Day 2 - The Abode of Memphis

"I fear… I feared…" the man stammers, trying to put into words something altogether unexplainable. Even now, as she crossed to the door, something in the man’s gut screamed no.

He crossed to a chair or bed, and sets himself down to sit. He waits for the woman to reveal the man behind the door.

Yuna starts to pull the barricade away, ready to open the door when able.

"Let him in, Barrington. Let’s see what waits on the other side." Charles offers weakly, feeling responsible for the man’s place barricading the door.

Barrington turns to Wilde, nods at him, and then turns to help Yuna taking apart the barricade.

"It all happened so fast..." he says to Yuna

"I had no idea what was going on... no idea what just happened..."

"I can feel my mind slipping away from me. Do you feel that too?"

Yua sets her jaw, "No, Barrington. I...I don't know what I saw, except some codger playing magicians tricks."

"Oh, please…" Charles scoffs weakly, in no mood for the reluctant believer act now. "A reporter that doesn’t believe what’s placed in front of her nose…"

Yuna turns on Charles, "What else could it have been? If...if that was real, then everything, the whole world, is wrong. Truth is no longer truth, and in a world like that...well that's not a world for reporters. That's a world for laughing stocks. If I wrote about what I saw, what I think I saw, I would be run out of town!"

"Memphis is not here, Mr. Hawkings, and we are present by permission of Ingrid. Unfortunately, it seems your mentor remains missing, though it has been our hope in staying here that we might learn a clue as to his whereabouts. You could not have heard his voice." Even as she says the words, she realizes she's trying to convince herself more than Harold. Had she heard him too? How would they possibly explain all the damage that has been done?

Charles just huffs, and nurses the wound above his eye, as the reporter tells her lie. He didn’t have the mind to convince her at present. Barrington knew what they had seen, surely. If anyone could truly know…

"Yes, well… wherever he is, he isn’t here." Charles says then, feeling it to be a hair more truth than lie to say so.

"We heard his voice too, Harold."

Barrington pauses.

"I've seen things in this house, Harold, that beggar belief. But I'm left with no others choice THAN to believe. To KNOW.

"What we do, we stage magicians, what I do, on stage, is mere illusion. Tricks of the eye. Misdirection. Show. Clever mechanical tricks."

"But there is something else. Something I'd never imagined, out there. True magic. I've felt it."

"I first started to suspect the night of your recent show. I could NOT work out how you did that trick. It felt somehow off."

"But here. In this room. In this house. I experienced things that. Well. I don't want to talk about them. But I can feel them draining the sanity out of my mind. Like I'm seeing things, becoming aware of them, that are too large for my brain to comprehend without breaking."

"Harold. You have to tell us. What happened at your show? What is this change that has come upon you? What do you know of Memphis and his disappearance? This is something bigger than all of us. We have to work together, I feel it in my gut, if we are to have any hope of getting out of this mystery, this awfulness, with our lives, with our sanity..."

Charles stifles at the not-so-implied threat. He gets to his feet and approaches the man, the magic book still in his hand.

To see the man approach, anyone would think that he would strike Harold with the very book in his hands.

"Foolish man!" he spits, his old age suppressing some of the rage he felt. His mind was whirling after everything, and some of the calm, collected man had receded.

Getting up onto the man’s face, the old man repeats:

"Fool!"

Barrington joins Wilde, up in the face of Hawkings.

"Too large for us to comprehend, but not for you, eh, Harold?"

"We saw what we saw, it was overwhelming - but I'm not going to be overwhelmed by you telling me what YOU know about what's going on here."

"And you can put your gun down, put it back in your holster, while you're at it, Harold."

"Out with it, man. Tell us what the hell is going on here!"

"You seem desperate yourself - maybe if you tell us what you know, we can even help each other!"

Yuna stands a little further back, but close enough to gauge Harold's reaction to the barrage against him. "Gentlemen, please," she says sternly.

"Harold, as much as I am loathe to admit it, there is clearly some very strange things going on here. Something beyond normal trickery. I...I do not know what to call it, but I realize now that whatever is going on surrounding Memphis, the burglars, you, is normal - even for magicians of such great renown as you and your mentor. Please, help us understand, so that we can find the truth and help. We are in a unique position to perhaps understand and offer assistance where no-one else can. Please, so you don't have to be alone in this."

"Put the gun down, Harold, and let's be reasonable. Talk about it."

"You know something! Speak…" Charles commands, lurching after the man and putting a rough hand to his shoulder in anger, in an attempt to drag him back for questioning.

"What did you do?!"

Seeing Hawkings moving to leave, and Wilde taking a hand to him, Barrington rushes forward to try and take the gun off Hawkings. Barrington is worried that, in his highly distressed state, Hawkings will respond to Wilde's assault by raising his gun and firing at them.