A P O P H E N I S T

     A completely unknown benefactor! How exciting. Well, benefactor is probably the wrong word, but whoever sent in the information has at least decided to make Ji Ying’s life interesting and that’s nearly as good, isn’t it? He could make money any old way, but finding new ways to have fun is a task that he thoroughly enjoys.

     “I’ve heard something about it, sure! Weird phenomena, supernatural blah-de-blah? But why on earth would someone send you information without a return address if they were potentially being offered a cash reward? It doesn’t make an ounce of sense if you ask me.”

     He cocks his head to one side and then to the other. He’s very curious as to who it was that collected… well, anything on him. They’d have to be someone who was observing him for a while, or maybe they were simply obsessed with someone he used to be? He can’t say for sure. He’s grateful that people can’t see his spirit form right now, though, because his whiskers are twitching, his tail swaying gently as he waits for more information.

   Richard’s lips thin. This is perfectly sound logic, which only points to his half-baked suspicion that the man in front of him had sent them; the only person who would have been contacted as a result of Strand seeing these photographs. No return address needed, when the subject of the mystery would certainly, eventually, find himself in this very office.

   “So what do you think?” he asks right out, expression neutral and eyes sharp. “Do you believe in so-called ‘dopplegangers?’ This notion of an unrelated, carbon copy of any given person? Sometimes mythical. Sometimes paranormal.” 

It was with relief that James came to a stop at the stranger’s side. Trying to pay attention to where he was going and speak at the same time was a difficult task for him at the moment. The golden motes of light that floated on the edges of his vision were a quiet warning that his grip on reality at that moment was tenuous at best, and it was better if he could take one thing at a time. 

          That evening was chilly and the ground was cold. The clouds had a heavy look to them, though James hadn’t noticed yet. He was busy taking in his would be rescuer, who was tall and surprisingly good lookin- and while he’d come across as standoffish at first James could hardly blame him. At least he was still helping.

          “Oh, ehm-” James took a moment to wrack his brain. Any other day he could have rattled off at least three or four landmarks, but now they were fuzzy in his mind and hard to pin down. Eventually his thoughts finally coalesced long enough to land on something and he perked, gripping onto the front of his cardigan in his excitement, “The Thames isn’t far from there! And the National Archives are just down the street I believe!”

   “The-” Richard comes up short, eyes narrowing. His finger pauses in its journey across the screen of his phone, certain in this moment that this stranger has hooked him for some purpose other than simply needing directions. Either he is playing some sort of practical joke, or he is legitimately ill. 

   “You’re a long way from London,” he replies, tone somewhat cutting; it can’t be helped, not when many people find him overly curt, unflatteringly blunt, and oftentimes condescending. Still, the expression on this man’s face seems oddly sincere, and he is inclined to believe that help truly is required here, and not the sort any kind of scholar can offer. 

The painfully British part of him wanted to start apologizing almost before his question had tumbled all the way out of his mouth. Though he experienced it often as a result of his Wanders, that feeling of being a nuisance would never stop causing a stone in his stomach. James was able to catch up just as they reached the next street light, and he offered up a weak smile in response to the man’s understandably reserved response.

       James’s mind, sluggish from the effects of the Wander, attempted and failed to parse that information into something on a map. He likely had a long time ahead of him yet before he would really get back up to speed, and the realization caused him to feel quite sheepish. Perhaps it would be better to try and find a police station- but that guaranteed an unpleasant night and he was still hopeful of this stranger’s generosity. 

      “I’m trying to get to-” Absently he lifted his wrist. By then he’d trained himself quite well to know the silver metal band around his wrist would tell him where to go, “30th and Water street… but I’m not certain how to get there from here, or how far away it is…”

   Richard is about to speak again, sympathetic enough in this unfortunate man’s plight to be of assistance if at all possible. For all that he is wandering around rainy Seattle with no shoes on, he does not at all appear as though he means any harm. If anything, quite the opposite. For all he knows, someone could be looking for him; it wouldn’t be the first time a family member from a hospital had somehow wandered from the facility and gotten themselves lost.

   Especially not here in the Pacific Northwest, where everyone seems to believe that they’ve got a reputation for strange and odd occurrences. He’s a recent transplant from Chicago, but he’s beginning to understand.

   “Water street,” the man repeats thoughtfully. He has since stopped walking, and now pulls his phone from his coat pocket, choosing a safe spot to stand aside out of the path of others traversing the sidewalk. “I’m not familiar with it. It you have a specific address, I can get you directions. Or a nearby location. Some sort of landmark. School. City building.” 

Following his roving gaze, Alex hurriedly gathers up a pile of notes, freeing up precious free space on the desk. She really needs to get a pinboard, or a whiteboard, or something, but that feels like it’s veering a little too close to obsession. When it’s all gathered here, in her workspace, she can fool herself that it’s still just work. Just a podcast.

(Never mind the books and notebooks littering her apartment, or the search history on her phone or laptop, or the hours she spends recording in her own home.)

She bristles, instinctively, when he finally frames his reason for being here.

“Checking up on me?” she demands, just a hint of irritation creeping into her words despite her attempt to keep her tone light. “You’re as bad as Nic. He barely seems to trust that I won’t go running half way around the world and straight into the arms of some crazy cult at a moment’s notice.”

But as soon as it came, the anger leaves, and she deflates a little. The smile that tugs the corner of her mouth upwards is meant for a peace offering.

“I’d at least call you first,” she says. And then, because it sounds a little too much like an admission: “You must have enough air miles saved up to fly around the world at least twice, by now.”

