"To let the brain work without sufficient material is like racing an engine. It racks itself to pieces." - Sherlock Holmes, The Adventure of the Devil's Foot.

  9 years ago, year 2003

  Normally, Wednesdays were my least favourite day. They sat in the dead middle of the week like a dull, grey stone—nothing good ever came from them. But today was worse. Today, I met him.

  Who, you ask? Well, patience. I'll get to that.

  School had never been a challenge for me, though that didn't mean I slacked off. I was what teachers liked to parade around as the model A-student: never skipped class, finished every assignment, and refused to accept anything less than perfect on my tests. I'd even been placed in one of the school's gifted programs. Today, in theory, should have been no different. Go to school, be the perfect Grace everyone expected, go home, collapse, repeat. A simple routine.

  But fate, apparently, had other plans.

  First period—English. Mr Vale announced a new student joining our class. Nothing unusual; gifted kids weren't exactly a rarity. But this one... this one was odd. Spectacularly odd.

  His name was Basil M. House, and from the instant I saw him, I knew trouble had arrived.

  Basil wasn't stupid—far from it. He had a knack for chemistry and an unsettlingly bright mind for picking apart complex logical and philosophical problems. But what truly set him apart were his eyes. His powers of observation were uncanny, unnerving even. The problem was that he wielded them terribly. The moment he arrived, he gravitated straight toward the troublemakers—the chronic ditchers, the pranksters, the bathroom-vandalizers. And yet Basil, unlike them, passed his classes. Effortlessly.

  Once, while I was heading to class, Basil rigged up some ridiculous contraption so a bucket of ice water would dump on whoever opened the door.

  Of course, the "whoever" was me.

  I was furious. Dripping, shivering, furious. I told him I'd report him to the principal, but he just shrugged in that infuriatingly smug way of his.

  "Go ahead. Report me~," he said, sing-song, as if daring me.

  "Basil, you're such a jerk!" Ashley snapped, stepping beside me. "Can you go one day without being such an ass!?"

  I glared at him, but that only made his grin widen. After that day, it was as if I'd become his favourite target—someone to annoy, poke at, and generally drive insane.

  Once, he casually pointed out that I'd tripped walking to school that morning—because of a tiny scrape at the tip of my shoe and the faint red marks still on my palms.

  How he noticed, I have no idea. How anyone notices that, ever, I don't know. But he did. Instantly.

  Around school, his reputation was a bizarre mix. Some people said he was just a socially clueless weirdo who fell in with the wrong crowd. Teachers whispered in meetings that he was a waste of talent.

  And maybe they were right.

  Because in my opinion? He was an absolutely insufferable jerk.

  The last time I saw him was on graduation day. He didn't walk the stage, which was strange. Despite the chaos he trailed behind him, his grades were good enough to pass. I only found him afterwards, sitting alone in the school library. He was tucked beside the mystery section, hunched over a book with a level of focus I'd never seen from him. His eyes were sharp as ever, but his expression was... serious. Quiet. Almost thoughtful.

  "Weirdo," I muttered, and left.

  .

  .

  .

  "Grace...? Graaaaaaace.....~ GRACE!"

  Snapping out of her own thoughts, Grace is jolted back to reality by Basil calling her name. In front of her was Basil, finishing three bowls of Pho at a random Asian restaurant they had found on the way back. Grace watched him finish his fourth bowl like it was nothing, eating the noodles and slurping down the soup as if it was a normal meal for him. But what concerned her more wasn't the fact that Basil was casually eating a meal that would feed a family of four; she was concerned about the case. The suicide was fine until they saw Sally dancing before her death; that, plus the mysterious chanting at night? Could this really be something supernatural?

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  She met Basil's eyes slowly, wondering what to tell him. "He'll surely laugh if I tell him that I think this has something to do with the supernatural.... but at the same time, what other possibility is there?" she thought.

  "You think this has something to do with ghosts, hm?" Basil said suddenly.

  Grace stared at him with a surprised look, "How did you know?"

  "Given the context and nature of this case, it's not odd that someone like you would think that."

  "What do you mean, 'someone like me'?" she snapped back, her eyes narrowed as if trying to stare into his soul.

