Chapter Text
Let it be known that Leonard Gilbert–master of the mystic, reader of palms, expert of psychoanalysis, prodigy of numerology, virtuoso of reading tea leaves, ace at astrology, genius fortune teller–possesses many faults, but a death wish has never been among them. So, reflecting on the events that led up to his current predicament, he really couldn't blame himself for responding the way he had.
…
From a young age, Leonard had been the observant sort. He would pick up on patterns in the people around him–the way the store clerk always tapped his fingers to the beat of the newest theater show tunes while tallying up people's change; the lighter-shaped patch of dust missing on the bookshelf beside his ma's recliner, where she would read and smoke her pipe in the evenings after dinner; which moments to pretend to pay attention in class so that his teachers' eyes would glaze past him on their way around the room. He paid attention to detail, details that others overlooked.
When he was 6 or 7 years old, his ma took him to the carnival when it passed through their backwater town. In hindsight, the whole operation was falling apart at the seams. Even the blacktop they set their rickety attractions up on was cracked and teeming with weeds, and that abandoned lot wasn't the carnival's doing. Streamers and tent cloths full of patches and stains decorated the hollowed out remains of a shopping plaza lost to time, rendered obsolete by its distance from anyone that might've wanted to use it.
Leonard was entertained, as most children would be, by the fried treats dusted with a powdery sugar-snow and the rusted-through carnival rides. He excitedly dragged his ma from stall to stall by the hand, thrilled to death despite himself. Sure, the whole outfit was a little ratty, worn by the road and drenched in the smell of cheap liquor that the carnies made most of their money smuggling across the border into the States as they "toured." But, to Leonard, it was new. Wonderfully foreign, full of hints at a wider world he'd yet to explore.
He tossed rings at empty bottles, he tossed baseballs at empty bottles, he even used a "fishing rod" with a magnet instead of a hook to drag around the bottom of a barrel to catch… empty bottles.
The main attraction, though, was a tent that stood tall and proudly purple in the middle of the fairground. Significantly less sun-bleached and worn than the other wobbly booths and slapdash, slumping canopies, this tent showed promise. Worth the upkeep, he would later guess, because it was their biggest moneymaker. The sign above the tent flap shone in the dusky evening light, with a tail tangled cords that popped and sparked. Every flourish freshly painted, not a single bulb on the sign burnt out.
The Mystical Madame Leonida
Psychic ✨ Fortune Teller ✨ Medium✨ Palm Reader ✨ Astrologist
50¢ per Reading, Tips Appreciated
The madame herself was just as flamboyant as her tent. Her skirts, shawl and head wrap were artfully arranged in layers of bright red, purple, white and blue fabric of various patterns. Her long red hair's vibrant sheen masked the stiffness and frizz from a few days without a wash. When she beamed down at Leonard, her mouth stretched out like a newspaper cartoon, but the thick layer of foundation and rouge on her cheeks barely cracked despite a long day of wear.
Leonard begged his ma to let him get his fortune read.
After a full day of nickels and dimes changing hands for each booth's unwinnable mini games, the look his ma gave him said he'll be delivering papers, stocking convenience store shelves, shoveling snow off of driveways, and every other job he can get his hands on for the foreseeable future to make up for the day's expenses. That's fine by him, though.
He's paying for magic, real magic, and even his six-year-old sensibilities are worldly enough to know that real magic doesn't come cheap.
Inside the tent, Madame Leonida had created as much atmosphere as her budget would allow. Crates stacked along the back edge of the space were hidden away by rich velvet cloths, and the makeshift shadow boxes frame various occult paraphernalia: a polished crystal ball in one and a Ouija board with its planchette in another. A round table sat in the middle of the room, covered by a hand-embroidered cloth with sequin-and-bead and stars. Madame Leonida took her seat at the table and nodded at little Leonard to take the other. The fortune teller picked up her well-worn deck of cards and started to shuffle them while he scrambled to take his seat.
She had him shuffle the cards himself once she finished, and then select the three cards he felt most drawn to from the fanned out deck. His fortune started out generic, full of fishing statements and leading questions that he didn't think much of, until she made a mistake.
The first time Madame Leonida mentioned a brother, Leonard's brows scrunched up in confusion, but he was too surprised to shut her down. Was his ma gonna have another baby and didn't tell him? But then she keeps going. Madame Leonida reveals that there will be a war–a storm already brewing overseas, the kind of war that would reimagine the meaning of the word war–and this imaginary brother of his would be on the front lines.
