[This adventure is hugely inspired by Grady Hendrix’s Horrorstör, Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves, and SCP-3008]
It had been about a month since Ursa and Merlin began their employment at the Caliber Institute. Merlin had been attempting to gain access to the R&D Department, despite not yet being approved for fieldwork, and Ursa had been looking for studio spaces in her time off. The work itself was simple, and their two office days a week were mostly clear of actual work to do within the first hour or so.
Nora was still getting used to having colleagues that didn’t actively avoid her. She wasn’t entirely sure if she was okay with the adjustment. Sure, it was… nice to know they weren’t vilifying her. Was that the word? Nice? But it did come with its own baggage.
Maybe a week after her new colleagues had received their prophecies, Nora had been making her way home from work when she became astutely aware of a presence following her. She’d ducked into an alleyway and turned the tables on the hooded figure in pursuit, slamming it against the wall and hissing, ‘So you’ve caught me. Now what?’
Frightened red eyes looked back at her. Some Vamp kid.
‘Whoa, whoa!’ he said, without the accent that Vampire gang members seemed to favour. ‘Not looking for trouble!’ He scrabbled with his hoodie for a second, making sure he was completely covered despite Nora’s grip on him. There weren’t any direct rays on an overcast day like this, so he needn’t have been so concerned. Nora herself was a much more pressing threat. Maybe she should remind him of that fact.
But no. He was practically still a child. She held him to the bricks for a moment more, just for emphasis, then let go and stepped back. ‘Well?’ she said. ‘What are you looking for?’
‘It’s just… uh, you’re with the Institute, right?’
Nora said nothing.
The Vamp kid groped around to fill the silence, as Nora expected him to. ‘Well, me and a few of our boys saw you a couple weeks back. With a gnome and someone else. Middle of the night, right?’
‘I also exist at night, yes. Get on with it.’
‘Well, your friend – not the gnome, the other one – doubled back to uh, give us a talking to. And I recognized her, like. P.C Hardgard, it was.’
‘Hardgard? Really?’
‘No I’m serious!’ the Vampire protested. ‘People take the piss out of her name but she’s sound about it, not like some of the other coppers. She’s alright. Always asks how it’s gone for me in court and stuff.’
‘So, let me know if I’m following you,’ said Nora, pun unintended. She’d been stood in a cold alley for longer than strictly necessary, a fact that was rapidly bleeding the patience from her voice. ‘You’ve stalked me through the city so that you could enquire if I… have a friend in the police?’
‘I wanted to ask if she was working for the Institute as well. ‘Cause that’d be a bit shit, you know?’
It was obviously Ursa he’d encountered, but that raised the question, was Ursa moonlighting as a PCSO? Or had she engaged in a bit of identity theft? It couldn’t be a coincidence, could it? Nora grunted. ‘That’s a good question. Now, don’t let me see you again, or I promise you’ll regret it.’
She gave him a friendly couple of slaps on the cheek and departed the alley unfollowed.
*
Nora hadn’t found an opportunity to bring it up with Ursa during the weeks since then. Which was to say, her method of ‘not really caring enough to pursue answers’ had yet to yield results.
She’d been drinking her first cup of coffee when both Ursa and Merlin had planted themselves at her table in the canteen. This too was something she was ambivalent about – company was nice, yes, but the effort of conversation was… taxing.
Mercifully, before Ursa had even opened her mouth, Cepheus had appeared and was hovering patiently on the outskirts of their table. ‘Hey guys,’ he said, when Nora acknowledged him. ‘Exciting news for you today! Merlin and Ursa have been fully approved for field work!’
The three of them watched as he did a jazzy little flourish with his hands. It drew the eye to his piano-key necktie. ‘And what’s more, I have the details of your first assignment as a team,’ he continued brightly.
‘Oh boy,’ said Nora. ‘Whatever could it be?’
‘Well, it’s just a routine haunting.’
Ursa looked up from her phone. ‘A routine haunting? That’s a normal assignment?’
Nora leant over. ‘Yeah, it’s a pretty average job. Mostly they’re not even proper ghosts, just sluggishly malevolent echoes of someone who died. You just need to find their remains, salt them, and burn them.’
