“A deductive story is a narrative about mysterious events that are, within the plotline, given a correct solution by one or more of the characters using logical means.”
– A. Zapryagaev (November 9th, 2023)
I, the author, guarantee that the following story is a deductive story.
Denouement
Rockil lit a cigarette, letting the weight of his words sink deeper into the silence. All eyes were now on him. Then, suddenly, they weren’t. Then, they were. The glances of the others had grown unsteady — near frantic. How could they not have?
“There is no culprit.”
The deeper those words sank, the louder their echo became.
Was this short little man calling himself a detective playing some kind of a joke on them? Of course there was a culprit.
Mr. White was the first to object. “Okay, I think we’ve put up with just about enough of this. I’m going home.”
Ms. Scarlet placed her hand on his shoulder. “Wait. I say we hear him out. If nothing else, because we’ve been stuck here for so long.”
Mr. Blue said nothing. This, Rockil felt, was the only helpful thing he’d done throughout the whole mess. Of the three, it must be said that he was the only one with reason to feel some sense of relief by Rockil’s revelation. Unsteady relief — downright uncomfortable relief — but relief, nevertheless.
Rockil turned to the policewoman next to him. “Since you’ve just arrived, Charlie, I’ll go over everything that’s happened. Nobody, I take it, disagrees?”
Everyone did very much disagree, but the thought of this solution being the true one — after a sea of false ones — gave them some sense of good humor for the old man. Rockil understood this was his last chance. Charlie, although little more than a clueless newcomer, also felt the finality of the situation.
The air became still.
The four pairs of eyes were on Rockil. And this time, they remained.
Rockil let the smoke seep out of his mouth. The great dragon had finally come to life — and he was ready to burn everything.
“It starts with Mr. Black.
“He’d found — what he claimed — was the hand-written first draft of Christianna Brand’s Death of Jezebel. I’m not much of a reader myself, and I don’t know if anyone here’s managed to convince me that it’s truly worth as much as some are claiming, but the point has not gone unappreciated — it’s worth something to someone, and that’s good enough to understand why this gathering happened.
“Mr. Black called three of the biggest mystery fanatics he could find,” he motioned to the three guests, “to this castle, in hopes of auctioning it off.
“He was a bit strange, though, wasn’t he? Instead of having a normal auction, he prepared an elaborate game of chicken.
“He locked the manuscript in a room at the top of one of the castle’s towers. He then had you go into the room, one by one, examine the manuscript, and privately make a bid for it. Nobody could know another’s bid. The person who had made the highest one would get the novel.
“As you now know, I was hired to act as security for this event. I was set to guard the entrance to the tower and given the only key to the door. My job was to thoroughly check everyone going in and out — Mr. Black included. I was also forbidden from letting anyone not accompanied by Mr. Black inside.
“It seemed like a reasonable setup. The entrance to the tower leads to a spiral staircase which leads to the room. The room has only a single window, which we now know cannot possibly be scaled from the outside.
“The auction went as expected. Mr. Blue was first. Then Ms. Scarlet. Then Mr. White. All three were accompanied by Mr. Black at all times, and all three were clear of any suspicious items. When there was nobody in the tower, I made sure the door was locked. When Mr. Black took one of his guests upstairs, the other two would be in my sight. I never left my post once.
“On this — we all agree?”
They nodded.
“After returning with Mr. White, Mr. Black declared that Ms. Scarlet had won the bid. That should’ve been the end of it. But the dance was only getting started, wasn’t it?
“The first mystery was Mr. Black’s disappearance. After declaring the winner, he excused himself, saying he had to do something in one of his collection rooms down the hall. The door to it can be clearly seen from the tower entrance. I can, therefore, confirm that me and the three guests had seen him go in and were together the entire time.
“The room in question contained a collection of taxidermied birds. Besides the tables they were laid out on, there was nothing else of interest in the room. The only way in and out was the door that was in our sights the entire time. By this point, I think we can all agree that there are no secret passages at play here: all of us have thoroughly examined the walls of the room, and I’ve personally gone over the castle’s floorplans. The structure and layout simply makes it impossible for a secret passage to exist.
