Click. Candles fred up, licking the edges of reality.
I stood in the very heart of a vast, old theater. The ceiling was lost in darkness, velvet curtains as a stormy sunset hung from unseen heights, their golden patterns shimmering in the candlelight. The smell of dust, wax and old curtains hung in the air, scratching the lungs. In the distance, muffled, as if from another dimension, an arming, slowly dying melody sounded. And they. The spectators.
They sat in their seats, dressed in impeccable tuxedos and gowns. Their silhouettes shrouded in shadow. Their faces were hidden, but I could feel their gazes. Hungry. Appraising. Hundreds of eyes filled with silent judgment.
In front of me, standing within a circle of light, was Woodsworth. His figure was as rigid as ever, but now he looked... different. His face is a white mask, with no slits for real eyes, just a smooth surface that reflects the light.
"You need to learn some manners, detective," he said with a hint of reproach, like my arithmetic teacher disappointed in me. He snapped his fingers.
My clothes were gone, repced by a tailcoat, a white shirt and a bastard bow tie. The perfect image of a proper gentleman, except for two things. My revolvers. Gone. I felt a cold emptiness where their familiar weight should have been.
"Hey!" I grabbed at the holsters that aren't there either. My fingers trembled like a drunkard’s without his bottles. "Give them back, you scum!"
Darkness swallowed me again. Then the fmes burst back to life. The stage. The light. In the air, like movie subtitles, words appeared:
"The Detective enters. He must introduce himself."
I stepped forward.
"Hell no! My revolvers - now! Fast!" I had no intention of switching careers this abruptly. The emptiness on the sides itched like a fresh wound.
The words flickered to "Incorrect!" before crumbling into ash, hissing like writhing snakes as they touched the stage.
"He does not respect the art."
"He cks proper etiquette."
"Mind your posture."
"His manners... are insufficient."
The voices rolled in, whispering, snickering, muffled, wet and slippery ughs, like someone running a wet palm over gss. I took another step, and now I could see them.
Grotesque figures, dressed with exquisite elegance, lounged in the seats, but their postures were unnatural. Their necks bent under the weight of their heads, fingers twitched like worms in agony. Red-skinned men with horns and monocles. Bloated toad-like creatures in evening gowns. Oozing slimes in top hats, holding wine gsses filled with darkness. Swine-faced aristocrats in tuxedos, lowering their opera gsses from their flesh masses, watching with zy disdain. A panopticon of the in-between. Neurosis!
"You must do better, detective," Woodsworth’s voice rang out, cold and merciless.
The snap of fingers. I returned two steps back, as if time had moved backwards, but the memory remained in pce.
"The Detective enters. He must introduce himself," the floating letters insisted.
I said what I had learned while working undercover as a dockworker. Good thing Jocelyn wasn't here.
"Incorrect!"
Snap.
"He is a degenerate."
"Look in the eyes."
"Does he despise beauty?"
"You disappoint us."
Some demons started rising from their seats. One spectator had an indignant fme erupt in the missing top half of his head. Instinctively, I grasped at the emptiness on my hips. Obsession!
"Do not disappoint our esteemed guests, detective," Woodsworth's voice came. "They are rather short-tempered."
"Fine," I said, straightening up and sensing the collective hatred towards me, which is deadly in these realms. The stares of a variety of eyes pierce me, and for a moment I think the walls of the theatre are breathing heavily. I feel the dusty curtains shudder, as if the stage itself were judging me. In the royal box on the mezzanine, someone entirely cloaked in darkness slowly, menacingly tapped a cw against the armrest of their chair. The tension swelled like distant thunder. "If that's what you want..."
I took a step forward, raised my head, and said:
"I am detective Decart Rains. And I am here to find the truth."
"Correct!"
I caught myself bracing for another "Incorrect!" Damn that butler and his mind. Well, I'll be a fool on strings, I'm used to it. The demonic theater begins its performance.
Darkness thickens again, then dissolves, and I find myself on the same stage, but in a new scene. Before me stands Longford. Alive, if that word applies. His eyes ck the gssy, lifeless stare I had seen in his office. He looks younger, if such a thing can be said about him. His tall, slightly hunched figure seems even more fragile, the dim stage light peeling away pieces of him.
"Woodsworth," his voice is dry, but it holds that familiar authority of a man accustomed to speaking, not listening. "You need to carry these crates."
He gestures toward several wooden boxes at his feet. They look new.
"Where to?" I ask dumbly.
"To the new room," he replies.
The letters appear in the air, burning like embers: "Be silent and obey."
Silence thickens. It presses against my ears, my chest, my mind. I feel the audience shifting in their seats, their whispers rising, gliding over my skin like icy fingers.
"Be silent and obey."
The audience waits for my reaction. I do what I must - I nod.
"As you wish, sir."
I bend down to lift the crates, feeling their weight press against my arms. They are heavy, as if filled not with objects but with old sins.
