Happy Monday everyone! I hope you had a fabulous weekend. Mine was spend doing chores in and around the house. I actually got to work in the garden. Mostly clearing away the burnt out remains of the tomatoes. Soon onions and garlic will go in but I am putting them in a little late this year because of the heat. But soon. For now, we have our morning prompt. Timers set for fifteen and let’s see what we come up with.
This is so not where I thought that would go when I started writing. I kind of love when that happens.
Monday, September 21st: He signed with a flourish.
He signed with a flourish. He felt a giddy sort of joy spread through him. He knew not to announce it, after all laughing maniacally while signing a property deed was not generally considered acceptable. ‘Skipping out while humming is probably a bad idea as well,’ he reminded himself.
For all his excitement, the flourish was all the expression he allowed himself. Considering the others in the room, it hardly raised an eyebrow. Looking around James half suspected that they would indulge in skipping and at least a maniacal chuckle.
The paperwork was sealed, filed and a heavy key ring was presented to him. The property was officially his.
He took the heavy keyring and the papers, bid a sober, good day to all involved and made it to the door without a single giggle escaping his lips.
If he was honest as he left the estate agent’s office, it was less giddy joy suffusing him and more a sense of profound relief. Finally he had a place where he could go through all the boxes he needed to search, read all the books and papers he needed to reach and with luck, finally figure out what exactly was going on.
He felt a little of his giddiness flee as reality returned. ‘Why couldn’t he have left a letter?’
It was an old thought and one that had been circling since his uncle died and left him his estate, including several mysterious noted clearly written to himself. That his Uncle Tobias was on some sort of quest was obvious. He was more than willing to chalk it up to Uncle Toby going around the bend in his dotage. In their family there was ample precedence for such a thing.
The of course details kept popping up. The news one morning would be full of a horrific tragedy that sounded disturbingly familiar. Sure enough James would find a write up about it in his Uncle’s notes. All of the details would be there, down to names and times. There was some variance. The article would list twenty two dead and Uncle Toby’s notes would say between twenty and thirty dead, but that was the extent of the differences.
Otherwise the information would be spot on. Uncle Toby would have just pinned the note to his board more than three months before it happened. The first time it happened James was willing to call it coincidence. The second time he thought coincidence might be stretching. The third and he let coincidence snap, believing something was up. The morning before they hit on time number twenty six.
The fact that there were still more than two hundred notations left had him somewhat spooked. He had taken the file from his uncles office along with all the general paraphernalia there. The items from his apartments in the city were boxed up and in storage. James very quickly reached the conclusion that if he was going to figure out what was going on then he would have to find some place to work. His own rented accommodations were of no use here. If he brought so much as a shoe box in his landlord instantly became suspicious.
What those suspicions were, James couldn’t tell but he used them as ample proof that a landlord inspection was needed. Thus far he hadn’t caught James doing anything untoward, mostly because as a rule, James did not perform untoward acts. He knew he needed a space where he could work uninterrupted if he was going to figure this out and now, he had secured one.
Ten til Midnight 