Leonard feels his confusion melt into a mortified kind of anger. She wasn't really magic at all! She was just a hack! A fraud! A liar that's not even good enough at lying to fool a grade-school kid like him!
He, like any self-respecting scammed customer, furiously ripped her a new one. He kicked up such a fuss, crying and yelling and dragging the other fair-goers into it, that his ma got their 50¢ back with a sniveling half-apology from the carnie in charge.
He also got them banned from that particular carnival for life.
Nearly three decades later, Leonard looks back on Madame Leonida and her scam fortune-telling fondly. The whoopin' he got after the scene he caused doesn't sting half as bad in hindsight. If he ever ran into the old bag again, he might even buy her a drink.
He'd never admit it to anyone else–he's got a reputation to uphold after all, and a magician never reveals his secrets–but that fleeting encounter changed the trajectory of his life.
Despite his initial youthful outrage at being conned, little Leonard couldn't get the encounter out of his mind. He turned it over and over again, as autumn became winter became spring became summer. While he washed laundry, while he played kick the can at recess, while his bike tires dug a rut along his paper delivery route, Madame Leonida's exaggerated cadence and unflappable delivery haunted the corners of his mind.
The longer he ruminated, the more it appealed to him. If Madame Leonida got to spend her days traveling from place to place and lying to people for money–gullible people who would always come back for more, no matter how meaningless and inaccurate her "insight" was–good for her. If even the mind behind Sherlock Holmes could be convinced by two little girls from the British countryside that faeries were real, then finding enough suckers to sustain herself up and down the East Coast of the States was child's play. Leonard could easily imagine much worse futures.
After that fateful day, he found himself drawn to the ebb and flow of the popular occult and supernatural movements of his time. Not because he had any faith in what they were doing, no no, but because he wanted to learn the tricks of the trade. Leonard discovered he could eke out a good life for himself on the backs of desperate folks who wanted his reassurance. The more people he "helped," the more his "magical" accolades took on a life of their own. He carefully molded his persona to fit the market, with the hands of a child that always paid a bit more attention to detail than everyone else.
All that to say, by the time he met Arthur Lester, Leonard Gilbert was well versed in the art of chicanery. Hell, he'd consider himself a professional.
Therefore, in his professional opinion, whatever specter hangs over the head of Mr. Lester and lets him peek beyond the veil at the recently deceased is no trick. There's no sleight of hand, no faded newspaper tucked underneath the tablecloth, and even the best guesser would slip up every now and again. But no matter how far fetched his conclusions seem, the dead man's mouthpiece only ever speaks true.
After their collaboration on the "Stained Livery Case," Leonard finds himself with an unprecedented opportunity to bond with his colleague in mysticism–er, well, to explore said colleague's private domain unobserved. The pair have returned to Lester's PI office in Arkham, where he'd been keeping the case files during his investigation. Currently, Lester himself is down the hall, giving a wrap-up report to some police officer friend of his–Carlisle? Carpenter? Whatever. He's doing the detective portion of his magical detective act, and thus, left Leonard unsupervised.
He pulls out a stack of business cards, folding and unfolding the dog eared corner of the top one, picking it apart until it's in three or four tissue-thin layers that melt against the sweat on his fingers. He pokes around the office, looking for a decent spot to plant them. They can't be too hidden, lest the desperate folks in need of metaphysical assistance overlook them entirely. But they can't be too visible either, or he's sure they'll get tossed out with the garbage before he manages to hook a single new sucker of his own. Maybe somewhere on the desk? Propped up against another trinket, maybe he could block the view from Lester's side?
Leonard considers the collection of disparate junk on his colleague's desk–is that a HUMAN JAWBONE??–and muses about how the hell Arthur Lester managed to come across his various… decorations.
He pictures Lester in the War. The whines and bangs of open fire echo overhead; the muddy, bloody mire of the trench soaks him up to his shins. Bedraggled and thin, Arthur cradles a thermos of watered-down booze, stretching it out between supply runs, and sweet-talking his trench mates into playing card games or chess with him while they wait for the next bomb to fall. He's lain on makeshift medical cots, blocking out the screams from amputations without anesthetics, because something has to be done before the rot seeps into the man's blood. He's spent his nights off duty getting plastered enough to forget that there's no light left behind his eyes. He's a friendly, worldly face for the new recruits, boys barely out of school, before he watches them plowed through like livestock at an abattoir. Hanging onto the last piece of some dear friend he lost, blown to bits in front of him…
… no, no, that can't be it.