“And yet — Mr. Black never walked out of that room. After fifteen minutes, the four of us went into the collection room.
“Ms. Scarlet would later suggest that someone could’ve gotten into the tower at this point. But, I assure you, the door was locked and the only key was still on me. Just to be doubly sure, I’d wedged two small pieces of paper into the gaps of the door. I’d hidden them pretty well, so the fact that they were exactly as I’d left them when I came back proves nobody went into the tower.
“Either way, we had bigger things to worry about at the time. The collection room was empty. Mr. Black had vanished.
“I returned to my post while Mr. Blue and Ms. Scarlet went off to look for him. Just a few moments later, Ms. Scarlet came back and said she’d just come from the courtyard — there was smoke coming out of the tower window.
“I unlocked the door and went upstairs.
“The manuscript was on fire.
“This, of course, should not have been possible. The room was completely empty besides the table the manuscript had been resting on. Everyone who had gone in and out was thoroughly searched. Not to mention — all three suspects were in Mr. Black’s company while they were in the room. They would’ve been unable to set the pages on fire without him noticing.
“The window didn’t offer an answer, either. It was not framed or covered with glass — instead, it was a simple gap in the wall. The table with the manuscript was in the center of the room, away from the window. Sun rays would not have reached it, excluding a solution where the manuscript was accidentally set on fire by them.
“By the time we’d put the fire out, it was too late. The manuscript was destroyed. All three of you later examined the charred scraps and confirmed from the bits and pieces still legible that those were from the pages you’d examined earlier. In other words, there was no switch — it really was the first draft that got destroyed.”
Rockil paused to crush his cigarette into the ashtray.
“But now comes the truly preposterous part, doesn’t it? Mr. Blue’s testimony.
“He and Ms. Scarlet were together when they noticed the smoke. She went off to alert me, while Mr. Blue kept watch of the tower.
“Suddenly — he has claimed — he saw a black suit of armor floating out of the window, into the sky.”
The detective didn’t need to add more dramatics. They’d gone over the point a million times by this point.
“I should restate the obvious. One — I’d searched the room before I even started watching the tower. There was no suit of armor and there was no place to hide a suit of armor. Two — the three people who’d visited the room in the tower confirmed there was no suit of armor there at any point. Three — I searched everyone going in and out of the room; nobody could’ve smuggled in a suit of armor. Four — it is impossible to scale the tower from the outside, meaning that nobody could’ve brought the suit in through the window. Five — the armor could not have been catapulted into the room from far away, because the castle is surrounded by walls. Their height and distance from the tower make forming any kind of trajectory impossible. Six — like the collection room, the tower has no secret passages.
“That’s for the armor entering the tower. As for it floating out of the window…”
“He’s lying! He has to be!” demanded Mr. White.
Rockil raised his hand. “I do believe we’ve been over this, Mr. White. While it is certainly the most sensible conclusion, we cannot forget that — as Sergeant Charlie here told us — a group of hikers had made camp in the mountain not far from here and had a clear top-down view of the castle and its surroundings. They were so impressed by it that they had even set a camera to record it while they went off to explore the surroundings. This footage covered the entire time of the auction.
“From it, we can prove that nobody scaled the tower from the outside. We can prove no suit of armor came into the tower from the window. We can prove that the smoke emerged right around the time Mr. Blue and Ms. Scarlet claimed to have seen it.
“And yes — we can prove that a suit of armor slowly floated out of the window and ascended high above, out of the camera’s view.”
Mr. White bit his lip. “Ridiculous. The footage had to have been faked.”
Charlie shook her head. “We’ve already gotten in touch with forensics on that. They confirm that the footage hasn’t been tampered with and was taken at the time the hikers claimed to have left it on for.” She turned to her notes. “We’ve also been unable to find any link between the hikers and Mr. Black. The choice of their hiking trail, too, was not controlled — they were originally supposed to go to a different part of the mountain, but their van driver had an unexpected emergency. The decision to set up camp where they did was last-minute, after they managed to find a replacement driver that was willing to take them — but to the other side of the mountain.”
