Alex's Novel (no name yet)

Disclaimer: Inspired by a series of puzzle games online. Not intended to be published.
*As you know, I have not been feeling well for a while now. I’m going to stay at this cabin by the lake I told you about. I am sorry this didn’t work out. Perhaps we will meet in another life.*

June 23rd, 1969.

The woman scoffed at the fake regret in her letter, knowing that her former lover would cling onto the words like his life depended on it. Perhaps it was true that he couldn’t live without her, but those were his emotions. Not hers.

She tucked the writing with an old photograph of her into an envelope, taping it shut with a piece of tape she bit off. She was out the door to her house in five minutes, luggage bag in tow. It was carrying enough clothes and food/drinks for a whole week, just in case her three day “dream” vacation by the cabin ended up being extended by a thunderstorm.

She returned to her home in three days, having to use every muscle just to make it through her front door. Only a spare set of clothes made it back with her from the cabin. She panted and managed to stumble a few more steps into her house. She was afraid of tiring herself to death, but she was even more afraid of going back outside.

She turned around and watched her front door fade into the wall. Then she walked back to her bedroom and drifted off to sleep.

## Chapter 1

The detective had heard people comparing a dead body to someone who was merely sleeping peacefully too many times to count. The body in front of him was neither sleeping nor peaceful.

The woman was lying just a few steps away from the caution tape sealed front door, sprawled across the ground with her head planted on the ground. Her face was on a puddle of her own dried blood, like she was licking the stain off the carpet. Her purple hair (she must have dyed it after disappearing) was almost smothering her face and hadn’t been combed. She always combed her hair in the morning.

He received the crime scene report a few hours after the body was found, after his superior’s superior’s superior “insisted” that he would be put in charge. The other officers left everything the way it was after gathering enough evidence to come to a conclusion: murder or suicide.

He hated them with a passion. They would undoubtedly celebrate his appointment to the head detective so that they would be able to take it easy. To them, he was nothing but laid-back.

The last time anyone saw her was 2 years ago- on June 25th, 1969, frantically stumbling through the streets and bumping into everyone around her without apologizing.

A layer of dust protected both of her windows, and the inside of her lock was covered in a layer of rust after all the thunderstorms that battered the neighborhood over the 2 years. They barely found anything to suggest that anyone lived there- no food, no water, no clothes, and no garbage. For all intents and purposes, she was only alive in the detective's memories.

Yet her fingerprints were found on every surface of the house. Even the ceiling light stared down at the detective with its pupil shaped light.

The detective bent down and brushed a few strands of her purple hair aside. The only noticeable injury was a horizontal slash across her neck. He guessed that it was made with a single clean slice. What was she doing at the time?

He imagined her stirring her tea or preparing food without any idea of the imminent danger.

“Wait for me,” he said to the corpse. “Whoever did this to you will wish that they never existed. Then I’ll come for you.”

A spider that was at least 5 sizes too large pushed its way out of her lips. The detective waited for it to crawl off her body before exterminating the insect without a second thought.

Nothing had the right to touch her.

A black key shot out from under his shoe from the force of his stomp, spinning over to the other side of the room before stopping at the wall. A key that was inside the spider before it was mashed with the wavy carpeting.

He picked it up and wiped down the spider remains with a spare handkerchief, tossing it back into his pocket and squinting to examine the key. No hidden messages or anything special. Aside from the fact that it was inside a living spider.

The sight of the key suddenly caused a sharp pain in the back of his head, as though someone had snuck up behind him and stabbed it with a sewing needle. The pain ceased after a few seconds of waiting, and he chalked it up to the stress of working.

He returned to the body, fully eyeing it over and noticing something sticking out from underneath her dress, where her neck and back connected. He tugged open the zipper only after a moment of hesitation, finding a folded piece of white paper hidden. He immediately grabbed it and unfolded it, scanning both sides for any mention of his name.

He only found a 3D drawing of a cube engulfed in orange flames. The top right corner had an I, written as a Roman numeral. He folded the paper and tucked it with the key from the spider. His eyes lingered back to the woman’s now bare back. Then he zipped her dress back up. Why tempt himself with what he’ll never have again?

