*
I took my Psylocybin. My wrist hurt from the county clerk encounter the day before, so I took some ibuprofen as well. Normally I would have a shower in the morning, but I’d had one the night before because I felt dirty when I got home. Since I didn’t have a shower, I left the bathroom more quickly than usual, and as I walked out I happened to look at the camera on the wall and I saw that it was moving. I felt sure that it had been pointed directly at the wall of the bathroom. When I looked at it, it stopped moving. I walked into the bathroom and out again several times, but the camera didn’t move any more. I would have to let GP&A know that they needed to fix my cameras in place because of their tendency to wander.
On the front page of the paper, there was an article about the new traffic cameras in town. In the space of only a week, traffic accidents at red lights went down by 95%. The license plate tracking software installed in the cameras had also been very effective, and the police had apprehended several wanted criminals. Prominent among those caught by the cameras was Yennifer Stroumph, the person whose complaints I had read in the paper the day before. It made sense; she only complained about them because she was hoping her own misdeeds wouldn’t be exposed. It was very bold of her to complain so openly, though, surely she must have known it would only draw attention to her. In any case, according to the paper she was beginning a long custodial sentence. I felt safer already.
I spent most of the day playing social internet games on my company laptop. Winslow had remained forever unwilling to accept my invites to Puppy Planet so I could earn more puppy points to do more puppy playing, but I sent another invite anyway.
Penelope still hadn’t returned my calls by dinnertime, so I called her again. There was no answer. I didn’t leave a voicemail, because I didn’t want to make her think I was weird by constantly leaving messages for her. Instead, I decided to drive over to her house late at night and uninvited. There was a craft store close to her house, and if she asked why I’d come I could say something about already being in the neighborhood buying embroidery supplies. I also put a pillow in the car so I could point and say, ‘look, there is the pillow I will be embroidering.’
To bolster my embroidery story, I stopped at the craft store and picked up some actual embroidery supplies. There was a surprising selection of embroidery mesh, but I did eventually choose a few good models. Thus equipped, I continued on to Penelope’s house.
There was a light on in her living room. I knocked on the door, but there was no answer.
“Penelope? It’s me, Oscar,” I called through the keyhole. “I brought you some meatloaf.” I had not brought any meatloaf, but it seemed like a suitable lure, and one which I could explain away by saying, ‘actually, I meant embroidery materials.’ She still didn’t answer. I walked around the house to see if there was another door to knock on or perhaps a window to look in. The curtains were closed, and I couldn’t see anything through them. There was a dark shadow on one of the living room curtains and the curtain was pressed against the window, as if something heavy had fallen against it. I stopped walking when I saw that. The shadow was shaped like a human head. The glass was cracked where it touched. It was Penelope, I realized. She must have tripped and fallen, striking her head on the glass. That was why she hadn’t returned my calls; she had been laying there all of yesterday. In fact, she could have hit her head immediately after she locked the door the night I was there; she could have been lying there all of that night as well. I could have kicked myself for not coming over sooner[35]. I reached up and knocked hard on the window near her head.
“Penelope,” I shouted. “Penelope!” There was no answer; she was definitely unconscious – or worse, but I put that thought out of my head immediately.
I tried the knob on the front door, but it was definitely locked. I jiggled the door, but all the locks made it very secure and it didn’t move at all.
I moved down the stairs and then charged up them at the door, slamming my shoulder into it, but the door was not persuaded. It was very obtuse. You have never seen such a stubborn door, I wager. I stepped back down and considered my possible options. The window was cracked from the inside, which meant it was weak and probably easy to break with enough force. Her house was raised up though, on a high foundation, and there was no way for me to get on an even level with the window to kick it in. There was a chimney, but even though I thought I could probably leap onto the roof if I climbed one of the nearby trees, I wasn’t going to risk getting stuck in the chimney out here at night.
