12.
~ Things never moved fast enough when it really mattered. This has always been true.
When he had to make a life changing or saving decision, he only had seconds. He never had the time to wonder what if. He only had time to react. Sometimes, not even that much time.
It felt as though years were wasting away while the other agents and police secured the scene.
They seemed more worried for the girl Arthur shot than Ariadne. The boys were shouting over one another and the girl, being treated for her gun shot wound was screaming profanities and how she would make him pay.
Finally, the ambulance workers were pulled, like gravity, to Ariadne.
"She's cold." Arthur managed to say.
He felt so weak. Too much had happened today from start to end. He had lost so much in such a short amount of time. He gave his weapon to the agent in charge when asked without protest.
Lake was shouting for the paramedics and the wind from the storm outside was snuffing out the candles in the attic.
~ Arthur waited outside surgery for some kind of news. It was horrible, this not knowing. Ariadne had been so cold in that attic. Her face so pale and she hadn't responded to him when he tried to wake her up. The blood over their bed sheet was frightening.
"Water?" Lake asked.
The Point Man looked up to see his new friend, a word he could now call Lake, hand him a bottled water.
"Thanks." Arthur said. He didn't feel thirsty. He didn't feel anything.
"Any news?" Lake asked.
Arthur shook his head.
"Well, the boys are spilling the beans in the interview rooms. Agents can barely keep up." Lake said with a trace of happiness.
"Teenagers." was all Arthur would say.
"Yes. It seems they worship some spooky online character named Wicker Man. He's the main leader in an online community. People have little avatars and meet one another in service to the Wicker Man. It's a goth thing." Lake explained.
Arthur looked at the agent in confusion.
"They took her, Arthur. Those kids took Miss Richards today. They did it all." Lake told him honestly.
"Why?" Arthur croaked. He still didn't understand.
"Ariadne Richards just happened to buy the house next door to one of the players. Bobby Whitman. His avatar name is Blood Raven. While his parents were away in Greece, he and his friends tore open the guest bathroom to get inside your place. It seems she looked like one of the victims of the Wicker Man game. His fifth actually."
"There were more?" Arthur asked.
Lake nodded.
"They killed Wilson, the security guard to." he sighed. "Bobby has a friend, Mark Wilkie, who programed the bomb to go off in the museum. Wilson wasn't meant to be a sacrifice, just a lose end."
"Sacrifice." Arthur said. He felt out of breath. As if all the air had left the room.
"Right now, the boys are confessing to the murders of four other missing persons. All of them looking similar to art work in this online game." Lake said.
Arthur stood and started pacing.
This was all a game? The monster just happened to live next door?
"This guy called me. He knew about me." Arthur protested.
"He knew all he needed to know about you because they gained access to your home. When they saw Ariadne, they decided she would be the fifth. Because Bobby Whitman lived next door, and saw when you weren't at home, he was able to cut out the guest bathroom and come inside. He claims the group found your old ID badges, your notebooks. Bobby Whitman decided to call you up, and torment you, Arthur. His parents are physiotherapists, he's probably been the subject of mind games his whole life." Lake explained.
"No, it has to be more than that." Arthur said quickly. A group of goth kids couldn't have done this.
"Arthur, we found some of your old notebooks at Bobby Whitman's house. In his bedroom. He's been studying you for months now. The rest of the group were planning to kill Ariadne today and he wouldn't let them. He wanted to keep you on the line because you were former Secret Service."
Arthur shook his head.
"How did he know about you, Lake? He mentioned you by name the second time he called me." the Point Man accused.
Lake nodded.
"The girl you shot, her name is Becky Miller. Screen name Isis Moon. She was on the scene at the time of the bombing. I spoke to her and everything. She made a witness statement. It's how they were able to know you were pulled from the house and would be gone a while. It gave the boys plenty of time to go in through the bathroom, take her and bring her back to the house next door. All of this, without ever tripping the motion detectors downstairs, the door alarms or anyone seeing them." Lake explained.
Arthur was shaking his head. He still couldn't believe it.
"There was no conspiracy here." Lake told him gently. "It was a random fucked up crime."
~ Ariadne's body was motionless in bed. Her flesh was pale and she seemed fitting to the rain storm outside.
Each breath looked painful to her as her chest rose and fell slightly. After Lake had told him about the kids and their online cult, the doctor came out and explained about Ariadne.