He patted her down and searched for any other hidden evidence, finding nothing out of the ordinary. Stealing another longing glance at the body, the detective ushered the two police officers stationed at the door.

“Bring her to the coroner for autopsy,” he requested.

He knew that both of them were as decent as coworkers got. One of them was a woman with a senior police officer as a father and brought up to be diligiant, and the other was a younger man who managed to retain positivity after a year of murder cases. But there were already too many people who knew or suspected something about his relationship with her. It became increasingly likely that his secrets would end up being spilled over one too many glasses of wine if too many people knew about it.

The two obeyed without question, exiting the house to get a medical stretcher outside. He searched for anything that was locked to distract himself from his memories. A quick search revealed that everything was locked, save for three empty drawers below the woman’s writing desk. No notes, no secret messages. Nothing except a lone fish tank containing an oversized fish stuck at the bottom with a shrimp beside it as company.

He turned to the bookshelf beside the desk, slightly surprised to see a shelf filled with a row of books with various colors and symbols on their spines. It was the only form of entertainment that was still in her house. He tried to pull one out in case they contained more evidence. It got stuck halfway through pulling it. He tugged on the book beside it, causing the first book to shoot back to its original position with a slight click while the new book also got stuck halfway through.

He tried pulling a book with the same colored spine out next. Both got stuck at the same place on their cover. It took 10 minutes for him to bring all 16 books out in order, with an additional 2 minutes for calming down when the 16th book was the wrong color.

The shelf lifted itself up to reveal 4 slots labelled I, II, III, and IV from left to right. Each slot had a cube symbol. He slid the first symbol down, and it switched to an upright fish symbol. 256 possible combinations.

Why would she put so much time and effort on adding puzzles in her own house? The detective felt even more disturbed that there were no real books. How could she live for an entire 2 years without anything?

The headache returned until he remembered the key in his pocket and temporarily forgot his confusion. The key ended up fitting in the left cabinet at the bottom of the bookshelf, revealing another piece of paper that was the same size as the other. This one had a sketch of an androgynous figure with an x over their left eye, the same color as the flames in the other sketch. This card was labelled with an IV.

The detective returned to the bookshelf and scrolled through all the symbols in the slot, but there was nothing remotely humanoid or eye-shaped that could be inputted.

The shelf beneath it had a single Russian doll with a line through the middle. He easily opened it, half expecting to find another piece of paper stashed inside. He was met with a parrot doll instead. It opened to reveal another doll with a woman holding a bloody knife painted on it. The next doll was a fish, which finally opened and revealed a black doll with grey feathers and two glowing eyes. A plastic rose was tucked inside.

The detective placed the rose in the first Russian doll to match the design, purely to keep himself preoccupied from the lingering questions about her. A small pop resonated inside the doll. He opened it, and the rose was replaced with a plastic fish skeleton. He closed it and opened it again, and it reverted back into the plastic rose.

He rubbed his eyes and pinched his hand to make sure he hadn’t fallen asleep. Then he called in the two police officers again.

“Watch,” he ordered, closing and opening the doll again to reveal the fish bone.

He repeated the process and it turned back into a rose. The baffled looks on their faces confirmed that he wasn’t hallucinating on his own.

“How did you do that?” asked the female officer, sounding slightly suspicious of him.

The detective merely lifted up the Russian dolls. Nothing underneath.

“I didn’t. I don’t have magic powers or anything.” The detective tried to give her a reassuring smile and lighten his own mood.

“If the rose matches with the first figure, why don’t you match the bone with the fish doll?” said the other police officer, sounding a bit too nonchalant about the impossibility.

The detective placed the skeleton in the fish doll and closed it, hearing the same pop. It became a plastic blood drop.

Before he could react to it, a sudden urge overtook him and he put the blood drop into the second doll. Pop. It became an egg.

He picked up the egg and could immediately tell that it wasn’t a plastic model this time. The surface was littered with small white bumps sticking out from the grey, appearing as stars staring down in the night sky. He put the egg into the bird doll, and it opened to reveal another key.

“-all an ambulance in case something’s wrong with him,” he heard the female officer say.

