Unfortunately, Isaiah didn’t have a camera with him during his next visit to the Archive, so the memory of the gobsmacked face Melvina made when he returned and handed her the signed authorization he obtained from Colin Sarratt would have to do. She clearly wasn’t expecting it, and she tried to weasel her way out by questioning the authenticity of the document, but she dropped that thought like a hot potato when Isaiah politely suggested to call Sarratt from her phone and have him sort out the situation. It took some effort, but he was now in. Troves of information were now at his fingertips in countless folders, binders, catalogues and microfilms – all he had to do was wade through them to find something useful.

And yet, the first thing that he wanted to inspect was something entirely unrelated to his case.

The Archive had, among other things, a full record of “The Courier”, Strona’s daily newspaper, available on microfilm. Isaiah scrolled through countless back issues of the publication to reach a very specific date, one he couldn’t forget even if he wanted to.

And there it was, right on the front page, in grim all-caps lettering. “Capital hero survives possession by monster murderer.” Underneath it, side by side and a little too close to each other for comfort, were two photos: one of Isaiah, and the other of an eerily calm Ambrose Annable.

The article itself could’ve done with improvements to say the least. For one, the journalist claimed that Isaiah “captured” Annable, which was stretching the truth. It was a team effort; Isaiah’s abilities were instrumental in bringing the culprit down, but he didn’t “capture” him any more or less than any of the other dedicated officers working tirelessly on the case. He also didn’t feel comfortable being hailed as a “hero” just for surviving something. In his mind he was simply lucky – that’s all there was to it.

The article did get something right though: one could scarcely find a better word to describe Ambrose Annable than “monster”. He was a counsellor who took advantage of the deep trust his clients placed in him to take them to secluded areas where, he promised, the fresh air and natural landscapes would do wonders for their mental health. There he would subdue and strangle them, taking particular care to be facing his victim, just so he could see their shock and helplessness as someone they relied on for help extinguished the life within them. He was driven purely by a twisted sense of accomplishment, each victim just another number he added to the score he was keeping. Once he was found out, getting a confession out of him was remarkably easy: he recounted his murders with the giddy glee of someone listing personal achievements they were most proud of. For 11 counts of murder, he was sentenced to death and executed swiftly.

However, the spiritual experts assumed correctly that such a strong drive would not go gentle into the good night after his death. Sure enough, investigators tasked with keeping tabs on him detected a strong malevolent presence soon after his execution. The spirit of Ambrose Annable was skulking around the streets, searching for someone to possess so he could continue his mission. An emergency detainment operation was organized, and this is how Isaiah found himself in that gloomy alley a little over a year ago.

Isaiah honestly believed that he was incapable of true hatred, but Ambrose Annable made him question that belief. Isaiah had every reason to despise him for taking residence in his body and turning his life upside down. But it went deeper than that. Annable was a man in a unique position to truly make a difference in people’s lives and have a positive impact on the world, but he used this position to do the exact opposite. Isaiah found that unforgivable. Just seeing that man’s photograph nestled so closely to his own unsettled him to his core, because Annable stood against everything Isaiah held dear. To have memories of innocent young lives ruthlessly stamped out before their time forcibly implanted into his dreams was a punishment for Isaiah, one he would have to endure to his dying day.

Nevertheless, he didn’t come to the Archive to dissect the feelings he harbored towards the parasite in his head. It was time to get to work.

Over the weeks that followed, Isaiah made several visits to the public records department, patiently searching through anything he felt could be relevant to his investigation. In a way, it was like looking for a needle in a haystack, but small puzzle pieces would pop up ever so often, making the search worth it. He’d managed to find Harlan Douglas in the wedding registries, confirming that Bubba was correct when he said that his wife’s name was Queenie. A quick search through the phonebooks brought up a Queenie Douglas in Strona, and Isaiah wrote down the phone number. He had also found Harlan’s obituaries in the “The Courier”, which helped him uncover the news story reporting on his suicide. The small block of text wasn’t particularly helpful – Isaiah was aware that his best bet was calling Douglas’ widow to see if she would be willing to meet him.

With Ezra Rowse, he knew to look further back to when Bubba and his class were still teenagers. Eventually, he’d found the newspaper article about the boy gone missing, this time taking up half a page. The very first sentence described Ezra as “son of Elmer Rowse”, tipping Isaiah off that his father might’ve been someone important. And he was – Elmer was a war veteran who held an important position in the city council and whose whole family had been actively involved with running Strona for generations. The article seemed to revel in the implication that Ezra had fled his home due to abuse: his father, it appeared, was not a model parent. The phonebook listed a Celia Rowse, and a painstaking trudge through birth records revealed her to be the daughter of Elmer and Davina Rowse – in other words, Ezra’s sister. She was also someone to seek out and ask for an interview.

The difficult part, then, was finding anything on Milo Bax. Patient digging unearthed his birth record and confirmed he was a student at Gresham Barlow Academy, but true to Bubba’s words he seemed to vanish without a trace after high school. There was no Milo Bax in the phone books, marriage or death records. Isaiah did have a few ideas how this could be possible, but they would be difficult to pursue without more concrete information. Apparently, the last name wasn’t common: the phonebook listed only two Baxes, an Ivor and a Milton. Some cross-referencing with birth records showed that Ivor was Milo’s brother, and Milton was Ivor’s son and Milo’s nephew. Isaiah was reasonably certain that the man who stamped his permission at the police HQ was Milton Bax, which made it all the more frustrating that he wasn’t cooperative. Nevertheless, both numbers were added to the list.

In between these valuable nuggets of information, however, were excruciatingly long periods spent seeking them out. There were days when Isaiah would go down a particularly deep rabbit hole without finding anything at all – hours spent scrolling down old microfilms of the daily paper or searching through birth records to no avail. The stuff he managed to find filled up maybe three-quarters of a page in his notebook, yet it took around a month to obtain. Some would call it tedious, but Isaiah genuinely enjoyed it. Wading through troves of data to uncover tiny pieces of raw knowledge gave him a genuine sense of accomplishment and gratification. In some alternate reality, he probably would’ve been a first-class scientist.

Being on the hunt for information meant reorganizing his life around a monotonous schedule. Isaiah’s days during that month were more-or-less the same: waking up in the morning, having breakfast, going to the Archives to get work done and then, depending on the day, going to therapy or taking some time to unwind. Luckily for Isaiah, he had the best ally he could ask for in his husband. Nigel cooked dinner and gave backrubs and assured Isaiah that he was supporting him every step of the way, even on frustrating days when no new info appeared. Nigel was Isaiah’s rock, instrumental in keeping him healthy and content on his journey to solve his last case.

Those four weeks of information gathering would have been an entirely mundane experience were it not for one thing. At one point, Isaiah realized something rather unusual.

He was being followed.