It’s a crappy joke, but maybe it’s enough to break the tension. The idea that he doesn’t trust her stings, but there’s nothing she can do about it. He’s always been stern and disapproving of her work, her methods, her conclusions - and it’s never stopped her before.

“Since you’re here, you can lend your professional opinion to a few of our more convincing submissions. There’s a couple where I can’t quite work out what I’m looking at.”

   That isn’t at all what he’d meant, but Alex does not give him the opportunity to elaborate before drawing a clumsy conclusion and accepting it as plausible fact. Not outside of the norm for her, which feels like a cruel if true thought to entertain; he is wise enough to bite his tongue. At this hour, he would expect nothing more or nothing less than the desperate attempts of a troubled workaholic to continue functioning.

   It is tempting to bristle himself, and he can feel his expression tightening a little, right along with the muscles in his shoulders, but Alex’s peace offering comes swiftly on the heels of her accusation, and he’s never quite been able to avoid succumbing to the tired softness that concludes a moment of tension. If anything, this swift shift indicates to him that he had been right to be concerned.

   “I assume most of them are either staged,” he says by way of agreement, because of course he will offer his expertise now that he is here. There’s scarcely anything else for him to do, as if he would not have something to interject whether Alex had specifically asked for his opinion or not. “Or ordinary things caught on camera, that listeners have imbued with the paranormal simply because they have been listening.” His fingertips lightly drum the side of his cup. “It’s on their mind. A current fixation. There’s a reason people are encouraged not to watch a horror film, for example, directly before bed.”

     Ji Ying blinks innocently at the man, because really this isn’t the first time that someone has told him that he has an unusually familiar face. Perhaps they think he looks like an old general from ancient times (he does). Perhaps there’s an uncanny resemblance to an obscure actor (there is). Perhaps whichever aged person has approached him simply remembers seeing someone in their youth who could have passed for his father or grandfather (they could, but it’s him, it’s him, it’s always him).

     He props his elbows onto the table, pillowing his chin upon his hands, and smiles. “Someone’s fascinated with me? That’s a heck of a word! I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’ve had some interest over the last couple years. Fast track to being a doctor with a pretty decent body if I do say so myself? The ladies love it. Some of the guys do too, honestly, and more power to them! But I wouldn’t call any of them fascinated, I think. Bit extreme.”

     The spirit, though leashed and concealed within him, wants to laugh. If someone has discovered something about them, then it’ll be a worthy challenge. “So? Who’s my secret admirer?”

   “I haven’t the faintest idea,” Richard replies,  managing to sound skeptical even if this is not the appropriate point in their conversation to do so. It’s a gift. “There isn’t any return address on the envelope, and whoever sent these photographs did not include any personal contact information. I think it’s safe to assume that this was not an accident.” 

  The man across from him seems utterly unconcerned, which, given the circumstances, is not what should spark his suspicion in this situation. Skeptical as Richard may be, if someone showed him a series of photographs of many different individuals that all resembled him so closely, he thinks he would at least be a little interested. Curious, maybe. It isn’t out of the realm of possibility, then, that he had been the one to send the photos. 

A breath of laughter escapes Alex, soft and whispering, slipping away quickly into the blue-tinged shadows at the corners of the studio. She rubs at her eyes, only just now realising how dark it’s grown.

“There’s not much to terrify me here,” she admits. “I was looking through some submissions from our listeners. Mostly pranks, or clever video-editing. I’ll admit the jumpscare of the clown screaming did startle me.”

A wan smile touches her lips. The touch of exhaustion isn’t worn by Strand alone; this late in the day all her careful work to hide her own lack of sleep is ineffective at best. Her concealer has faded, hinting at the bruised purple it’s been doing its best to cover, and she hasn’t had coffee since dinner time. She leans back in the chair, bending her spine back over its edge to stretch out her back and hearing it pop once or twice. 

When he mentions her phone, she reaches automatically for it, only to find that it’s not next to her computer where she’d expect it to be. She frowns at the space, casting her eyes around the room before memory flickers.

“—I must have left it in my bag when I went out to pick up dinner,” she realises. “It’s in the other room. Sorry—nothing urgent, I hope?”

He must need something, to have tried calling her in the middle of the night like this. Concern begins to leak into her expression. She drags out a chair for him, ankle hooking around one leg to help push it back from the desk. 

“What’s happened?”

   It’s a perfectly reasonable explanation, and not one that somebody might come up with on their own when there are so many others crowding the mind for validation. If he were anybody else, he could safely assume that Alex had simply been asleep. It’s certainly late enough for that to be a safe assumption, and would be, if not for the fact that he is a routine listener of the podcast they have been working together on for so long. 

   “Nothing’s happened,” he tells her, sinking gratefully into the seat offered him. Averting his eyes from the screen, Richard searches for a safe place among the organized mess for his coffee. “Not lately.” 

   There is no easy way for him to simply admit that he’d been concerned. If current trends are holding, he would expect her to be awake at this hour, logging sleep notes or working herself to exhaustion, hoping that hitting a wall might mean not only falling asleep, but staying that way. 

   There is no easy way for him to simply admit that Alex is not the only one who might be losing sleep lately. His own hyperfixation has kept him working into the early hours of the morning, so much so that even at the current hour, he is not yet beginning to feel the urge for rest. There will be phone calls and emails aplenty vying for his attention as soon as normal office hours roll around, despite his prolonged absence from his actual office. His father’s house - or, he supposes, his house, now - is still an unruly mess.