darkness, he was helpless as the spiders descended upon him. They swarmed down his sleeves and up the legs of his pants. With a panicked yell he slapped down his wriggling clothes, but there were just too many of them. They crawled in under the fabric and bit into his skin with dozens, no, hundreds of tiny fangs, gnawing through his flesh–
"What the fuck? Rude!"
"Help," he wheezed. "Help me!"
The spiders scurried out of his clothes and up over his scalp. He clamped his teeth together, but they crammed into his ears, his nostrils, and pushed against his sunglasses. They squeezed in under the leather of his gloves. They tunneled into his arms, and the fabric of his shirt was soaking through with something warm and wet and–
"Rude! Quit it!"
A cone of blinding brightness pinned his hands in its glare. Rude stared down at them, frozen. The arm he'd been slapping, the arm that had been covered in spiders – in the cold light of Reno's flashlight, he saw nothing. Nothing clinging on his jacket, nothing squirming beneath the fabric. No tiny skittering legs, no bites, no blood. Nothing.
Rude just stared. The air shimmered with the dust he'd kicked up in his panic, and every shallow breath he sucked in tickled his throat. His arm trembled, more violently by the second, until Reno grabbed hold of it.
"C'mon, Rude, talk to me," he said, his voice unsteady. "What's up with you, man?"
Reno's face was paler than usual, eerily shadowed like a skull in the light of his torch, only he wasn't grinning. His eyes were wide and startled.
Rude felt light-headed. He felt like he was swaying at the precipice of a yawning abyss, mere seconds from plummeting into a pitch black nothing.
"I..." He wet his lips. "I don't know."