House Of Avenues (Episode Three)

Johanna Deren, diviner of Tarot, Pixie grrl, tempestuous traveler of the Hyperverse with the alluring songs of baroque lullabies, former lover of Cecil, who recounted the events at the hospital in detail.
"...so you burned it down?" She commented when he finished.
"Hopefully, we obviously didn't stick around..."
"Do you wanna reading?"
He shook his head. "No, I'm sick of fortunes... I went to Lady-My-Rhyme-Petal some days ago."
"What'd she say?"
" Apparently I will see the beginning of the end of the oldest story." He quoted. "I need help trying to remember where I saw that symbol..."
"Do you think it could be from that one case..."
"The Unspoken Hymn?....the only one I never solved, and I have 3 days of missing time..." He tipped his tumbler full of rum & root beer. "...Know anyone good with recalling memory?"
"My friend, Dana."
Cecil let out an exasperated breath, swirling the ice in his cup and how the light catches in it, skimming glances at Johanna. "Time to go for a walk... think things over..." He set his glass down delicately on a wet ringed napkin and stood, Johanna slid out of the booth and embraced him leaving a friendly peck on his cheek. "take care of yourself." He said pushing a coil of hair away from her face.
"You too."

Cecil on the stroll City takes him halogen sidewalks Oriental kiosks grandiose fashions 24 hour continuum of hot speeds and the frosty cliques bombshelling in high heels. Ambidextrous lovers stalking prophets in bus terminals membraneous gods of narcotic markets....
{CITY SPIRITS::: cecil hits crossroads, they get in communication:::}
The Twins: Rattle & Toddle
Toddle, the girl, with a cute black triangular dress wearing a bow on top. Rattle, the boy, with black short pants and his button down shirt done up with a bow tie. Their heads, luminous and perfectly spherical, marked only by three circles where their eyes and mouth should be, both grasped light red balloons, neither spoke, instead, the balloons showed pictures, what Cecil saw on them alternated between a skull & crossbones and an "!".
~An emanation of one of the Minor Harbingers...~ He mulled over the encounter. ~...and no clear indication of what the warning refers to...~ His troubled, overworked mind turned his thoughts towards home and sleep.

The House Of Avenues, a labyrinth of off kilter hallways 60's goth kitsch tiki black light Nag Champa. Mysterious rooms that seem to exist only to punctuate the mood, the place looked to Cecil as if it built itself out of archetypes his office looked like a 1940's NYC apartment complete with a view from a fire escape, the dining room had a long polished table and walls of dark oakwood carved with goblins and gargoyles, the library's high ceiling and stained glass roof depicting shapes of sacred geometry, skyscraper shelves of heavy tomes rows upon rows of unabridged knowledge...laboratories that could only be used by learned alchemists from the future...a museum of artifacts, some collected, others left behind by previous owners, things like a reel to reel tape recorder once used by William Burroughs, the unpublished manuscript of H. P. Lovecraft's only full length novel: "The Aeon Of Tsathoggua", the sound system used by the Merry Pranksters during their Acid Tests, a deck of Tarot cards designed by artist Kurt Schwitters, paintings by famous artists that never saw light of day, trinkets and doo-dads charged with the energy of pop culture, forgotten 45's and secret decoder rings, peculiar inventions sprouted from peculiar minds: a T.V. that broadcasts the dreams of everyone in a 7 mile radius, The Enochian Boombox picks up angelic transmissions, a telephone that lets you listen in on future conversations, a slide whistle that calls ghosts and spirits when certain tunes are played, a pair of ordinary glasses that allow the wearer to immerse themselves in sexual fantasy. The House's ownership history -a long winded list of eccentrics and iconoclasts, some famous, others not quite in the public eye, like Wyrmwood Tavern regulars The Philadelphia Man and Con Yoleb, Cecil acquired it in 2005 and has occupied it since. From outside, when it could be seen, it looked ramshackle, an oblong rectangle with a tin smokestack jutting from the shingles, a manicured front lawn with a charming bramble of rose bushes by the porch. The backyard an overgrown and unearthly garden of yams, tubers, roots, herbs, and trees that bared lanterns of onion-like fruit. Furless, albino things hop and lope in the dirt, the place oft times haunted by former residents and other ghosts and godforms attempting to offer advice on Cecil's cases but mostly just acting a nuisance.

Cecil woke, sweating off the echoes of nightmare, he headed to the kitchen for some cold water down a spiral staircase that he didn't remember being there into the living room, tidy and post-modern, and, on to his destination where he met Windy Susan, one of the chaos spirits that sometimes inhabit the house, her attire, a black Victorian dress buttoned up to the neck, with bustiers hair tucked into a hat with a lacy veil covering the top half of her face, in one hand she held an umbrella with doll parts dangling from it, in the other, a brown bottle marked XXX, and, with a sassy, cockney accent alerted "WOT ABOUT JOSH?!?!", Cecil started getting incredulous, for a man who had become so jaded towards the weird shit that invaded his life on a regular basis things started getting to a crisis point. "WOT ABOUT JOSH?!?!" she repeated banging the bottom of the bottle on the spotless formica counter, he poured his glass of water, "WOT ABOUT JOSH?!?!"
"What about him?" Cecil asked dismissively.
"When was the last time you visited 'im? Been gone by the Two-Lou's I 'spect..."
"I got enough on my mind without you giving me more questions, I already ran into Bottle & Tumble, and I don't know of anybody called the Two-Lou's..."
"Oh you will soon enough, portents, entrails and tea leaves, the ayes 'ave it, 5 sided die...."
"If I promise to look into it tomorrow, after a good nights sleep, would you leave me alone?"
"I promise to give ya a swift kick in the arse if you don't wise up boy!" Windy Susan took a swig from her XXX and faded out of sight.
~all in a days work~ He thought adversely, going back to his bedroom.

Cecil always hated any kind of hospital, not just for the usual reasons people disliked them, for him it came down to the surgical antiseptic smell, his nightmares always had a bleached and vaguely medicinal scent, especially as of late. Now he argued with a prim, curt, head nurse, looking down her nose at him, fully convinced that one Joshua Cohen, friend and former bassist/violin player, "wasn't currently registered in this particular facility, and no record exists of him ever being here". Cecil, knowing better, confessed that he must have gotten the name of the institution wrong and went off thinking ~What The Fuck?!~ ...Finding himself in quite the quandary... ~I visited him a few months ago...maybe his family knows something...~ He soon found that asking Josh's family questions concerning his whereabouts would be far more difficult than he initially anticipated, when he arrived at the last known address new occupants lived there and they knew nothing of the former tenants, asking the neighbors ended up being equally fruitless. ~haven't seen his family in years...time to try a different approach.~
Preparing for ritual, back at his headquarters, Cecil chalks crop circle sigils on the smooth floor in the domed planetarium room, holograph zodiac keeping the astrological time, places a pic that his missing friend once used along with a photo in a circle, and intones in his encrypted magick tongue:
" <9^> {*!*!*!} ^7*^ >++< <^^^> <8> *!*!*!*>"
Legs crossed Yoga style he lets electric currents of Josh's emotional patterns and life string out like antennas focusing his empathic feelers but, no absence, just a shapeless fog the faintest whiffs of a desperation, the notion of neither here nor there, but nothing he could follow through on, if his friend still lives, he had been well hidden, but for what purpose? ~I will going to get to the bottom of this!~