"Woodsworth," Longford says again, his voice carrying a warning. "Not a word to anyone."
"Not a word to anyone," I repeat, and my words sound like a vow.
"Correct!"
The demonic theater continues its performance. Darkness thickens again, and I feel the floor beneath my feet change. It kicks me in the ass, forcing me to sit. Now I am seated at an iron table, illuminated by a single mp, its light cutting through the darkness and into my eyes. And in front of me is myself.
Yes, me. The same coat, the same hat, the same revolvers at my sides, but now missing. A square face, graying at the temples. But his eyes - my eyes - stare at me with unclouded rage, with not a shred of humanity left in them.
"You are a criminal. You must confess.""What did you do to Mr Longford?""Did you kill him?"
The subtitles in the air burned like the ears of a saint in a brothel. They trembled, overpped, as if they were trying to sear their words into my brain. Suppressing the primal impulse to reach for Zakhar and Danil, I try to get comfortable, but the chair beneath me offers neither peace nor support, just like my ex.
"SPIT IT OUT, YOU STINKING BASTARD! ARE YOU A KILLER?" I roar at myself, clearly overdoing it. No one should encounter their own projections in someone else's mind. And especially not in their own. And "stinking bastard"? The best a butler's mind can come up with. His mind is less mature than the rest of him.
"I need to collect my thoughts," I reply to myself. "And talk to the smart me."
I get what's happening. With my job, you involuntarily pick up the basics of psychology. They unfold right before your eyes and often try to kill you. If a person's ego is destroyed, it gets repced by the ego of the psionic who wormed their way into their mind. I understand that I'm standing in Woodsworth's pce. These demons - his environment, his judges, his caretakers. Childhood trauma. Lovely. My daily bread. And Woodsworth didn't kill his master, otherwise, this theater would have shown the corresponding scene. An emotional imprint like that can’t be suppressed. This scene, where I’m being accused, is the result of my own dumb joke that the butler was the killer.
"SPEAK, STUPID DEGENERATE!" I break my own pause. A dumb, aggressive brute.
I take a deep breath.
"I didn’t kill Longford," I say.
"What a beautiful lie!""Actor!""Horrible performance!"
"Incorrect!" The letters settle into my eyes like hot ash. I blink, but they are still there, burned into my retinas like splinters, and my temples start throbbing with their usual crappy symphony. Darkness engulfs me again, the noise of the underworld in the theater growing louder.
"Alright," I say, straightening up. "If this is what you need... I killed him," I say, and the words are forced out of me like rusty nails from a board.
"Correct!" The subtitles disappear. The audience falls silent.
"Correct," I say, and my voice sounds like praise.
I vanish into the darkness, and I remain alone on the stage.
The darkness does not subside. It thickens, clinging to my body as if it wants to become my second coat. No, thanks. The air is heavy and stagnant, like old wine that has neither smell nor taste, only poison. No one has breathed in this pce for a long time. Centuries. And it feels like I'm not here to breathe either.
I stand in a circle of light and beyond its edge is the rest of the world. The subtitles appear in the air, burned onto film:
"Defendant: Detective Decart Rains."
I clenched my fists. Alright, if that’s how it is, then let’s py.
"Your crime: failure to obey order."
"Sentence: whatever the audience decides."
Silence. Dead, yet all-consuming. Then the first rustle. They begin to rise. The spectators. The judges. The executioners. One by one. The whisper of fabric, the crunch of joints, the gliding sound of footsteps. Slow, calm, savoring the inevitability.
"So that’s how it is... The show is over," I say, sliding my gaze over their grotesque faces. "Where’s my round of appuse?"
A sound. Something between a snake’s hiss and the rustle of dry leaves scattering under boots. Their many mouths do not open, but I hear them.
"You didn’t bow.""You didn’t watch your posture.""You didn’t know your lines."
They take a step. I take a step back.
"He wants to run.""Like a cowardly rat.""Your parents are gone."
I tense up.
"I don’t run," I say. "And I sure as hell don’t run from damn theatergoers."
They take another step. Slowly, with grandeur, they ascend onto the stage, as if crossing a threshold transforms them into actors. In the scene "Lynching the Detective."
"Give me back my revolvers, damn butler! You’re not the killer, I got it!" I shout, but my voice holds no power.
"Defense against just punishment is denied," Woodsworth expins calmly.
They take another step. I try to widen the space between us, but with every passing moment, it shrinks. And beyond the light, the darkness thickens into a viscous mire. A manifestation of nightmare logic!
Cold seeps into my bones. Around me, only bckness, hostile, suffocating, and the inhuman, hellish figures. Their drowsy stupor from before is gone. Their eyes widen like those of the insane, lips peel back to reveal predatory fangs, and fingers stretch into cws.
"The verdict is final."
They lunge forward. The demonic theater ends its performance.