Dark Places: Edge of Reason

Part Two

At first light, Trixie awoke Mart and urged him to get dressed. In her determination to find the source of the strange noises of the night before she had almost rushed up there alone, but age and experience had mellowed her enough to wait the few minutes it would take for him to accompany her. When both were dressed, they eased the chair out from under the door handle and peeked out into the hallway. All was still and undisturbed.

“Let’s take a look upstairs,” she suggested, heading for the stairs.

At the top, they paused, listening, but there was nothing to hear. Trixie walked along the corridor until she reached the room immediately above that in which they had slept. The door was partly closed and she touched it gently to allow it to swing open.

Mart let out a breath. “We didn’t check behind those curtains last night. From the way they’re moving now, the window’s either broken or open and I think there might be a tree branch right next to it – that will be how they got in.”

“But who is ‘they’?” his sister asked. “Was it a person, or an animal?”

Her brother shrugged and went into the room. He crossed to the closed curtain and swished it aside. The window was partly open. Just outside, a large tree branch, thick enough to hold a grown man, almost brushed against the sill. Mart tried to open the window further, but found that it was jammed fast and would not move in any direction.

“If it was a person, I don’t think they came in this way,” he noted. “I know I wouldn’t fit through that gap.”

“And look: there’s a footprint in the dust over here,” Trixie added, crouching down near the wall below the next window. She swished the curtain aside and found it open also, and the end of another branch protruding into the room. Some of the tenderest parts appeared to have been eaten by something. “What sort of animal do you think made this track?”

Mart looked at the faint mark and shrugged. “Not sure, really, but definitely not a cow.”

His sister rolled her eyes. “Would you leave cows out of it, please? We know there couldn’t be any cows getting in, either through open windows or closed doors.”

“Do I look like Jim?” Mart demanded. “When he gets here, you can ask him what made them. In the meantime, I’m not going to make any guesses. I can’t tell from that; it’s too indistinct.”

“Well, we’ll have to do something about the windows, I think,” she decided. “Either that, or can we lock this door? No matter what kind of animal it is, I don’t want it licking my face in my sleep.”

“No key to this one, either,” he answered. “But I’ll see if I can do something to keep it shut.”

Trixie frowned. “We should move where we sleep to one of the rooms up here, too. If we do that, we can keep all the downstairs windows closed at night and, if we choose a room with no trees outside, we might not be bothered by any more night-time visitors.”

Her brother nodded. “You do that and I’ll try to get the windows shut or fix this door somehow – but not until after breakfast. I’m starved.”

Shaking her head at him, Trixie led the way down to their makeshift kitchen, where they made and consumed a meal together. While Mart was working upstairs, she washed the dishes, moved their bedding, put the rooms they were using into some kind of order, found the spare mantle for the lantern and fitted it and did a few other little jobs. Just as she was finishing, she heard a loud thump, a cry of pain and indignation, then a whoop of triumph coming from upstairs. When she met her brother in the hall, he was still rubbing a hurt head, but walking with the assurance of victory over inanimate objects.

“You okay?” she asked.

Mart nodded. “Tripped over something on the floor and banged head-first into the stuck window – which was okay, because it came unstuck at the same time.”

Trixie shook her head. “When they say, ‘Use your head,’ it’s not meant to be taken so literally.”

Mart groaned and walked towards the front door, with Trixie following, the large ring of keys jangling where she had clipped them to her belt.

“So, where are we going to explore first?” he asked, as they went outside and locked the building behind themselves.

She looked around and considered for a few moments. “Can we take a walk around town first and get our bearings? If we see any interesting buildings, we can take a quick look as we go past.”

That decided, they walked back in the direction from which they had arrived until they reached the point at the corner of the road to the town where the buildings stopped. One lone brick building stood at the end of the row, but they did not stop to look inside. Turning, they retraced their steps, looking out for items of interest along the cross-street which were visible.

“There should be more streets,” Trixie muttered. “I’m sure there were more on the map.”

“Which is this one, then?” Mart wondered, pointing to the nearby street corner.

His sister frowned and looked around for a few moments. They were standing outside a large, white building, which looked rather shabby, with its peeling paint and boarded over windows. A wide gap on either side of it suggested that other buildings had once stood there, but all trace of them had disappeared. Diagonally across the street, one single brick building bore the name of a bank, its year of establishment proudly displayed. A little further along, a garage blotted the landscape with its ugly façade.