Lester certainly sports the haunted look of a soldier, staring off into the middle distance to "think" and flinching at sudden noises, but he's not quite old enough for the Great War's conscription to have caught him. He very well could have been a kid at the time, draft dodging potential aside. Not to mention that the jagged scar along Arthur's throat is new. A few months old, rather than a few years. Not something he could have acquired overseas.
The scenario in his head rewrites itself. He's heard rumors about Lester's old partner got caught up in some nasty business with the mob. Maybe that partner dragged him into the seedier underbelly of Arkham. Leonard follows the thread.
Lester as a young man, struggling as an entertainer during Prohibition, looking for a steady gig and getting in over his head. (He does have a whole piano stuffed into this tiny office, so music clearly means something to him.) He starts out as a fence, the middle-man whose hands pass liquor off one way and cold hard cash the other. He keeps a low profile, unassuming enough that he keeps his in with the music community, but just popular enough that everyone knows he's the hookup for any less-than-savory tastes of his fellow performers. If he happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and it came down to self-defense, who could really blame him if he popped off a rival goon?
The jaw, then, might be a souvenir. Something his boss let him hang onto after the cleanup was taken care off. All the better for his higher-ups that Lester wanted it; evidence like that is plenty to turn a subordinate into a fall guy, if you've got the right connections.
But then, it's probably not that either.
Sure, Arthur Lester proves himself time and time again to be scarily competent at picking through criminal minds, but if he did have connections, ties that ran that deep, he'd need a lot of money to keep the police from uncovering them. More money than his office-couch-turned-bed suggests he's got.
Is the bone just a prop then? Some Halloween decoration left out year-round? A play on his nickname from the police? Why play along with something he clearly doesn't like though, especially to this degree…?
Leonard picks up a different trinket–a fine, silver, piano-shaped music box–from the desk and flips it over. The engraving reads, "from Luna and Tom and the patrons of the Waylay."
The Waylay, hm? Nice name for a bar. Lester may have played piano for them, before his pivot into detective work. Seems like a top-shelf establishment, if they can afford merchandise like this and even get it engraved, just for a temporary musician. That, or Mr. Lester was one hell of an entertainer, and all the staff and regulars chipped in for this going away gift. Maybe those mob connections weren't so far-fetched, after all. Real silver and delicate gear work pulled together to thank a "business partner" that kept them in business during hard times, somewhere the money flowed as freely as bubbles down a champagne tower.
That explains nothing about the grisly keepsake on display beside it, though.
Curiouser and curiouser, the abstract portrait that the dead man's mouthpiece paints through every eclectic piece on display.
Leonard winds the mechanism on the bottom of the music box, and lets the soft bell-tones wash over the room. The song it plays is familiar, but he can't quite place it. If it's an Arthur Lester original, then he's done a damn good job for himself, because it's definitely a song he's heard in passing, and Leonard is no music aficionado.
The longer he listens, the more he loses track of his surroundings, completely sucked into the music. It sounds more like a true piano now, with the grainy overlay you'd expect from a radio broadcast. There's a swell of notes, and he can almost hear other instruments playing along–the makings of a jazz band, just a whisper of horns, drums, and strings. But that's… that's not possible… it's just a music box. It's just–
–a–
Wait.
His hands are empty?
His hands are empty, and the hardwood flooring of Lester's office has been replaced with rich maroon carpet. The song is still–
The–the song is–
–but, how did –?
He's standing in. A… jazz bar?
(Well, that would explain the jazz band.)
It's a swanky place, really. Even the carpet is immaculate, not a stain in sight, and it compliments the wallpaper's subtle, monochrome, relief-style design and gold accents. The large mirror behind the bar, inset into the wall, makes their liquor well look endless. An etching of WAYLAY, centered and framed by a geometric, twisting border, gives him his first real clue to where he's landed. Leonard recognizes the name from the engraving on Lester's now-missing music box. So, this is the Waylay, apparently.
It's elegant. Neuveau, deco.
Rich.
