Nightmares Vs Magic

After the visitor finished their drink, Dove took their empty cup and went out to figure out where to put it, while Joon helped them by grabbing the bag they came with as the visitor would have their hands occupied with the notebook and pen. 

She found an office room, and figured out it was Leon's by seeing the logs and the photos along the wall. There was a desktop computer on the desk in the far corner of the room, and Dove had walked over to it, looking for a notepad. 

I only wanted to write a short letter for Leon, letting him know that our visitor drank the tea and liked it. I didn't mean to peak at anything but, well, the picture frame was just the first thing I noticed, and I couldn't help but notice the details. 

It was one of a few that sat at the desk, but it stood out the most. A horizontally laid rectangular picture frame, holding a peculiar photograph that Leon definitely had printed out, unless the device he used to take the photo was a polaroid camera that he just happened to hold up and angle just right to get the photo. 

It looked more like a selfie and a practiced one, he was in the left side of the photo, having held the device with his right hand, smiling softly at the screen where he was likely able to see the shot of the two men behind him, unaware of the photo he was talking. One man looked just like him, even with the hair, although just a little younger, likely a brother. The other man was different. 

Significantly longer hair, his shoulders were broad and his posture stiff, like a soldiers'. He didn't look at all related to them, but the photo seemed like one you'd take of your friends or family.

After observing the photo, Dove then found some sticky notes in the first drawer she opened, and gingerly took one stack out to use, writing her note with one of the many pens easily found across the desk. She took the written note off and stuck it onto the cup which she placed in front of the keyboard, then put the rest of the unused sticky notes back in the drawer. 

They then left the apothecary floor, showing their visitor around the place whilst also making their way to wherever they could get information about their current questions. Considering how Bence was adamant about them not asking about the topic of zombies, at least until he and the others came back, they decided to ask about the headless horseman. 

Enzo and Adan were still in the building, along with some other employees, but Joon and Dove didn't feel comfortable asking anyone unfamiliar. Joon took the lead when they got to the Alchemist Labs and began looking for either of the two gentlemen. 

It was exceptionally clean, with many tables but with very few stray tools and papers on only a couple of them. Most other tools were on the shelves near the tables. Likely a way of organizing and keeping track of which tables were for what purpose based on the tools nearby. Dove had never been to a real lab room before, aside from the ones at her school during chemistry or forensic science, but those were only classroom versions. 

They went through a door that led to a wide hallway, and the door was labeled 'Experimenting rooms'. Each of the doors throughout the hall had different labels to specify what kind of experiments they were designed for, and Joon led them down to the one that seemed the tamest. 

'Electronics Workshop'. 

He knocked on the door, and when there was no answer, the boy knelt down and laid halfway on the floor to try and peak underneath the door. 

"Get up, Joon. He left that room a while ago." Enzo's voice spoke up from behind them.

The visitor jumped a little and whipped their head around to see the voice of the stranger, while Dove helped to pull Joon up from the floor. 

Enzo was holding a small, clear plastic box, containing what looked like large leaves that had multiple yellow spots on them. They almost looked like mere patterns on the leaf if they weren't moving. 

"Are those aphids?" 

"Yeah, I was just bringing them over to this room for feeding time." 

They stepped aside so that he could get to the door, taking out what looked like a black charcoal stick. It looked like a chalk stick and was the length of a cigarette. The same solid piece soon shapeshifted in his hand, taking the form of a key. He used that key to unlock the door, but didn't turn the knob, likely because he could tell the visitor behind him was becoming curious. He looked over his shoulder to see the teenager eagerly tapping Dove's shoulder to ask how and what the material he just used was. 

"Oh, that? Some sort of ink-looking device, it's solid when dormant or unused, and whoever's holding it can manipulate it into whatever they need. The guy we're looking for, Adan, he makes them." Joon answered in simple terms, before turning to Enzo with a frown.

"And he still refuses to show me how to make them or even let me know what material he uses."

"He knows that you'll use it for mischief." Enzo retorted as he turned the knob and opened the door to reveal the room inside. 

