47. Traces, The Attic

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The lockdown on Room 369 had been lifted. Yesterday's blood had been scrubbed away, and the house had regained its tranquility, yet the front door was so riddled with bullet holes that it could no longer be closed.

The two men entered, first drawing back all the curtains on both floors and opening the windows to let in fresh air, allowing the warm sunlight to illuminate every room and corner.

Dean stood with his hands on his hips, his gaze taking in the surroundings.

"This time we’ll search together. You take the second floor. By the way, does this house have a basement?"

"I don’t recall there being one," Alvin replied firmly, shaking his head.

With their tasks divided, Dean remained on the first floor to search.

It was a textbook layout: living room and kitchen combined.

Dean kept his "God's Eye View" ability active, surveying everything within five meters with each step he took.

He scrutinized the front, back, to either side, the ceiling above, the wooden floor beneath his feet, and even considered the possibility of a basement or hidden compartments.

To the right of the hall, against the inner wall, stood a black sofa, a coffee table, and a television. On the outer side, a dining table with two chairs.

Next to the dining table, a large cabinet pressed against the wall, filled with cups and plates. Oddly, the wooden knives and forks inside had been snapped in two.

The left side featured a compact kitchen, with stove, cupboards, refrigerator, and a dish cabinet, all thick with dust and draped in cobwebs.

This matched the old man’s previous claim that the house had stood empty for five years.

Dean gathered information as he went, reflecting on his findings.

The "God's Eye View" was far more thorough than mere eyesight, offering a panoramic, 360-degree perspective. Not even a fly resting on a chair or a tangle of thread on the floor could escape its scrutiny.

"Not bad," Dean mused. "Aside from using this ability to ambush through floors and barriers, it’s also perfect for finding clues at crime scenes."

His gaze shifted to the refrigerator.

The door to the cooler had been forcibly removed, leaving the inside empty—fit to serve as a storage cabinet. The fridge was plugged in, but not connected to power.

The ceiling light wouldn’t turn on. The television screen had a gaping hole. None of the appliances worked.

The electricity had been cut off throughout the house.

"Is it because the utility bills haven’t been paid for too long? Then why hasn’t the house been auctioned off? Isn’t American property management supposed to be all-powerful?"

"What is this mark?"

Dean approached the dining table and discovered a crude symbol on one of the legs—a swirling, black spiral.

It looked to him like the meaningless scribble of a hyperactive child with a black pencil.

Dean searched more carefully and was surprised to find similar symbols on the coffee table, chairs, TV stand, even the wooden floor. Some were barely the size of a fingernail; others, as large as a palm, drawn so forcefully that pencil lead had broken off inside the grooves.

After a rough tally, Dean realized there were over a hundred of these symbols on the first floor alone.

"Alvin! Did a child ever live in this house?"

Dean called up the stairs.

"A child? No!" Alvin’s voice came down, certain. "Didn’t the neighbors say so? Panon always lived alone, never married."

"Am I seeing things then? It can’t be Panon himself who drew all these symbols, right?" Dean wondered aloud. "How old is your brother now?"

"Same as me, forty-eight."

"How long has he lived here? Oh, right, you haven’t visited in ages, so you probably wouldn’t know?"

"Panon and I grew up in this house. Later, I moved to Compton in Los Angeles, and he’s lived alone ever since," Alvin replied, descending the stairs, his expression somber.

"What do these symbols mean?" Dean nodded, pointing to a black ring at his feet.

"Panon drew those when he was little. Whenever he was nervous or upset, he’d start scribbling them."

"So it really was him."

Dean fell into thought.

It was normal enough for a mischievous child to doodle on the furniture, but a hundred or more symbols on a single floor—that was excessive, suggesting something was deeply wrong with the person drawing them.

He recalled the information gathered from the neighbors.

Panon was reclusive, venturing out for groceries only once every week or two, bundled up in heavy clothing. The local kids thought he was a weirdo, sometimes breaking in to tease or bully him.

That was hardly normal adult behavior.

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"So, Panon has always been different from others?" The thought surfaced in Dean’s mind, and at that moment the system buzzed—his investigation progress jumped from ten percent to fifteen.

Did that mean he was on the right track?

But he was at a loss for how to ask Alvin directly. He couldn’t very well blurt out—"Is your brother crazy?"

"Any findings on the first floor?" Alvin interrupted his thoughts.

"Nothing more. Let’s check upstairs."

...

The second floor had three bedrooms and a bathroom.

Alvin led Dean straight into the right-hand bedroom. It was not large; along the left wall stood a row of empty wardrobes, not a single article of clothing inside.

Dean guessed most of the clothes had been stolen by intruders.

Sunlight through the window revealed a single bed in the middle of the room. The blankets and sheets had vanished, leaving only a grimy mattress and bed frame.

"I used to stay in this room," Alvin said, unconcerned by the filth. He sat down on the mattress, looking around with a gaze full of emotion. The place was deserted, yet he smiled as if transported.