Rockil nodded. “It seems pretty clear-cut, doesn’t it?”
“It’s not clear-cut at all!” Mr. White continued to protest. “It’s impossible!” He ran his fingers through his hair. “You have to be the culprit! When we all split up to look for Black, you went into the tower and you set fire to the book and you brought in the suit of armor and you made it go into the sky… somehow. You were the one to examine the plans, weren’t you? There you go, then. You lied then, too. There was a secret passage that Black used to escape, and you two are putting on a show here.”
The old man shook his head. “A reasonable conclusion. But also wrong. The floorplans I looked through are freely available to the police, and they will easily confirm no secret passage has ever existed. I’m sure Sergeant Charlie will also go through the room on her own time and fail to find a secret passage.
“As for me setting the manuscript on fire — this, too, is easily proven false.
“After all, Mr. White, while these two were out looking for Mr. Black, you stayed behind with me. Are you suggesting I did all that right under your nose?”
Mr. White blinked. “Well… N-No. No, I guess… not.”
The detective grinned. “And that’s why there’s no culprit.”
Mr. Blue cocked his head. “What do you mean?”
“When you eliminate the impossible,” the old man pulled out another cigarette, “whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.
“We have a man who entered a room and seemingly vanished into thin air. He could not have gone through the door, the only way in and out. And he could not have hidden anywhere.
“Therefore, he did not ‘seemingly’ vanish. He actually vanished. He dematerialized then and there.
“There is no other answer.”
A quartet of jaws now hung in the air.
“We have a book that caught on fire, in a room that no object that could set it on fire ever entered. We have numerous pieces of evidence proving nobody could have gone in or out of the room at the only time it could’ve reasonably been set on fire.
“Therefore, the book was not set on fire by anyone. It spontaneously combusted.
“We have a suit of armor that floated out of the room. We have camera footage showing this to have actually happened. There was no doubt in this happening to begin with. The only question was how our black knight got there in the first place.
“The same logic for the book applies. It could not have gone through me and it could not have gone through the window. There are no secret passages.
“Therefore, the opposite of Mr. Black’s case happened. The suit of armor materialized from nothing. He then ascended into the sky.
“There is no culprit.
“You are all free to go.”
The Bureau
The BMC — The Bureau of Mystery Cohesion — is not an organization that exists. At least, not in what is considered to be the ‘real world.’ Its influence is, instead, hidden in a layer that exists between fiction and reality. Its agents are present in every mystery story — some as characters appearing in it, others acting as a guiding force that is never once mentioned.
Their task is always the same — ensure that the logic of the mystery is consistent with the world it appears in. A solution employing bad logic is fine. A solution that defies the common sense of its world without warning is not.
It is the duty of every agent to influence the story, when and if required, to ensure the latter never happens. Failure to do so would leave the world of the story in a state of contradiction, causing the story to eat itself alive until nothing remained.
To this end, the agents are the only ones aware they exist in a fictional world. The history of this fictional world is always as long as the one in real life, and people have lived and died as expected throughout it. The only true difference — the point — is that the world itself was created for the events of the mystery story. The world will exist before and after it, of course — assuming, again, that the story itself doesn’t fall apart, breaking the world’s perceived rules and causing its end.
Forger’s world existed in a story called Death of ‘Death of Jezebel’. It was knowledge ingrained in him since the day he was born. When he graduated college, he learned the location of his office — a small little box in an complex without a name, in which he would wait for the story to start.
At first, the agent typically knows nothing but the name of the story they’re in. It’s only when the story nears its arrival that information starts to trickle in: every Bureau office is equipped with a pigeonhole. Just before the story’s author wrote a page or a chapter of the manuscript they’re working on (it varied) — before the words in their head are truly even known to them — they would appear in an agent’s pigeonhole for them to check ahead of time.
