Jonathon Worthington: Strangelight Investigator

Case #17: The Mystery of the Giggling Gobber (Chapter 5)

Panic seized my heart when I awoke to the darkness, the insane laughter echoing in my ears from my nightmare. The lack of sight was complete and stifling, and my first instinct was to scream out in terror. Deciding that simply wouldn't do, I restrained my primal impulses, albeit at quite an effort. As I waited for my ragged breathing to calm down again I took stock of the situation.

I was blind. That fact alone prompted a tidal wave of fear that I struggled to repress. But I was also still alive; a not inconsiderable advantage over the alternative. As the panic receded I realized I was also no longer in the dilapidated mansion, or rather I was most likely in the fiend's laboratory sequestered somewhere within the house, awaiting my turn under the knife. My head rested on a makeshift pillow, and the board beneath me, while lacking padding, also lacked splinters and warping. The air was free of dust and pleasantly cool on my bare chest.

A new fear struck me.

Slowly my hands crept up from my sides and confirmed that, yes, someone had indeed sliced open my shirt, and currently my skin was exposed for the entire world to see. While the masking cream's effects hopefully still lingered on my hands and face I knew without a doubt that the same wasn't true of the rest of my body. My chest had been a dark mahogany brown for several days now, and the dull scarlet of the bloody diseased markings would be quite stark against such a canvas.

Someone else now knew my secret.

The sound of scissors working nearby caught my breath, but I couldn't control my dreadful curiosity. If the flash of light had been enough to blind me, what other effect might it have had on my face? I had to know how bad it was. Slowly I moved my hands up, afraid of what I'd find, afraid that the owner of the scissors would notice and return to disembowel me to make yet another abomination. Yet the scissors did not waver in their task, and I was relieved to find that cotton met my touch, not a ragged landscape where my face should have been. Careful to make no sudden moves that would attract attention, I drew the cloth away.

The dim light I saw made me nearly weep in relief. What I'd taken for blindness was merely a compress laid across my eyes. I had trouble focusing, but I could clearly hear someone talking to himself nearby, his high-pitched chattering voice never pausing for more than a moment. Flickering lanterns burned merrily from the support beams of the large field tent despite the slivers of daylight shining through the small gaps in the heavy cloth walls of the makeshift structure. Through the haze of my returning sight I was able to discern that near where I rested the entrance flap had been drawn closed, but I glimpsed the welcome sight of Outpost Five illuminated by the morning sun on the other side.

"Left cut, right cut, up down and all around, secrets to be had, secrets be sad, they want to be known," murmured the tiny voice behind the scissors.

I shook my head, trying to focus, unsure now if I were awake or not. Orsch lay splayed across several crates; his shirt was sliced open and over him leaned a gobber not more than two feet tall wearing comically oversized apothecary garb and holding a scalpel.

My pistol was in my hand. I didn't remember pulling it out of my coat. For that matter, I didn't know where my coat even was. Without looking I knew the weapon was loaded by the slight difference in weight, by the smell, by a sense I couldn't even name. It didn't matter. I raised it and pointed the barrel straight at the gobber's head, silently debating the ethics of shooting someone in the back that was the size of a child.

Orsch was quite unconscious and with his shirt slit open I saw his massive barrel chest revealed for the first time ever. While I'd appreciated his tendency to dress conservatively I'd never thought to inquire why, when so many of his ilk were content to brashly pose shirtless and worse even when their physiques didn't justify it.