Then I remembered the secret entrance she had mentioned. Where was it, though? I circled the house. I tapped every suspicious stone I could see. I kicked the walls. I squeezed a worm that seemed out of place. I pulled away the ivy that was crawling up the house, but there were only blank bricks behind it. I picked up a rock and threw it at the cracked window. The rock only bounced off, leaving a tiny chip in the glass.
At last, I sat down in a lawn chair and leaned back in it. I massaged my shoulder, which was sore from where I had rammed into the door. I had to think. I leaned back, and looked up into the sky. The dark night clouds briefly moved from in front of the moon and I saw the chimney in silhouette against the bright lunar light. The chimney was located on the roof directly above the far wall of the living room. But I had been in there only a few days before, and there was no fireplace in the living room. That could only mean that the chimney was the secret entrance.
I clambered up into a nearby tree. An owl turned its scornful eyes towards me, but I had no time to stop for a discussion of my worth. I leapt out of the tree. The roof was steep and I found very little purchase on the roofing shingles, which caused me to slip and slide back towards the edge, but I was able to lie down and spread my body out to create enough friction to stop myself falling to the ground. I crawled up the roof towards the chimney in that fashion, wriggling my body and scrabbling for any slight handholds that made themselves available.
At last, I reached the chimney. I wrapped my arms around it, shuffling them upwards gradually until I was standing against the chimney. The wind of a gathering storm whipped against my body, and I held on tightly to the life-saving bricks. Lightning shot to the earth far away from me, and the air rumbled a thundering response.
The builders had sealed the chimney with a screened vent to allow smoke out but to prevent any squirrels or men from getting in accidentally. Several warning decals were on the vent, including one showing a man climbing into the chimney, circled in red and crossed through. I hadn’t made it this far by letting warning labels rule my life, though, and so I dug my fingers into the vent and ripped it out, then flung it to the ground below.
I hoisted myself up delicately and turned around, putting one leg into the chimney as if I was going down a ladder. For a moment, I looked very much like the man on the warning sign. The wind gusted, which made me lose my balance, and I fell backwards. I was sat – wedged – in the chimney, with one leg down and one leg up. I was able to rock myself free, and I lifted up again, allowing me to put the other leg down the chimney. I then began to inch my way downwards, bracing myself against the walls of the chimney with my arms and legs. Down in the chimney, I saw nothing but blackness. The shrinking rectangle of light at the top of the chimney looked down on me from above.
The chimney narrowed as it went down, and once I had made it what I thought was about halfway, I suddenly realized that I could move no further. I was stuck. This was the worst secret entrance ever.
I scratched at the walls like an ineffective Victorian chimney sweep, trying to widen the chimney. Plenty of caked-on soot flaked away, but I still couldn’t move further down. I heard a light tapping above me, and I looked up just in time to get the first raindrops of the night directly in my eyes. Then the sky poured down, and the chimney acted as a funnel to direct more than my fair share of rain onto me.
I sat for a while, hanging limply inside the chimney. I didn’t know what to do. I could go back up, but then I wou
ldn’t be able to get inside and help Penelope. She needed my help. That thought gave me energy, and I strained all my muscles and kicked my legs against the inside of the chimney. After several kicks, my shoe went into the chimney wall. The house was old and some of the bricks must have been loose; the rain must have loosened the aging mortar and I had loosened them further with my flailing. I worked my foot farther in against the brick until it moved free, and I heard the brick thud onto the floor in whatever room I was next to. I used my feet to feel the other bricks around the newly empty space, and several of those felt loose as well. With more kicking, I was able to dislodge them until I had a respectable hole. Knocking out those few bricks had taken several minutes; it was a laborious process, and I hoped I wouldn’t have to dismantle the whole chimney from the inside in order to get down to Penelope. If I had to though, I would.
I rested both of my feet in the hole. If I’d had the time to appreciate it, I would have enjoyed the comfortable perch I had created. I didn’t have the time, though, and I pressed down with all the strength of my legs, pushing my back solidly against the wall. The wall gave way and crumbled behind me, and I launched backwards out of the chimney and onto the floor, trailing a cloud of soot behind me and spreading it out in a large puff when I landed.