If something was amiss, the agent still had time to influence the world around them to make parts of the described events or logic possible and consistent. If it seemed like the culprit should have left fingerprints on the murder weapon but didn’t, the agent had to ensure that the handle of the knife the culprit had on-hand would not be able to maintain any. If it seemed that the author had accidentally made a character appear in two places at the same time, the agent would have to find a double for that character for the problem to be explainable within the world. If the story misused a physical principle, the agent could start a misinformation campaign to convince everyone in the world that the author’s interpretation was the correct one.
If they could not change the world, they could attempt to edit the page themselves and place it back in the pigeonhole — the pages would disappear, subtly giving the author a chance to course-correct their thinking. The latter approach was considered highly dangerous, however, as it may make the author indecisive, causing further, much more glaring, contradictions later down the line. The story itself would begin to play out in the world when the last page was handed in. If the agent had not prepared accordingly, disaster was very likely.
Regardless of the approach, the one thing an agent could not do was stop or derail the events of the mystery as they were happening in the world. Integrating as one of the cast members was acceptable — provided that the agent was simply playing the part of an already written character for the purposes of subtle cleanup.
But interfering was disastrous. It would have created a ripple effect — since the story was already written by the time the events are playing out, the agent’s actions would contradict the rest of the written story, detaching the author’s work from the fictional world it’s meant to play out in, and, in turn, destroying both.
The general rule of thumb was to try and keep the story a deductive one. A handbook every office was equipped with provided a definition:
A deductive story is a narrative about mysterious events that are, within the plotline, given a correct solution by one or more of the characters using logical means.
The manual went on to explain that the solution could not be given by an omniscient narrator after the fact or through the culprit confessing; instead, that it had to be stated by a character within the story, who was capable of interpreting all the clues in a logical manner, with no inexplicable intuition involved. The solution provided had to be correct — there could be no doubt that it was the truth of the matter.
It must be said that Forger took his job seriously. Since he had no idea when the pages would start coming in, he used the story’s title as a starting point. Whatever it was going to be, it had something to do with Christianna Brand’s Death of Jezebel. It was a novel that existed in Forger’s world — a highly regarded one, at that.
It was a locked room murder mystery. A stage actress, Isabel Drew, concocts a cruel scheme that leads to the suicide of a young man, Johnny Wise. Time passes, and she eventually organizes an elaborate stage performance — a pageant in which a dozen knights on horseback would ride beneath a queen’s tower. The queen, of course, being played by Isabel Drew herself.
During the performance, however, Isabel falls from the tower. When her body is inspected, it is found that she had been strangled. The knights were all on stage, in clear view of the audience — including the three directly under the tower; the ones that would’ve had a reasonable chance of killing her. The backstage area leading to the tower was locked from the inside, with someone guarding the door from the outside.
Whodunnit? And how?
Although a short novel, most of it was quite dense — almost all of the page count is focused on theorizing as to how the crime could’ve been committed, leading to false solution after false solution. A bit exhausting for Forger’s tastes, but he was a tired man to begin with, so there was little hope for him to begin with.
And Forger was truly devoid of hope. Because at the key moment — the one important moment of his life, and indeed the lives of his entire world — he was not there to examine the story. Just before the author had started to generate pages into his pigeonhole, Forger was involved in an accident that left him in a two-month coma.
By the time he came to, it was too late. The events of the story had played out — and they had played out disastrously. The world was beginning to fall apart. Time was beginning to shatter. The sky was turning red.
Nobody seemed to notice except Forger. And thus, it was Forger alone who carried the full burden of failure.
The only thing left for him in the pigeonhole was the title page, a page in which the author seemed to commit to making the story a deductive one, and the last chapter, Denouement.
The rest of the pages were gone. The story had almost completely collapsed, crushed under the weight of Detective Rockil’s destructive logic. Soon, the last chapter would be devoured too, and nothing would remain.
Still, Forger noticed — the destruction was occurring exceptionally slowly. Miraculously slowly, even. Why?
…Had the events of the story not finished playing out?
The fact that the apocalypse had begun was proof that the solution provided was the intended one, and thus the only correct one. There was no changing it.
What could Forger do?
Could he make it correct after the fact?
Denouement was playing out at the end of the story. But with the rest of the story gone — could it not serve as the beginning, instead?
