Adventure VII - Episode One


The short man took two steps forward and laid his palm flat against the wall.  “It’s a house.”

The woman in blue moved to stand beside him, careful not to touch, and let her eyes lose focus, looking inside instead of out.  “No.  It’s an image.”  There was the slightest note of surprise in her voice.

The man turned and regarded her with hard eyes.  “It can’t be.  We’re standing in it.”

“Nevertheless.  It’s only partly here.”  She met the steely stare.  “We’re only partly here.”


Silver watched the ritual with interest.  “Is this usual, or is it a show for my benefit?”

Grey eyes nailed him while blue eyes shone for him.  He shivered a little as the brief touch ghosted over his mind and he smiled.

The two operators turned from him in unison, back to the wall, which apparently warranted further investigation.

She ghosted her fingers over the wallpaper.  //Do you feel it?//

//Yes.//

//?//

//I don’t like it.//

Sapphire glanced at her partner.  Sometimes his honesty – as pure as she’d ever known – astounded her.

//Why not?//  She made her mind-voice gentle, a personal question as much as it was a professional query.

He didn’t answer, his thoughts hidden from her as he’d been taught.  As they’d all been taught. 

//Steel?//

Ignoring the question he turned, walking away from her and starting up the narrow, steep staircase.

“What year is it?” he called back, knowing she’d be behind him.  He didn’t know about Silver.  He didn’t care right at that moment.

“Turn of the century, I think.  Although… there’s something not quite right.”

The stairs turned back on themselves and he carried on up to the small landing.  “Which century?”

“Beginning of the nineteenth.  But like I said….”

//What’s wrong?//

She smiled slightly at the question in her mind, stopping close to him on the landing.

She glanced at the stairs continuing upwards to their right and the two doors leading off, one in front of them and one to their left.

//This place doesn’t exist.//


“I wish you’d both stop doing that.” 

Silver’s complaint met them as he stopped halfway up the stairs.  If they wanted him to hear them they could speak to him, in voice and in mind.  But they were keeping to themselves, closer than he’d known them to.  Closer than on previous occasions when he’d worked with them.

He wondered to himself; was this jealousy?

Steel smiled down at him diffidently.  “Sorry.”  He reached for the knob of the door in front of them and pushed it open, stepping inside.

Sapphire followed and a moment later Silver heard her intake of breath.  He took the rest of the stairs two at a time and stopped to peer over her shoulder.

“What?”  All he saw was a room. 

Two chairs were facing one another over a small, round table in front of a burning log fire.  In one corner a workbench, chemicals, Bunsen burners, test tubes.  Against the bench, a violin case.  On the mantelpiece letters, papers, matches.  In another corner, loaded bookshelves.  And in the third, a table set for two.

The décor fitted with what they’d seen so far. 

Nothing overtly shocking, Silver thought to himself. 

But Sapphire obviously had a different point of view.


//What is it?//

//Steel… they’re trapped….//

//Who are?//

//I don’t know… two of them… two men.  They were here…//

//Where are they now?//

//I don’t know….//

Silver stepped back, lifting his hand.  “Sapphire?”

Steel’s reach was lightening fast.  He snagged Silver’s wrist, catching it before he could touch her.  “No.”

Unaware of the aborted unconscious attack on her mind, she continued.  //They’re in pain, Steel.//

//What kind of pain?//

//I don’t know.// 

Blinking, she turned her head, stared at him.  “They’re not real.”

As if bewildered by her words, he stepped passed her, back out onto the landing, belatedly letting go of Silver’s wrist before he went.


The second man rubbed his flesh with his good hand; Steel’s grip had been like a vice. 

“Thank you,” he muttered, watching the silent communication between his companions. 

They weren’t actually talking at that moment, when they did he could feel it – a buzzing in the air, like static – but they were still speaking in a language all their own.

He envied that; envied them both the partner and if not friend then at least comrade they’d found in each other.


Moving, Steel reached for the knob of the second door. 

As his fingers touched the cold metal he froze.

