Alfie picks up his pace when he sees the police officer's plight. "What do you mean 'there's nothing there'? That cop is going to die if we don't do something quick!" Alfie takes out his gun and fires a shot, hoping to cripple the white dog.
Taryn wrinkled her nose, but when she didn't smell any spatter of ectoplasm, her interest turned to scorn. "Alfie. Tell us what is happening in a useful way or I am going to sit on you."
Catching up, Oscar moves ahead of Taryn and Alfie, hoping to find the spot where Alfie saw... whatever it is he saw. He'll look for anything left behind, paw prints, unusually disturbed dirt , or anything out of the ordinary.
Rani moved to somewhere behind Alfie, to avoid the gunshots. Because shot hurt. "The gunfire just gave us a timelimit to work out what's happening here," she warned the others.
As it dawns on Alfie that maybe his companions aren't blind and deaf, he begins consider the other possibilities. "What I saw was a white dog chasing after a police officer. I had thought it was aiming to kill him, but no, it dragged him through a portal to who-knows-where. Given that you are all acting as if I'm insane, and my bullets went straight through the dog, I surmise that this did not take place in the sensory realm. My apologies. It took me a while to piece that together."
Alfie looks around for any possible witnesses to what had just happened, so that he can try to ask about what exactly took place.
Oscar examined the area around where the bullets entered, but the bullets themselves appeared to be the only thing out of the ordinary. While the area did have the occasional tracks of wildlife, there didn't appear to be anything that lined up with Alfie's tale of a dog chasing a person.
Off towards the edge of town, a door opened, spilling more light into the road next to the building with the lights on. A figure stepped and turned to look first one way then the other down the road before flipping on a flashlight and starting to cautiously look around. Whomever it was still too far away to make out any discernable detail, a fact which would most likely extend in reverse, but in a wide-open area with good moonlight, the crowd of people would be hard to miss even at this distance.
“Uh, folks, perhaps we should hide? Very quickly? Also, Alfie could it be that you saw the future?” Ahmad says before he slowly moves behind a nearby crate.
Hiding seemed smart.
“Uh, folks, perhaps we should hide? Very quickly? Also, Alfie could it be that you saw the future?”
Oscar looks up from where he was examining the ground and spies the figure at the edge of town with the flashlight.
"We're too far away for them to see who we are. Unless we have something else to do here, we should just leave."
Assuming nobody else has anything else to do here, Oscar starts to make his way back to the van. At one point, he'll ask Alfie from which direction his big white dog and its victim came from.
Alfie ruffles his beard. "I don't think I would have seen the future. When I want to know the future, I ask you about it," he answers Ahmad. "Usually I only see the present. There is a lot more to the present than meets the eye. Possibly it was the police officer's spirit that was... kidnapped," he proposes, trying not to evoke the memory of Alfie's failing to Ahmad's father in much the same way.
If Ahmad and Rani get out of hiding, Alfie joins Oscar walking to the van. "The dog was chasing him away from the warehouse, southwards," Alfie verifies for Oscar from his seat.
Realising that there’s little in the way of hiding spots nearby, Ahmad changes his mind and follows Oscar.
"There's nothing they'll see from here that we can help. Let's just go."
Despite being unable to hear whatever shouting, the group followed Alfie out of the warehouse compound towards a wide, empty grassy area. The moonlight lit it up quite well, but there didn't appear to be anything of note there.
The group made a hasty retreat back to the van. While they may have been seen, the distance pretty much assured that their identities would remain unknown.
My vote goes for next day too.
The group headed back towards Ahmad's van where he dropped them off at their homes and rented hotel rooms. The Hunters' rest of peaceful and undisturbed.
Alfie oversleeps by a few hours - not on purpose, but his body needed it . After his ordinary meditation routine and a late breakfast, he goes out for some fresh air and sees the policemen.
"Yes, of course. I was going to an engagement, but I can put it off until later. Let me just call to say I'll be late." Actually he
didn't make any plans for a specific hour, but the police don't need to know that it's just a possible excuse to leave if they detain him for too long.
