Vestavia Hills

He went to her and hugged her. Then he kissed her on the forehead and went outside.

He had work to do.

He walked high and low all the main roads in town, asking questions to many people; in some cases, he asked the same people twice a short time later, the ones who didn't convince him, to catch possible contradictions.

He looked at the site of the fire for a long time.

He filled several sheets with all the notes, the hypotheses, the thoughts that rioted inside him.

Yet even after all this intense activity, the sunset came without Nicholas Abbot being any closer to a lead.

He stopped for a drink before going back home, to gather his thoughts, or perhaps calm them down. He needed something strong.

Upon entering the bar, he noticed that a person was watching him. Then, when he had taken a more decisive step towards the front door, she withdrew, as if she wanted to approach him but not at that moment.

His tense nerves most likely made him see more oddities than there were. Therefore, he decided to silence the nerves and not give too much weight to the last impressions of a very long day.

When he went out into the street, without having shaken off that feeling of having made some mistakes, the figure waiting for him was still there, she had just changed place, but not the intention of approaching him, it seemed.

Nick became self-defensive, subtly tensing his muscles, ready to sprint. However, he soon realized that there would be no reason for it.

The person in front of him, now he saw her well, was an older woman, submissive, who certainly could not have caused him any concern.

"Inspector Abbot," said the woman.

Nick looked carefully at the figure before him. A crooked smile formed on his face.

"It's me, detective, Evelyn Archer."

The lampposts on the main street were already emanating their amber light, which seemed to wrap everything up. It was as if all Vestavia Hills was sinking into see-through molasses: people and buildings could still be seen, but everything had a sticky slowness on it. People seemed to move in slow motion. Things showed as a slowed downtime, not at their usual pace.

The town's colours seemed to merge, one moment they look like was chalk on a blackboard, the next moment they were exchanging places in strange combinations. A woman passing by had the skin the same colour as the moon and the hair like the nearby bush. A passing horse, on the other hand, was tinged with the bluish colour of the furthest areas of the street, where the street lamp's lights did not reach; while the buggy that the animal was pulling and the man who drove it had the colours of the blood of the pieces of meat exposed by the butcher.

Even the dimensions of objects and the world were assuming unstable and indefinite states. The outlines of things were fraying as if they came out wrong on a painting. Roundness and edges exchanged places: moreover, they first got bigger and then smaller, without any logic.

Yes, logic: every perception had lost its own, and it did not seem possible to determine which the right one for the world was.

The music spread everywhere from far away but contaminated by a background sound that seemed to contain many overlapping voices. This cacophony had something disturbing about it, as much as fascinating the mystery of its origin was. It appeared to be underwater, and those sounds had the touching indefinability of the wind when it whistles in the mountains.

Nicholas Abbot was a dot in that washed-out design of the world, firm in his position similar to a statue poorly made. Yet, with his head anxiously trying to interpret what he thought he was feeling, and throbbed slightly, perhaps for the drink he just had, probably for the unreality of what he deciphered.

An instant.

Maybe much more.

The blink of an eye. Or the prolongation of a moment, as it can only happen in eternity.

Then Nick recovered from that strange daydream, without knowing how long it lasted.

In front of him, there was still that modest and innocent figure, this time in its natural contours and colors, of Evelyn Archer.

"How can I help you?" Nick seemed to have regained his full presence of spirit, so he was able to resume the thread of the conversation.

Evelyn said to him, "I know you can investigate the church fire and the disappearance of Reverend Abblepot."

Nicholas didn't reply, but his demeanor made the woman understand that he was interested in letting her go on, so she continued: "I knew Johnathan Abblepot, like everyone else. But in so many ways, more than any person you can contact. "

The way Evelyn Archer spoke was convincing, not dragged, but sure and severe, Nick thought; it was the tone of someone who is not making anything up, and who is risking something in revealing what she is saying.

"If you want to know what happened to him, let me tell you, I do too. I need to know. And maybe I have something to say to you that will help both of us. "

This time the blink of an eye was real, and it was Nicholas': it was the time it took him to make the decision.

"Okay," he said, "I'll listen to you."

YET ANOTHER AFTERNOON FOR ROBERT RED

5.

He was sipping orange juice. He thought that the taste had a rancid aftertaste and that perhaps he had left it in the refrigerator a little too long.

He didn't want to put up with another nuisance: as if he needed a stomach ache from spoiled food. He threw the juice into the sink.

Robert was leaning against the kitchen cabinet with the dazed look of one who is following his thoughts, the one who makes the person with glazed eyes seem so ridiculous, almost as if they were those of a stuffed animal. Yet he was not thinking of anything specific.

More than anything else, he tried to follow his emotions, which were made mostly of anger inside his now quite physically tested body. Insomnia gave him no break, and this gave him other problems such as lack of appetite and headaches. Concern for his nightmares, which had also been joined by daytime hallucinations, was beginning to grow. Finally, for the past two days, a fever had arrived from who knows where, which gave him a dullness, a further numbness feeling.

In short, he felt like crap. And, although he did not know who to blame, and perhaps for this very reason, his anger was growing.

He would never have thought of doing it; it was something he could not understand and had always avoided because considered it a disease, he went to look for the number of a psychologist.

When he heard someone talking about it, he always looked with pity on the subject in question. How could it be possible that someone needed a person who told him how to feel, who coaxed him with pleasant or even provocative sentences, who gave him a shoulder to cry on and feel sorry for himself while getting paid for it?

What kind of person was someone who couldn't even control what he thought?

But now, gripped by the monster of insomnia, which forced him to spend whole days in a daze, and was no longer sure of what he saw or did, perhaps he too could give it a go. Those strange feelings, such as the experience of the previous day or the one in the literary café, convinced him that his psycho-physical health could be in question. He had already followed the doctor's orders: but the pills didn't work, and he had no intention of taking stronger medications.

The hallucinations were what worried him the most: if he were no longer able to distinguish the real from the unreal, well, that would have been a big problem.

With all those hours of lost sleep and that heaviness on his eyelids and in his brain, all those afternoons spent dozing off without really resting, and he was no longer sure he could distinguish what he did from what was only a dream.

Dr. Thomas Trevor.

To Robert, it seemed somewhat popular, judging from the website. Well, however, for Robert, one was worth the other, not having high esteem of psychologists.

Yet another twinge of headache convinced him that he should try.

So he dialed the number and spoke with a kind secretary, who told him that the doctor would be free the next day.