“I’m not sure,” she answered, finally, “but I think we should be able to figure it out if I can find the address of that bank.”

Mart nodded and they kept walking. They passed the building where they had spent the night and kept going until they reached a large, solid-looking building that Trixie recognised from the photographs she had seen as being the old high school. The road branched at this point, with the left arm passing the school and disappearing among some trees. The right branch presumably met up with the straight road that they had arrived upon.

“Let’s take a look in here,” she suggested, flicking through her large collection of keys until she found the one for the school. “It should be in pretty good shape because it was one of the last places in use – it’s only been empty about a year. I have to look it over for one of my cover tasks, anyway, since we have the engineer’s report on it and it’s probably the most valuable building here.”

“Fine with me,” her brother replied, following her up to a door at one end, rather than the main entrance.

Trixie pushed the key into the lock and held her breath as it turned. The door opened with barely a squeak into what must once have been the school gym. At one end, a basketball hoop was still in place; at the other end, the backboard leant against the wall, its hoop broken off. In the time since the school closed, the gym had perhaps been used as a meeting room, or something of that nature, for metal chairs were stacked against the walls and a table stood at one side with a couple of chairs pushed in behind it.

So far, the old school was dim and dusty, but not particularly spooky. Their footsteps echoed as they crossed the floor to peek out through grimy windows. The jumble of overgrown shrubs blocked most of the view, however, so Trixie turned in a slow circle to get her bearings. Immediately next to the door by which they had entered was a wide staircase, seemingly part of the external brick wall and separated from the gym by a partition wall. Another partition wall, painted in a dirty yellow and featuring several yellow-brown doors, blocked the view any further into the building.

One glance through the only unmarked door was enough to make up Trixie’s mind. “I’m going to take a look around upstairs,” she told her brother. “What do you want to do?”

“I’ll stay down here a little longer,” he replied, gesturing at the corridor revealed through the open doorway. “There might be something of interest in one of the other rooms.”

Nodding her approval, Trixie headed for the stairs, taking them at a fast pace. For the next fifteen minutes, she roamed over the building, poking in closets and looking out through windows. She encountered plenty of educational relics and an assortment of other things, but nothing of real interest. Wearying of the place, she headed down the central staircase, which was rather grander than the set she had used earlier, to look for her brother.

As she neared the half-way point, she heard what seemed to be footsteps coming along one of the corridors. Leaving the stairwell, she turned in that direction, thinking that it must be Mart. When she reached a place where she could see the length of the corridor, it was empty.

“Strange,” she murmured to herself. In a louder voice, she called, “Mart! Are you there?”

He did not answer. She took a few steps down the corridor, peeking into the first room, but finding it empty. She continued all the way to the end, checking each room as she passed, but found no one. Here, at the other extreme of the building from where they had entered, was another staircase, just like the first. She stepped into the stairwell at the end and glanced both up and down. There was still no one to be seen. With slow steps, she went down to the bottom of the stairs and walked back to her starting point.

Just as she arrived, Mart came down the stairs and started as he saw her.

“What are you doing here?” he asked. “I was sure I heard you on the top floor, but I called and you didn’t answer me.”

“Well, I was sure I heard you on the middle floor,” she replied. “I went all the way to the other end of the building looking for you, then came back along this floor.”

He glanced around for a moment. “Is there someone else in here with us, do you think?”

She shrugged. “Maybe. I couldn’t find anyone, though, and I looked in all the rooms along the way.”

“Well, let’s go, then,” Mart answered, ushering her towards the door.

Trixie nodded and they went outside together. They followed the branch of road which disappeared into the trees, soon finding that it led to the church. The rutted road was becoming choked with weeds, mute evidence that the church was no longer in use. It was a large building, constructed of red bricks similar to those of the place where they were staying. Its steeple, painted a deep red, towered over them.

They took a quick look around, but the peaceful old building did not hold much attraction for Trixie; she was on the lookout for something more exciting. They returned past the old high school, along a rough track with no houses on it. Across the fields, they could see some a short distance away, noting that they were in a worse condition than most. The road ended in a T-intersection. When they reached it, they saw that some large barriers had been erected across the road only a short distance away. Beyond the barriers, a few pylons remained from a collapsed bridge.