It's nowhere he's been before, and that's for certain. Leonard has no idea how he got here, or where here even is. The only thing keeping him from outwardly panicking is that he's not alone in the club. Patrons mill about the tables and waiters manifest in and out of their vicinity with the crisp professionalism of a staff trained to be seen and not heard. Not a single other person, customer or employee, seems to think his miraculous appearance is anything noteworthy.
As relieving as it might feel to blend in, it's unsettling in equal measure. What kind of place–what kind of people–treat an honest-to-God supernatural apparition like an everyday occurrence?
Until he has a better grasp on what he's dealing with, his best bet is to just go with the flow. Not draw unwanted attention to himself by panicking or causing a scene.
He pats down his pockets and finds a wad of cash in one of them. Good, that's good, expected even, it's… normal. He's being perfectly normal about all of this, actually. He can just go buy a drink and have a look around. Normal style.
Leonard makes his way up to the bar and flags down the bartender. He wears the same uniform as the wait staff, but styles it more lax, with the top two buttons undone. His sleeves are rolled up with leather armlets accentuating his muscles. Leonard watches those muscles flex and relax while he shakes and stirs patrons' beverages for them. All the wait staff have an ephemeral quality to them, forcing the eyes to drift past them like a piece of set decoration instead of a person to engage with. The bartender has a similar inconspicuous aura, but Leonard can't deny that he's also got the physique and grooming of an up-and-coming movie star. With his slick hair and thick, sculpted mustache, he could easily pass for someone famous, but not quite famous enough to place. Leonard wonders if that's a requirement for all the employees here.
"What can I do ya for?" The bartender's voice jerks Leonard from his thoughts.
"I'll have a… ehehmmm…" think, Leonard, think fast. What's a drink? "… a–a glass of…" yes, that's good, a glass. Drinks come in glasses! A glass of…? "… milk."
Fuck.
"A glass of… milk? Plain milk?" The bartender raises an eyebrow at him, mouth pinched shut to maintain his professional facade and choke back the beginnings of a laugh.
Well, he can't back out now, he's committed.
"Yes. A glass of plain milk," he doubles down. "Thank you," he tacks on as an afterthought, not wanting to sound like an asshole to an employee.
When the bartender comes back and hands him a rocks glass of plain milk, Leonard slides over a crumpled bill and escapes that social situation as quickly as he can.
It honestly could have gone worse.
Perhaps it's time to look for one of those "patrons" from the engraving, or a different member of staff who may know the name Arthur Lester, and they'll be able to wiggle their fingers and magic him back home. Or, at least, back to where he came from. Really, it's their fault he's in this situation in the first place, gifting Lester that transportation trinket. Sending him back is the least they could do.
Leonard sidles up to a table where a young woman, in full flapper finery, sits alone watching the band.
"Pardon me, miss," she startles when he speaks, but waves for him to take a seat. "Do you come here often?"
She laughs like Daisy Buchanan from The Great Gatsby, with the metallic ting of money, of coins falling into a pile of more coins.
"You're new here, aren't'cha Mac?"
"Is it that obvious?" he titters, hoping his apprehension doesn't show in his smile.
"Askin' questions like that is one way to make it plain, even if you had a decent disguise." She flags over a waiter, "Pierre, doll, I think our friend here could use a chat with the Manager."
"Oh, pff–well, that's not necessary –" Leonard blusters, trying to wave the woman and the server both away, sloshing around the milk in his glass. The waiter, Pierre, grabs him by the upper arm and yanks him standing. "Ah, that's quite the grip strength you've got there. Have you ever considered going into carpentry?"
Pierre tilts his head and squints at Leonard, not deigning to respond.
"This really is just," Leonard hisses at the waiter's nails digging crescents into his arm, "far too much trouble to go to for little old me. Really. I can just–you can just–look, there's an empty table right there!" he squirms but can't escape the waiter's grip.
"Please stop struggling, sir."
Leonard presses his mouth shut into a thin line. On the one hand, everything in his head is screaming Avoid! Escape! Evade!, but on the other… if anyone here has a chance of resolving this little mix'em'up with the music box, the one that calls themself "the Manager" is probably his best bet.
