The Mystery of the Backward Riding Cyclist: A New Underwood and Prim Adventure

After reading Underwood's notebook entry, Prim held the image in his mind's eye retaining each important detail with his legendary photographic memory.

"It has been several days since your expected visit with a potential new client. During that time, not only have you been industrious, I have managed to sell the reasonably priced Atlantic Souvenir from 1835 that I procured at the literary festival for a profitable sum to a distant buyer which needed that particular issue to help complete their collection of Hawthorne magazine publications. You now have your phantom, I the wisdom of a fellow reasoner from the Renaissance of our American Literature."

"Our rendezvous for the appointment had been canceled with the substitution of a letter delivered by hand by a rather unusual person whose features were quite startlingly waxen yet whose demeanor and appearance so common as to allow an easy disappearance back into the sidewalk crowd," Mason continued to explain. "The communication contained but that solitary address. I remained cautious as you have often instructed, taking time to learn as much from surrounding location from individuals who often approached me and quickly dissapeared during my observation in the same stealthy manor as the original messenger."

"Her influence is over you now, not only through hypnotism but tough aquaintences, though she has no existence but in your recollections of those momentarily minutes of that afternoon. Now, not only is your mind haunted, as are many these days, but we have the mystery of this imposing structure. In this often shadowy world, I have witnessed many strange sights, yet without wonder or dismay, for the process of ratiocination of the intellect refined by focusing on the eerie allow me to usually resolve them, demystifying the herd, or easily allow them to disappear completely from my attention and consciousness with contemplation of every new baffling challenge."









©2019 by L.P. Van Ness. All rights reserved.

[genre: eerie fiction]