2019-12-14 - Lost Carcosa

What Alexander finds through the flower's petals is a stretch of road that he would find familiar - the Lonely Highway winds away from the city's heart and out of Gray Harbor, like some trail left behind by its constructors to spell either salvation or doom for a weary traveler. Especially these days, it would be - he knows that the B&B in which he first met Catherine Levenson is just down the road, and that the forest trail leading to Blackwood Manor is nearby.

He would have to walk through another forest trail and into a clearing where he would find a dilapidated house. It's not much to look at - the fence has long since fallen into disrepair, its darkened windows broken and its outer walls overtaken by wild, crawling ivy inundated by Autumn blossoms of different kinds, thick enough to camouflage it from view, yet another piece of Gray Harbor's past that has been forgotten and swallowed by the elements.

The moon is but a sliver above his head, emanating very little light, its crescent a sharp, glittering curve against the clouds. It almost looks like a smile.

The house is silent and unmoving; underneath all the vegetation is the empty husk of its former self, and the only movement and minds he can sense are the animals hiding in the woods. The cold is settling in quickly, but a few eyes and hearts remain. It's too early yet to hibernate for the winter.

But that leaves him with the distinct impression that he is being watched, though there's no hostility attached to these hidden eyes in the dark.

The front door yawns before him, as well as the broken windows laden with ivy. There's also a back door, but the single-story dwelling looks so old and worn that it even tips forward on its foundations, threatening to collapse onto him and hide its secrets before he could even breathe the air inside.

As flowers wilt at the wake of his stumble, he'd find more and more of them the further he moves into the structure. What is apparent the longer he attempts to find some respite from the scent is the fact that there's no escaping it, because this place...

...is a greenhouse.

The weight of it is oppressive, pulling at his eyelids and coaxing him to sleep. Whenever his cheek finds the ground in that last stumble, he'd hear the clatter of ebony on stone, the visible length of a walking stick and a pair of black, polished Oxfords standing a few feet away from him. A familiar voice slips through his darkening senses.

"Mister Clayton." A gloved finger taps on the heavy head of his walking stick. "Oh, dear. I'd have hoped that you'd heed my warning, at least. Do you remember the last thing I told you?"

May we never meet again.

"I'll understand, however, if it's difficult to remember at the moment, but I'll give you a few. We'll speak then." And with that, the man just wanders away, and leaves Alexander to his struggling and the suffocating mercies of the flowers until the world goes dark.

When Alexander opens his eyes again, he'd feel pressure the size and weight of a watermelon pressing into the back of his head.

The flowers are still around him, expelling their euphoric scent, gold against green and as far as the eye could see. Situated close to the fountain bearing the likeness of some monstrous and twisted thing that is all teeth and tentacles, he is comfortable at least, on some antiquated recliner with velvet upholstery, and used by enough bodies that it feels like sitting on a cloud, liable to leave a body sinking further into it at every movement.

It's difficult to concentrate, difficult to think, the longer he stays here among the flowers.

If he tries to move, he'll find that he cannot. Coils of something wind around his arms, torso and legs and it's only when he manages to recover some of his fragmented awareness that he would realize that they're moving, their sibilant hissing whispering soft in his senses. The head of one rises up from close to his left wrist; thankfully, fangs haven't been bared yet, slitted, reptilian eyes staring into his dark ones.

Peregrine, if that is his real name (it's not), is situated on a seat near his recliner, his bowler and dark glasses obscuring his features from view and his gloved fingers toying with the pocket watch that he has pulled from the flap in his waistcoat. He watches the hidden dial now and then, his left hand making a mark on the leather-bound journal resting on his lap. Long legs are folded by the knee as he writes, and whatever he's noting, he seems engrossed enough that he doesn't even lift his head when he speaks.

"I wouldn't make any sudden movements, if I were you. Do you know what asp venom does to a human body, Mister Clayton? It's less about the neurotoxin, really, and more that it constricts the diaphragm until breath is impossible." His head finally tilts to regard his guest on the recliner.

"So. To what do I owe this visit?"

