Excerpt: Lydia Mycroft and the Alien Voodoo

The tape on the inside of the house, which had been the defined border of what looked like some sort of study beforehand, had apparently been cut down by whoever or whatever had scared off all the police interest. Some of the objects on the bookcases lining the edge of the room glowed dimly despite a total absence of visible wiring.

Of course, the main attraction lay in the center of the room; apparently whoever had sent the police off had done so very quickly, before they could remove Ms. Halcombe's body. It hardly took a genius to determine she had been killed with some sort of blunt instrument, as the slight amounts of blood and matted bruises indicated clearly enough in a way which looked somewhat difficult to fake, but beyond that something seemed wrong. Maybe it was just my high- strung nerves speaking, but the bruising just didn't seem quite large enough for her to actually be dead; something was beginning to look very strange about this, and I doubted that it could be just the lighting throwing me off- guard either.

Another glance revealed several conspicuous (well, to me) absences from the shelf system, defying the symmetry which seemed to govern the rest of the room's decor. Granted, it was an odd thing to notice at the scene of a murder which from the looks of it had been committed fairly recently; without touching anything it was tough to construct any detailed picture, and I hardly wanted to do that. Most of the devices strewn about were hardly artistic- looking, and many of them seemed to have been designed for form over function. The ones I could hope to understand properly tended to bear a resemblance to more normal methods of accomplishing the same rough purpose, including a set of what almost looked like garden tools. From the looks of the set, one was missing; I've never been really superstitious, but there was almost a palpable aura of dread surrounding the gap.

This had just gotten a whole lot weirder. Weirder than your everyday break- in to the house of a murdered former professor of yours to check out the abandoned crime scene, I mean. What, normal people do that all the time, don't they?

The train of logic had taken only about thirty seconds to put together - in the telling, though, it sort of seems as though it took forever. Considering my luck it shouldn't have come as a surprise that right after I had the faintest idea regarding what to look for in a closer inspection the door opened behind me. (I had it coming, not paying attention to as much of my surroundings as I could.)

Very quickly there was the blade of a shovel being leveled at me; the suited man from the Goose was holding the other end in white-gloved hands. I tried not to let the mild state of panic my mind quickly approached show on my face.