“There’s no other road out on this side of town, so when the bridge went out,” Trixie told her brother, “the people who’d been coming to church from that direction couldn’t come any more, so they closed down the big church here and used a smaller one in the next town that way. And once the church went, it was only a matter of time until everything else went, too.”

“Has it been this way a long time, then?” Mart asked.

She shrugged. “About ten years, I think. Nobody wanted to pay to fix it, so they just blocked off the road and left it that way.”

“Well, I think that’s the whole town, then,” Mart decided, turning along the road so that the ruined bridge was behind them. “What next?”

They followed that road, looking for a way back to the town’s main street. Just past the ruin of a brick house, its roof long gone and windows unglazed, a well-defined street led in the right direction and they turned into it.

Trixie began jingling keys in an effort to find her next target. As she sorted through them, one label jumped out at her. “Hey! I think this is the key to that creepy house we passed, just before we got into town. Let’s drive out there and take a look.”

Mart rolled his eyes. “It will probably be too rotten to go inside.”

“I’d like to look anyway,” she pleaded. “If you don’t want to, I’ll go by myself.”

He heaved a sigh and followed her back to the car, where she climbed into the driver’s seat and took off before he had even finished fastening his seatbelt. In only a few minutes, they had arrived. The drive was unnavigable, so Trixie parked the car on the side of the road and they walked through long grass to the house.

She stopped just outside and looked up. “It doesn’t look so creepy up close. It just looks sad and neglected.” She walked up to the stairs and carefully tested each one before putting her full weight on it. “It doesn’t look so bad. I think we’ll be able to look inside.”

The key turned easily in the lock and the door swung open with a groan. Trixie paused to test the floor before she took a step across the threshold, screwing up her nose at the sour smell the old house gave off. To make matters worse, the still air inside was stifling hot. On either side of the entranceway, a door stood open into two front rooms. Curtains hung in tatters at the windows and the furniture in each was covered in dust and grime. Papers lay on the floor of one room and they rustled in the breeze coming through the open door. The floor felt sturdy underfoot, so Trixie ventured further inside. A short tour was enough to satisfy her curiosity and she returned to the front of the house to lock up once more.

“This place is just awful,” she called to Mart, who had remained outside and was waiting a short distance away. “The person who lived here last must have gotten sick, or died suddenly, and no one cleared up after them when they went. There’s rotten food in the kitchen and dirty plates on the dining room table.”

“Did you look for a body?” he asked. “Maybe they’re still in there.”

Trixie did not deign to reply. “That sure was disappointing. It wasn’t at all spooky, only kind of disgusting.”

Mart shook his head in amusement. “You could have listened to me. I told you there was no point in coming here.”

“There was so a point,” she answered, frowning at him. “I learned something important just now.”

He could not resist the implied challenge. “What was that?”

“I shouldn’t judge a building by its appearance. If an exciting-looking building like this one can just be disgusting inside, it stands to reason that a boring-looking one might be filled with all kinds of interesting things.”

Mart climbed back into the car, this time taking the driver’s seat. “Well, come on then. Let’s go find a boring-looking one to explore. We might have better luck that way.”

As the sun sank in the sky, Trixie and Mart enjoyed their evening meal sitting on the front steps of their building. A cooling breeze and a little bit of shade went a long way towards making the spot more pleasant than anywhere inside. After they had finished, they decided to make the most of the remaining daylight and do a little further exploration. With a view to locating the scene of the crime, they decided to start looking through the other buildings in the middle of town.

“So, how about we start with that one,” Mart suggested, pointing next door. “It looks old enough to be the one.”

Trixie sorted through her keys and found the right one. The door was so swollen that they had to wrench it open, revealing a room whose floor had caved in. “I don’t think we’re going in there, then,” Trixie told her brother, as they both peered inside. “This isn’t it, anyway, I’m fairly sure. The back wall of the building we’re looking for was brick and this one is built of timber.”

Mart shrugged. “No real clue as to which building it was, either. Well, let’s try the next one.”

They made their way along the row, looking through some buildings and only examining others from outside. They had looked over four by the time that it became too dark to see and called a halt to the proceeding.

“Let’s go get cleaned off a little,” Trixie suggested, flapping the front of her T-shirt to get some air circulating through it. “I’m feeling hot and dusty.”

Her brother agreed. There being no running water in the town, they made their way down to the stream that ran along the northern outskirts and splashed in the small pools of water they found there. They both felt relief to cool off a little, for the day had been hot, and lingered there for quite some time. When they returned to their lodgings, it was becoming quite dark.