Mentally rolling his eyes because he knows he can't stop their curiosity; he allowed the kids to each peek around him to peer inside the room so they could understand what he meant by 'feeding time'.

As expected, there were electronics, and multiple shelves or racks where some small or very thin tools hung on the wall. They could see the clean and neat table where Joon last saw Adan working, but then his eyes frowned at something new. On the table, there was a lamp, some stray tools left on the table, and another clear plastic box sitting there. It looked like the one Enzo was holding, except it was holding a different species. 

Dove took a step back quickly as soon as she realized, ushering the visitor to keep their distance as well. Joon however, made his realization loud.

"Are those spiders?" He asked as he went inside the room to look. 

Enzo followed after him, keeping a careful watch.

"Yes, he was using them earlier for his work. You'd be surprised how useful these little creatures can be when they cooperate with you." He gently nudged Joon to move aside so that he could place the box of aphids down next to the spiders. 

"Is it, safe? Or actually functional, to use spiders to fix or go through electronic hardware?" Dove asked from the doorway. 

The visitor had frantically taken out their notebook and began writing out their whole shock and confusion for all the new knowledge that came to them in puzzle pieces. 

Dove stepped aside so that they could turn their notebook to Enzo and have him read the new message. 

'What kinda lab is this?' 

'Since when are spiders helpful for electronics????'

'I've seen a lot of horrific things today - just b4 coming here - and I'm so confused.'

Enzo read out all of them and looked up in thought, wondering what words to say, before looking back down at the visitor. 

"You can see things other people can't, right?"

"They wouldn't be here if not for Hollow, plus Bence said something about them summoning zombies and refused to elaborate." Joon gave more context as the guest nodded. 

"How interested are you in science?"

They shrugged, giving a confused look before simply making an ok sign with one hand. 

"Well, that's alright, because alchemy is essentially a mixture of science and magic, don't expect the procedures to make scientific sense. Add in the fact you can see things that we call nightmares and well, it just doesn't make sense. Now then!" He pulled gently on the back of Joon black t-shirt, pulling him away after deciding the boy has taken enough photos of the aphids and spiders, and then gently ushering the three out of the room.

"Adan is currently in the open labs. Joon, I trust you to lead them there and nowhere else. I'll be busy reorganizing this room, along with feeding Adan's little friends, so I'll be too busy to entertain your questions for now." He said curtly. 

He waited for any possible responses they might have. They only nodded, and so he closed the door to work. As he was entrusted to, Joon led them straight to the open labs, which was more like the place they had passed earlier, with all the tables, tools on the walls, and lab equipment set in fixed places. Except here, there were more computers and papers scattered about. A little less organized essentially. 

Adan was at one of the computers, the phone he was working with earlier, he had it turned back on, and it seemed he had every piece of history in every corner of the phone's software, revealed. The phone was plugged into the computer he had turned on, so that he could have a bigger screen to see all the information from the phone.

He turned his head in their direction as soon as he heard their footsteps. 

"Ah, Joon, Dove." He then tilts his head upon seeing the green-eyed teenager behind them, notebook clutched and pen in their right hand, ready to write more questions.

"And who might your new friend be?"

"They don't have a name at the moment; we've just stuck to calling them visitor. We're showing them around."

"And?" Adan asked as his eyes stuck back to the screen, going back to scrolling through all the messages on the phone. 

"And we have a bunch of questions about that horseman!" 

"Of course you do, and his name is Hollow, child."

Dove quickly excused herself from the conversation after feeling her phone vibrate in her pocket. She had set her phone to vibrate to accommodate for the onslaught of messages that Annabelle would send every now and then.

Out of the open labs, she went through the door that led to the hall for at least some kind of respectable divider between her call and the conversation a good distance away. She closed the door behind her and answered the phone with a curt, "Hello?"

On the other side of the phone, she didn't expect to hear the concerned voice of one of her landlords.

"Dove? Sweetie? Where are you? Do you know how late it is?" 

"Ah, Sorry Miss Annie, I'm, pretty much working overtime tonight, so I won't be back for a while. Was there anything you needed?"

"Nothing aside from knowing why you're out so late? Even most of our guests have gone to bed."