‘That sounds quite similar to how one might describe a normal ghost,’ said Merlin. ‘A lazy one, anyway.’
‘Proper ghosts are rarer. They’re still sentient. Your average poltergeist doesn’t even have any consciousness at all.’ Nora paused to consider for a second. ‘Like a jellyfish.’
Cepheus grinned again with his big, flat teeth. ‘Well, this is a jellyfish that can text, then. All the employees have been getting texts that just say “help”. Penelope raised the flag here.’
Ursa was the first to say it. ‘What do you mean, employees? I thought we were going to a haunted house?’
Cepheus at least had the decency to look embarrassed. ‘Actually… it’s an Ikea.’
This earned a raised eyebrow from Merlin. It sounded an awful lot like a novel he’d read. ‘So less a haunted house, and more a haunted household goods store?’
‘Something like that,’ said Cepheus. ‘We’ve organized a cover for you to get in employee-only areas and the like. You’ll be joining the loss prevention team as temps.’
Ursa physically rose from her seat. ‘Loss prevention?! Have you seen me, Cepheus?’ She gave him a moment to consider her pink hair, diminutive stature, and Harajuku fashion sense. ‘Loss prevention is for like, balding men with beer bellies and stranglers’ hands!’
She slowly sank back to her seat, leaving the others wondering if her outburst was a symptom of some weird past trauma.
‘Well, couldn’t you shift yourself to look like that?’ Cepheus began, but ran out of steam under the encumbrance of Ursa’s stare. ‘Um. Anyway. It’s the one just north of here, so it’ll only be about half an hour’s drive. You’re expected to be there for orientation at 12.’
‘Hold on a sec,’ said Merlin, a slow grin spreading below his moustache. ‘Does this mean we have official access to the R&D department?’
Cepheus blinked. ‘I think she’s baking right now.’
*
The door to the Caliber Institute’s R&D department was a fairly sturdy one, with a reinforced pane of frosted glass in the upper half. The glass bore an inscription that read:
RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT
Below that, someone had scrawled an addendum in red permanent marker. It read:
and baked goods such as cake, pies, and flapped jack
This door currently hung ajar, with a light plume of dark smoke issuing from it. Merlin led the way with Nora and Ursa trailing behind.
‘I don’t know why you’re in such a rush,’ Nora was saying. ‘We’ve still got hours.’
‘I want as much time as possible to examine the R&D facilities here.’
‘They’re not much to write home about.’
‘Perhaps not to you,’ Merlin said. He marched through the open door with the eagerness of a soldier returning from overseas.
The room within was smaller than expected. Several benches were laid out with beakers and Bunsen burners, all bubbling away in the refinement of some alchemical concoction. Against one wall was a lathe; an antique that was powered by a pedal and flywheel rather than a motor. Currently there was a staff clamped into it, with runes carved up maybe half its length.
There was also a Goblin stood in the centre of the room, sniffing at the air occasionally and looking confused. She was wearing casual clothes with a white lab coat on top, then atop that, an apron emblazoned with the words ‘YOUR TEXT HERE’ in a large sans serif font.
Merlin’s attention, however, was entirely focused on a set of decrepit-looking servers clustered in a corner. It rather looked like they’d been just left there to gather dust. A sticker, mostly peeled away by now, read ‘This machine is a server. DO NOT POWER IT DOWN!!’
‘Hello, Emva,’ said Nora. ‘Smells like something might be burning.’
The Goblin’s eyes widened like detonating fireworks. ‘My muffins!’ she cried, vaulting a bench and sprinting into a little en suite kitchen area. There came a clanging sound and a shriek, then Emva reappeared with a tray of grey, igneous rocks that might have been muffins before whatever cataclysm had occurred in the oven. Or perhaps she’d used a kiln?
‘Oh man,’ said Emva. ‘Got ‘em just in time!’ She brandished the tray in their direction. ‘Wanna try?’
‘Oh, we really should let them cool,’ said Ursa, carefully.
Nora nodded, grateful for Ursa’s silver tongue. ‘Besides,’ she said. ‘We’re here on business.’