As twilight faded into night, Trixie decided to sit out front of the building for a while and enjoy the darkness and quiet. She had always considered her parents’ home in Sleepyside to be in a quiet area, but the isolation of the place she now found herself was far greater. There were so many more stars in the sky and no sign of other human presence anywhere, save a distant glow on the horizon.

She would have loved to walk around the town and experience it by night, but the memory of the gaping mouths of several disused storm cellars that she had noticed through the day kept her from wandering around, at least until she knew the area a little better.

“So, what’s the plan for tomorrow?” Mart asked, sitting down next to her.

Trixie gave a shrug. “More of the same, really. I need to find the scene of the crime. I should probably do some more thorough searches, too, and make notes on what I find. Maybe there are clues in some of these buildings as to what they were years and years ago.”

Mart nodded and was silent for a long time. “I don’t think I like it out here. It’s a little too quiet.”

His sister laughed. “You always did like there to be noise. I was thinking that it was peaceful – and a bit mysterious.”

“The dreaded M-word,” he teased, earning himself a half-hearted thump on the arm. “Okay, I get that, though. It does make you want to go out exploring the place. This is going to be fun, I think, and it will be even better when the rest of the Bob-Whites get here.”

“It will be,” she replied.

He rose and offered her a hand up. “Time for bed?”

Trixie agreed and they went inside for the night.

Over the next two days, Trixie and Mart explored almost all of the buildings in the centre of town, identifying many of them and matching a few to known locations on the map. They were still finding it difficult to match the buildings of the present day to the way things had been in 1919, but progress was being made nonetheless. The file that Trixie had started before leaving New York was expanding at a rapid pace, with new pages of notes on each place they searched. The picture was also building up in her mind, as what she had learned began to relate to what she found in person.

“I think we’re making good progress,” she told Mart one afternoon, as they headed down to a small water-hole in the stream that they had found. “I thought I’d have found out where it all happened much sooner than this, but still, we’re getting there.”

Her brother groaned and dropped into the cool water. “And here I thought we had nothing and were wasting our time.”

Trixie frowned and splashed him. “We’re getting there,” she insisted. “It’s just going to take a little time and energy.”

“I’m all out of energy,” Mart grumbled. “Next time we do this kind of thing, make it somewhere cool, okay?”

Trixie shook her head at him. “Some people! You just can’t please them.”

The following weekend, the rest of the Bob-Whites were expected for a visit. In preparation, Trixie swept the whole building in which they were staying – except for the room with the footprints she wanted identified – and scrounged some furniture from some of the nearby buildings. She and Mart had just finished carrying in the last item, a table, when they heard the approach of a vehicle. Dropping her end to the floor with a loud thump, she raced outside to see whether it was their friends. The unfamiliar car pulled up and five Bob-Whites piled out.

“You really think we’re going to stay here?” Di raised a sceptical eyebrow, but her eyes twinkled. “You know that we were expecting something a little more luxurious, don’t you?”

“Come and have a tour of the town,” Trixie offered, with a grin, “and you can choose your own accommodation. There’s a variety of very special places to stay, including, for example, the really charming residence you passed on the way into town. Sure, it has an – ahem – aroma all of its own, but you can’t say it doesn’t have character.”

Mart shook his head. “Take my advice and stay here with us. It’s never going to earn five stars, but it’s clean enough and we’ve already evicted the animal kingdom.”

“I’m feeling a little worried about that last part,” Honey commented. “What kinds of animals are we talking here?”

Trixie could not resist a dig at her brother. “Tree-climbing cows, mostly, if you listen to Mart.”

He shook his head. “If you had listened to me, you would have known that it was not a cow. I was intending to defer to Jim’s expert opinion, when he had seen the tracks.”

“Well, whatever kind of animal it was,” Brian interjected, before the inevitable argument could escalate, “I suggest that we unpack the car and take a look around.”

This being agreeable to everyone, they made short work of the unpacking and met together near the car. Jim, who had taken a detour upstairs, identified the tracks as belonging to a porcupine, to the general relief of the group, who were fully expecting him to say it was something large, dangerous and liable to eat them. Honey, being the last to join them, apologised for being late and mentioned that she was anxious to find out whether Trixie now knew the whereabouts of the scene of the crime.