The whispers he heard were not Sapphire or Silver.  They were coming from a distance but he couldn’t pinpoint the origin. 

There was something wrong.

Were they actually only in his imagination?

He spun, glancing quickly from her to him.  They hadn’t heard anything, he could tell that simply by looking at them.  But he asked anyway.

“Did you hear that?”

Sapphire automatically assumed he was talking to her.  So did Silver.

//Hear what?//  This time she broadcast the question for both men to hear.

//Whispers.//

//What did they say?//

//…I don’t know.//  Aware he was being as helpful as he’d considered Sapphire to be only moments ago, he tried harder.  “Male voices.  Only… I might have imagined them.”

“What makes you think that?”

He hesitated.  “The sound… felt wrong.”  Glancing at her apologetically, or what he hoped was apologetically, he beckoned her to his side with his eyes alone and indicated the doorknob. 

Reaching for it once again he touched it as her fingers stroked over his own, resting between them on the metal. 

But this time there was nothing.  Silence.

“Just a doorknob,” she told him with a quick smile.

“You don’t believe me.”  His tone took them all by surprise.  “Sorry.”  Turning from her, he pushed open the door and looked inside.

It was a bedroom, about half the size of the living room.  The décor was simple, definitely in keeping with the rest of the house.  A metal bed frame with a narrow mattress and one pillow stood along the wall to his left, taking up the majority of space in the room. 

Opposite, a narrow dresser with a mirror and some personal effects – comb, pill box, oddly some sort of slipper next to which lay a syringe.

A small fireplace next to the dresser was unlit.  A window looked out but it was too dark to see what was beyond.  A second door to his right seemed that it would open out into the living area.

Nervous, but unsure why, Steel stepped across the threshold.


The voices were no longer whispers, they were screams.  His hands flew to cover his ears but it didn’t help – the sounds were inside his head, not outside.

With a cry of his own he bent double, his mind on fire.

He knew nothing of the swift rescue until he was out on the landing again, shaking and panting, his hands being drawn down from his head gently while concerned blue eyes questioned him.

“Steel?”

He looked at her, thankful beyond belief.  But for a moment he couldn’t speak.

//Steel?//

He yelled out as the white-hot fire drove through his tender mind.

“Don’t,” he ground out through gritted teeth, “please.”

“I’m sorry,” she released one wrist and stroked the hair at his temple softly.  “I’m sorry.  Come and sit down.”

Carefully she led his still-trembling form through into the living room and sat him in one of the chairs by the fire.  Crouching in front of him, aware of Silver looking on from the doorway, she rested her hands on his knees and watched as he closed his eyes and leaned forward, head in his palms.

“What happened?”

He took a deep breath.  “I don’t know.  I could feel them screaming, as if they were in that room but not.  Something… linked me to them.”

“Who are they?”  She parroted his question from before.

He lifted his head and looked around gingerly.  “They lived here.”

“And now?”

“Now… a part of them is still here but they’re not.”

“Where are they?”

He glanced at her.  “They’re nowhere.  They don’t exist.”


Silver turned from the two operators in the living room and started up the second flight of stairs. 

Just one set this time.  The landing was just as small, and once again there were two doors off it, one in front of him and one along the landing to his right.

The one in front was a bathroom.  Toilet, sink and a harsh metal tub.  He remembered reading somewhere about outside privies and wondered if an inside toilet was in keeping with the times.

Still pondering, he walked along the bare floorboards to the second door and pushed it open. 

A second bedroom, much like the first except for something odd.  Books – or rather, what looked to be hand-written journals - covered much of the bed and dresser, all of them open.

Cautiously stepping inside, he reached for the closest one and picked it up. 

As his fingers gripped the paper, it crumbled through them, turning to dust before his very eyes, scattering on the air.

“How very odd….”

Fascinated, he touched the end of the bed, wrapping long fingers around the metal frame.  It was cold and remained in tact.  It was real.

Meaning… the books weren’t?

Crouching down next to the bed he read what was on an open page of one of the journals, being careful not to touch.


‘A difficult case to be sure.  And a painful one in many ways.  Now we are home we will do as we desire.