I was unhurt. I had been farther down than I thought, nearly at the floor already, so I only fell two or three feet. Standing up, I saw myself in the mirror by the light of the moon through the window. I was soaked and my clothes were dyed black, but the rain had mostly washed my head and face free of soot.
When I looked around, I saw that I was in Penelope’s bedroom. Moreover, there was a fireplace below the chimney in there. Which meant that the chimney actually wasn’t a secret entrance; I had smashed my way in through a perfectly normal chimney. No matter; I was in. I walked towards her bedroom door, and then stopped. I looked down and saw that I was leaving dark tracks with my shoes. I took them off, because when I roused her from unconsciousness I didn’t want to have to explain all of the carpet in her house being ruined by someone who wore shoes suspiciously like mine.
I opened the door and went into the living room. It looked like the scene of a violent struggle. The coffee table was smashed. Books had been knocked off their shelves and strewn about. The drinks we’d had the night I was there had been knocked over and spilled on the floor. Near the drinks there was a dark stain of what appeared to be blood. There was blood on the front door knob. I had not expected to see those things. I did not see the only thing I had expected to see, which was Penelope sat against the wall with her head against the window. Instead, there was her houseplant with the particularly long, fuzzy leaves, which had fallen over against the window and cracked it at the point of impact, looking very much like a woman’s head from the outside. I checked the bathroom and the kitchen. Penelope was not in the house at all.
All of this meant that Penelope needed my help even more. She had been kidnapped, and the blood meant that she was wounded, too. I picked up the phone to call for help, but there was no dial tone; the kidnapper had cut the line.
I went back to the bedroom and prepared to go up the chimney. Then I felt curious, and I went to check the door. The extra latches and locks on it were all unfastened, and only the single flimsy lock built into the knob secured it. That one could be locked from the inside before you went out, which meant Penelope had unlocked the door for the kidnapper to come in, but why? Who? There was no time to sit and ponder, though, she needed help. I went out the front door myself, and locked it.
Back at home, I called the police. The woman on the line took my name and address, and Penelope’s address. She said that an officer would first visit Penelope’s house, and then someone would come speak to me as well.
I waited impotently, sitting on the couch. For the first time, I felt the limitations Psylocybin had imposed on me. Months before, I would have felt suspicious of twenty people by this time in the day, and I would have immediately suspected someone – anyone – of being Penelope’s kidnapper. Now, with my amygdala under control, I didn’t have even the slightest funny feeling about so much as a meter reader. In the past, perhaps my suspicions would have been wrong, but I wouldn’t have felt so helpless. I would have rushed out of the house and pursued every lead until Penelope was safe and I was satisfied. Now, there was nothing. Penelope was gone. I didn’t know who had done it, and without my paranoia I was powerless. I was a normal person, now, and I had to rely on the police and others in authority to help me and to find her.
After I had waited for several hours and had re-arranged my furniture to allow myself some feeling of control over my life, I started on my embroidery with the things I had bought as a cover story when I went to Penelope’s house. Then, someone knocked on the door. I answered it to find a man in a suit. Water dripped off the brim of his hat. I recognized him as being one of the several men who had questioned me when I was in jail. I remembered that his last name was Brown. Or maybe Johnson.
“Do you mind if I come in, sir?”
I allowed that I did not mind, and he came in.
“I’m Detective Bronson.” I was close. “I have some questions for you,” he said.
“Before you get started, detective,” I said, “I think I legally have to tell you that this conversation is being recorded.”
He stopped in the middle of opening his notepad, and let the cover fall back.
“Excuse me?” he said, looking at me as if there was something strange about me.
“It’s just… well, look,” I said, pointing to the camera, which was pointing at us.
He raised one eyebrow and sighed. He opened his notebook again.