‘Plus I’d like to take a look at those servers if you wouldn’t mind.’ There was a revulsion in Merlin’s eyes, quite unrelated to the calcified muffins.
‘What? Why?’ Emva put her tray down. Nora and Ursa found themselves still watching it, as if expecting it to lunge at them.
Merlin rushed over to the servers while he was talking. ‘I can hear that they’re running, but they’re not in great shape, are they? I was hoping to investigate the, er… well, I was expecting some state of the art blending of magic and technology.’ His voice grew muffled as he stuck his head through the gap behind one. ‘Good god, they’re all plugged in on one extension?!’
‘Oh. Yeah, they’re not really my thing,’ said Emva. ‘I’ve been trying to get rid, but nobody will help me shift ‘em.’
Merlin emerged with a look of horror and a patina of dust. ‘This room isn’t even air conditioned.’
‘Oof, I know right? The kitchen makes it ten times worse, too.’
Merlin’s gaze moved to the kitchen area, taking it in properly this time. There was a sign above the doorway that said ‘server room’.
‘Huh,’ he said. ‘Well, uh, Emva, if you’re ever in need of any assistance with these, I would be more than happy to lend a hand.’
‘Ah yeah, clear some space! That’d be great!’
Merlin didn’t correct her, but Nora took advantage of his silence to redirect the conversation. ‘So Emva, we’re going to be dealing with a ghost. These two are new recruits.’
‘Oh!’ said Emva. ‘Yes. I made up some stuff for the newbies!’ She scrambled over to a workbench with cupboards below it, throwing open the doors.
*
Emva had apparently been given a brief description of their talents and needs, and only listened to maybe half of it. Ursa received a guitar shaped like a cat, which produced a sort of synthesized meowing instead of normal notes. Merlin came away with a bowtie that, when tied around an electrical device, would apparently recharge its battery. He was instructed that under no circumstances whatsoever should he put it around his neck.
Nora was also given something Emva kept calling a ‘Bitch Crystal’. When pressed for information, Emva told her it was ‘for bad bitches only’ and would ‘increase her power’.
After that, the three of them headed over to the car park. There was a company car they’d been given permission to use, though they did hit something of a snag.
‘Who’s driving?’ Ursa asked. ‘I mean, I don’t have a license, so…’
‘Well I can’t do it. I only know how to ride a bike.’ Nora nodded toward a motorcycle, a sleek black monster of a sport bike that couldn’t decide if it belonged more to a cyberpunk futurescape or apocalyptic wasteland. There were a couple of empty spaces to either side of it, like it had scared off the surrounding cars. Or eaten them.
‘I’ll handle it,’ said Merlin. The gnome trooped over to the car without checking to see if they were following.
‘Wait, won’t you need like, pedal extenders?’ said Ursa as she settled into the back seat. ‘Adaptive devices, or whatever the term is?’
Merlin climbed into the front passenger seat and began typing away at his laptop.
‘Uh, Merlin?’ Ursa watched as he highlighted a program named Unseen_Servant.exe and selected Run as thaumaturge from a list of options. The engine rumbled to life.
‘Wait, wait, wait!’ said Nora. ‘We can’t go driving through town without a bloody driver! People are going to see. Do you want auditors chasing us down through the streets?’
‘Google,’ said Merlin, by way of explanation.
They were sat in a 2001 Honda Accord. Pedestrians were more likely to suspect it was haunted than self-driving. Of course, Merlin’s Unseen Servant was a sort of hybrid of the two.
‘No. Nope,’ said Nora. ‘This isn’t happening. They gave me a sidecar for my bike. We’ll use that.’
Merlin closed his laptop in a somewhat sullen gesture.
‘How did you teach a program how to drive, anyway?’ Ursa asked, as Nora fitted the side of her monstrous bike with an incongruous little carriage. ‘I thought you had to ride around on that little electric scooter thing?’
‘I don’t have to. I choose to,’ said Merlin, patiently. ‘For the environment. I know how to drive a car.’
‘Really?’ Nora chucked him a helmet. ‘What did you learn to drive in?’
Merlin said nothing for a moment. Then, very quietly:
‘A clown car.’
The others just about managed to stop laughing by the time they arrived at Ikea.
Roll History 