So much happens that isn’t recorded in the official versions I write.  As I’ve written so many times before, and will no doubt write again, we would be destroyed – both of us – if it was ever discovered what we were doing behind these doors.  The law is brutal.

He has no time for the police, of course.  But the thought of gaol frightens even him as it terrifies me.  No one will ever find out, this we have sworn.  We will take our secrets to the grave.’


Frowning, Silver rose to his feet and stepped out of the room, heading back downstairs. 


In the living room, Sapphire was sitting in the second chair.  She was watching her companion intensely and for a moment Silver wasn’t sure whether they were talking or not. 

He made his mind up no, they were just sitting.

Steel still cradled his head in his hands and Silver found a slither of sympathy for him. 

“Are you all right?” he asked as quietly as he could.

Sitting up slowly, Steel looked directly at him.  “Yes, I think so.”

Silver wasn’t immediately convinced.  The other man was unusually pale, and tremors were still obviously working through his slight frame.

Ignoring the fission of worry in his mind, he asked, “What were you told?”

It was Sapphire who answered.  “About what was happening here?”

“Yes.”

“Just that there was a hole in time and we were needed to fill it.  I assume that’s why you’re here.”

He nodded vaguely.  “Right.”

“Silver?  That is why you’re here, isn’t it?”

He nodded again.  “Yes, oh yes.”  He paused.  “Would you mind… coming with me.  For a minute or two?  I have something to show you.”

Sapphire reached out, touched Steel’s hands where he’d clasped them in his lap.

“Stay here.”

She followed Silver up the stairs and he led her into the second bedroom, indicating the journals and telling her what had happened when he’d tried to pick one up.

He knew she would do the same.  And it had the same result.  Another sprinkling of dust on the floor of the room, on the bare boards and the old rug.

Moving forward, she peered at one of the journals that lay open on the dresser.  “What do they say?”

“It appears to make up a diary, I think.  The one I read seemed to speak of a crime that the writer and another were committing or had committed and were pledging to keep a secret between them.”

Sapphire read the closest page.


‘He’s a fascinating man.  Full of insight yet ill equipped to deal with the very society he so loves to reduce to deduction and observance.

I wonder now if anyone other than myself would stand to live with him, for his habits are unusual and his work brings him in at all hours of the night.

His playing aside (although with practise I can tell that he might be quite good) I enjoy his company and am satisfied with the turns my life has taken.’


She went to turn the page and it turned to ashes in her fingers.  Silver raised his eyebrows at her bright, broadcast expletive but said nothing.

Moving her hands behind her back, she tilted her head to read another page in another book.


‘I was wrong about him in so many ways, and yet right in a few scant, important details. 

His playing just needs an audience as I found to my pleasure this evening.  The terrible aching in my head had not cleared since lunchtime and so when he started to make sounds similar to a cat in significant pain, I was forced to make my way downstairs to request silence.

The moment I opened the door, his style changed completely.  He began a quiet Mozart piece, one which far from scraping my nerves soothed them.  I sat and rested while he played to me, lulling me with each new piece of music.

When I woke, he was sitting across from me sipping from a glass of wine having eaten supper!  I’d slept through the whole affair!

Of course I apologised, but he would hear nothing of it.’


“Why do they turn to dust?” Silver pondered aloud, breaking the spell of the journal pages were weaving with their story.

“They’re not meant to be here,” Sapphire guessed.  “When we touch them we break whatever time bubble is keeping them here.”

“So they belong here in space but not in time?”

“I don’t know.  I’m speculating, that’s all.”


“What have you found that’s so interesting?”

Sapphire and Silver turned to see Steel standing at the top of the stairs.  He looked drained from the mere act of climbing them as he leaned heavily on the wooden banister.

“Journals,” Sapphire told him with a smile.  “Only they don’t seem to belong.  Whenever we touch them, they become dust.”

Recovered, Steel took two long strides across the landing.  “Are any of them open?  Can you read….” 

His words became a scream as he stepped inside the room.


~ ~ ~

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