“Now, according to your statement taken over the phone, you were at Ms. Hope’s house two nights ago, when she pushed you out and locked the door.” He looked up from his notes, and I nodded. “You went there tonight because she hadn’t been answering your phone calls, found the place in a state of violent disarray with the lady in question missing, and you drove back to your house to call the police.”
He paused, apparently thinking over his notes, and looked down at my feet.
“Correct me if I’m wrong here,” he said. “You also said that the door appeared to have been unlocked from the inside, so she must have unlocked it to let the… kidnapper,” he flicked his eyes up to me as he said that, and then back down to his notes, “in the house.”
“In the lady’s bedroom, Mr. Well, we found signs of forced entry through the chimney. ‘Signs’ is just a technical term we investigators use, but for your benefit let me explain that there was a man-sized hole in the chimney. We also found a pair of shoes.” He looked down at my feet again, and I looked too. “You’re not wearing any shoes, Mr. Well, and your socks look awfully dirty. Is that soot?”
“I…” I wiggled my toes. I agreed that it did look odd. “I left my shoes in her bedroom,” I said.
He wrote in his pad for a moment.
“Mr. Well, are you saying that it was you who broke into Ms. Hope’s house through the chimney? After she had locked you out of her house two days prior and ignored your calls in the two days since?”
I didn’t very much like the way the conversation was going, and I said so. He drew himself up.
“It’s my duty to inform you that you’re officially a suspect in the disappearance of Penelope Hope, Mr. Well.”
“I’m the one who reported that she’d been kidnapped,” I said. “I’m the good guy, here!”
He stepped up close to me, close enough that I could see the pores in his nose, and tapped the badge on the breast of his suit. “No, Oscar, I’m the good guy here. I thought I recognized you, but I wasn’t sure until I heard the rest of this bullshit story. You’re the one who said, ‘oh my keys almost didn’t fit in my door and I had to buy a different brand of apple juice once so I killed a man.’ You’re a real piece of work, harassing this girl and then trying to pretend like someone else did it.”
“It’s not—I d
idn’t—” I stuttered out. I didn’t know what to say; I hadn’t expected this, and I wasn’t prepared.
“Now I come here and I see you’ve got cameras set up right in the middle of your house, you’re not wearing any shoes, and you’re trying to tell me someone else took Ms. Hope. Is she back there?” he asked, pointing behind me. “Have you got a camera on her too? You’re some kind of sicko, aren’t you? I don’t know what technicality your lawyer used to get you free from that charge with the guy you killed, but you’re not going to do the same thing this time. Now I’m the one with my eye on you,” he rumbled, and poked me in the chest, “and I’ll be seeing you back in jail again, this time for good.” He stepped out the door, and then turned back to say, “Don’t leave town,” before walking away into the rain, leaving my door open.
I walked back into the living room and sat down on the couch. I sat for several minutes before I was even able to think about the situation. Not only was I powerless to do anything myself, but the only people who could do something were looking in the wrong place – at me. I ran my hand over my face, and it came away black with wet soot. I realized I must have seemed like a maniac to the detective, shoeless and covered in soot in my house under the watchful eye of my cameras. I hadn’t even thought to explain to him that they weren’t actually my cameras, but everything had happened so fast I hardly had time to think about anything.
Once I could calmly explain everything to the police, he’d see that I didn’t have anything to do with it, but he was gone now, and I didn’t know when I would be able to see him again. Until I could get it straightened out, it seemed like I was going to be the prime suspect. I didn’t worry about going to jail again because this time I truly hadn’t done anything wrong, but I was worried that nobody was actually looking for whoever had really kidnapped Penelope.
The only other person I could turn to for help was Dr. Boggs, maybe he would know something. At the very least, he’d be able to contact the police on my behalf and explain to Detective Bronson about my paranoid past and my newly medicated self.
I eventually dropped off to sleep on the couch with the front door still wide open.