Trixie shook her head. “We haven’t pinned it down, yet.”

“What have you discovered so far?” Brian asked, as the others looked towards them in interest.

Trixie drew a breath while she gathered her thoughts. “It’s a really interesting place. You can see the places where there used to be buildings, but they’ve been demolished, or fallen down, and mixed in with those are plenty of other buildings that have been empty for years, but aren’t too bad, and some that have been used quite recently, and then there are places that look like you could push them down, they’re so crooked. We’ve gone through a lot of the buildings I’ve got keys for, and some of the ones that are just standing open, but a few are so bad that I didn’t want to go inside.”

“But what about the crime?” Brian persisted. “Why haven’t you pinned down a location for it, yet?”

His sister frowned. “It’s not as easy as you’d think. See, there are so many buildings missing that it’s hard in some places to pick where things were and some places have been altered so much that there’s no telling what they were to start with.” Brian looked incredulous, so she hurried on. “Not all of the streets are visible any more, and some of the intersections are a little vague. Down there, by that really ugly garage, for example, might be the corner of Main and Third, or that might be it on the other side of that broken-down old car. No one’s driven on one of the streets for so long that it’s completely disappeared.”

“That doesn’t seem all that likely,” Brian persisted.

“The map shows five streets, but we can only find four,” Trixie explained, with an overt show of patience with dense older brothers. “The last one is Church Street; that’s easy enough to identify because of the huge church at the end of it. So, either the other streets were named First, Third and Fourth Streets and they left a space to add Second one day – which I don’t find all that likely – or one of the streets has disappeared. You can take your choice for explanation.”

“Well, I’d like to look around,” Honey put in, changing the subject. “What do you suggest, Trixie?”

“Let’s walk this way,” she answered, pointing back towards the centre of town. “There are a few buildings I wanted to show you all.”

As they walked through the town, Trixie gave a running commentary on what they had found in the various buildings and the things she knew about each of them. They followed the main street down to the most run-down part of town, then turned back past the school. She pointed out the track that led to the church, but they did not follow it, instead turning back toward their starting point.

They had not gone far past the old school when they reached a well-preserved house of interesting design, which had caught Trixie’s imagination. She could not resist the chance of showing it off to her friends. A steep gable faced them as they approached; to one side of it, an octagonal room with pointed roof projected. It gave the effect of the house having a small tower. The appearance of the house was spoiled, however, by a kind of lean-to shack built right against the front porch.

“Oh, this would be just perfect for the principal’s residence,” Honey gushed, peering through the overgrown trees to get a better look. “You’d just need to get rid of that ugly shed and it would be beautiful. And it’s not far from the school, is it?”

“Just down the street,” Trixie confirmed. “Don’t you just love that little turret-thing? Let’s go up there. I think, if you chopped down some of these trees, you might get a good view from up there.”

“Yeah,” Dan muttered, “of all the derelict houses in that direction.”

Trixie tossed her head and ran lightly up the front stairs to open the door. “If you cleaned up the town, there wouldn’t be any derelict houses to see.”

He raised an eyebrow at her. “What would be the point of that? The whole reason this is a ghost town is because no one wants to live here.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” she answered, as they all went inside. “I think there were people who wanted to live here, but they didn’t want to live here alone. If there had been something to make a few more people stay, I think the town might have survived.”

“Too late, now,” Dan replied with a shrug.

“I don’t know,” Trixie objected, still leading the way through the house. “Maybe, if Mr. Wheeler can find someone who’d like to take over some of these buildings–”

“Like Jim, for his school,” Honey suggested, just as they arrived at the small tower. “And this would be a perfectly perfect place for him to live while he ran it, don’t you think? It does need a little work, but it seems to be in quite good condition and doesn’t seem as if it’s been empty for all that long.”

“It would probably be great for that.” Trixie picked up her point, ignoring Jim’s frown and the answer which came to his lips. “Then, maybe the town could become inhabited again.”

“Which would be lovely,” Honey added. “I’d much rather visit it after that happened. Maybe we can make it an annual trip.”

“That’s a really good idea, Hon. But let’s keep going.” Trixie led the group outside and further through the town, visiting a seemingly random selection of sites, before returning to their starting point and going inside.

“Well, that’s it, really,” she told the group. “So, I guess it would be good if you could help with identifying the scene of the crime.”

