"Are you sure this is safe? I still think she’s keeping secrets." Yvette’s gaze lingered on the guest room where the automatized maid had disappeared moments ago, after coaxing a weary, despondent Denise to sleep.

  "She didn’t tell us everything about that painting because the truth is too monstrous—maybe even she doubts her own memories," said Winslow. "And with her servants and neighbors already forgetting her, what good would convincing us do?"

  "But why her? What made those things from beyond fixate on her family?"

  "We’ll need to investigate. A cursed bloodline, perhaps. Or some relic that drew their notice. My bet’s on the former—you sensed the anomalies in her, didn’t you? She’s the ‘window’… the ‘gate.’" As he spoke, he rifled through an herb cabinet in the distillery.

  "A gate?"

  "Entities from the cosmos spawn beings that exist only in dreams. Most drift through overlapping realms, never touching ours—like a shadow failing to grasp a ring from a box. But sometimes, through rituals or human invention, they find a way in.

  I think she is that way—why she alone remembers the mansion’s horrors while others were altered. Imagine standing before a door no one else sees, watching something press against it from the other side. You’d question your sanity too." Winslow’s smile was unsettlingly serene.

  Had the old professor said this, his gravitas might’ve softened the dread. But Winslow’s offhand delivery felt like a sober man casually admitting, "I used to hear voices. We’re on good terms now."

  "Wait—you sound like you know this. Personal experience?"

  A noncommittal hum. Winslow produced a small box containing wheat stalks, a few kernels mutated into grotesque black spurs—an inch long, curved like devil’s talons.

  He crushed the altered grains, weighed the powder on a chemist’s scale, then swallowed it. Yvette frowned. "What was that?"

  "Ergot. A hallucinogenic fungus. Ancient priests used it to speak to gods."

  "You’re not a drug addict."

  "It’s for the case. The entity we’re hunting isn’t fully here yet—just leaking through. This lets my mind bridge the gap, like shamans using mushrooms to see spirits."

  "Then I’ll take some to—"

  He slammed the box shut. "No. Ergot doesn’t just twist your mind—it burns. Medieval cults lost whole villages to ‘St. Anthony’s Fire,’ limbs rotting off from overdose."

  "And you ate it? Induce vomiting now!"

  "I’ve done this before. Know the dose. Built resistance." His calm was infuriating. "There are… other options, but none as precise. Alcohol dulls, opium numbs, coca leaves hype—good for a fight, bad for finesse. Ergot bends reality cleanly."

  Spoken like a man too familiar with his poisons.

  Yvette hadn’t pegged Winslow for a pharmacopeia connoisseur.

  "Training lets me stay lucid. Most minds shatter. I’ll sleep soon—let my dreaming self pilot my body. Dreams can solidify visions… let me perceive the imperceptible."

  "Why risk this? Hallucinogens destroy people."

  "I had a grudge against ‘invisible things’ once. Not anymore. Now, it’s strictly professional."

  "How hard is it? This… dreamwalking?"

  "Imagine sleepwalking while knowing you’re asleep. Few can. And when it works—" He hesitated. "I act… strange. Don’t panic."

  Separation of realities sounded fatal. Higher alchemy taught of shifting shadows and whispering voids—lessons in how much more the world held.

  "Here’s a trick: Check reflections for extra limbs. Try bending a finger backward. Pass one hand through the other. If it works, your mind’s awake… and you can touch the dream."

  Too arcane. She shelved the idea—but not her goal.

  "Relax. I’ll handle the vision. You’ll guide me back—ensure I wake properly. Because if the ‘dream me’ stays trapped while my body’s puppeted by what I saw… Let’s not find out." His eyelids grew heavy.

  Quick. Practical solution.

  "That ghost-camera lens from the Bell Street case—Maskin made it into a monocle. Claims it shows spirits. Would it work here?" She’d locked it away, wary of its reputation for attracting "unclean things."