The girl pulled her phone from her ear and swiped down on the screen for the time. It was well past two o'clock in the morning, Dove had never registered how late it must've been for she used to have a habit of staying up far past two. This is why it never occurred to her to check the time. 

"We just got some extra work, so I can't leave just yet. Might be here all night, but I think I can multitask doing some requests if you have any shopping errands?"

"Hmph! The only request I could possibly have would be for you to not stay out so late!"

She heard the elderly lady sigh.

"Jobs these days are keeping children away from their beds too long. I'll be turning in for the night, but you need to inform me the minute you're coming back!"

"Yes Ma'am, goodnight." Dove said softly, ending the call quickly and was about to head back into the open lab until she caught Enzo out the corner of her eye. 

"Are you done with that room already?" She asked as she saw the man walking towards the door, holding a now empty plastic box of what used to have aphids. 

She went to the door, but he beat her to it, opening it for the both of them. 

"The only mess there was thankfully just stray tools. The little pets have now been fed, so I'm off to see whatever new request Hollow wrote down for me about his materials before he left." 

She hummed as she began unconsciously walking with him.

"For an undead person, I thought they would never have wardrobe malfunctions, much less need replacements."

"Well, it typically only happens once a year, his excuse to visit, and he doesn't actually need them. He's mostly just indecisive about what weapons he wants to use, and then suddenly after learning we design weapons, it became a yearly thing." 

He led her to a different door labeled 'Creation labs'. In the hallway of that section, each room now had different labels, but for different design or invention categories. She silently followed him to the door labeled 'Melee Designs'. 

"He can use multiple weapons? He's not just limited to that axe he wields?"

"Oh, he had a main weapon when he first became a Dullahan. But he didn't like it much."

That word reminded her of what she had asked Ursa before. 

"If I may, what's a Dullahan?" 

Enzo seemed to smile at that question as he walked over to a case that appeared to have been prepped in advance for some time, and he waved her over.

The case was a long rectangular shape; and it looked like it was made up of the same material used for vintage guitar cases. There was a name carved on the top,

"Hollow's Bone Whip"

Enzo opened up the case for her to see as he answered. 

"An undead man, who rides in on either a horse or a horse-pulled carriage, commonly wielding things like these and carrying his own severed head, riding in a gallop as a messenger of death."

...

"He is essentially the Irish version of the grim reaper paired with a horse, nothing too special." Adan lazily answered Joon's questions as he worked at the computer. 

"Dullahans aren't as scary as you might imagine, you can simply deter them with gold or jewelry. Our Dullahan isn't even like the others, for he was never able to find his severed head when he died."

"Right, because according to the story about him, he was a soldier who lost his head to a cannonball."

Adan then suddenly chuckled as he scrolled through all the miscellaneous on the phone, taking screen of the important ones. 

"And just like a European soldier, the silly corpse at one point tried to use a jack-o-lantern as a replacement. He's been fond of jack-o-lanterns ever since."

The visitor held up a notebook after jotting down their question, showing it to Joon to read out, since Adan was still busy.

"If the horseman from the legend of sleepy hollow is real, then does that mean Ichabod was real? Our new friend wants to know." 

Adan hummed in thought, before finally taking his eyes away from his current work and getting up from his seat to search the table he was at for a pen and a piece of paper. The visitor tapped his shoulder and lent him theirs, to which he replied with a courteous thank you, before writing down a set of numbers and words in what was at first assumed a pattern until he explained. 

"Go with Dove down to the archives' floor, go to this shelf number, I'm sure she's already seen the computers down there, but just in case, count the rows on the shelf until you get to this number, and then search that row for this book." He explained as he gave the notebook back to them. 

"The line between fiction and reality can,,,," He tilt his head side to side as he looked up, hissing in thought as he thought of the right words. 

"-Dwindle or blur, since while some supernatural creatures have been real from the beginning but became less and less with the modern era, nightmares can be created and still are created every day. This book I recommend should give you a better answer." 

The two nodded and went to go search for Dove, Adan watched them leave, hands in his pockets. Only when he continued to watch and see all three eventually leave the floor entirely, did he go back to working on the computer, the screen of which he was using his back to subtly hide from the two. 