The pair stop in front of a sturdy oak door with a large, frosted glass window. In gilded lettering, it reads only "The Manager." The exchange happening inside is somewhat muffled, and completely obscured. Leonard can pick up on a heated back and forth, unearthly roaring and chanting, and the squishing thwap of meat against a solid surface before everything goes quiet. With each passing moment, the tension coiled in Leonard's muscles only grows. His body, not exactly against but certainly beyond his conscious will, is poised to bolt the moment the opportunity presents itself.
Unfortunately for him, before he gets his chance, a cheery "come in!" summons them inside the office.
The thing that greets them is just finishing tucking itself back into a human-shaped suit. It sits behind a desk, back long and straight, fingers dainty and folded together. Its eyes are the last to resolve. From slitted things, dotted across every stretch of exposed skin, they coalesce into two, evenly-sized eyes on its face: onyx-black and piercing. Leonard can see his own body's tension mirrored in the Manager. He is a bug, skittering underneath a piece of furniture, and the creature staring him down is a man with a loafer in hand, poised to strike the moment he peeks out.
Pierre takes a beat to gauge the strain in the air, then shoves Leonard forward, sending him stumbling into the middle of the room. A splash of his forgotten milk escapes its glass, and splatters onto the pristine, snow-white rug he now stands on. Pierre winces at the spill, gives the Manager a stilted something midway between a nod and a bow, and takes a large step back across the threshold.
The door slams shut with a loud thud on his way out. Pierre really should be a carpenter, Leonard thinks, given the confident way he hammered the last nail into poor Leonard's coffin.
With his last avenue of escape barred, Leonard turns his attention what he does best: observation.
The office's minutiae–or, rather, the set dressings used to impersonate an office–read futuristic. Furniture like the desk and liquor cabinet are chunky and angular, with barely-rounded corners and duck-footed, thin, cylindrical legs. Bright pops of color and simple geometric patterns dapple the upholstery. Ruddy wood paneling and the white carpet under his feet tie the space together.
The only thing out of place in this buttoned-up illusion is the pulpy, ground lump of flesh comprised of bits and pieces that once made up a human body. Not a speck of viscera stains the rug, only Leonard's spilled milk seeps into its fibers.
As Leonard stares at his surroundings, trying not to gape at them like a wall-mounted fish, the Manager stares at him. There's an amused glint to the predator's smile, but a simultaneous frustration and impatience in it too. This might as well be its 15-minute break before the dinner rush.
"I–hello," Leonard offers the creature a bow, before realizing that was probably a weird thing to do, and straightening back up. He laughs awkwardly, then flinches at his own laugh, like he wasn't expecting it. "It's, ah–it's a lovely place you've got here. Very… clean. Well, aside from the, you know, the, uh." Leonard clamps his mouth shut before he can shove his foot any further into it.
The Manager blinks at him a few times in rapid succession, but remains silent. Waiting for the awkwardness, the discomfort of it all, to force Leonard to keep talking. Leonard knows this trick, he's even used it himself! But it's hard to remember little things like psychology when you're being stared down by an eldritch horror draped in a businessman's skin-suit.
"Look, I assure you, I truly have no idea what's going on here. I'm sure you're very good at… whatever it is you do here, and I wish you and the Waylay nothing but success. But, as I'm sure you've gathered by now, I don't belong here." Leonard starts to pace as he rambles, walking out his jitters to keep them from stuttering into his voice. "I don't have any business with you. Or anyone else here, to my knowledge. Honestly, I don't even know how I got here in the first place! I would be very appreciative if I could just return home, please. Um, in one piece. Unharmed, if you w- would generously allow it. Thank you." He flashes the creature a thumbs up.
It sits eerily still for a moment longer, and then the facade cracks. It snorts, then lets out a discomfiting, stilted laugh.
"Gods, you should see your face," it wipes an imaginary tear from its cheek. "It's like you think I'm going to jump across this desk and gobble you right up!" Another burst of laughter, swiftly cut off as it clears its throat behind a closed fist. "Ahem, of course I'm not going to do that. Here at the Waylay, we like to keep things… civil." A beat of awkward stasis passes, then the thing waves its hand towards one of the leather armchairs. "Sit, sit, sit!"
Leonard, reluctant to obey but even more reluctant to disobey, sits.
"Now, you are one unlucky little man, aren't you Leonard?"
"How do you know my –?"
"Ayupupupupub–don't you worry your tiny little head about that. Of course I know who you are. I've had my eye on your world for a while, but I never would have expected someone like… you to stumble right into my lap like this..." It trails off with a thoughtful hum, glancing between the bloody pile of corpse bits on the floor and the living Leonard.
