Part 2 || A Girl's House

[. . .] They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night. In their gray visions they obtain glimpses of eternity, and thrill, in awakening, to find that they have been upon the verge of the great secret. In snatches, they learn something of the wisdom which is of good, and more of the mere knowledge which is of evil. They penetrate, however, rudderless or compassless into the vast ocean of the “light ineffable,” and again, like the adventures of the Nubian geographer, “agressi sunt mare tenebrarum, quid in eo esset exploraturi” [they went to the sea of ​​darkness, to find out what was in it].

—Edgar Allan Poe,

“Eleonora”

Part 2 || 1 | Emma

A Tale of Two Customers II

Although Muse Bureau Chief Taiso Takagi was accustomed to walking everywhere he went, he knew his presence amongst the daytime staff and customers and especially the kids would cause a scene. So as soon as he appeared atop the roof of The Cake Fairy on his enormous eight-pointed seal of daffodils, he shrunk to his smaller fist-sized form in a sack suit, a trilby atop his head, and a big handlebar mustache hanging from his face down to the middle of his waistcoat. He listened to the hubbub of voices from the customers sitting on the curb beneath the shop’s awning, of waiters and waitresses taking orders, of children complaining to their parents about how hungry they were, of their parents telling them to be patient, and decided it was safe to proceed.

He took out the preliminary witness statements from his bag and read through them, one by one, reading them over and over, till he knew the details almost by heart, which took him the better part of the morning. Except for Jane’s report, the rest focused on the nine-tailed fox woman, but they all followed the same pattern of events. A few of the witnesses noted a young girl making a scene during their shifts, crying and eating the cakes and drinks she had ordered. The overall consensus they shared was that this girl was having boyfriend trouble, till their observations dovetailed towards the nine-tailed fox woman appearing by the girl’s table. Only Jane’s report went into further detail about the lone customer during her shift, in which she had asked the girl if she was okay, before the fox woman scared her off.

By 11:00 a.m., after memorizing the statements, Taiso walked to the center of the rooftop and stomped his foot three times, analogous to knocking on a door three times in the absence of a door, and said, “I’m here.”

And a moment later, several ghosts of waitresses and a few trap yokai waiters all manifested around him in their maid uniforms, shimmering in the morning light of day. Several of them even gawked at his diminutive and mustachioed form, stars and hearts in their eyes, which made Taiso think that they wanted to tug at his handlebar mustache. In fact, one of the spectral waitresses had the audacity to say, “Can we tug at your cute mustache?”

“I’m not here to have my mustache tugged,” Taiso said, “or my head patted, or my belly rubbed.”

All the female ghosts and yokai traps sighed.

“Now to business,” Taiso said. “I’ve read your witness statements, so I’m here to follow up on them. Besides the nine-tailed fox woman, what about this other customer?”

“That’s the weird part,” the waitress said, the one that had asked to pull his mustache.

“And who are you, miss?” Taiso said.

“I’m Jane,” she said. “Anyway, the girl was crying, so I thought she’d been stood up by her boyfriend.”

“Duly noted,” he said. “What else?”

“You mean,” Janet said, “about the fox woman?”

“Not the fox woman,” Taiso said. “What else can you tell me about the customer the fox woman was with?”

“Well,” Jane said, “she ordered cheesecake and ginger tea for herself, then ordered a chocolate cake and a cherry soda for her boyfriend.”

“What makes you think that she was waiting for her boyfriend?” he said. “Could she not have been waiting for her girlfriend for a girls’ night out?”

“Well, yes,” Jane said, “but she wouldn’t have cried so much, poor thing. She was heartbroken.”

“I see,” Taiso said, wondering if Judy Windermere was having boyfriend trouble, but he needed more information before determining that such was the case. If her date was a no-show, there was no way of knowing for certain if Judy was having boyfriend trouble, or girlfriend trouble, or was just sulking over something else entirely. “Say,” he added, “did you catch the customer’s name?”

“No, I didn’t,” Jane said.

So Taiso turned to the rest of the witnesses and said, “Then can any of you give me a description of her?”

“The customer?” Jane said.

“Yes,” he said.

All the witnesses said the customer had brown hair that ended just above her shoulders and wore glasses, but Jane went into more detail. She had observed that the customer was dressed in a short-sleeved hooded blouse, a buttoned undershirt, a pleated skirt, socks, and shoe-laced sneakers.

Their observations fit Judy’s description, so Taiso said to Jane, “When you waited on her table, did the customer give off any indication that she was dreaming?”

Jane paused, then said, “Only at the end when she disappeared from the table.”

Taiso noted it, making sure to mention this to the Muse Inspector ASAP, then turned his inquiry to the fox woman and said, “You all gave a detailed description of the fox woman, both in The Cake Fairy and in the street. After apologizing for the scene, in which direction did she go?”

So all the waitresses and trap waiters stalked off towards the ledge of the roof and pointed over the awning down at the cobblestone street, due west, and Jane said, “The fox woman went along that street when she left.”

“That’s it for now,” Taiso Takagi said, taking out several calling cards and handing them out to the witnesses. “If there’s anything else, feel free to call my number.”