Could Forger somehow let the story have sense after the fact?
There was no time to think. Everything was almost over. What could he do?
He ran out of his office.
The Denouement was over.
That only left room for one thing.
Epilogue
Forger ran into Detective Rockil’s office. An unlit cigarette remained mid-air, caught between a pair of boney fingers. The old man was about to open his mouth, but reconsidered. This reconsideration gave Forger a moment — a decisive one.
The earlier parts of the story were gone. Although the events had surely played out at some point, their destruction meant that they were being erased along with the world. That meant the only information — the only memories — someone related to the story would have carried in full were the pages of Denouement.
“Hello, detective.” Forger said. “Long time, no see. I just wanted to say goodbye before I go. It’s me. Do I look different?”
“A bit too much.” the detective admitted. “How about you give me a hint?”
“I’m the man who vanished into thin air.”
Denouement had no character descriptions. It was the only chance he had. If Rockil didn’t believe him, it was all over.
The old man smiled. “The man who vanished into thin air. Hah. Long time no see, indeed, Mr. Black. How was your trip in the ether?”
And there it was. It worked. Rockil actually believed Forger was Mr. Black. And if the detective believed him, then it had to be true — he had been Mr. Black all along. With this acknowledgment, Forger did the one thing he shouldn’t have — he altered the events of the story.
This had severed the world from the author’s intent. If the world was falling apart, it was now falling apart even faster.
But it was his only shot. He would treat Denouement as the first chapter of the story. Forger would make himself the main character of the ones that would follow it. He would make Rockil’s deduction make sense.
The only problem was the author. This wasn’t Forger’s story to tell.
But this was the author’s fault to begin with. He would be convinced to play along. One way or another. If he changed what was written to match with what Forger had done after the fact, the world would be consistent once more.
First things first, though.
If he was going to fix Rockil’s reasoning, he had to alter past events. The past could not be changed directly — as this would have introduced time travel and further complicated the list of things Forger had to explain away. But it could be contextualized.
By becoming Mr. Black, Forger could now add to the events by filling in the gaps in Rockil’s perspective of them.
Forger could create a flashback.
Mr. Black Disappears (Again, For the First Time)
Forger opened his eyes.
Rockil was still there, cigarette in-hand. But they were no longer in his office. Instead, they stood in a hallway made of stone. Instead of leaning against his desk, the detective was now leaning against a large wooden door.
Three more people were now with them. Two men and a woman.
“Well?” one of the men spoke with impatience. “Who gets it?”
Forger understood.
He turned to the woman. “Congratulations, Ms. Scarlet. It’s yours.”
The woman let out a little squeal, extending her hand. Forger shook it.
Ignoring the scornful looks of the two men, he added: “Before I hand it off, I’m afraid there’s one thing I have to do. Excuse me for a moment.”
Forger turned on his heel. There was a conspicuous door at the end of the hall. No doubt the collection room.
It didn’t matter why the ‘real’ Mr. Black had disappeared. It certainly didn’t matter why he went in there to begin with. This was the second draft — and Forger was going in there because he was supposed to go in there — something that would no doubt be acknowledged when the writer is forced to put all of it to paper.
Still — he thought as he walked down the corridor — there was still the problem of the disappearance itself. How was he supposed to escape in a way that didn’t contradict the logic of the world?
Once again, it was do or die.
Sealing himself into the room of taxidermied birds, Forger resolved to use his one idea.
The connection between his fictional world and the real world was undoubtedly two-way. Its extent, he could not understand, but the fact that the delivered pages could be edited to any effect proved it.
Could something besides pages be sent through it?
Something bigger?
Like a person?
The edited pages do disappear if placed back in the…
“…It’ll work.” Forger murmured.
He looked around the room. Among all these birds, there was only one he wanted.
Luck was on his side once more. It was actually there.
He grabbed it, ran his fingers along the stitched seams and tore open a hole.
The bird was a pigeon. And he’d just made a hole in it.
A pigeon hole.