Alfie heads back to his doorpost and draws out his phone to text the other members of the group. Following cops to the station. Seems innocuous.
A moment later, he's back next to the policemen. "I'm ready to go, officers."
Oscar mumbles a thanks to Elmohtar as he climbed out of the van in front of his small apartment complex. It wasn't a terribly nice complex, but Oscar had needed to find a place where the landlord was not engaged enough to prevent Oscar from making the modifications he needed to make to the apartment. Case in point, he had the large bathroom mirror removed from behind the sink. Oscar no longer notices the discoloration in the wall from where the mirror used to be as he walks past to start a hot shower.
In the shower he cleans his wound as best he can and then the rest of himself. He stands under the scalding water until it starts to turn cold thinking about how he failed to prevent two men from dying, and knowing that there's still a child out there that these creatures may still have.
Once he gets out, he does what he can to tend to his wound, and then goes to bed, exhausted.
In the morning, as Oscar is checking his usual conspiracy sites to suss out the truths most people don't see, he gets a text from the police's volunteer coordinator asking for help searching. He debates whether or not he should go or if he should continue his research, but in the end, he decides that if the police's search is related to the events of last night, he would be better off knowing about it. He puts on warm clothing and heads out.
Along the way, he receives Alfie's text and responds with his own. Joining volunteer police search. Could be related to last night.
After dropping off everyone wherever they wanted to go, Ahmad texts his mother to make sure she is fine and passes out still half-dressed shortly after.
He wakes up early the following morning and first eats a very generous breakfast. Then, he gets a fancy bath bomb a student had gifted him a while ago and stays underwater for a couple of hours whilst watching a documentary on the connection between the cities of Thebes in Egypt, Greece and Illinois. Anything to keep his mind off a terrible personal revelation, reliving trauma, being repeatedly traumatised by people dying in front of him, loads of blood, asphyxiation, monsters. Nope, not thinking about it. Nope. Damn.
As he is getting a second breakfast in the form of mini-pastries baked by Fatima because he absolutely deserves it, Ahmad frowns at all the news on their botched rescue attempts from the last day. He puts all of that aside when he receives Chloe’s message.
“Chloe! Of course, always happy to chat. Let’s meet at my office in half an hour, if that works for you?” He texts back.
He gets dressed quickly, reads the messages and replies. Chloe, Alice’s sister, messaged me. Will catch up with you later!
Returning to the hotel room was an act of frustration for Rani. Not only had they not been able to help the child, who had mostly likely been devoured by the monster her father had been devoured by as well, but the police officer had been taken as well, no doubt meeting an unpleasant fate. It was one thing for harm to befall people before you even knew - to have someone snatched before your eyes was another matter altogether.
Heading to the hotel's little bathroom, Rani got the shower running and stepped inside. She felt drained to the soul and worn, but reached out of the shower for the golden book and up to the shower head. A brief muttering of words and the shower head gleamed as though freshly polished, the water turning somehow even more clear as it sluiced of the days regrets and some of the hurts Rani had taken.
Stepping out and wrapping herself in a robe, Rani sat at the desk in the room for a few minutes. The creature was fast - faster than they were. Clearly, they were going to have to do something to negate that or it would be a repeat of today when they found it again - if they were lucky. Her magic could enthuse a person, make them run as fast as any human on the planet, but maybe she could do something else to help...
The room was sparse to say the least, consisting largely of a table and two office-style chairs. The walls are a plain, off-white color, devoid of decoration. On the wall opposite the door is what looks like a manual pull alarm of some sort while up out of easy reach is a semi-circular camera of some sort. Another wall sports a large mirror.
One of the deputies flashes an apologetic smile. "Sorry about the accommodations; Lt. Buchannan is conducting a volunteer orientation in our main briefing room, so this is really the only place we have available to talk. Lt. Carter should be with you shortly. Can I get ya anything to drink while you wait? Coffee? Glass of water?"
Heading towards the room, the first thing Oscar noticed was that there were several volunteers openly wearing handguns strapped to their side. They seemed to be bunched together talking in a group. Though not all members of the group were armed, all were wearing a mix of camouflaged clothing and bright, eye-catching neon orange vests.