Leonard shrugs, not entirely sure what to say. He's far too busy cycling through the full range of human emotion to bother with words.
At the surface, there's vindication. He knew something strange was going on with Arthur Lester–his skills were too inexplicable, his history was too full of holes, his whole demeanor strayed just a centimeter to the left of normal, like he was looking through you at something no one else could see–and wouldn't ya know it, Leonard was right. The Great Gilbert's done it again!
Underneath that vindication, of course, is abject terror. Not only is he trapped and utterly helpless under the magnifying glass of this otherworldly nightmare, his only hope is to make a good enough impression on the… boss of this establishment? Lord of this realm? Whatever it may be, Leonard needs it to like him, or at least find him entertaining enough, to keep him alive.
He's confused.
He's bewildered.
He's playing dead.
He's scrutinizing the creature back.
A sliver of him might even be excited. His own belief in the mystic arts petered out around the same time as his belief in Santa Claus, but one can't spend his whole life investing in a lie without, for a fleeting moment here or there, wishing it were true. Now that he's face to face with proof of the supernatural, he can't help the thrill that runs up his spine in response.
Though, that could just be the terror.
The being behind the desk is still silently scrutinizing him when he resurfaces from his thoughts. With a small huff of breath and its trademark tight, pained smile, it tells him, "Come to think of it, I believe the two of us could help each other out. What would you say to that?"
Keep it fond, keep it entertained. "I- I- I- I'm sure that, auh, I mean that–yes, that would be, ideal," he agrees a bit too fast. "Ehm… how?"
The creature gives him an intrigued mmmp? If Leonard's ego were any bigger, he might call it surprised.
"How what, Mr. Gilbert?"
"How would you like for us to, as you say, help each other out?"
Its clenched grimace-grin relaxes a fraction, ironically making it look more pleased than before.
"Well, I'll lay it right out for you. You've got a problem, and I've got a problem. Your problem is simple, you want to leave. And you're welcome to, just as soon as you take care of something for me."
Aaaand thus returns the ominous weight of circumstance.
"What are you asking me for, Mister, uhm, Manager?"
"Allow me to show you," its nose crinkles with mischief. Leonard catches the entertained gleam in its eye, a tiger batting at a songbird in its den, watching it flap and flutter about pitifully. He tries to hold his line, back straight and chin up, instead of giving in to the feeling of food being played with.
When the entity reaches across the desk and grabs his forearm, thankfully the one not holding his glass this time, the world around them swirls in and out of focus until they're together in a vision.
You see, Mr. Gilbert–Lennie, if I may–the scale of my problem, the scope of what I'm doing here, is so much bigger than you could possibly imagine.
The office of Lester and Doe fades into focus, and like the start of a silent film, the slumped and motionless–presumably dead–body of Arthur Lester jolts awake. Leonard jolts with him, surprised to see his colleague in this state. He turns towards the Manager with a dozen questions on the tip of his tongue, but it shushes him with a clawed finger against his lips. That same finger then nudges him back to face the scene.
Pay attention.
The Arthur in the scene trips over the other body in the room, one that Leonard can now place as the dead body of his partner, Parker Yang, and proceeds to work himself into a lather, gesturing wildly and arguing with the air. The whole slapstick routine culminates in Lester being dragged out in handcuffs for the presumed murder.
Men like you are too focused on pulling the wool over others' eyes to notice the blinders that keep your own from wandering.
The vision around them warps, and Leonard is yanked backwards faster than he can comprehend. In a split-second, he's crashed through the ceiling of the office and hovers in the sky, staring down at a bird's eye view of Arkham. Still images of leather-bound tomes with inscrutable contents, hooded figures chanting around altars, and gruesome crime scenes in basements and cemeteries flash in and out of his eyeline fast enough to make him dizzy.
The occult. The mystic. The strange and unthinkable. All those hints at what lies beyond–it's always been there. Burrowed right under your nose, and you hardly even notice.
Then, another yank, and Leonard stares down at a living map of the Northeast. People mill about like specks of dust, undulating across the otherwise static image of place. His place on the high edge of the scene is uncanny–real enough to make Leonard feel his stomach in his feet looking down, but impossible enough to grasp at the thread of hope that he can't actually fall from here.