Forger stuck his hand into it, silently praying to a god he knew was no god at all. Soon, something on the other side began to pull him in further. It sucked his shoulder into the hole. Then his head. Then his torso. The legs. Finally, the other arm.
Voila.
Mr. Black had vanished into thin air — sucked into a stuffed pigeon.
Meet Your Maker
I wasn’t having a good day. All I could do then was sit in my chair, dejected and frankly a little angry that the past few days’ work had disappeared practically overnight.
Yesterday, I finished the first draft of Death of ‘Death of Jezebel’ and sent it out to my beta-readers. It was way shorter than my usual stuff — almost kind of a joke in response to someone coining the term ‘deductive novel.’ I wanted to write a story where the definition was adhered to, but with the finale having a logical ‘deduction’ that didn’t make any sense — and was, generally speaking, hardly a real deduction at all.
One beta-reader went through it and got back to me. He liked it. I think. The others had all just gotten started with it or, at the very least, opened the document. I didn’t think it would need more than a few days to be ready to be put out there.
But this morning, I realized that the document had gotten corrupted. For some reason, only the last chapter was still in there — everything else was gone. All the backups seemed to have gone to hell, too — they only had the last chapter, if that.
Since it was a Cloud document, there was no other copy — all the beta-readers were now left a single chapter to go over.
What was I supposed to do now? Rewrite the thing from memory?
“What a disaster.” I muttered, sipping my coffee.
“You don’t know the half of it.”
I jumped.
Standing at the doorway to my room was a man. He was dressed in all black — the suit was slick, but decidedly too big for his unquestionably slim frame. Scanning his surroundings, he ran his hand through the several months’ worth of unkempt beard clinging to his face.
I couldn’t bring myself to ask him who he was. Because I recognized his face. Neither could I ask what he was doing here. Because he belonged here.
He was me.
Or, no — no. Obviously, he wasn’t me. But he looked like me.
“Call me Forger.” he said. “I don’t need another name.”
“I–”
“Just listen.”
And I did.
He told me who he was. About the fictional world he came from. The Bureau and its role. How I ruined everything. How he’s trying to fix it. How he came here.
He told me that the pages of my story disappeared as a result of it eating itself.
“That doesn’t make any sense.” I glanced at the open document. “I mean, I can accept a little metanarrative here and all, but c’mon, a story’s a story. Google doesn’t have code that can just erase my document. Bad nonsensical mystery novels still exist. They don’t implode.”
“Because the agents of their world make their fictional worlds bend to the author’s nonsense. The ones who don’t — who fail — those stories get deleted. It’s not just about me preserving my world, get it? It’s about you preserving your story.”
“Well, my story isn’t exactly preserved.”
“Neither is my world.” he scoffed. “Go figure.”
“Still… it doesn’t seem like a real thing. Mystery novels having some kind of a specialized Bureau. Is there a Romance Bureau? A Thriller Bureau?”
“I’m literally standing right in front of you.”
“Right.” I coughed. “But that’s not… a thing that’s supposed to happen in the real world, you know?”
He considered it. “Well. I guess not. Which means I haven’t really made it into the real world, have I? This, too — right now — is a layer of fiction. My world is a fictional world within this fictional world… And this fictional world exists because a version of you — somewhere in a world beyond here — is writing all this.”
I blinked. “I don’t exist?”
“Sure you do. Just as I do. Your life feels real enough, doesn’t it?”
“It does.”
“In that case — for both our sakes’ — I need you to do me a favor and rewrite what you were working on. Take Denouement as the first chapter. Have the rest of the story follow me. Use what I just told you.”
It didn’t sound like much of a plan. “But how does the story end? I’d rather not just be left to my own devices here. It’s my incompetence that created this whole mess.”
He tapped his chin. “Fair point. How about we do it together, then?”
“What’s supposed to happen after the part of the story where you visit me?”
“Well — by leaving through the pigeon, I’ve made Mr. Black’s disappearance consistent with the rules of the world. There’s still the manuscript’s burning and the flying suit of armor. I think we can get rid of both of them at the same time.”
He sat down on my couch. “How about this? We’ll write in another flashback sequence. This one before Rockil and the guests show up…”
World Ender
Forger opened his eyes.
