The Bizarre Detective Agency Chapter 81

The carriage rolled to a slow stop on a dark street. The faint flicker of candlelight glimmered in a few windows, but most were pitch-black. In a world where darkness meant danger, this often signified that no one was home.

Oak Street, number 103—the client's residence. A high wall enclosed the property, and the carriage waited silently nearby. The windows of the house beyond the wall were dark; not a single gleam of light escaped them.

“Too late... or is it already over?” Lu Li muttered, an oil lamp in his hand.

The first possibility meant the client was already dead; the second, that another exorcist had beaten him to the job. Anna, not understanding the distinction, simply sat beside him, tilting her head.

“Anna, do you sense any of your kind inside?” Lu Li asked, turning his head.

“No...” Anna whispered, shaking her head.

That meant one of two things: either there were no ghosts inside, or the ghost within was stronger than Anna. He could all but rule out the first possibility, which meant...

Lu Li didn’t rush in, his eyes fixed on the house.

“The good Lord’s light shines upon the world... as does the glint of a coin...” A low, humming song drifted from the distance, slowly growing closer.

But the voice was familiar. Only a few hours ago, Lu Li had been speaking with its owner... and had given him 1,000 shillings.

The humming faded. Gades, who had apparently decided to walk several kilometers at midnight to save on fare, spotted the carriage ahead and the figure standing beside it with a lamp.

“Conceal your presence, Anna,” Lu Li said. He wasn’t sure how local exorcists felt about ghosts.

Meanwhile, Gades stopped swaying and approached the carriage, his expression suspicious. When he finally made out the figure inside, he exclaimed:

“What are you doing here?!” His shout echoed down the quiet street, but his attention immediately shifted. “Are you trying to steal my job?!”

So the competitor Marcus had mentioned was Gades... Then again, it made perfect sense. A man as greedy for money as Gades was a perfect match for Marcus.

“Before we argue about this, we should probably find our client,” Lu Li said, lowering his guard slightly now that he was dealing with an acquaintance. The client was the lady of the house, yet no one was here and no lights were on. The whole situation was strange.

Gades snapped out of it and, with a grim expression, ran toward the gate. Unwilling to miss the chance to earn a fee and potentially save lives, Lu Li followed.

Gades ran to the iron gate, rattled it a few times, and finding it locked, began to scale the wall.

Planting his feet on a few outcroppings, Gades scrambled rather nimbly over the wall and dropped down on the other side.

Still, the years were taking their toll, and he was slightly winded after the jump. Seeing that the windows remained dark, he tensed.

“I hope no one’s home...”

“What do you mean, no one? The clients, the whole family, are inside.” Lu Li, who had followed him, simply pushed the gate open and walked into the yard. Beneath furrowed brows, his dark eyes remained calm.

For a moment, Lu Li tightened his grip on the handle of his Spirit Gun, and the touch allowed him to “see” that the entire house was shrouded in a hazy mist.

Without even asking how Lu Li had opened the gate, Gades’s expression changed drastically. “This is bad!”

He tried the front door, but it was locked from the inside and wouldn’t budge.

Before he could try a window, Lu Li called to Anna and asked her to open the door from the other side. With a quick glance at Gades, Anna passed right through the door.

Gades stared at Lu Li in astonishment. “A ghost?!”

“Mhm,” Lu Li replied curtly, offering no further explanation.

A click echoed from the other side. The door swung slowly open, and Anna floated out from the dark entryway.

For the moment, Gades paid Anna no mind. Like Lu Li, he rested a hand on the grip of his own pistol, raised his lamp, and stepped inside. In his hat, he looked like a sheriff ready to investigate a crime.

“Stay close to me, Anna,” Lu Li said, his eyes on Gades’s back as he followed him in. His hand remained on the grip of his Spirit Gun, ready to draw it at a moment’s notice.

“Anyone here?!” The lamplight trembled as Gades scanned his surroundings, hunching over and advancing cautiously.

Lu Li walked behind him, his posture perfectly straight. Anna drifted at his side, looking around with open curiosity. The pair—one human, one ghost—looked more like they were out for a casual stroll than exploring a dangerous house.

After a few meters down the dark corridor, they came to an open door. As Gades passed the dark room, he raised his lamp and peered inside. The outline of a piano emerged from the shadows.

After scanning the room, Gades moved on.

Passing another open door, Gades raised his lamp again. An empty bed, a thrown-off blanket, rumpled sheets—it was a bedroom.

A few more meters down the hall, Gades stopped abruptly, his expression grave.

He clamped the lamp between his teeth, and with his free hand, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a strange, dry, black branch.

“This is...”

The black branch seemed to be some kind of artifact. Holding it, Gades appeared to sense something and began to look around intently.

“Anna, tear off the wallpaper,” Lu Li said suddenly.

Anna nodded obediently, and a powerful gust of wind suddenly swept through the corridor, carrying a distinct chill with it.

The wind whipped at their hair as strips of wallpaper swirled through the air, fluttering down from above.

“That’s...” Gades dropped the branch. Through the falling scraps, his eyes widened in horror at what was hidden beneath the wallpaper.

Thick, black-and-red lines snaked chaotically across the wall like a child’s frantic scribbles—dense, dark, and overlapping. The ceiling, the walls—everything was covered in them, the lines disappearing beneath the remaining wallpaper.

Where a gap had formed, a black silhouette appeared.

The silhouettes of a family of three, holding hands as if in a moment of happiness, materialized on the wall, evoking a sense of deep unease.

Staring at the eerie silhouette of the hand-in-hand family, Gades felt a chill run down his spine. He cried out in terror:

“It’s a Seal!”

“A Seal?” Lu Li tilted his head slightly, his gaze fixed on the black silhouette of the family.

“A pattern imbued with a strange power... These lines are its tracks. The entire house has been marked by the Seal!”

“So?”

“The Seal creates another dimension. I have to destroy it, or the ghosts in the wall will get out!” Gades declared, his face grim. He pulled out the black branch again and began to gnaw on the bark.

Lu Li noticed the teeth marks already on the branch.

Gades forced himself to swallow a fingernail-sized piece of bark, and hideous veins bulged across his face. He began to back away, toward the piano room they had passed earlier.

Gades scrambled into the room and yelled back at Lu Li:

“I’m going to destroy the Seal, but I won’t be able to protect you. You and Anna should get out of here.”

“Alright.”

Gades clearly had this under control, so Lu Li turned without hesitation and left the room.

Reaching the doorway, Lu Li stopped and looked back. “Should I close the door?”

The piano room was dark. There was no light, and no one to be seen.

Gades had vanished. And so had Anna.