All of them said that they would. Then, as the spectral witnesses dispersed from the roof, he summoned his eight-pointed seal of daffodils below his feet, teleported from the rooftop to the back alley behind the cake shop, and summoned a two-pointed seal of daffodils beside him.

From that summoning seal appeared three oversized black dogs, all of them barking and prancing as if they wanted to play with him. Taiso Takagi, still in his fist-sized form, asked them to sit on their haunches and listen to him, which they did.

“All right, boys,” he said. “There’s a fox lady I want you to sniff out,” and he walked towards the entrance of the alley opening into a side lane that intersected the cobblestone street next to the cake shop’s entrance, manifested a plastic baggie containing strands of Emma Vasari’s fur that he had combed off of her at his house in the Nine Shards before she left his residence for God-knows-where, letting the dogs sniff it, and pointed down the lane towards the cobblestone street. “Your target went that way. Follow her scent and sit down when the scent disappears. Is that clear?”

All three dogs barked.

“Off you go then,” Taiso said.

And the trio of black ghost dogs took off down the lane, sniffed around the cobblestone street, and took off down the street, barking and running.

After that, Taiso went back inside the alleyway, out of sight of potential passers-by, manifested a rotary phone, took the handle off the cradle, dialed Nathaniel’s office, and waited for him to pick up. When the voice on the other end of the line identified himself as the Muse Inspector, Taiso said, “This is the Chief. I’ve just talked with the witnesses at The Cake Fairy, and it’s a can of worms!”

“Do you think it’s Emma?” Nathaniel said.

“It looks like it,” Taiso said.

“In connection with Judy’s case?” Nathaniel said.

“I’m not sure yet,” Taiso said, “but one of the witnesses I talked to thought the customer she waited on was dreaming after she saw her disappear upon noticing the fox woman at her table. Now I’m not sure if this customer was Judy, because the witness didn’t get the customer's name. So to make sure, I’ve let my dogs track the fox woman’s scent in the street where the witnesses said they saw her leaving.”

There came a pause at the other end of the line, till he said, “Should I tell Momo and the others?”

“Not yet,” Taiso said. “Once I’ve got proof of Emma’s involvement, I’ll inform them myself. Till then, don’t leak a word of this to them, got it?”

“Yes, sir,” he said, yet he didn’t hang up.

“What is it, Inspector?” Taiso said, feeling something uncanny in the silence of his colleague.

“Chief, listen to this,” Nathaniel said. “Momo and the others informed me that they investigated Judy’s house and school before you called me. In Judy’s house, they found three volumes on the floor in the family room, one from Sax Rohmer, one from Bram Stoker, and one from H. P. Lovecraft, all of them open to passages with eyes as the main motif. Then they checked the back patio and saw eyes there, so it looks like there are some synchronicities going on at the house.”

Taiso paused, thinking of Jane’s witness statement describing the fox woman scaring her from the customer’s table with her glaring red eyes, and said, “That’s interesting. What did they find out in Judy’s school?”

“That’s the weird part,” Nathaniel said. “They’ve met and deputized a site-bound spirit there, who said he’d heard rumors from the students about fox eyes.”

“Fox eyes?” Taiso said.

“Yeah,” Nathaniel said. “If there’s a connection to all this eye-stuff in three separate locations, then Judy is that connection.”

“I see,” Taiso said. “In any case, I’ll know for sure when the dogs finish tracking the fox woman’s scent.”

“All right,” Nathaniel said, “then keep me informed of any further developments.”

“Will do,” Taiso said, hung up the handle back on its cradle, and dissipated the rotary phone.

Then Taiso took out a magic map of the area, angled it in the light of the sun shining overhead into the alley, and saw three blue dots moving along the cobblestone street, then turning left down a side lane, then heading through an alleyway between a grocery store and a row of eateries . . .

A Tale of a Wayward Fox I

The events that hitherto followed were trivial compared to the development that Muse Bureau Chief Taiso Takagi was to observe in the movements of his three familiars on the map. Standing by the back door of The Cake Fairy, Taiso followed the trio of blue dots that were his black dogs on the map as they stopped and sniffed and ran down various streets and turned at various corners, repeating these motions over and over. Then, after a while, he noticed his dogs making a bee-line down a street across several residential blocks, before they stopped at a cul-de-sac, sniffing the air, then headed towards one of the houses at the cul-de-sac entrance and paused there, sniffing at the air again and barking into his mind.

“Good boys, good boys!” Taiso said in his mind. “Now sit! Sit, boys! Sit!”

Then three daffodils appeared on the map, accompanied with echoes of another dog barking through his mind, making his three black dogs bark in reply.