Enzo walked up behind him, his steps nearly quiet despite his shoes that should be making taps against the floor. Adan still heard him regardless, his relaxed and friendly face from earlier, now frowning and etched with concern. He used his left hand to beckon Enzo closer, shifting in his chair on wheels to slide a bit to give him a good view. 

Enzo leaned one hand against the table as he too frowned at the screen, which was displaying text messages from the phone, messages that were long deleted but recovered after some work. 

"Damn, want me to go get Laurence right now?"

Adan shook his head.

"I'm not done sifting through everything yet, not that it would matter. The rest of the deleted content are indecent photos of women taken without permission, but for now, with the emergency case and an integration of possibly a new intern, I don't feel that we should disturb him with this for now."

Enzo hummed in response, not in exact agreement, but he didn't know how else to respond. Not as he continued to stare at the screen that displayed one of the many deleted conversations on the phone, one that involved the mysterious phone guy conversing with the now dying man.

???: 'How are you enjoying your thrilling new freedom?'

S: 'I can't thank you enough! I've never been able to get this close to em without some struggle! And your paying me for this!'

???: 'Well while I'm glad you're having fun, try not to forget exactly why I'm paying you. Keep sending me your reports on anything unnatural, and be very detailed. If you feel like your mind is playing tricks on you, or that you might be seeing things, tell me everything about it.'

S: 'Yeah! of course!'

???: 'Don't forget your most important task.' 

Enzo and Adan's eyes squinted in disgust, unsure at what but the next messages would make their stomachs twist. Enzo is not one to get sick so easily, not from the things he's witnessed, but reality can sometimes be very grotesque. 

???: 'Keep your eyes open for any sign of a young girl with silver hair, blue eyes, and greyish brown skin. She should be 18, soon to be 19, if I did my math right.'

S: 'Easy, not many girls fit that description.'

???: 'I know, and yet she hid herself so well from me.'

Sent at 1:08AM.

The next response came hours later, but around the time when Dove, Bence, and Annabelle went to Claire's house in the evening today. 

S: 'I found her! She came to Claire's house with some guy with a suitcase! I think the bitch went to the police! What do I do???'

???: 'Tell me everything. Why is she there? Were you not being careful enough?'

S: 'I did everything you told me to do!! Nothing else! You need to tell me how to get out of this or we're both getting caught!!'

Adan could tell the mysterious phone guy seemed annoyed with the recipient, and had decidedly given up on him then and there, not exactly to help the man but to keep his own identity secret. Strawford appears to have been more foolish than expected. 

???: 'Alright. Relax, everything's going to be okay, keep following my instructions, I'll explain to you step by step how to get rid of all the evidence.'

S: ' really? just like that?'

???: 'Of course. Simply get rid of all the information inside this phone, and then get rid of it. I am the one who gave the instructions and money for items, and all your crimes are on this device. If you really did follow all my instructions, including taking all the money out in cash before making your purchase, simply get rid of this phone, and they'll have nothing to prove.'

Enzo clicked his tongue in disgust. 

"Shouldn't we at least warn Dove about this?"

Adan sifted through more of the text messages, but he didn't find anything else about her, it both made his stomach churn, but he wouldn't let the thoughts consume him with doubt and hesitation just yet. 

"We need more information on this man, and I'd really rather not disturb her for now. I'll inform Ursa when she comes back, ask her to give an order to her hunting dogs and skinwalkers, to look out for someone hunting one of ours."

"So, you basically want to keep it a secret that someone's looking for her." Enzo responded back, turning to half sit, half lean on the table, and crossed his arms. His face now stern. 

"I don't want to scare her. For all we know, the person searching for her is merely a bumbling fool just like that Strawford man getting eaten in a room in the basements right now." Adan turned in his chair to respond back. 

Enzo shook his head. 

"C'mon, that's not enough of a reason. You don't want to scare her, make anyone else worried, but you and I both know that this guy is definitely smarter than the guy her, Annabelle, and Bence just dealt with." 

It was Adan's turn to click his tongue, but more in annoyance. 