  "Might… Some seers glimpse entities naturally…" Winslow’s yawn swallowed the rest.

  He was fading. "I’ll fetch it. Meet at my place—it’s on the way to Bilodo’s."

  A drowsy nod. The ever-proper Winslow, who scoffed at Ulysses’ lounging, now slumped inelegantly on the sofa.

  Did he hear me? She scribbled a note—Covent Garden—and tucked it into his lax fingers.

  Reality and fantasy were two sides of the same page—forever separate yet intimately connected. Throughout history, those versed in the arcane had sought to pierce that veil, to reach across the divide between what is and what lurks beyond.

  If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

  Yet such attempts were perilous. The barriers existed for a reason. To trespass where mortal eyes were never meant to see courted disaster. The lucky might simply vanish, lost between worlds. The unlucky could tear the fabric wide enough for something to slip through—something that had no business walking the streets of London.

  Officially, their Order forbade dimensional crossings, even the less hazardous methods. But rules, like politicians' morals, tended to bend when convenient.

  The hour was late—that liminal time when the walls between worlds grew thin. Yvette examined the monocle in her palm. Carved from the ocular tissue of a mythical deep-sea abomination, its rubbery surface glistened faintly in the lamplight. Normally it floated in a jar of preserving brine, but tonight it would serve a higher purpose.

  Not the safest approach, certainly. But needs must when devils drive.

  The cold glass adhered to her eye socket with disturbing intimacy. She tasted salt and the iron tang of primordial oceans. As the organic lens bonded with her flesh, microscopic tendrils burrowed into her skin—painless yet profoundly alien.

  Her vision swam. The moonlit London outside her window became an overexposed daguerreotype, reality's edges blurred as if viewed through shifting seawater. When she blinked, her right eyelid moved with the sluggishness of a sleeping limb.

  Then perception shifted again. Not obscured—revealed. The world's veneer peeled back like sunburnt skin. Water stains on brickwork resolved into crawling sigils. Shadows in alleyways slithered with independent purpose.

  Instinct screamed that she was exposing herself. The monocle didn't just let her see—it made her seen. She yanked her tricorn hat low over the unnatural eye just as iron-shod wheels clattered to a stop below.

  "Visitor at the door, sir," came Alison's voice from the hall.

  "My carriage," Yvette corrected while strapping on her rapier. "Should anything happen tonight, refer to Eddie. And don't answer the door to anyone."

  Through the window slit, she noted the coachman's waxen pallor—another of Winslow's clockwork sentinels. Inside the cab, she found a second construct cradling a sleeping child.

  "Denise?" Yvette's fingers twitched toward the girl. "This is no place for her."

  The Winslow who met her gaze bore little resemblance to the fastidious nobleman of daytime. His gray eyes held the same vacant precision as his automata. "Insurance."

  The Suicide Club case had taught them both how interdimensional incursions worked. For an Elder Thing to manifest required either an extended acclimation period—or a living conduit.

  Denise might be that doorway.

  Snakes forced through narrow gaps could be stopped halfway, Yvette thought. Dangerous, yes—but better than letting the whole serpent through.

  Winslow's silence confirmed her suspicions.

  "It hasn't come to that," she protested.

  "That creature wants her for a reason," he said tonelessly. "If it consumes her will, we won't be facing some half-formed phantom. We'll have a fully actualized nightmare wearing human skin."

  Before she could argue, the carriage stopped. The Bilodo mansion loomed through swirling mist, its blazing windows showing no signs of life within.

  The door swung open at Winslow's touch, then sealed shut like a trap. When Yvette tried the handle, the brass keyhole blinked at her with a bloodshot eye—then clicked open.

  Inside, the house defied physics. A dozen servants froze mid-task like clockwork figures whose mainspring had wound down. Then, in horrific sequence:

  Eyes rotated backward in sockets.

  Necks twisted, vertebrae popping audibly.

  Bodies pivoted as one behind rictus grins.

  "The master's honored guest!" they chorused while producing knives and shears. "The dinner bell has rung!"