So he picked up the map, closed in on the details of the house, and saw that it was Judy’s house, which he had designated as a potential disaster area last week. He had not worded it that way in his letter to Judge Pan of the Court of the Nine Shards, so as not to cause a panic in the Muse Bureau, but he worded it so that the old geezer would issue him a roving commission on the whereabouts of the missing Emma Vssari in connection with the odd disappearances of Judy Windermere. With this in mind, he summoned another eight-pointed seal of daffodils below his feet, teleporting himself from the alley behind The Cake Fairy—

And found himself by his three faithful dogs, all of them sitting by three glowing daffodils on the sidewalk by Judy’s house. The moment he appeared, his dogs began barking and prancing around him, accompanied by a black dachshund barking from its kennel in the front yard of the house next door, running to the edge of the lawn, till the chain on its collar kept it from going further. So Taiso’s three black dogs approached the dachshund, barking at it, and the dachshund barked back.

Seeing this, Taiso put the map back inside his bag, took out the doggy treats, four cold-cut slices of ham, and threw three of them at his dogs, which snatched them up from the air amidst their prancing and tail-wagging glee.

“Good boys, good boys!” Taiso said. “Yes, you are!”

His dogs gave him appreciative barks as they ate the last of their meaty snacks. With that, Taiso threw the fourth cold-cut slice at the dachshund at the edge of the yard, who snatched it up in its small maws and gorged itself on a free snack from a friendly stranger.

“You like it, eh, boy?” Taiso said.

The dachshund barked, wagging its small tail and chewing its snack before swallowing it in one big gulp. With that, the fist-sized Taiso Takagi walked up to his three black dogs and the dachshund and scratched their necks behind their ears.

“Good boys, good boys!” he said.

The four dogs barked.

“Now keep a lookout for me,” he said, “while I go check something out at that house,” and he pointed towards Judy’s house right next door.

The four dogs barked again.

“Good,” he said. “I’ll be back soon.”

And the dogs barked again, their tails wagging.

Taiso then headed across the driveway, up the entrance path, and towards the front door, still left ajar.

“Anybody home?” Taiso said.

But nobody responded from inside.

So he invited himself in, passing the threshold into the foyer, then thought better of it. Even though the house seemed empty and the door was open, he didn’t want to go through with the hassle of going back to the Court of the Nine Shards to ask Judge Pan for a search warrant of Judy’s house. So he exited the front door and thought back to his phone conversation with Nathaniel, who mentioned that Momo’s team had been to this house before his arrival. Then he remembered Nathaniel say that they had seen eyes in the back patio, so he threw another eight-pointed seal of daffodils below his feet—

And teleported to the covered back patio, where he found a side table in between a pair of plastic Adirondack chairs sitting against the patio’s back wall. Even in the shade of the patio, the air felt hot and humid, making the fist-sized Taiso perspire beneath the waistcoat of his sack suit. So he wiped his sleeve across the perspiration on his head, approached the chairs and the side table, and touched them with his hand, closing his eyes and waiting for an image of eyes to enter his mind. But when nothing happened, he touched the walls and closed his eyes: nothing. Then he touched the pillars of the patio and closed his eyes: nothing. And then he touched the windowed patio entrance into the family room and closed his eyes . . .

And saw a pair of red fox eyes.

His breath caught in his throat, and Taiso pulled away, whispering a name under her breath:

“Emma . . .”

Moments passed as he digested the insight through his mind, then manifested his rotary phone and thought of dialing Momo’s smartphone number, but thought better of it. He still didn’t know what had happened to Emma Vasari, only that she was stalking Judy Windermere in her dreams, so he dialed the Muse Inspector Nathaniel Coleman’s office and waited for him to pick it up on the other end of the line.

After the first ring, Nathaniel’s voice said, “This is the Muse Inspector’s office.”

“I’ve confirmed it, Nathaniel,” Taiso said.

“Emma’s involved?” he said.

“In the Judy Windermere case, yes,” Taiso said. “My dogs tracked Emma’s scent to Judy’s house, and after talking with the witnesses in The Cake Fairy, I know Emma’s been following Judy’s whereabouts in her dreams.”

“How long has Emma been stalking Judy’s dreams?”

“I don’t know yet,” Taiso said, “nor do I know why, for that matter. All I know at this point is that Judy has attracted the attention of a potential dream eater.”

“Are you gonna contact Momo?”

“Not yet, Muse Inspector,” Taiso said, “not till I find out what’s happened to Emma. Till I find out what’s happened, just tell the girls they’re dealing with a dream eater.”

“That’s it?” Nathaniel said.

“That’s it,” Taiso said, then hung up the handset on its cradle, dissipated the phone away, threw another eight-pointed seal below his feet—

And teleported back to his dogs, still waiting and barking with the dachshund.

“Okay, boys,” Taiso said, “time to go.”

The black dachshund whimpered, bowing its head low to the ground, its tail no longer wagging.

So Taiso approached it, patted its head with his hand, and said, “Don’t be too sad, old boy. You’ll see me and my dogs around some other time. Just not now.”

The dachshund barked.

“Good boy,” Taiso said and patted his head again, then to his three black dogs: “Okay, time to go, boys,” and he summoned three two-pointed seals of daffodils below his three dogs and teleported them back to his house in the Nine Shards. After that, he doffed his hat at the lonely dachshund, still with its head lowered onto the grassy lawn, summoned another eight-pointed seal of daffodils below his feet, and teleported himself away from Judy’s neighborhood.

TBC