"Mm. And you knew enough about the incident to determine correctly that it was me. Bravo, Mister Clayton. You have been chasing me. Though..." The next cant of Peregrine's head catches the ambient light, making the dark lenses of his glasses shine against the shadows of his hat. "...you might regret that, in the end. Should I ask what that incident, then, tells you about me? What are your conclusions thus far, detective?"

His reaction to those two words seems to amuse him, those hidden eyes falling to the way his knuckles whiten against the armrests of Alexander's recliner, making a noise that sounds almost distressingly pleased. "This is the second time you've confronted me for her sake. Are you the sort, after all? The type to destroy yourself for the sake of another? Not..." He gestures airily with his spare set of gloved fingers. "...that I'm one to judge, but I can't help but be curious as to whether this is a new development in your life or a pattern that you've always demonstrated through it."

"As for the benefits of wisdom..." The crooked smile earns him a visible smirk. "Well, perhaps you ought to learn a bit of that, before the lack of it kills you." He shifts in his seat, and re-crosses his legs the other way. "Take it as free advice, if you will, from an older man to a much younger one."

The last words Alexander utters causes fingers to drum lightly on the head of his walking stick, which has managed to stand straight against the floor whether or not he is holding it. "It depends. Are you asking me that because you prefer to be dead?"

"Investigator." He echoes the correction as if memorizing it and receives it with good grace, but otherwise he doesn't comment on his observations - neither confirms nor denies whether Alexander's conclusions are correct. He had put his notebook away now, but he's paying rapt attention on his captive - much like the bird of prey from where his nickname is devised. It is fitting in many ways, and the scythe-like smile that is visible under his hat does not waver.

All he elects to say to that, when Alexander reaches the end, is: "Not what I hoped you'd gather from that entire endeavor, but close enough, I suppose."

Spindly shoulders lift in a faint shrug. "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players," Peregrine intones with a flourish, his smooth, but whispery tenor infusing the syllables with additional color and life that a drab recitation wouldn't otherwise invoke. "One of the Bard's most enduring observations and a fitting addition to his legend. Life is dramatic by nature, Mister Clayton, and much like any enterprising sort to be found in the world, I work with what I'm given. This confrontation, for instance. It has its own drama." He gestures to Alexander in the recliner, bound by snakes. "A man willing to throw himself in a pyre of his own making, armed only by some futile and egregiously optimistic hope that he would somehow manage to prevent any harm that would visit someone he clearly loves without fully understanding the risks, the costs, or how your closest associates would feel when something irreparable or irrevocable happened to you in the attempt, Miss Reede, included."

He leans back against his seat. "You see, I don't need to hurt you, Mister Clayton - at least, not in the way that truly matters - to hurt others. Not really." The smile switches character, the kind of expression that hides the knife slid between the ribs. "You hurt them just fine on your own."

The man in the bowler hat lets that hang, before he continues. "You said that this makes you feel as if you're visiting a psychologist," he begins. "So let's try that, shall we? Answer my questions, and every truthful answer will yield the benefit of one of my friends easing his or her grip on you. That is more than equitable, I think, when I am giving you a choice to save your own life. What say you, Mister Clayton? Are you willing to bare your mind and soul for a second chance at life?"

"Am I?" Two words that might as well be the spoken equivalent of a brow arching higher than the other. "And what would you do, Mister Clayton, if I estimated your importance to anyone accurately?"

Peregrine clicks the top of his pocketwatch in his right-hand grip. "Let's start there. What would you do, and how would you feel, you think, if you were wrong?"

One of the cobra heads slithers upwards to hover just before his face, staring at him with those yellow-gold eyes and slitted pupils.

The cobra continues to stare, but with that question answered, one of the coils binding Alexander's torso slides away from the recliner, and slithers across the floor away from both men.

"Do you think that belief may be coloring your perception in that regard?" Peregrine asks smoothly. "Does it make it easier to blind yourself to the idea that others may be invested in you, emotionally, if you hold onto that belief?" He tsks quietly behind his teeth. "Do you indulge yourself in this manner, often? It's one thing to be ignorant, but to be willfully ignorant...? I may have misjudged you, Mister Clayton."

