Lucas Stirling - Awakening

[Gremlin]

With the door closed and the sudden change in atmosphere, Lucas couldn't help but look around the room. He took the glass from Marty, taking a mouthful. At the same time, he took his phone from his pocket and opened up the notes app. Lucas made notes as his client talked, next to the part about things happening again he wrote 'Cat?'

"Video evidence is always good. Are these...events limited to any time o' day?"

[Anthr4xus]

Lucas noticed that the water smelled oddly sweet. There was nothing different in the taste, just regular NYC tap, but there was a faintly sweet, almost floral note to either the glass or the water that he noticed as he was drinking.

Marty shook his head, "No regular pattern I've been able to pick out, although most of my recordings are during the day. I have seen something at night, but I don't have a good night vision setup, so a lot of details get lost."

[Gremlin]

Lucas couldn't help wrinkling his nose when he noticed the odd smell coming from the drink. Surely his client hadn't dosed the glass before filling it. He continued tapping away at his phone, making more notes as he listened.

"And, have any of your neighbours mentioned noticing anything similar?"

[Anthr4xus]

Marty hummed and said, "Well, I don't really get along with my neighbors that well. They haven't said anything to me if they have, but I don't know how they could have missed everything." Marty sat, practically perching on the edge of couch, looking up at Lucas. "Do you think I am imagining things, Mr. Stirling?" he asked.

[Gremlin]

"I'd be lying if I said it hadn't crossed my mind." Lucas replied. "But I saw somethin' earlier that's made me reconsider." Logically, if the water did contain a drug of some kind, it couldn't have affected him when he spotted the tabby cat...twice. The puzzle was practically begging him to try to solve it. "'Course, we could both be losing it." Lucas thought, but voicing the idea was hardly going to be helpful for his client. "How about we see those videos you mentioned?"

[Anthr4xus]

Nodding, Marty bounced to his feet and said, "Let me grab my laptop." He quickly stepped past Lucas and moved upstairs. Lucas stood in the crowded living room, looking at his notes on his phone. Upstairs he could hear Marty moving around. He looked around for some place to put the odd-smelling glass of water. Just as the started to move towards one of the small end tables on either end of the couch there was a sudden thump against the curtained window. The sudden noise made him jump just a little, and he was glad that Marty was out of the room. It's always better to maintain that unshakable persona in front of clients.

[Gremlin]

Lucas looked towards the window at the unexpected thump, then placed his glass on the end table. He couldn't help but look around to see if Marty or another, as yet unseen, person had entered the room before he stood and walked over to the window. Not wanting to catch a follow up brick to the face, Lucas refrained from standing in front of the curtain window and opening the curtains. Instead, he stayed to one side of the window and moved the curtain just enough to allow him to peer out onto the street.

[Anthr4xus]

As Lucas opened the curtains, he realizes how dirty the bottom of the window was, brownish streaks and smears marring the lower quarter of the window. The source of the thump is not immediately apparent, although as he glances around looking for it, he notices a well-dressed middle aged man emerge from the woods of Seton Falls park at the end of the road. He was walking slowly, obviously looking around as if searching for something that could be almost anywhere. He stops in front of the small building at the end of the street, apparently reading the small sign out front and scoping the place out.

Lucas' attention was suddenly pulled away from the figure at the far end of the street as a small brown thing hurtled from the low bushes below the window, across the narrow porch, and banged loudly against the glass. The sound was more of a bong than a bang without the curtains to temper it, and as Lucas recovered from his shock he was surprised to see a large brown squirrel scrabbling against the glass, smearing traces of mud, dirt and other foulness among the filth that was already there. The squirrel was only there a moment before launching off the sill and back into the bushes.

It was only then that Lucas realized that for almost this entire time he has heard Marty footsteps moving upstairs. With slow realization, Lucas realized that the steps were regular in pace and pattern, not like he was retracing steps or pacing, but for him to have walked for at least a few minutes now should have put him anywhere in the house. It didn't make sense that he could take so many steps in sequence without having to change pattern as he took a corner or paused to open a door.

 

[Gremlin]

This time there was definitely no hiding it, when the squirrel struck the window Lucas started and swore, then laughed quietly to himself. Granted it was more unusual than a bird flying into the window, but a squirrel was hardly a cause for concern. He took note of the middle-aged man as he left the woods and couldn't help wondering what the man was looking for. Not for the first time, Lucas considered whether this need to know had led him to his past then current employment.

When the metronomic footsteps upstairs registered, Lucas looked up at the ceiling from one end of the room to the other. This confirmed that there shouldn't have been any way for Marty to consistently have taken so many paces, and it was certainly stranger than a misguided squirrel. Before he knew what he was doing, Lucas had walked to the bottom of the stairs and was looking up them before following Marty.

[Anthr4xus]

As Lucas stepped to the bottom of the stairs, there was a sudden quickening of the steps and a slight change as they seemed to suddenly become less muffled and closer. Before Lucas could even set a foot on the bottom stair, Marty rounded the banister and appeared at the top of the stairs, laptop and power card held in both hands before him. He looked at Lucas quizzically and said, "Is everything alright, Mr. Sterling?"

[Gremlin]

"Yeah." Lucas replied, "Just somethin' hit the window here." He attempted a quick diversion from his wanderings by asking "You have many problems with that sort of things, local kids maybe?"

[Anthr4xus]

Marty nodded, his gaze going to the curtains. "I'm not sure what it is, but something keeps banging on it. I've not been able to catch whatever it is. Why? Did you see it?"

[Gremlin]

Lucas thought for a second, "Why would a squirrel keep flinging itself against the window?" before replying, "Looked like a squirrel, but I only saw it for a second an' I'm no wildlife expert. You say it keeps happening, could be linked to why you've hired me." He went back to his seat and waited for Marty to set up the laptop.

"Oh, there was some fella looking a bit lost out there as well." Lucas described the middle aged man to Marty. "Is he a local?"

 

 

[Anthr4xus]

Marty shook his head and said, "Doesn't sound like anyone I know." He set the laptop down on the coffee table and opened it up. A video was already queued to play, showing a still of what Lucas assumed to be Marty's backyard. From the timestamp, Lucas saw that it was from roughly two weeks ago, at 3:57:00 pm. "This first one is really quick." Marty hit a button on the keyboard and the video started to play. It was a non-descript post stamp back yard. A plastic table and matching chairs were in the foreground and a small, hoarfrost covered garden dominated the back of the small space. Tall wooden privacy fences blocked the view into the nearby yards. The timestamp on the video hit 3:58:23 and there was a momentary distortion. For less than a second the air in the middle ground seemed to twist somehow. It was an apparently optical effect as nothing in the yard was disturbed, and by the time the timestamp hit 3:58:55 it was gone. As if it had never been. Marty hit a button to freeze the video. "Did you see it Mr. Stirling? I can try to run it slower. Unfortunately the only video software I have is pretty low-grade freeware stuff."

[Gremlin]

"I saw it." Lucas replied. "If it wasn't for that damn cat I'd think it was some sort of CGI." he thought. "You said this was the first one?" Lucas asked, wondering if the start of these events coincided with anything. "An' can I get a copy of this?" Normally, he'd knock on doors and quiz the neighbours but he wasn't sure how he would ask if they'd seen anything resembling what Marty had asked him to look into.