She had suffered a concussion, most likely during the attack, which had to be treated medically. It's possible she wasn't even conscious at the time her right ring finger was cut off her hand.
"She'll need to stay for a few days. We need to perform more tests. A head injury is very serious." he had said.
"Is she going to be alight?" Arthur asked.
"It's too early to say. She hadn't really made sense when she briefly woke up earlier." the doctor said.
"Was there any sign of sexual assault?" Lake asked quickly.
Arthur felt his heart miss a beat.
"None. Although her finger nails are broken down very badly. She must have fought back." the doctor had said.
"Their were a lot of scratches on the boys." Lake added.
So now, Ariadne slept the sleep of the dead. Her head patched up from the blow the goth boys had given her.
It was raining heavily outside and Arthur wanted to go to sleep. He had been awake since one in the morning and it was almost midnight.
What would happen when she woke up? Would she want to just go home like nothing even happened? How could they live in a house where this had happened?
They would have to move. Somewhere where there was low crime rate or maybe even overseas.
Arthur wanted to bite his nails at the stress he was under. He pulled open his notebook instead.
'She's been found in a disused factory near our house. Teenagers involved with an online cult had taken her. The main suspect is a boy named Bobby Whitman. He lived next door to us this whole time. He went in through the guest bathroom and took her.
'Thank God he found my old notebooks and decided to play games with me. They would have killed her right away if he hadn't. We never would have found her if he hadn't called me.
'How can all of this just be a cruel game?'
Ariadne moaned and the Point Man was quick to hide his little notebook. He never liked for people to see him writing.
She turned her head and saw him, but her eyes were still glazed over.
"Ariadne." Arthur said.
He moved closer to her bed as she raised her wounded hand to him.
"You're safe now. You're in a hospital and you're safe. I'm here." he whispered.
Her voice came out, groggy and drugged.
"I was hoping it was just a dream." she said.
She held up the heavily bandaged hand.
Arthur nodded. She was awake when they cut off her finger.
"Are you in pain?" he asked. "I can see if I can get you something."
She shook her head and managed a smile.
"I told him… that guy… I told him that you'd come for me. That he'd be sorry." she said. "I really talked you up. Made you seem like a bad ass."
She closed her eyes and grinned. Arthur couldn't help but smile back.
"Oh yeah? Better than your boyfriend from that stripper movie?" Arthur teased.
"He's not a stripper anymore, and yes." she croaked. "Channing Tatum's got nothing on you."
"Good to know." Arthur whispered.
"I knew you'd come." she said. She was already drifting back to sleep again. "I told them you would come. I told them you would…"
She was asleep again.
Arthur felt a happiness stir inside him.
He kissed her forehead and whispered.
"Baby, I still hate that wallpaper."
~ One Year Later ~
~ Things moved quickly after lawyers were called in. Ariadne still had her's on retainer and the Whitman's were quick to sell out their son, their 2.2 million dollar home and pay Ariadne Richards almost half of that.
The goth kids were made a media spectacle. The Wicker Man helped to demonize all online gaming. In total, there were eight kids in the cult that had kidnaped and done murders in the name of this online boogie man. All of them taking pictures of their crimes. Most of them in Washington, but some from other states.
It was a quick and sensational trial. All the kids were tried as adults.
~ Even with a fresh infusion of money, it was hard to finish the house.
"You girls keep it down in there!" Lake shouted form the TV room. It was meant to be a ground floor wash room when the house was built, but Arthur insisted he needed an office. An office with no desk, just a pair of recliners, a mini fridge and a large flat screen.
They were having a monster movie marathon while Ariadne and Lake's brother 'Chaz' were making the finishing touches to the dinning room.
"Glad your brother's an interior designer." Arthur said as wolf man stalked some unsuspecting teens in a parked car.
"He's not licensed or anything but he loves it. Hopefully he can use this place in his portfolio. Whatever that means." Lake said.
"What did you think of the wallpaper in the dining room?" Arthur asked.
"I'm glad Chaz talked her out of putting it up in the kitchen." Lake laughed.
"I hate to say, I mean, I really hate to say it, but it looks nice in the dinning room. When she showed it to me, I didn't think it would work." Arthur admitted.
"Are we going to talk about decorating all day or are we going to watch wolf man kill these people?" Lake asked.
"Wolf man kill some people." the Point Man agreed.
They were quite for a while as they watched the blood lust. Ariadne and Chaz were talking loudly in the dinning room about wainscoting.