“Pardon?” he asked, turning back and watching her body briefly jolt up with fright.

“What happened to you? You just spent 5 minutes staring at the egg before it...transformed into the key. We tried to call you, but you completely ignored it.”

“You called me?” He checked his watch to confirm what she said and frowned, realizing that he had taken far longer than he should have.

“You didn’t h-”

They were interrupted by a thud coming from behind them. The male police officer had collapsed onto the ground and had his eyes tightly shut. His partner immediately checked his pulse and let out a breath when she felt it.

“He must have overworked himself during the week or something. I’ll take him back to the station.” She slipped out of the front door with her partner in tow as the detective stared at the key.

He tested it on the right cabinet at the bottom of the bookshelf. Click. A jar of dead flies was waiting for him, with a note taped to the front that read “Fish food” in printed ink.

He grimaced as he opened the jar and offhandedly threw a fly into the fish tank, wiping his fingers on the table. In spite of this, he felt a slight sense of closure at fulfilling one of her desires, even if it was as trivial as a simple household chore.

Would she appreciate it if she was watching him?

He watched the fly slowly drift into one of the decorative shells near the fish, which didn’t even manage to budge a millimeter due to its massive size.

One of her fingers came out of the shell and lifted the fly back up.

He felt as though his heart had just been hit by a wave, suddenly feeling hopeful, terrified, confused, and anxious all at once. However, he was in a slight trance until he watched the fly land in the fish’s mouth. The fish disintegrated into a small black key that looked the same as the key from the spider.

He picked up the shell and smashed it onto the table, watching the pieces spiraling through the air and falling all over the ground.

The headache returned, and he had to drag himself to her couch so that he wouldn’t end up falling face first on the floor. Something was draining all of his energy. The house wasn’t normal. Neither of the police officers would be back to check on him for hours, and no one would know if he dropped dead right there and then.

After a few more attempts at getting up, his body gave in and his eyelids slowly shut themselves.

He woke up in another part of the house, hearing the shrill shriek of a telephone right beside him. He picked himself off the floor and answered it. A robotic voice came from the receiver.

“All that you touch, you change.”

The phone went silent, but the detective suddenly felt weak. Too weak to even continue standing upright. He lost his grip on his own body, and it began to move itself into another room. He passed by the window and took a moment to gaze outside.

She was standing under a cherry blossom in a park. Her eyes were shut, and the only movement on her was her dress, swaying back and forth in the breeze.

His body moved away, even through his mental screaming, until it reached the kitchen and stood behind an egg cup. The egg was black this time, shades darker than the egg from the Russian doll and without the white dots scattered over the surface. His hands took a spoon lying on the counter and tapped the egg.

Crack. Crack. Crack. Crack.

On the fourth tap, a black moth flew out of the shell. His vision blurred for a second.

Crack.

The top half fell off, and three more moths burst out.

Crack.

A black cube emerged from the egg, levitating an inch above it as hundreds of moths flew alongside. The moths shot onto his skin and fused with it. Powerless to do anything, the detective only felt the moths fusing with his skin. Everything burnt like he was covered with lit matches. His hand took the cube without any sense of urgency, picking it up and rotating it a few times to examine it. One of the sides lit up and revealed a mirror inside a grandfather clock. He became a black, pulsating figure with two glowing whites for eyes.

Then he shot up from the couch, immediately sticking his arms out and peering at them. They were the same. As he got up and composed himself from the nightmare, he noticed a small table beside the couch. It had a telephone, different from the one in his nightmare, along with a newspaper with a cigar on top.

He picked the cigar up and sniffed it, hoping for the scent of lipstick, at the very least. As usual, there was nothing.

He carelessly tossed it on the ground and picked up the newspaper, noticing a puzzle at the bottom circled in red.

Win an exclusive vacation to a cabin! Finish the puzzle, say the word, and dial the number below:

024 \_ \_ \_

There were four sets of horizontal boxes, one for each letter, with a vertical box drawn in the middle.

