The night was heavy, damp with the moisture of fear, when Edgar left the house accompanied by David. The dark road was silent except for the sound of the engine choking between moments of stillness. Neither spoke much, as if words had lost their meaning after what they had witnessed in the grandfather's house. Edgar was distracted, as if his mind hadn't left that white room yet, as if his soul was still standing there before that thing, looking into a something he didn't yet understand whether it reflected his past or his future.
He kept staring out the window into nothingness until he felt something move under his sleeve. A quick glance... and he trembled. A small card had slipped onto his wrist from nowhere, bearing a new address written in elegant script. The address for the next mission. He said nothing, tried to hide it from David.
He said suddenly, in a calm tone hiding obvious tension:
"David... can we postpone the investigation until another day? I have something urgent tonight."
David turned to him surprised, and said after a short silence:
"Another side job, isn't it?"
Edgar smiled faintly:
"Yes, that's right... but it's just simple overnight guard duty. I'll earn some money, I promise, I won't be late."
David shook his head slowly, looked at him for a long moment, then said in a serious tone:
"But promise me, after that you'd work with me on that case.?"
Edgar placed his hand on his chest and said with a small smile hiding his unease:
"I promise."
And after a few minutes, the car stopped at the edge of the hill, where the night was darker, as if the stars refused to approach this place.
Edgar got out of the car,while David joked:
"That building you're guarding? Looks like you're the one who'll need guarding, damn, my friend, this place looks like it came out of adult nightmares."
Edgar smiled with feigned lightness, looking at the card then at the distant building that looked like a skeleton of a dead era, surrounded by bare trees arching around it like dead fingers pointing to the sky.
He said softly:
"It seems..., yes this is the right place."
David drove off, dust flying behind him. Edgar remained standing, looking at the dark building, the wind playing with his torn red coat. An inner feeling told him that what awaited him behind those walls wasn't ordinary work... but a new summons from fate.
He muttered:
"Well, let's do it."
He raised his wrist and said:
"Duncan, summoning."
Duncan appeared from a small watery vortex, hair wet, shouting in annoyance:
"Damn it, you pulled me from a hot bath! Didn't you see the companion notification before summoning? What if I was naked?"
Edgar replied dryly and calmly:
"That's not possible, Duncan... you're always naked."
Duncan frowned and said:
"True... but that doesn't justify pulling a donkey from a sacred steam session."
Then he turned towards the building, looked at it thoughtfully, and said:
"Is this the place we're cleaning?"
Edgar said, swallowing hard:
"It seems so."
Duncan replied thoughtfully:
"If the outside looks like this... I don't want to imagine the inside."
They advanced with hesitant steps, the crows above their heads screaming in a terrifying tone, as if singing the night of the tormented. As they approached the iron gate, they heard a hoarse voice piercing the silence:
"Stop! Don't come any closer, whoever you are!"
Duncan froze in place, hiding behind Edgar immediately.
An old man appeared,his shadow shrinking and elongating under the glare of the lantern shaking in his trembling hand as if the wind itself refused to touch him. His frame was bent unnaturally, as if his spine had solidified into a forward-curving posture. His skin was pale and translucent like the skin of a cave insect, showing blue, branching veins beneath. But the most horrifying thing was his eyes: completely white, without iris or pupil, resembling two pristine pieces of white marble, staring blindly yet with a terrifying awareness of everything.
The old man approached with stumbling, irregular steps, as if his joints were moving in opposite directions. His voice was like nails scratching on an old wooden board:
"Who are you?"
Edgar said:
"We are the Cleaners. We were summoned based on this address."
The old man nodded slowly, and Edgar and Duncan heard a faint cracking sound rising from his neck. He said in a hoarse voice interspersed with a whistling sound, as if air was leaking from punctured lungs:
"Yes... I'm the one who summoned you. Or so I think. I'm not sure of anything anymore. But I warn you... no one leaves here as they entered."
Edgar and Duncan exchanged anxious looks.
Edgar said:
"Why do you say that?"
The old man raised his head with painful slowness, and said in a voice closer to a whisper, emitting a smell of rot and damp earth:
"Because reality here is distorted. Everyone who entered this place disappeared. Before, there was... a woman living in that hill next to the building. She told me to guard it. I asked her why me, blind and helpless. She laughed with a voice that wasn't human—her height was inhuman, as if she was speaking to me from a rooftop but she was beside me—but my need for money made me overlook it.
The woman said:
" there are things in this world that shouldn't be seen, and the blind are more suitable than others to guard them because the blind knows his limit."
The old man continued, his voice faltering, while his long, delicate fingers spun hysterically around the handle of his cane:
"I used to receive my payment monthly in my small room. I always found the money on the table, carefully wrapped. One day, I couldn't bear the curiosity. I went up to her house... but the place was completely abandoned. I asked the police, they said this place had been abandoned for decades, and the hospital next to it was a maternity hospital.
But I'm sure I used to hear doctors'voices talking to me, children crying others laughing, mothers moaning. I heard them every day greeting me... From the day I told the police the sounds suddenly stopped for the last month. This month, many things happened; the sounds of children crying out as they came to play here and got lost. the police started investigating but they found nothing."
The old man was telling his story without stopping while Duncan and Edgar looked at each other in astonishment.
He fell silent for a moment, then raised his face to the empty sky with his stiff white eyes:
"I heard them for the last month every day. At first they were crying, after that repeating 'Mama, mama,' and finally singing... a song without words. Just sounds, as if the wind was mourning instead of them."
He moved closer to Edgar, the smell of damp soil and rotten flesh assaulting their noses, and said in a hoarse voice:
"Wait here, I'll show you something..."
He walked away with heavy, unbalanced steps, then began moving strangely—raising his cane, dancing with a distorted lightness, moving away toward the side of the building, swaying left and right, gradually disappearing into the darkness. But his shape was altering with each step, as if the shadow he cast no longer matched his body, becoming thinner and more elongated.
Edgar said anxiously:
"Sir, what are you doing?!"
But the man didn't answer, then... whooosh... he disappeared.
Edgar rushed after him, followed by a reluctant Duncan, until he suddenly stopped... and raised the lantern toward him.
The old man was hanging from a tree. It wasn't just his body; even his clothes had turned into rotten threads intertwined with the tree bark. His body had transformed into a brittle skeleton, white and eroded as if decades had passed over it in those few moments. Only his face—remained completely intact, even more vibrant, with his white oval eyes still wide open, but now emptied, transformed into two deep black pits emanating the smell of death. His mouth was torn into a wide smile carefully drawn with congealed blood, as if someone wanted him to laugh forever.
Edgar recoiled back toward the main door, and Duncan trembled, saying:
"What in the hell is this?!"
Edgar replied, panting:
"Aren't you the guide here? Shouldn't you understand this?"
Duncan replied with wide eyes:
"Indeed, but my friend, things here are beyond my control."
Edgar stepped back, clenched his fist, and said in a decisive tone despite the terror in his voice:
"Get ready... we're going in."
Duncan screamed:
"What?! Are you crazy? Don't you see what's happening?"
But Edgar advanced steadily toward the iron gate that slowly opened by itself, emitting a long creaking sound, as if laughing mockingly.
Edgar said in a low, trembling voice:
"I have to catch up with the team...."
He stepped inside the gate, and the darkness swallowed him as water swallows the drowning.
As for Duncan,he stood hesitating for a moment, then muttered as he followed him:
"I hate my job....."