Other people were gathered in their own small groups, chatting or browsing a small table of refreshments as they waited. The refreshments largely consisted of large thermoses of coffee as well as a wide assortment of fairly generic-looking pastries. Not far from the table were two deputies busy organizing a separate table of snacks and some clipboards with paper.
Once there, she took a seat opposite from the counselor she began talking. "So Mr. Elmohtar, were you able to talk to Mr. Campbell ? 'Cause I was thinking, I have a friend who's really good with computers. I was thinking maybe she could try, I dunno, Googling for him or something? Or, I dunno, maybe see if she can find any of his Facebook friends and see if they know how to get in contact with him? The one thing is it might maybe involve bending the rules just a little, so I wanted to see if you thought it'd be helpful first. I mean, Alice is a really sweet girl, and I want to do whatever I can to help find her! I just don't want to get my friend in trouble." She looked up at the counselor, trying to gauge his reaction.
Oscar nods at Deputy Thompson and heads to the briefing room. Noticing that many of the volunteers are armed, he thinks briefly about how these men might end up needing those weapons against something more than they're ready for.
He looks around to see if there's anyone he might recognize, but he has no intention of approaching them. He won't take any offered food or drink. He waits for the briefing to start.
*********
“We couldn’t find him, actually. No one home. Even tried speaking to one of his neighbours, but the guy wasn’t very helpful.” Images of the video in which the man was engulfed by some demonic black goo springs to mind and he keeps himself from shuddering. “But we did get the idea that idea that contacting him will be…pretty difficult.”
When she mentions ”googling” Bryce, Ahmad cannot help a bit of a mischievous smile.
“What is it that your friend does exactly, Chloe? And don’t worry, you know I’m in the business of getting you guys out of trouble.”
Rani went to the local petrol station. Well, gas station. This was the US, and people could look at you funny if you used the wrong words. Grabbing some rope and a 12 pack of energy drinks - cherry, because that was almost always the best flavour - she headed back to her hotel room and spent some time to enchant both the cans and weave the net. Nylon rope was pretty strong, right? She hoped so, anyway, as she imbued it with the might of the burning sun in the deserts planes at midday. It would be nice if she could do it in more impressive fashion than by writing a series of hieroglyphs down it's length in yellow sharpie, but hopefully once triggered it would work well.
The cans were similar, a glyph on the bottom of each can that she thought mean speed. She wished she had a better understanding of the hieroglyphs she used, but no one in this age really understood them. To make sure the mark didn't get damaged she covered them in clear nail varnish.
Preparations done, for now, she took a break until she was called.
Alfie picks a nice, comfortable chair and leans back. "Water please. I already had breakfast. I presume you brought me here because I had volunteered my assistance with the Alice case a few days ago?"
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The deputy shrugged. "You'll have to ask Lt. Carter. Those kind of details are above my pay grade. I was told to bring you here, so I did. I'll go get your water." He left leaving his partner standing just outside the door. After a minute or so, he returned with some tap water in a styrofoam cup.
Alfie was left alone in the blank room with nothing of particular interest to look at for what seemed like an annoyingly long time. He was just about to pull out his phone to check exactly how long it had been when the door opened and a man with short blond hair in a tie and jacket opened the door and walked in. Closing the door behind him, he strode over to the table in a business-like fashion and took the seat opposite from Alfie. He placed a small folder in front of himself, pulling a few sheets out and quickly glancing over them as he talked. "Good morning. I am Lt. Carter. You are one Alfie Afla, is that correct? I just need to get some quick background details to make sure our records are up to date. Can you verify that the residence the deputies picked you up at is your current primary address? I also have a note here that you own a local business in the town, can you verify its name and what business function it serves?" He looked up, pulling a pen from an inside jacket pocket and preparing to take some notes.