"From birth through twelfth grade, I lay here every day... Can’t believe after all these years, the house hasn't changed a bit. Panon kept it exactly the same."

"It’s like I’ve gone back in time." Alvin wiped tears from the corner of his eye.

Meanwhile, Dean picked up a soccer ball from a shelf by the window. It was little more than a black-and-white shell, all the air long since leaked away.

Alvin noticed. "When we were kids, Panon always begged me to play soccer with him on the lawn. He’d be the goalie, I’d take shots."

"You two were close?"

"Of course. We’re twins, both born on May 23, 1932. Did you know, he was born half an hour ahead of me... so he became my big brother."

Alvin smiled at the memory. "We ate, slept, played together—inseparable. Sometimes I felt like we had some special psychic connection. Sounds unlikely, but I could read his mind from his expression, and he could do the same with me."

Then why couldn’t you sense his disappearance? Dean thought, and asked a more direct, painful question:

"If you were that close, why did you go so many years without seeing him?"

At that, Alvin seemed frozen. His smile vanished, breath caught in his throat, and he clutched his upper right abdomen with both hands.

His breathing grew labored, the lines beside his nose trembling with the tension, his face pale as an old photograph.

"Shit! Hey man, what’s wrong? Don’t scare me!" Dean hurried to help him lie down, fussing over him in confusion.

Within a minute, Alvin returned to normal, his shirt soaked in sweat, as though he’d just been hauled out of water.

"Sorry, my old problem hits me a few times a day. Dean, maybe let’s check another room?"

Dean abandoned any attempt to persuade him. If Alvin didn’t care about his own illness, why should an outsider press the issue?

They inspected the remaining rooms.

The bathroom, Panon’s bedroom, and the brothers’ father’s bedroom—all bore even more of those black circular symbols than the first floor.

"Besides you and your brother, your father lived here too?"

"Yes. When I was in high school, our father passed away from a serious illness. That was over twenty years ago now."

"I’m sorry... So you two were on your own for a long time?"

Alvin nodded, running his hand along a bookshelf, his expression complicated—partly moved, but touched by something harder to define.

Dean began to summarize the clues he had.

Alvin and Panon’s father died young; the brothers relied on each other in this house. Later, Alvin moved to Los Angeles, and Panon remained alone in the old home.

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For reasons unknown, the brothers had not seen each other for a long time—at least ten years.

Panon was eccentric, shunned by the neighborhood, prone to drawing strange symbols all over the house when upset. Extremely introverted, perhaps suffering from severe OCD or some other disorder?

Five years ago, Panon disappeared and was never seen in the neighborhood again.

"That’s all for now," Dean made a mental note.

"Wait, is there an attic in this house?"

Dean looked up; with his ever-present "God's Eye View," he spotted a narrow, shadowy space behind the right corner of the master bedroom ceiling.

It was extremely well hidden, nestled between the ceiling and the beams. Without Dean’s special ability, it might have gone unnoticed for a month of searching.

But there was no light inside; it was pitch black.

"Wait, I don’t remember there being an attic," Alvin said, astonished.

"Let’s find a ladder and take a look."

...

A quarter of an hour later, after considerable effort, Dean pried open a plank in the ceiling that fit perfectly with its surroundings, and climbed into the attic.

The space was cramped, half the size of a bedroom.

There were no windows; the darkness was total.

The air was stagnant, thick with the faintest mustiness, and everything was coated in dust.

It was eerily silent.

Both men felt an uncanny sense that, in the depths of this darkness, a bloodthirsty monster lay in wait, poised to leap out and devour any intruder.

Dean held a Colt in one hand and, in the other, a flashlight taken from the car.

He let out a breath of relief.

The attic held only a large, jet-black bed, and beside it, an unlocked wooden storage chest.

Both pieces looked ancient, relics from another era.

"Dean, how did you find this? I lived here for years and never knew there was an attic."

"I’m just good at finding things," Dean replied.

Alvin’s attention was caught by the black bed in the center. Two meters long, one meter wide, set directly on the floor.

As if bewitched, he approached, brushing the dust from the bedframe. The sensation was strange—cold and hard as cement, inscribed with curving patterns.

He murmured, his expression as if he’d witnessed something unbelievable, cold sweat beading on his face.

Dean knocked on the bed. It seemed completely solid.

He sent his "God's Eye" deeper, but without light, he could see nothing.

He gave up on the bed and shone his flashlight on the wooden chest. The chest was reddish-brown, knee-high.

When he touched it, his fingers met a thick, warm layer of fuzz, as if stroking a living animal.

Dean recoiled as though shocked, circling the chest. His "God's Eye" discovered two peculiar wooden panels, and on the back of the chest was an intricate design:

A pale eye, the size of a palm, surrounded by a ring of pale lashes—like a pallid sun radiating beams of light.

Dean reached to open it.

"Dean, Alvin, where are you?" Holden’s voice suddenly echoed from below the attic, a thunderclap shattering the silence.

Alvin snapped out of his trance, hurriedly moving away from the bed.

Dean grabbed the chest and climbed down the ladder.