The words may be mocking, but there's not a trace of it on the man's voice. Instead, a blithe smile follows. "And if I availed that information to you, what would you do? Would you attempt to find this person and perhaps hold him or her hostage to secure my cooperation and compliance?"

One, by one, by one, the snakes slowly set him free. Around the torso, around the legs, though a cobra remains on both his ankles, and of course his wrists. There are quite a few left, but every question he answers, Peregrine, it seems, is willing to hold true to his word about letting him go. Fingers continue to drum absently on the pocketwatch in his grip, its hidden dial facing him - odd, however, that the dark lenses of his glasses do not mirror the details within, however faint. Light does not act the way it should here.

Or there may be another reason for the lack of reflection.

"And what is the alternative, when it comes to getting through the day? Surely an intelligent man such as yourself knows as well as any other that disappointment is a fact of life, and that were humans made infallible, they wouldn't be humans at all. Not even the Gods can boast such a state of perfection. So why are you constantly apprehensive of disappointing anyone?"

The smile returns at the rippling look of disgust. "Nobody left alive, save but one," he says, almost indulgently, as if rewarding the man for his curiosity as another particularly fat asp winds away from Alexander. "Does that surprise you, I wonder."

"So you're a man who doesn't want to disappoint anyone, reacts so viscerally to the notion of doing so, and yet..." Peregrine gestures sideways. "You have acquaintances, I assume. Friends. Even someone who you love and who presumably loves you - enough, at least, to go on a tear with murderous intent and face me directly. Wouldn't it be easier to...not...have any of those? Then why do you elect to? Wouldn't that be easier on yourself? Easier on the others, especially if they ever discover that you blatantly disregard their investment in you in such a way?"

One snake slithers away. The man's dark lenses reflect everything else but the watch.

The last question tilts his smile upwards, a more wistful note there. "Do I strike you as a person who has any feelings?" he counters, overtly amused. "Or at least, feelings that could still be considered within the human spectrum?"

"And do you believe that you can maintain any of these relationships without the necessary reciprocation?" Peregrine smiles faintly. "You seem to value emotion, Mister Clayton, and how they affect you, and the others around you, especially when you happen to be the source. I do not believe, however, that you place enough importance in the ones that you ought in order to sustain them. You'll be alone again, I think, before long...but that is ultimately the fate of every selfish man, and you seem well aware of the fact that you are."

And he would know, wouldn't he?

His pocketwatch snaps shut in his grip as the last snake winds away from Alexander - the heady scent remains in the air and now he has been freed from his bonds, to act and do what he wills. "As much as it would be personally fascinating to entertain your questions, I'm afraid this session is now at an end." He rises from his seat then, feet astride, his hand once more finding his walking stick. "Shall I send you on your way, or do you have any additional business with me?"

And that, too, is telling.

If there is tension in the air as Alexander calculates his odds of delivering a fatal blow, the man in the bowler hat doesn't show it. But when he decides to abandon his attempts at murder, there's a quiet sound that carries the suspicious notes of disappointment and a strange, disjointed relief. It is confusing, but he can't be said to be a complicated adversary on his own, considering what the investigator already knows of him.

Peregrine taps his walking stick on the floor and the trellis laden with ivy on the very end of the birdcage-like greenhouse shifts; like verdant drapery parting, it reveals a door for him to walk through.

"There you are, Mister Clayton. Do try and have yourself a happy Christmas. It's the most wonderful time of year, after all." His smile returns, affable and even mischievous. "May we never meet again."

"Ah, well. Perhaps I'm not all that immune to my own condition," Peregrine tells him mildly, with an almost teasing lilt.

"After all, how could I have ever learned to be so effective, if I didn't know what it was like to hope?"

The words follow him as Alexander goes through the door, and when he steps through it and the appendage shuts, it would be silent and still once more, abandoned in the silent dilapidated shack choked with ivy, and the moon still grinning above his head.