Wickerman Cove

Part 15: The Boatman Doesn't Call

A chill breeze came in through the still-open front door.

From the quality of the fixtures and furniture, it looked like the professor had tried to keep the place in something approaching its original condition. At least, at some point.

The walls had thick, tan damask wallpaper with bronze velvet. The furniture was heavy, with a lot of varnished wood and dark velvet. Neglect had taken its lustre – layers of dust ingrained the velvet, and the tar of endless cigarettes spoiled the glow of the heavy chandeliers.

It was the sort of interior that was still probably great on a cold winter's evening, with a fire roaring in the hearth. In the summer sun, it seemed to devour the light, despite the sash windows and the glass doors that led out onto a deck. A room that created endless dark corners to fill with shadow. More than a basically oblong room should have had.

On impulse, Steph patted her pocket. She hadn't smoked for two years, but the urge rose from nowhere, probably from the overflowing ashtrays on every surface.

"Well," the sheriff said, indicating the red writing on the wall, "at least it's not blood."

"Or any other bodily fluid," Steph added.

The older woman chuckled for a moment, before noticing Penny's look of horror. "I'm sorry, kid," she said, "just a little gallows humour. I suspect the sarge and I have seen enough of this stuff to be a little less... taken aback than you are."

The sheriff got her phone out and started taking pictures. Steph leaned closer to the writings – whatever they'd been written in wasn't ink or sharpie. It was almost more like crayon, matting the velvet rather than sinking into it. Renard circled Penny, as he did when she was agitated, gently establishing a perimeter between her and the outside world.

Penny put a pair of wire framed glasses on. With the black dress and goth eyeliner, it made her look like a librarian in a story by Lovecraft or Poe. Probably Poe, since she wasn't evil or pregnant with some supernatural horror. Penny leaned forward, squinting where the crayon, or whatever it was, smudged the letters into each other.

"Any of this make sense to you?" Steph asked, dropping back to where she could check the windows.

The room was long, with the mantle and fireplace on the inner wall, and a gallery of paintings, engravings and framed photographs on the wall that faced the outside. Most of them had been drawn/painted over, rendering them indiscernible with near-illegible script. Light came in from large sash windows that faced inland, and a pair of French doors that looked out to sea. There was more spilling into the corner, from an alcove lined with bookshelves.

Penny pointed to a patch where the red characters had run to the point of indecipherability. Some of it makes sense, she signed. Someone has erased key sections. Soap and bucket, from the smell.

"I'm surprised you can smell anything through all this cigarette fug. What's it about?" Steph asked, watching the still-empty road. She moved to another window, where she could see down the cliff. A large white boat bobbed at the jetty.

I don't know, Penny signed, scratching the back of Renard's head. The language is called Arctic-4, at least to us. It exists only on a small number of ceramic tablets found embedded in the permafrost. It's supposed to be over forty thousand years old. Your archaeologists aren't yet convinced it isn't a hoax, or a mistake.

The characters were little more than a series of lines, of varying height and thickness, arranged in groups that didn't seem to correspond to the length of any words in a language Steph had ever seen. The more she looked at it, the less certain she was as to why she'd identified it as writing.

"Arctic-4 suggests there are three others? I always thought nobody had ever lived there?" Steph asked.

Your archaeologists think the tablets must have been left by traders, using some pre-historic route that isn't passable anymore, Penny signed. Which is sweet.

"Our archaeologists? They're yours too," Steph said. "Unless there's something you want to tell me?"

Not yet, Penny signed, smiling. You aren't ready.

Renard barked, a yap that made the sheriff startle. Penny reached down to scratch the top of his head again.

In seriousness, yes, of course I'm human, she signed, I have a fleshy, hairy head just like everyone else. I eat foods made from burned and rotting animal or vegetable parts. What could be more human than that? I like cake.

Steph looked Penny up and down, at all roughly five-four of her, with curly black hair and about twenty pounds of corseted black velvet. A world away from the Corps. It swung from refreshing to daunting. She gave Steph the same Amélie smile that had annoyed the shit out of her in New York.

"You're weird," Steph said, with affection. "Anyone ever tell you that?"

Yes. The question is, Penny signed, am I weird enough to be human?

Renard looked between them, as if their conversation was the most exciting verbal tennis he'd ever seen.

"Sure," Steph said. "Until you take off that dress and it turns out you've got nothing below the waist but tentacles."

Penny shivered, laughing at the joke, or one she'd thought of herself. It was silent, and she kept one leather-gloved hand clamped over her mouth.

That's certainly a relief, she signed. Of all my secrets, I certainly don't have tentacles.

Steph turned back to the writing. Outside, whoever was singing was still giving it their all – a strange choral piece that refused to form itself into comprehensible words. It was annoying, as if she could almost reach past all the distractions and read the writing, despite it being from a language that was thousands of years old, or dead.

"So," Steph asked, shaking herself. "What does it all say?"

Penny looked over it. A lot of keywords have been washed off. It seems to be about a... Singer Under the Sea? It's hard. There are words that could mean, Singer, Judge, Guardian or Scream and I don't have the context to interpret them. The shape of the lines could indicate it's a song, or the professor might have just had to break it up like that to fit it onto the wall.

"Aren't you supposed to just give me the answers like magic?" Steph said. "Isn't that the whole thing about having an expert on a mission?"

Penny smiled and shook her head. You watch too much TV.

"The question is," Steph said, picking through the piles of paper. "Why would he buy or find up a... what? A Sumerian statue? Then make a crazy wall of notes in a possible hoax language and cover his living room in pages of... I don't know... does this look Native American?"

Penny looked over another mound of papers. Not just Native American –ancient languages. Dozens.

"It might be for code," the sheriff said, from the other side of the room. "They used a lot of rare and old languages during World War Two. They're harder to crack."

"I don't know," Steph said, looking out of the window. The boat was moored, and a white plastic crate set out on the jetty beside it. "Look, I noticed a light on upstairs, shall we check before we declare this guy is missing? Like you said, he's a late riser. He might just have forgotten to close the front door properly."

The sheriff laughed. "Sounds good to me. I know this house a little, let me lead the way."

"We should check his boat, too," Steph said. "It looks like someone's loading it."

The sheriff stiffened. She turned to the same window Steph had been looking out of, one hand on her gun. "Emil doesn't have a boat," she said, slowly.

That was when a man with a scar and a Russian pistol came down the stairs.