After not too long a man entered the room, heading towards the front. Once there he started calling for everyone's attention. "Excuse me ladies and gentlemen, if I could get y'all to quiet down for a bit, I'd like to get this show on the road. I'm Lt. Charlie Buchannan, and I'll try to keep this short 'n' sweet. We have reason to believe a missing girl by the name of Alice has gone missing in the woods near the edge of town." He held up and then began to pass around a picture of Alice Campbell. "Now, as you're no doubt aware, that's a lot of ground we may need to cover, and we'll be able to do it much more quickly the more hands we have we have on deck. We're going to split you into groups each led by a different deputy who knows what area you've been assigned. Now, if this here is your first search party, here's the best way to get it done." He quickly went over the proper procedure, making sure people knew to pause long enough to listen for cries for help and to make sure to stay hydrated. When he was done explaining, he directed people to grab one of the small bags of snacks and a bottle of water one of the deputies in the back had been putting together and then to make their way to one of several deputies with clipboards.
"That's right. 'Alfred' on official documentation. Yes, that's my primary address. I'm a professional medium. That means I help living people communicate with spirits. Details are on the card," Alfie adds. He whips out three business cards from his wallet, but stopping himself short of suggesting that the officer take a few for the wife and kids, he puts two cards back and hands the one to Lt. Carter.
Ahmad laughs when Chloe says she already got her friend to look into it.
“Ok, no problem. And thanks for telling me the truth. I’m not surprised to hear that she found Mr. Campbell is, well, that his business is a bit on the dodgy side. It’s good to have confirmation.” His expression turns serious. “But, Chloe, this whole thing is dangerous. I love that you take initiative, but please promise me you and your friend won’t try to contact these people directly? I have some…erm…friends who are looking for Alice too and they have a bit more experience when handling that sort of situation, so best leave it to the pros, ok?”
Ahmad goes silent for a second, playing around with a pen and thinking about what he had seen on Bryce’s apartment the day before — last minute packing up without any immediate plans to travel. “So, hypothetically, could your friend find out what Campbell was telling his bosses about doing a couple of days ago? Like, if he was planning to run and hide somewhere safe?”
Oscar is drawn like a magnet to Danial Applebaum.
"Hello, I listen to your podcast, sometimes," he says by way of introduction. "You have a good voice for radio. Have you been part of a state-sponsored search party before?"
Taryn's personal care regimen was very simple. "Don't keep poking it." After all, as long as she wasn't actively aggravating it, even a shackled werewolf could recover from just about anything given time.
***
She'd tagged along with Oscar, trying to avoid whatever weirdness was going on with Alfie's ghosts. Besides, who better than her to go on a hunt?
"Do you have dogs?" she asked the sheriff, "Do you have anything with her scent for them to track?"
"And the name of your business was..." Carter repeated.
"So tell me Mr. Afla, how would you describe your business? Does it do well? I can't imagine there are that many people in this day and age who still believe in 'psychics' or whatever. Do your customers always come to you or do you make house calls?"
"But you know, now that I think about it, I heard these two guys in the office might be into that kind of thing. Who was it again?" He snapped his fingers a few times as he tried to recall the names. "Right, I think it was Sammy Richardson and Dean Prescott. They ever visit you for some of the hoodoo you do?"
"So what's typically involved in one of these séance things anyway? Do you do one of those dances where you throw bones, maybe sacrifice a chicken or something? Do you have, like, assistants to help you out or is it just you manning the fort by yourself?"
Lt. Buchannan gave a slight shrug in response to Taryn's question. "Yes 'n' no, missy. We don't have a K9 unit in town, but we've requested the use of the closest unit. They're still en route, as it were, and probably won't be here for another hour or two. Since time if often of the essence, we decided to go ahead and start the search now and have them join us when they arrive."
Daniel turned to blink slowly at Oscar. "Why thankee kindly. Though I suppose a podcast isn't exactly the same as radio -- I've been told I've got to keep up with the times and that no one's listening to radio anymore -- I take your meaning nonetheless. As such, I appreciate both your patronage and your kind words. Far too many people have become jaded -- but not the right kind of jaded, ya kin? -- with the truth that's right in front of their own God-given eyes. Still, as long as one person is willing to take a moment to listen, I'll keep spreading the good word."