  "That aside, I believe we need to pay a visit to someone..."

  A few minutes and a bus ride later, they arrived at a clinic, a private one. Nathan's Family Therapy. The clinic itself was quite small, having only a waiting area with a few chairs and a small kids section filled with books, toys, and cute little cartoon animals on the walls. Upfront was the reception counter that only had one employee working, who also looked like they hated their job to the brim. Finally, behind the count was, as far as Grace could see, one single office.

  "Hi, welcome to Nathan's Family Therapy. Please state your name if this is an appointment. If not, then please sign this form, and Dr Nathan will be right with you in a moment." Said the lady with the most unenthusiastic voice mankind has ever heard.

  "Hi, we're here to investigate the death of Sally Graves, a patient of Dr Nathan." Grace said as she flashed her badge, "We would like to speak with him for a moment."

  The lady gave no reaction, only blankly staring at the duo before dialling a number on her desk phone, before looking up again, "Dr Nathan would be right with you. Please have a seat."

  Grace sat next to Basil in the kids' area, not by choice; Basil had simply led her there. She watched him read the children's books that were stacked neatly in the corner of the room. One by one, he browsed through all of it. This scene gave Garce a sense of deja vu. At the time of graduation, she also saw Basil sitting alone at the library, reading a book. But high school Basil and current Basil are completely different people.

  "By the way..." She said softly, "When did you get into reading books? I remember in high school you weren't exactly... The reading type."

  Basil looked up at her, seeing her curiosity, he grinned, "I was quite lost in high school, my dear Grace," he said, "having the talent but no direction was quite dangerous for a young boy. It was only at graduation did I found that direction, in a book. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes was the first book I ever read with interest and the first book that gave me meaning. I connected with Holmes because he gave me the blueprints for my talents."

  Grace was amazed. The same guy who dumped water on her... got changed because of a book? Maybe Ashley was right when she said that he would surprise her. But just before, Grace could say something...

  "Excuse me, Dr Nathan is ready to see you...."

  The meeting, as Basil would call it, was a complete waste of time. Dr Nathan basically told them exactly what was expected; Sally had some sort of trauma or PTSD, causing her to hear and see hallucinations. This explains the suicide and the possible cause of hearing chanting. However, that doesn't satisfy Basil's curiosity for everything in between. He did not want an answer that was 95% right; he wanted one that was 100% right. But Basil may already have the answer to all of it very soon.

  The two sat on the rooftop of the apartment. Grace was pacing back and forth, trying to figure out what Basil could be thinking about. Basil sat at the very edge of the building; all it would take was one little push, and he would end up just like Sally Graves.

  "This may just be a case of a series of unfortunate events after all," Grace said, "no supernatural stuff..."

  "Really?" Basil said suddenly. Standing up, he pulled out his phone. On it was a new article he found on a daily news website. Headline stated:

  "??????????'?? ?????????????? ???????????????? ?????????? ???? ???????? ???? ????????????. ?????????? ???? ???? ?????? ??????'?? ???????????????"

  Below was a short video. Looking at the post time of the article, it seemed like the video was taken one and a half weeks before Sally's death. Showing Sally arriving at a Buddhist Temple with her husband, then, suddenly, her clothes caught on fire from seemingly nothing. The fear and panic in other people's voices were instant, so it couldn't have been fake.

  "This case reminds me of a case from a few weeks back, of a woman named Mary Glean. It was stated that on Saturday night, while waiting for the train, cameras caught Mary suddenly getting pushed into the train tracks by a mysterious force." Basil stated, "and it just so happened that Sally knows Mary."

  "How do you know that?" Grace asked with curiosity.

  "I did some research on Mary's case when it was published, and I noticed a few things. She had wavy ginger hair, light freckles around the nose, and a mole on the bottom left of her Neck. In Mr Grave's house, I noticed a picture that was placed on a shelf near the TV. Seemed like a high school picture of Sally and one other person. That person, besides slightly straighter hair, had light freckles and a small mole on the bottom left of her neck." He said, "There's no mistake, it's her."

  "That's... wow..." Grace said in awe, "So what now?"

  "Now we solve the case....."