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Oh, c-coffee? Ha, ha— thank you, but I’m… I think I’m fine for now. But— well, I do understand that you might need it yourself, though. So many testimonies to hear in such a short time, I— I admire your courage. I just hope you will believe us, because… well, j-just keep an open mind, alright? Your coffee will… probably help with that. At least I suppose it’s what allows you to keep your calm all the time, right?
Some things just have this ability to… let you forget all your worries. Tea is one example among many: it’s an absolute delight for anyone’s taste, it allows everyone to pause for any thoughts they wish to wonder about— Tea clears your mind, and always makes you feel all the more ready to face any difficulties you might encounter.
And then comes music. So light and heart-warming.
Music is timeless. Music lets you forget up to the mere existence of reality. It would let us forget up to the very reason why we are here.
… And the reasons why, perhaps, we shouldn’t have been here.
Ah, um, well— yes, sometimes I… do wonder what would have happened if we hadn’t been there. But though we went through many dangers and despite the fact that I would probably have preferred avoiding this— I actually am glad that we did. Under retrospect, things would have gone much worse if it weren’t for our journey back there.
Oh, um— yes, sorry, of course. You want me to actually explain it, right. From the very beginning? I… will do my best.
Everything began on the day we received this letter.
Luke warned us about a mystery revolving around Inglewood, a little Irish village not too far from Dublin, where he has been living with his parents for a little more than two months.
Some inhabitants from this village had started to disappear mysteriously a few days earlier. You would first think about a simple kidnapping case, but the other piece of the puzzle he gave us… made us realize that the truth was far more intricate.
Luke had joined to his letter some pictures showing very peculiar equine creatures who, according to his sayings, had started to appear in the nearby forest around the same period of time. Due to some of the inhabitants’ legends and folklore, these creatures were the first suspects for the disappearances and some organized monster hunts had begun; but this would only increase the risk of one of these men to disappear themselves. Besides, Luke firmly claimed that he was positive of these ponies’ absolute innocence: the professor and I trusted him, and as it turned out— they really didn’t have anything to do with the actual case, besides being victims themselves of the same phenomenon.
That being said— though we did prepare our departure as soon as we could, we did not leave immediately. Part of it was because the ferry would only leave a few days later of course, but… Something else happened as well in London, just the night before we left.
Ono-B2.2β
Covent Garden, London (England)
March 4th, 1964 — 09:42 PM
Janice Quatlane’s talent was just as impressive as the professor had told me. She had offered us to attend her concert a week earlier, so we could not just break our promise at the last moment; besides, I wouldn’t have missed a concert like this one for anything in the world! I have to admit— though I was already thinking about the case we had to solve, I was just happy and overjoyed over practically anything at this time. I was looking forward to finally reuniting with Luke, and I was also eager to solve puzzles with them like before. The professor had even promised that I would really accompany them and actively take part in the investigation, this time! I was… Why, yes, I was excited about this case. Ecstatic, even.
But this concert… should have been a first warning to me. I should have known that the case from three months ago was… not as singular as I wished.
There is so much we don’t know about this place.
There is so much we don’t understand.
When she was kidnapped under the entire audience’s presence, the panic that resulted was immediate. The professor ordered me to call the police, so I straightaway ran to the hall as fast as I could.
Back in the theatre, the commotion was suffocating. Some people claimed they had seen men in black outright abducting her, but this flash of light was so intense, it was hard to tell whether they really were wearing black, or even if they were there at all. Well, now we know for sure that there indeed were agents back there, but— we only learned about these facts on the next day.
On that night, I found the professor on the stage, intensely trying to make some sense out of this phenomenon; needless to say, all of his theories were deconstructed as soon as he was considering them. Even when the police arrived and the forensics ran tests on the scene, not a single hint could be found. No trapdoors. No traces of flare bombs. A perfect alibi for the technical crew responsible for the spotlights. Out of the two puzzles we had to solve on that night, none met a conclusion.
Despite the long hours of investigation, neither the intense light nor the fact that they had disappeared from the entire audience’s field of vision within less than a mere second could be explained: the flash of light seemed to have simply come out of nowhere, but this was impossible; the potential abductors would have found some way to not only escape from the stage on their own, but to also supposedly drag along with them a resilient victim, all of this within less than a second, without making a sound. This, too, seemed impossible.
The opera’s exits had been secured all along, obviously, but despite the police’s intense searching, neither Janice nor any potential suspects could be found. It seemed impossible at the time, but they were long gone by then.
We simply had no idea how far from us they already were…
Many attempts to find a rational solution to this miracle followed, always getting more extravagant than the last. None of them ever found the slightest ounce of relevance. Even an elaborated and meticulously premeditated escape, using the multiple ropes, their respective counterbalances and the numerous beams hidden behind the stage’s curtains in order to escape through the ceiling, eventually proved to be impracticable. The inspector was tearing his hair out each time the professor was proving his theories wrong.
One single word repeatedly showed up in their debates. “Impossible.”
And even the professor’s look seemed to tell that it was impossible.
Maybe because it was the answer we would have preferred keeping in mind.