"That necromancer merely helped visualize a spirit, and then drag an unconscious man here. And if you truly believe he is so helpful, well, he is currently out dealing with a new necromancer's puberty at the moment." He responded in annoyance. 

Enzo tilted his head and frowned back, curious at the head Alchemist's annoyance of the necromancer. The Alchemist merely took a breath before pinching the bridge of his nose before relaxing his brows. He turned back to the computer, almost finished filtering out the important evidence, ready to prepare it for Laurence. 

"We can save the negotiation of this information's reveal for after they get back. For now, Dove and the others are safe, so long as they are well within this building. compared to the other floors, our archives are the most secure. By the time the others come back, that is when we will reveal the information." He shrugged and said with a relaxed grin, back to his confident and assured self. 

Enzo sighed beside him, knowing he couldn't argue against him for now.

As the two pondered and debated over the concerning discovery, Dove, Joon, and their friend were making their, down in the archives room that seemed to shift on it's own, as if it was alive. Dove, having been in the room once, was already used to it the second time. Joon and their new friend were surprised, but far more intrigued if anything. 

They stared, slack jawed as they watched the shelves move and stop before them. Dove was already numb to the magic and stepped between them, cupping both their jaws to gently shut them, before gently tugging them along to go closer. 

The friend quickly wrote, 'The shelves here can move?!?!'

She nodded. "And it might have a cheeky personality too." 

"It's kind of like that dollhouse place we did back in July." Joon responded in awe at all the books and structure of the place. "Except it's less annoying."

Instead of being met with the desk, the floor seemed to know that they were down to search for answers and shifted itself to allow them quicker access to the right section of the mysterious library.

Assuming that, the kids went and counted the shelves, then the rows, and then counted the books until they got to the number Adan had written down on the friend's notebook. 

The strangest thing, however, is when they read the words on the spine of the book they counted up to.

'A guide to Necromancy'

"Okay, this is not what we were looking for, and Adan would definitely not recommend a book like this, ever, unless he had to." Joon said as he reached to pull the book from the shelf anyway.

"He'll rant about necromancy being unnatural and making less sense than alchemy."

Dove squinted, deducing. 

"I guess the Archives wanted to give their own book recommendation. But why necromancy? Unless..." She slowly turned her head to the friend, still clutching at their notebook.

The friend stared back at her, blankly and confused, before their eyes dilated and widened as they then pointed at themself. 

"You think they might be a new necromancer?" Joon asked, about to wipe down the book for dust until he quickly realized there was no dust. 

"It would make sense." Dove shrugged. "Where else could the zombies have come from? And how else would they be able to summon Hollow to pick them up if they can't talk? Besides, I can remember the words Bence used when talking to them, how he acted."

She gestured for the book, Joon handed it to her, and she looked it over by the cover, from front to back.

"Bence is a necromancer, so he probably knew." 

Their friend turned their notebook around to respond. 

'But I don't even know how I did it. and if I am a necromancer, why didn't he say anything about that?'

"He was probably in a rush." Joon put his arms up and crossed them behind his head.

"Now that I think about it, since we've never seen zombies in real life, we don't know how they actually act. Maybe zombies in real life move fast and can climb fences."

"And it's also possible that since they could summon a famous horseman from folklore, who's to say you can't summon other supernatural creatures." Dove thought out loud, mostly to herself but smiling softly as she became prepared to ask the friend some questions.

The friend suddenly shrunk into themself after hearing his hypothesis, feeling guilty and looking concerned. Joon hissed upon realizing the implication of what they may have done, considering the other campers at the farm and the dangers of zombies. Dove also pulled back on her questions, pondering on giving them a comforting pat on the shoulder but decided against it as she began walking and gestured for them to follow. 

They went to one of the many tables set between the columns of shelves and computers, and she laid the book on its spine first. That's how she noticed that many pages were dog-eared already. 

Bence clearly read this book a lot as well.

Dove used the dog-ear marks to first help her find the table of contents and then went to the chapter that began with the rare birth of a necromancer.

Little did the three know that they would soon be running out of that room in a rush and filled with panic and fear.