1. Painter of the Lady of the Lake
2. Parrot
3. Neobuxbaumia
4. Vincent van Gogh: Bedroom in \_\_\_\_

The detective silently thanked his university lessons as he filled in cactus for 3 and Arles for 4. The painter of the fictional lady of the lake had a name that was too long to fit in the boxes, and there were too many species of parrot for him to remember any of them.

He left the newspaper and sat back down on the couch to think, thrusting his hand in between the cushions in case there was something there.

He pried out another piece of paper with a drawing of a hand and orange flames on the palm. It was labeled with a II.

A cursory search of the house for another lock led him back to the writing desk with the fish tank. He unlocked the drawer in the table, pulling out a folder titled “The Lady of the Lake by Lacus Fleo.”

He opened it to reveal a painting on the front of photograph paper. A woman was standing under an arch and holding a black cube on a tray, with a path that led to a small village behind her.

He returned to the newspaper and wrote down the painter’s name.

L a c u s [F] l e o

\_\_\_\_\_[\_]\_\_\_

 C a c [t] u s

   A r l [e] s

Fate. It was so coincidental with everything else that the detective wanted to fall to his knees and laugh. Was it really just a coincidence, or did the newspaper agency have a role in her death?

His gaze wandered over to a bulletin board above the couch, with a single piece of paper. It had a sketch of a church with flames, labelled III. All four papers were referring to a part of the painting.

The first one had a sketch of the cube, the second had a sketch of the woman’s right hand, the third depicting the church in the village, and the fourth marking her left eye.

He opened the folder again and turned the photograph over, finding an entire page of symbols. He circled the four that corresponded with the pages and rushed back to the bookshelf.

I, II, III, IV.

He scrolled through each slot until the symbols matched. The shelf clicked and folded forwards, revealing a series of numbers. 024355.

He had the phone number and the crossword. All that was left was mustering up the courage to call.

It barely took him 5 seconds to pick up the phone, nearly ripping it off as he dialed the numbers with his trembling fingers, having to take extra care not to hit the wrong ones.

Beep. Beeeep. Beeeep.

“Hello?”

The detective took in a breath and nearly dropped the phone. The voice was identical to the one in his dream.

“T-this is...detective…” He uttered the first name that came to his mind. “Detective Lacus.”

“Yes?”

“I wanted to enter your competition.”

“Say. The. Word.”

“Fate?”

“I am sorry. Your place is already taken.”

“What do you mean?”

He only heard the dial tone.

He smashed the entire telephone, taking multiple breaths to calm himself down. He knew that he should have tried calling back, but something told him that the robotic voice wouldn’t answer again.

He ran his hand through his hair as he made for the front door, deciding to take a temporary break from the case before he ended up falling asleep again.

He froze when he saw her body again, in the same room where he found her. Her body, dangling from the ceiling with her eyes still shut. The cut on her throat was gone.

He uttered her name for the first time in years. His voice sounded much more pitiful than he expected.

Her mouth opened, and a few moths flew out. Her body slowly levitated upwards until it disappeared into the ceiling. He had been tracing it with his eyes, but it just vanished once he blinked.

A swarm of moths gathered on the ceiling, flying together in clumps. The detective covered his face and peeked out, terrified that his dream was really a premonition. The moths paid him no attention, forming another series of numbers on the ceiling. 1421.

A final search of the house led him to a safe hidden within a cupboard in her kitchen with a 4 digit combination. He entered 1421. Click.

He tore open the portfolio and a collection of photographs scattered across the floor.

A mill, a church, a village. Her childhood home.

They had been sitting in her bedroom for their first promise to each other.

“I’ll take you to the mill one day,” he had reassured her, giving her hand a gentle pat.

“What if I’m out of the country?” she had asked, gazing longfully at the photographs her father took on his sightseeing trips.

“Even if you died before I took you, you’ll find a way to bring your spirit there with me.” Apparently neither of them had found his statement creepy at the time, considering she merely nodded and continued with her day.

How much did he know as a child, if he knew anything at all?

He shouted her name again and heard it echo throughout her house.

“Was this your doing? After years of running, you only contact me again when you’re dead? Why should I fulfill my promise if you broke all of yours?”

He only took the photographs with him, leaving everything else in her house behind for good.