This post has the following content warnings:
Oscar takes the train back to London and starts asking around about Roby.
A person buying a book mentions that Randolph Carter had known Roby, and the next morning he can set up some time to talk to him.
Huh, wasn't that the guy Terrence talked to at the party? He seemed a bit much. But that's like 40% of his customers; he has a lot of experience in this area.
"Which could just be vivid imagination but the strange part is that Roby seemed to know this had happened, he apologized about it."
"You know, if you guys listen I can tell you." He makes an exaggerated non-committal gesture.
...Inaaya really needs to actually evaluate what she thinks happened with Roby and Valentine. Not right now, though. "Please do."
"I'm game." Terrence thinks about it. "Seems unfair to you if we don't know the language, though. We should be comrades in arms, for the experience of it. Inaaya, do you know German?"
"Damn. Nor do I. Well, we could give it a shot anyhow, if you're game, Oscar. In any case, that's a very strange report indeed."
If Jing Yi wants to fuck around and make cheap jokes more than he wants to help Roby, he's not even worth engaging with. Oscar may as well pretend he's not there. Fine by him!
"I can't say Der Wanderer's been treating me kindly," he says. "It's a funny work-- written like a case study, and I don't know why he chose the genre, it's so technical, far from the best way to present personal experiences. In any case-- he does have an eye for details.
"There are some strange things in it. Lots of King in Yellow references, as I mentioned. But-- I guess I can understand how it'd have an unsettling effect. On people with a certain cast of mind. Even for me-- the detached tone and the details are sometimes creepy." He's decided that, despite his strategy of ignoring Jing Yi, he does not want to give him a chance to react to the dream. He didn't even want to tell Hannah.
That leaves the question of who he can tell. Inaaya is-- well, he can tell she thinks he's been silly lately, so that's not a great option. Sal probably wouldn't judge him, but isn't there something embarrassing about burdening some random kid with your weird dreams? And he doesn't even know how he feels about telling Terrence.
"Huh. Well, Sal and William and I talked to Valentine Donovan back in Wales," and she summarizes that conversation and definitely doesn't have any particular emotional response to it, "and then here in London I found the Robys' house and talked to a few people who'd been living in the area. One of them said that the night of the murder there'd been a very loud whistling noise all night, and someone who'd seen the bodies said it looked like they'd been stabbed or clawed."
"It sounds like Roby would have heard," Terrence muses. "If I recall correctly, Carter described the - the body in Parker's case as desiccated, not stabbed. But the whistling is a very strange detail, and especially one to come up twice."
"...Well, we heard this secondhand. It sounded, um. Dubious." He glances at Oscar.
"Can you repeat the dubious secondhand thing anyway." (She's been taking notes on all of this.)
"Carter is-- he told me that the body was suddenly dried out-- I think he used the word 'mummy'?"
He did not expect Inaaya to be taking notes on Carter's description of physically impossible happenings but he guesses someone has to, so good on her.
View Flat HTML
View Metadata
Search Post
