The Scarlet Moon

#15. The Domino effect.

I hoped that the house was not surrounded by police. I anyway took the rough route into the house instead of the front. Climbing pipes .... something I have never done! I landed on the balcony of one of the rooms and realized it was Saayudh's! Bingo! I walked up to the cupboard where he usually kept the drawing. My drawings.

I opened the cupboard and looked inside for the paintings. Weird. There was nothing in the cupboard except the paintings. No one would use up a full cupboard just for some paintings. And besides, the paintings were meant to be hung on walls not locked up in a cupboard. I grabbed the paintings with a shaking hand. I realised the paintings weren't even mine!!! I hurriedly flipped over the paintings to see if he left me a note. But no. There wasn't any! What now? What does he mean to tell me? What was that message? I did not know if the paintings were of help yet, I stuffed them in my bag.

I decided to search his room. I knew there might have been a police search already and anything suspicious would have already been taken. But I wanted to try my luck. I started searching under his bed, carpet, looked for hollows in the wall and floor. Then I went back to the cupboard disappointed and stared at it. I put my hand in and ran my hand over every part of the cupboard. In the corner at the back of the first rack was a bulging. I put my hand on the bulge and tapped it. Hollow. I tried peeling off the false cover and succeeded! Beneath the bulge was a key. Or at least the head of the key. The lower half of the key was detached. Now it's going to be damn tough if the other half was hidden too!

I was losing my energy so I put my hand into my pocket and pulled out a chocolate. A note and the chain fell from my pocket and I bent down to pick them up. When I stood up I hit my head on book stand and the books fell off. Behind the books was a button. I pressed the button reflexly without thinking about the consequences. I thought, like in the movies, a door would open and everything related to the secret would show up and I will live happily ever after. But on pressing it an exhaust fan turned on at the corner of the room pulling a string attached to it. To the end of the string was attached a hook that escalated up as the fan turned and got hooked to a protruding metal loop attached to a board. The board tilted up as the fan continued to turn and a small ball made of dough rolled down from the tilted board and fell into a fish tank on the floor. I went closer to the fish tank and waited to see what is going to happen next. The tiny fishes crowded around the ball and started nibbling at it. And inside was the lower half of the key! Ingenious! I took a fish net and fished out the key. I fit the two parts and the key was complete.

I was looking for a lock now.... Geez. So much of searching! I tried opening all the draws and there was ONE draw that wouldn't open.... The first draw of the cupboard! Now I understood! His message! 'Draw first' actually meant the first draw! Okay! I need to calm down and think. Think. Search the draw. Yea. I need to search the draw! I put my hand into the draw and pulled out everything there was. A blue pen, a scarf, a badge, a newspaper cutting, a few drawings and pictures. The pen...blue pen.... I opened the pen and took a close look. It was a ball point but the tip had a glass nib. Glass? I tried new things with the pen. Twisted the body, opened it, shook it and so on. I was just making sure it wasn't another weird invention of Saayudh. Finally I pressed the cover into the back of the pen and tried to write 'Nina'. But there was no ink I guess, it didn't write. I shook it well and and wrote again. No it didn't write. The pen cap looked like it was going to fall off so I pressed it in harder. And to my surprise the nib emitted blue light! And on the paper that I wrote was written 'Nina' !!! Invisible ink! UV light! That's it! 'Light your paintings with UV light and they'll look beautiful!' That's what he meant! I stood up, took a deep breath and walked towards the paintings. I am going to read what Saayudh wanted to tell me. This is going to put an end to bloodshed.