He was standing in the room on top of the tower. Before him was the manuscript, laid out on the table. This manuscript would soon have to burn — and its destruction would be set here and now.
He could not resort to any mechanical trickery, because Rockil would inevitably search the room and find it. On the off-chance he didn’t, then the narrative would’ve been considered unfair, destroying the Denouement chapter.
Forger had a different idea.
He flipped through the manuscript. The chapters and passages were indeed familiar. This was, without a doubt, Death of Jezebel. Whether it was truly the first draft written by Christianna Brand, it was impossible to know.
Fortunate, given that it was never the focus of the story.
Flipping to the end of the manuscript, he was relieved to find some extra pages of empty paper attached to the bundle. It was, of course, the same type of paper as the rest of the manuscript.
He pulled out a pen and began writing. Mimicking the handwriting would be tricky — but there was a reason he was called Forger.
He wrote:
Epilogue
Of course, what nobody could have known — not Cockie, nor dear Charlesworth — for all their efforts — was that they were wrong. There was no shame in it. Being human was all they could be. It was their cage — sense, common or otherwise — had not evolved to think in a way they had been required to. What they had been piecing so desperately had not been a jigsaw puzzle — but an equation to which no mathematician had found an answer to.
Indeed — who would have believed that the true culprit had been Johnny Wise himself?
Johnny, who had seen what he had seen in that apartment. Johnny, who had driven his car into that wall and died. Johnny, loved and mourned by so many.
Yes — Johnny had killed Isabel Drew. The stars had aligned, and all that misery, all that loneliness, all that hurt — for the past seven years, it had all lingered in the air. Nobody could see it — but all could feel it.
Johnny, too, started to feel.
At first it was nothing. A rogue radio wave nobody could interpret. Then people started seeing apparitions. A mirage beneath the summer heat. A flicker in the drug-induced haze of midnight streets.
Then he started to feel again. The air became solid.
Still — nobody could see it. Nobody could see him.
But soon enough, he saw.
He saw the long seven years. And he saw that his pain had birthed more pain. And he saw Peppy. He saw her empty shell.
Then he saw Isabel Drew.
And he knew what had to be done.
On the day of the pageant, his formless visage took a fifth suit of armor that nobody had remembered was supposed to be there: that of the black knight.
When the play began, he slipped inside of it and flew along the ceiling, above the audience. He descended down into the backstage area. Nobody could spot the black suit of armor — the light was only focused on the stage.
There was nobody around.
Someone was whistling Greensleeves.
He ascended the tower. Obviously, he had no need for the suit of armor. But he needed Isabel Drew to know that it was not a phantasm that killed her. She had to see — to fear — of a breathing, living human being, who had come along to punish her.
He wrapped his hands around her neck — and threw her out of the tower window.
From this window, he himself flew back into the darkness of the ceiling. Never to be found.
A black knight flew through the night sky.
His vengeance complete, Johnny Wise was prepared to disappear for good. The ether that had produced him was free to take him back.
But that didn’t happen. Because he happened to look down.
On a lone run-down rooftop, a group of pigeons had arranged themselves in a funny way — they’d formed a circle around a hole in the roof.
What was this?
Was this the way back home?
Johnny Wise began his descent — into the hole surrounded by the pigeons.
A pigeon hole.
Forger put the pen away.
That would do.
He may have existed in a fictional world, but it was a fictional world with mystery novels in them. Those mystery novels, in turn, must have had fictional worlds of their own to take place in. He learned from his encounter with the author, after all, that worlds could be layered.
He had made this story his own. It would no longer take place in the world of Death of Jezebel. It would now belong to another world — one created for failure. No agent could salvage that conclusion.
According to the author, his story began to disappear only after he’d sent it to be read. Therefore, this manuscript, too, would not begin its destruction until someone glanced at it. Luckily — no less than three people would do so.
That world would burn. And so would the manuscript.
The only one to escape will be a lone black knight. A stranger in a foreign land.
He would then do what he could always do.
He would spread his arms and fly.
