Phase: Geminus

Mr W. T. Patterson

About half an hour after Mora's rapid departure, Mr Patterson had found a bath full of tepid water, and an ice-bucket filled with chilled water, and chunks of ice in his second-story bathroom. Intrigued by the smell of lemongrass and ginger that had wafted under the door, Mr Patterson had expected to find a bottle of some bathroom substance knocked over - but instead found the baffling scene left by Mora. While the rest of the room looked relatively untouched, the vessels of water - were very much out of place. Unsure what to do. Mr Patterson decided to check the rest of the house, starting with the large guest bedroom adjacent to the bathroom. Sure enough, the room looked untouched - or at least as far as Mr Patterson could recall, having never spent much time in the guest bedroom himself. Moving inside the room to check more closely, Mr Patterson noticed a mild damp feeling under his toes. Taking another step, he was shocked to find another patch of dampness beneath his feet. "Wet, foot-prints", Mr Patterson muttered to himself, shuffling his feet across the carpet to feel out the patterns of wet and dry. Puzzled, Mr Patterson checked back in the hallway and bathroom. Would there be wet patches if someone came out of the bathroom and into the guest room dripping wet? he wondered, before noticing that there were no wet patches near the door.

Mr Patterson's phone vibrated loudly in his pocket, reminding him why he had come home early from his trip as he pulled out his phone to find his brother's name written on the screen. Their mother was unconscious and in hospital - which was a much more pressing issue than the mystery water in his bathroom. Hastened by the phone call from his brother, who was calling to signal his arrival outside - Mr Patterson left the mysterious scene, vaguely thinking to himself whether he should ask his cleaner if they had decided to help themselves to his house while he was away - or if he should file some kind of police report for someone trespassing in his bathroom.

Certainly, the last thing Mr Patterson had expected when he got home from the hospital was that all evidence of his bathroom intruder would have disappeared. His brother Andrew had accompanied him inside to help him check the rest of the house. The police had offered an escort in case the intruder was still in the house - but Mr Patterson had a suspicion it was his cleaner, and as he hadn't spotted anything missing or broken - had chosen not to press the issue. Still, his brother was a welcome addition to his search of the house - especially after the shock of their mother becoming comatose and unresponsive at work with no apparent medical explanation. "Will," Andrew said after our stroll around the house looking for any sign of missing, moved or broken items, "Are you sure this actually happened, and you didn't just dream it? I mean, you can't have slept much travelling back here at such short notice. Maybe it was some kind of microsleep hallucination?"

"But I smelt it," Mr Patterson said, momentarily taken aback by hearing his first name being used, as everyone was always so formal when he was working. " They smelled the lemony-ginger coming from the bathwater, - and I felt the dampness of the carpet on my feet. I don't remember ever dreaming of touch and smell like that before."

"So, you're convinced it was the cleaner then? And she panicked and left the bathwater, but hung around here to clear the evidence?" Andrew asked, unconvinced.

"It must have been. I will call tomorrow and ask." Will sighed. "I have to fire her for this, don't I?" he asked more to himself than his brother, while pouring them both some whiskey, and turning the conversation back towards their mother, and the hard questions they needed to start asking if she did not wake up soon.