Beings like me are the architects of humanity's rise and fall, we are your ebb and flow, the rhyme to your reason. For someone who takes so much pride in his observational skills, you've spent your whole life utterly ignorant to the bigger picture.
Before he can catch his breath, another yank reveals Europe, Africa, and the Americas across the light curve of a globe. The ocean between continents is far enough away to appear to fit in the palm of Leonard's hand. Another nauseating barrage of images show him supernatural encounters through the ages: illuminations in medieval tomes, present day archaeological expeditions, a scorched future of twisted metal and humid overgrowth, where the monuments of civilization as he knows it barely peek out from the nature that's subsumed them. He can feel the dreary fog of the highlands; the dry, sandy expanse of Egyptian desert; and the wet heat of a world where humankind is a forgotten concept, all in such rapid succession he half expects his skin to bleed from exposure.
There are entities beyond your comprehension just on the other side of this lace-thin veil, and while some of us are content with the way things are, others like to… how should I put it… stick their fingers in the pie. To them, there's nothing better than the pop of a ripe berry, feeling the juice ooze out of a closed fist, that sticky-sweet satisfaction.
And again, Leonard is crooked around the neck like a puppet and dragged into what he can only assume is the dark void of space. Earth, everything he's ever known–everything everyone has ever known–hovers baseball-sized before him. He digs the heels of his hands into his eyes and desperately tries to stop looking, just for a second. Not like that helps, though. Even with his eyes closed, the vision remains the same. He can feel the pressure of his palms against his eyelids, but he can't find his hands. Distantly, he thinks he might be crying.
Every world, every where and every when and every one, is merely a dream, strung together in haphazard fashion by the subconscious of a blind, mute, utterly uninvested idiot God: Azathoth.
And he's pulled again. Again! How is there still further to go? Leonard can feel a wounded noise punched out of him, but the aching, ringing silence of empty space blocks it from his ears. A dusty spiral floats, and he floats, and at some point, he stops trying to understand, because there's so much to understand that maybe there's nothing to be understood at all. He lets the Manager's words wash over him.
While he sleeps, things are. But there are some forces that want to upset that cosmic balancing act. One particular… malevolent actor, let's say, wants to wake Azathoth from his dreaming. Perhaps even kill him outright, if such a thing could be done.
Even further out, the dusty shapes become dots, a pointillism rendering of a few wide, thin, wrinkled lines. They expand and contract at random, what could be considered micro-movements if they weren't on such a multiversal scale.
The lines contract.
The lines s t r e t c h
s t r e t c h
s t r e t c h a p a r t .
Open,
an eye.
(Leonard stares into a gigantic eye.)
The eye stares blankly at nothing.
there is no sliver of light reflected in its huge, wet sclera.
(Leonard cannot see himself in the sclera.)
there is nothing left to reflect.
If Azathoth awakens, everything ends.
Just.
Like.
That.
With the echoing snap of its fingers, the Manager returns them both to its office in the Waylay.
Leonard lurches in his seat, nearly falling to the floor, as the breakneck motion of the vision screeches to a halt. He takes a moment to regain his bearings, raising a shaking hand and his glass and taking his first tentative sip of milk. Once he feels capable of speech, he meets the Manager's gaze.
"You want me to help you… save the world?" Tall order, even for a god.
The god in question barks out a half-breath of crazed laughter. "So dramatic! You're not exactly wrong, but don't get ahead of yourself little buddy, you're certainly not my first line of defense."
Ouch.
"… right…"
"Plan A, let's call it, is well underway in a universe not too far from your own. But I prefer to be thorough, especially with so much on the line. I'm sure you understand."
"Of course," Leonard tries his best to follow the vague explanation.
"You would be, for lack of a better term, a redundancy measure." It side-eyes the flesh pile, "As you can see, this version of Arthur Lester was, ah –"
"THAT was Arthur Lester??" He can't help but interject.
"Yes. Well, was being the operative word."
"Jesus Christ," Leonard mutters in horror.
"No, Arthur Lester." It's clearly trying to joke, but his once-colleague's viscera, wrenched inside-out in a puddle at his feet, has sucked all the potential levity out of Leonard. "Anyway, instead of leaving his world without an Arthur to keep things moving along, that's where you'd come in! I would just slip you into his body –"
Leonard shudders, eyes still locked on the remains.