“It could help to make a map,” Di suggested. “That way, we might be able to see things that aren’t obvious on the ground.”

“Right,” said Honey, taking up pencil and paper and leading the way back outside. “Let’s do that and make a list of the buildings that are still in good condition and where they are, and the buildings that are in poor condition and their locations.”

“How about if I do the map-drawing,” Jim offered, taking the pencil from her hand. “It might be quicker that way.”

“More accurate, too,” Mart teased. “If Honey did the map work, she’d probably have the whole town upside down and back to front.”

While the others laughed, Honey stuck out her tongue at Mart and turned her back on him. Meanwhile, Jim had started setting out the approximate locations of the streets and the buildings remaining in the middle of town. After a short pause for thought, he suggested, “How about if I list the well-preserved buildings on the left and the ruins on the right? I’ll give each one a number, starting at the middle of town and working outwards. How does that sound?”

“Fine,” Trixie answered, before anyone else could. “But which building is that you’re doing now?”

Jim pointed with his pencil to the one remaining bank. “We’re facing north right now, so I thought this would be a good place to start. We can see a fair few buildings from here and I think, when I’m finished with those, we can move up the main street a little and get a vantage point along one of the cross-streets.”

Soon, all of the visible structures were marked and they had changed their position to see more. Mart and Trixie each scouted around, looking through the gaps in the vegetation to try to see further. Before long, Jim had made a reasonable representation of the town and the debate began on which side to place the labels.

“None of the houses on the northern outskirts of town are repairable,” Brian stated, earning him a look of disbelief from Honey.

“What about the one with the cute little dormer window above the door?” she asked. “It seems just fine, apart from some paint and other little things like that.”

“We’re not talking about architectural merit,” he answered. “This discussion is about the state of repair, and that house is in poor condition.”

Honey looked mutinous. “That house over there is in poor condition.”

“That house,” Brian contradicted, “is in danger of falling down at every light breeze.”

Jim settled the argument by adding another column to the labels. “We can call that one in moderate condition – not a ruin, but not well-preserved, either.”

The next bone of contention was on what to call some of the buildings, particularly those towards the centre of town. The bank was easy enough, as its name was engraved in stone above the door, but some of the other structures were a little less clearly defined.

“I still think it’s a post office,” Trixie asserted, when her eldest brother wanted to call a particular building a general store. “I looks very post office-ish to me.”

“It could easily have been both.” Brian frowned at the building in question. “In a town of this size, it’s unreasonable to expect a dedicated building just for the mail.”

“But we know that there was one.” She stamped her foot in frustration.

Once more, Jim settled the matter. “I’ll call it ‘Big, white, wooden building – post office or general store.’ I think that covers everything.”

The debates continued until the diagram was complete. From there, the discussion turned to the possible former locations of some buildings which had disappeared from the landscape. At the end of ten minutes argument on the subject, Jim summed up the points on which they all seemed to agree.

“So, I think we’ve established that this was the main street. Does anyone object to that statement? No? Good.” He ran a hand through his hair. “We also agree that the numbered streets ran at right angles to this street, and that one of them ran through just where we’re standing? No objections? Great.”

“I still think it’s First Street,” Trixie interjected. “There’s only room for one more street in that direction and I know that it’s called Church Street.”

“I still think it can’t be First Street. It must be either Second or Third. First must have been further that way.” Brian’s face was set in a frown.

Jim suppressed the urge to roll his eyes. “Whatever it was called, we agree that one of the numbered streets ran through here.”

“Yes,” Mart answered quickly, as his brother and sister geared up to argue further.

“We agree that the building we’re looking for was on Main Street, near the intersection with Second Street, that it was next to a saloon and in line of sight of the Post Office – which may, or may not be that building over there.”

“If we could get inside, I bet we could confirm that it is,” Trixie moaned. “I’m sure it must be. I just wish I could figure out which key fits it.” She jangled the heavy ring in despair.

“Let me see that,” Brian demanded. “You’re probably not looking for the right thing.”

He sat down on the step of the nearest store front and began to methodically work through the numerous keys. About two-thirds of the way through his task, his expression changed. Taking the graphite powder that they were carrying with them for the purpose, he lubricated a single key. Thoughtfully, he rose and made his way over to the large, white building. He fitted the key he held into the lock and wriggled it back and forth until the powder had done its work. The lock turned over and the door opened with an ominous creak.

Continue to part 3.