  Silver wires erupted from Winslow's sleeves. His puppeteer's threads found purchase in the servants' spines, jerking them skyward in a macabre dance. When their chanting continued, the wires compelled hands into mouths until only gagging sounds remained.

  "They're innocent thralls," Yvette warned.

  "Collateral damage is... inconvenient." His shrug would've suited a discussion of inclement weather.

  Despite the disturbance, an unnatural stillness clung to the upper floors. From the stairwell's base, not a single light flickered above—a stark contrast to the bustling servant quarters below where every lamp blazed brightly.

  Yvette stood at the threshold between illumination and shadow, her enhanced vision scrutinizing through the deceased creature's ocular lens. The intricate wallpaper patterns seemed to conceal watching eyes, and faint hisses lingered at her periphery. Even the staircase appeared to pulsate faintly, reminding her disturbingly of organic passages—as if the mansion itself were some great beast that had shaped its substance into architecture, waiting in predatory stillness.

  She shook her head to clear the unsettling notion.

  "Our next move? Should we proceed upstairs—"

  "Of all possible approaches, you'd choose the worst," Winslow interjected bluntly.

  Insufferable man...

  Breathe. He's barely conscious right now.

  Movement suddenly disturbed the upper silence. Mrs. Bilodo materialized on the landing, now clad in formal evening wear and bearing a candelabrum. Her charming smile never wavered at the sight of dangling servants or armed intruders.

  "Welcome, dear guests. Won't you join me in the parlor? I've prepared tea and cakes."

  The hunters remained silent, weapons ready.

  The invitation repeated verbatim—same cadence, same pause—like a wound-up music box's refrain.

  Yvette's enhanced sight revealed the truth: beneath the gown swayed a thick vine-like appendage vanishing upward, as if some grotesque puppet master dangled its marionette. Stranger still, ordinary vision showed nothing amiss. Had it been like this in daylight?

  Half-conscious Winslow saw it too.

  They struck as one—Yvette's glowing argent round streaking toward the tendril while Winslow's glittering filaments ensnared the woman.

  The result proved anticlimactic. Target and tentacle dissolved like wax effigies, leaving only foul sludge dripping down the steps.

  "Your suggestion plays into its hands," Winslow murmured. "The upper floors warp dangerously toward its realm. We stay here."

  "...It was just a thought. Alternatives?"

  "The Familiar's entry required human intervention." Winslow made the maid marionette approach Denise. "We'll consult the source directly."

  As he retracted the cerebral filament, the peacefully sleeping girl began whimpering in distress.

  "She's dreaming," Winslow confirmed, examining her darting eyes. "The confrontation approaches."

  Suddenly, savory aromas replaced the stench. The suspended servants vanished, replaced by steaming buffet carts. The kitchen lay in improbable readiness—dishes artfully arranged, ovens blazing, as if staff had momentarily stepped away.

  Until...

  Yvette spotted the wedding ring wedged on a suspiciously digit-shaped morsel in the stew.

  Denise's whimpers intensified, her face glistening with anguish.

  "Can't we wake her?"

  "This battle exists in dreams now. Only resolution ends it—the creature grows desperate." Winslow's detached tone couldn't mask something deeper. "It breaks her psyche strategically—like old ecstatic rites, but accelerated through trauma."

  Yvette recognized the clinical description's personal weight. Impulsively, she covered his hand—a comforting gesture from her hospice days.

  Winslow recoiled as if burned.

  Undeterred, she rephrased: "Hypothetically, how would one rescue such a victim while defeating the entity?"

  After a loaded pause, he answered: "Dream invasion counters dream predation. If you're that curious..." Without warning, he manipulated Denise's nerves to induce nightmare imagery.

  A child's voice immediately bubbled from a stewpot, singing the horrific "Juniper Tree" ballad—Albion's grisly tale of familial cannibalism.

  Typical. She glared at Winslow before lifting the lid.