"No, no, not into that," the Manager waves it off like it's nothing, a ridiculous notion, and Leonard struggles to refocus on the conversation. "A regular old living breathing Arthur. Think of it like a costume! An Arthur suit."
"Ehhh, I don't know about–"
"– and, once you're in your Arthur suit, all you have to do, my friend, is exactly what I tell you to do." Its voice chills at the end of the statement, but before the threat has any time to marinate, the Manager has reverted to its own bubbly, customer-service-style persona. "Treat the people you meet like you would a client. Put on a little show for them, buy the rest of us some time."
"How long would I be, uhuhmm, 'performing' this role?"
"As long as it takes! There is no simple answer to a question like that, Lennie, hate to disappoint–but, if and when Plan A gets done neutralizing the threat at hand, your job will be donezo, and I can send you right back where you came from. Right to the very moment you first picked up my music box, even! The rest of the world wouldn't even realize you'd been gone."
"How is that even possible?"
It chuckles, "if I told you, I'd have to kill you. Haha! Just kidding. If I told you, the knowledge would melt your tiny brain and kill you all by itself. Best not to ask too many questions."
"Then–but–h- how will I know what you want me to do? When I'm back in the real, I mean, the, uh, the–other–real world?"
"Oh, you won't be going in alone. I'll be assigning you a companion, a Vanguard, to make sure that you stay on track and don't trip your way into anything too noticeable down there. Think of it like a handler, a shift manager, maybe. the Vanguard will answer all those pesky questions that I'm too busy to, and it will keep me up to date on your progress so I won't have to nitpick at every little move you make."
He nods along, not quite in understanding, but something close enough to count.
"So, Lennie, what do you say?"
Clearly Arthur Lester–this ill-fated, other world's version, as well as his own–is already neck deep in the occult. Even if Leonard's appearance in the Waylay wasn't his doing directly, it's still circumstantially Lester's fault. Leonard would also bet that he'd know how to cover it up. Is this what happened to Lester's old detective partner? He's heard the public story: mob connections, debt collections, all believable enough, but in the face of recent revelations… could he have just been in the wrong place at the wrong time? Was he a convenient sacrifice for some nefarious ritual? Is revisiting the question at all just a matter of recency bias, or could Leonard be onto something?
Regardless, none of the charges ever caught up with his Lester. If he could dodge suspicion in the untimely demise of his own partner, the dead man's mouthpiece must be a better actor than Leonard pegged him for, and that doesn't bode well for his own case.
Because Leonard is, at this point, a case.
He doesn't exactly have a thriving community of family and friends that would rally together to search out the truth of what happened to him, and isn't that unfortunate.
The Manager maintains his strained smile, but the look in his eyes is one he's used to seeing across the dinner table from his ma, before she sighs and asks if he's sure about this career of his. The look that says you were always such a bright boy, Lennie, why couldn't you just go into sales like your grandfather? That says you really could go so far in life if you just applied yourself.
His ma knows what he's like. She may still cook him a meal when he travels up to see her once or twice a year, but there's always a palpable disappointment in her gaze when she asks what he's doing these days. Her brilliant child, all grown up to be… well, him. It's enough to put a damper on any mother's esteem. She's used to him not calling for weeks, sometimes even months at a time. She wouldn't even think to look for him until it was far, far too late, and even if she did, would it be because she missed him, or out of some guilty sense of maternal obligation?
He's never been married, and doesn't exactly have close friends, just passing acquaintances. A few of his more regular clients might miss him, the ones that treat their readings like a social visit, but even then, what has he ever provided them but a comforting bed of bullshit to lie in? Wouldn't they be better off seeing someone else? Someone capable of real magic, or at least someone who believes they might be?
It's never been a problem before, he'd even go so far as to call it a good thing! But now… it's a shame to realize that his disappearance would go so easily unnoticed.
Leonard would be the first to admit that he possesses many, many faults. But a death wish has never been among them. In fact, he would pride himself on his sense of self-preservation. With the options laid out before him: a guaranteed ticket to Hell, or a chance, no matter how slim, to make it home, there's hardly a choice to be made.
"I'll do it."
"Good, good," the Manager rests its chin on its interlaced fingers, elbows perched on its desk. "Best of luck out there, champ. I'll have my eye on you."
It winks at him, and everything goes black.