"It's perfect, dear. It breaks up all the vibrant color." Chaz was saying.
"It's too dark. With the furniture… it looks too dark now." Ariadne said.
"Nonsense. We'll put some fresh fruit in a bowl and hang up some bright, modern artwork. The wallpaper is amazing! It really pops right out at you!" Chaz sang.
The Point Man rolled his eyes.
"When is her sister going to come and live with you guys?" Lake asked.
"It took some convincing. But once she saw the finished basement and how nice it turned out, she agreed. I think it's going to work out well. Having someone else living here, but not in the house exactly." Arthur told him.
"You know Chaz is wanting to do the bedrooms upstairs next. You in for a few more months of my brother hanging around, talking about French wallpaper and vintage fixtures?" Lake asked.
"I love it. It means I don't have to talk about those things and have Ariadne get mad at me for having bad taste. I still can't believe she let me decorate the man cave here." Arthur told him.
"No one sees the man cave or how ugly it is. All that matters is the TV and Xbox. Wanna play call of duty later?"
"Sure." Arthur sighed.
~ "Chaz has this idea for the guest room I've been using as a closet." Ariadne said.
"Oh?" Arthur asked. Trying to sound interested.
"He thinks, since we live alone here, that I should turn it into a really big closet with built ins. What do you think?" she asked.
They were getting ready for bed and Ariadne was settling down with her latest copy of some big art book on her lap.
Arthur paused.
"Think that will hurt the resale value of this place." he told her. "People want bedrooms."
"I know. But I don't really see us moving now that Elizabeth is coming." she said.
"Maybe." Arthur agreed.
He looked down at her hands over the art book. Her missing finger was cleanly cut off, and with surgery, looked like she never even had a finger there at all.
She felt him look at her hand and covered it. A tactic she had adopted whenever she was around people and didn't want them to stare.
"After what happened, you still want to live here?" he asked for the hundredth time.
"I feel like if we leave, it means I'm scared. I'm not scared, Arthur. I'm angry, sure, but I'm not scared. Besides, the house is really nice now. It feels like home."
It does feel like home." he agreed.
He nodded at her book. A large monstrosity that cost over fifty dollars and came with color pictures and a built in bookmark.
"What's so special about this one?" he asked nodding at the pavement sized tome.
"Oh, it's by Thadora Langford." Ariadne said. "I'm meeting with her next week and want her to sign it for me. She's an art buff and the owner of the infamous 'Goose Girl'. It was a painting of a goose girl done by a fifteenth century painter. Not of any real significance until one day a man came into the gallery, tore it from the wall and slashed it five times before he was stopped. It was never able to be repaired. No one knows why he did it. It was one of those odd random crimes. I think it would make a good thesis. It's something no one had ever done before. Might even be a book in it. Mrs Langford and her husband have lead a very exciting life and collected a lot of art work. Each with a story behind it. She rarely gives interviews."
Arthur saw a light of happiness in Ariadne's eyes at the idea of a new and untapped subject for her PhD.
She didn't have to explain why she chose that topic. Random and senseless acts of violence were always on her mind. She could identify with the painting in a way. To be hurt by someone for no reason. For nothing she did or her father did. Just, random.
"Wow, so you think there's enough martial for a book?" he asked. "That's ambitious."
"Life is short. We both know that." she shrugged. I don't want to leave this world without accomplishing any real goals."
He nodded and settled himself in bed beside her.
"Well, open the book up and show me some of these paintings she has." Arthur ordered.
Ariadne smiles and tried to bat his hands away from the heavy paper at the front.
Ariadne gasped in horror to see her new book had been vandalized. On the first few pages, a small, rectangle hole had been carefully cut into the top of the pages. The cuts were precise and didn't mare the art work in anyway. Only they cradled a large, brilliant diamond ring there.
"Arthur." she whispered.
"I don't think we should turn the other guest room into a closet. I was hoping it might get used for other things." the Point Man said casually. "Who knows? We may a visitor someday who needs it."
"How long have you been planning this?" she asked. She was pretending to be mad, but her lips were curing into a smile.
"Long enough." he said simply.
"You destroyed my book being so romantic." she scolded him. Her new ring slipping easily on her finger.
"I'm sure Mrs. Langford will think it's a charming story." Arthur said.
"Yes, I can tell her that my new fiancé is a fool." Ariadne huffed.
"As long as I'm your fool." he smiled.