One hears... things, when one is in Doctor Unthank's business. Of course, he works primarily in the service of those who are willing to pay, but he's a curious man, and it's always worth looking into the mysterious and the unknown. Lost secrets are his favourite kind. One never knows when they might come in handy.
So certain things have passed into his awareness over the years; a film called The Navidson Record, a house: 1 Ash Tree Lane, a manuscript, a young man with the rather telling name of Johnny Truant. And so, having recently completed with great satisfaction his task for Sir Roger Widdowson, and with nothing else pressing, he goes looking.
Walking in dreams is a less precise art than time-travelling in the corporeal world, but he is unsurprised to find himself in a house. Not the house, but a house. And a most peculiar one, at that. It's not hard to discern the pattern, and if he is unsurprised by the grasping shadows that swim from the corners of every other room, uncoiling and swamping and insinuating, that does not mean he's unafraid of them. Nothing in dreams can harm him, he knows that well enough, but there are... things waiting after death for a man like himself. He is in no hurry to meet them.
But something is here, he can tell that much; some answer, a signpost to point the way to the next best path; he only need try enough rooms. And so imagine his delight when he opens the door from a pleasant, warmly-panelled study and walks through to find himself in a room papered, littered, with the pages of a book, and a young man howling like a Bedlam inmate and bloodying his fingers on the walls.
The door shuts behind him suddenly, sucked closed with a vacuum draught of air, and Doctor Unthank lets out a pleased little breath. 'Ah.'
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So certain things have passed into his awareness over the years; a film called The Navidson Record, a house: 1 Ash Tree Lane, a manuscript, a young man with the rather telling name of Johnny Truant. And so, having recently completed with great satisfaction his task for Sir Roger Widdowson, and with nothing else pressing, he goes looking.
Walking in dreams is a less precise art than time-travelling in the corporeal world, but he is unsurprised to find himself in a house. Not the house, but a house. And a most peculiar one, at that. It's not hard to discern the pattern, and if he is unsurprised by the grasping shadows that swim from the corners of every other room, uncoiling and swamping and insinuating, that does not mean he's unafraid of them. Nothing in dreams can harm him, he knows that well enough, but there are... things waiting after death for a man like himself. He is in no hurry to meet them.
But something is here, he can tell that much; some answer, a signpost to point the way to the next best path; he only need try enough rooms. And so imagine his delight when he opens the door from a pleasant, warmly-panelled study and walks through to find himself in a room papered, littered, with the pages of a book, and a young man howling like a Bedlam inmate and bloodying his fingers on the walls.
The door shuts behind him suddenly, sucked closed with a vacuum draught of air, and Doctor Unthank lets out a pleased little breath. 'Ah.'