He paused a long moment, thoughtfully stroking his beard as he tried to recall if he had been part of another search before. "No, I don't suppose that I have. Maybe the odd, impromptu search for a lost pet, but I don't recall there being a search like this for a missing child. I can't begin to imagine the state her parents must be in. Do you have any children, Mr.... Sorry, I don't think I quite caught your name." He paused briefly for a response before continuing to ramble on. "I don't have any children myself. Or perhaps I have many just not of the sort biologic. I'd like to think in some way that all children are in some small part mine. Or rather ours. Hear me, I beg: in a community such as this, it's important that we all look out for one another. As they say, it takes a village to rear a child, so as such I would like to think that everyone here, man or woman, would look out for another's child as though it were their own. I'd like to think if the details of this here search had been known earlier, the turnout would have been much higher."
After a few seconds, the chime of incoming messages could be heard. She typed a bit more, waiting for another reply before answering. "So she says the main IRC he seems to like using is one of those ones that doesn't keep messages for long. Makes sense, I guess, if they're talking about sketchy things. She could get you into that if you wanted to chat with them. But if you're specifically looking for travel plans, she can try checking a few places. Depending on how thorough a search you want, it might take some time. Like, getting his credit records will take longer than searching travel records for his name, but if you also want her to try seeing if she can find evidence of other aliases or whatever, that'll take even longer." There was a chime of another message. "Oh, she also wants to know if you have physical access to his computer or something, as that would help speed things up. Also the names of any people important to him and their birthdates if you have them."
Alfie mumbles something about forgetfulness and quickly changes his sentence. "It's called Otherworld Communications. I make a modest living. Not many customers, but not many expenses either. It's almost always at my place, since people can get frightened in their own home. I had a lady threaten to sue if I didn't drive her own favorite cousin out of her home, poor thing..."
He listens attentively to the questions, glad to have someone interested in them. "Dean came by a few times. I hope he's getting over the passing on of his mother. I don't recall the other name right now."
"I take care of the rituals by myself before or after the meeting. People come to me for the communication, not to see me make a fool of myself," he snorts. "And may I ask why you're taking down my business details?"
Ahmad laughs weakly at Chloe saying they weren’t that stupid, flashes of him getting shot by a police office the previous day come to his mind.
“Good, good. That’s very good to hear. You are both more reasonable than me…when I was your age, I mean.
“And IRC? Oh, wow, those were the days. I didn’t know people still used that.” Ahmad thinks for a second. “Would access to his phone be of any use to her, you think? I think I can get some names for her, but I need to check. Oh, and does she know anything about what Campbell actually did?”
He frowns and massages the bridge of his nose as a very annoying thought comes to him.
“Can your…can your friend check if has any connections to that building company, Turner?”
Whilst Chloe texts her friend, Ahmad does the same on the hunter group chat.
‘Anything you guys want to ask a little computer genius who hacked into the father’s private chatroom with his bosses?’
"I've always heard these kind of things work better by the light of the moon. Is that a thing? I suppose it'd lend itself to some atmosphere. Or do you keep more standard, 9 to 5 business hours?"
"So how was business yesterday? Did you have a lot of people coming and goin'? Maybe trying to talk to the spirit of the fella who was found dead over by the construction site? Lot of lookie-loos, so I wouldn't be surprised if that gave you a little bump in business, eh? People seeing if you could talk to his spirit or something?"
When Oscar notices Taryn, he stares at her in consideration until she looks back at him. He gives her a nod in greeting and goes back to his conversation with Daniel
"My name is Oscar Hallward. I don't have any children. But missing children in this sort of town is something that makes me pay attention. I'm not going to sit around and not do anything when we don't know what could be happening to her.
"It's hard to say if the police are doing a good job finding her, because we don't know where they've tried searching."
Oscar replies to Ahmad's text with a simple, 'who is hacker'
Ahmad replies: ’not sure. Friend of one of my students. Will ask her to search for connections between turner and Bryce’
Alfie's suspicion is raised but he decides to let the officer continue asking. "That's right, I haven't seen Dean for a while. I have no normal hours. I only get a few appointments a week."
Lt. Carter's last question makes Alfie suspect that he might be under suspicion himself for something. He decides that after answering, he'll press the question until he gets an answer. "I didn't have any appointments yesterday. No one came about the girl. Usually the people who come want to speak with a dead loved one, not just curious about something in the news. Except for treasure hunters, I suppose. None of those lately, either."
Alfie coughs to stop the lieutenant from asking his next question. "Excuse me, you said you were asking me these questions to get 'background' about 'things.' Background for what, exactly?"
"Oh, is that why? I always assumed it was nature conservation or something." energetic young woman added. She was carrying a drink take-out tray with a number of different coffees on it. "Hi, I'm Beverly. When I heard we were doing a search, I figured I should jump on that and make sure everybody was caffeinated for it. I wasn't sure what people liked so I brought a variety of things: mocha, French vanilla latte, a couple of plain with both a dark and light roast, Americano, macchiato, and of course, cream and sweeteners to modify to taste. Gotta make sure we all stay awake this early in the morning!" It wasn't exactly early but it sounded a bit like the girl had already had several helpings of caffeinated drinks herself. Each of the styrofoam take-out cups had a beautifully drawn bird logo on them along with "Birdhouse Coffee" in ornate lettering.
"Alright, alright, settle down." Deputy Golding announced to the small group he had apparently been assigned. He pulled out a map and circled an area. "This is our assigned search zone. We'll meet here," he indicated a place at the edge of the forrest, [b]"Head up through this area, move laterally this way, and then circle back around. The general idea is that we're going to form a line, everybody within eye shot of their two neighbors and me in the center of the line. I'll have the radio to call in any updates and likewise listen to any reports from the other teams. If you need a lift to the start site, I can take you in the truck I'll be taking. Even if you don't need to, I would suggest using the restrooms here unless you want to pop a squat in the woods." He gave the slightly bouncing Beverly a rather pointed look. "Any questions before we head out?"
Alfie replies with the same nondescript look on his face. "I wasn't 'open' or 'closed.' I simply had no appointment scheduled. And, Lieutenant, I believe you didn't answer my question."
Oscar politely declines the coffee. He's taken pains to avoid developing a caffeine addiction that many others have become reliant on.
After finishing messaging the others, Ahmad looks up and smiles.
“So. This is just a hunch — and your friend needs to be really careful because these people are nasty — but can you ask her to see if she can find connections between Bryce and Turner? And then, well, I found this cellphone. And this piece of paper with some code in it. Perhaps your friend can figure something out?” Ahmad winks. “I think this should be enough to keep her busy for a bit, right?”
Waking from her rest and unsure what to do, Rani decided to see if there was any way to track the things movement. With foci from the child, the father and the cop perhaps it would be possible to see if they were all in different places, if they were all in one place - that was, one creature - and if there was anyway to track it's movements since they'd last seen it.
"Oscar! Hold up a moment!" Oscar turned to see the man planting his remaining bundle of flags at his current location. "Tell Taryn to bring it in and wait a moment by these flags; it seems Beverly wandered a bit too far. I'm going to backtrack a bit to find her and we can reset our formation." He called a similar message to Daniel as he jogged towards the older man to start his quick backtrack.
Taryn locked eyes hard with Oscar, and immediately ignored Golding's instructions, spiking her flags and walking off towards where Beverly had gone missing.
"More eyes, right?"
While, theoretically, she did not need to see all three sources for her plan to work having three resources worked better than two. She began to research how to re-do the spell more succesfully, using the only resource at hand - the internet.
"Excuse me," Alfie responds firmly, "but the reason why I would like to know why you are asking me these questions is because you seem to me to be interrogating me as if I'm a murder suspect. While I am as eager as anyone for this case to be solved, if you are insinuating that I am suspected of playing a part in the murder, that would be frankly insulting. Especially since I have already offered my volunteer help to your police department on this case, as you can verify with Deputy Thomson or whoever keeps these records. If I am indeed being interrogated as a suspect, I think that I ought to know."