"The night was quiet. I had just finished my nighttime routine, which included brushing my teeth, washing my face, and getting ready for bed." Mary Glean said, "I was around four in the morning when it happened. I woke up suddenly, and my body couldn't move like that... thing was your body can't move, but your consciousness."

  "Sleep paralysis?" Grace said as she sat beside her bedside. Basil and Grace found Mary in a hospital. It was hard to find; all it took was some digging.

  "Yes, that. After what felt like 15 minutes, I felt my body slowly gain the ability to move. But as soon as I tried to... something grabbed me. It felt like something was choking me; I felt my vision slowly going black, and my hands, amidst the struggle, spilled some makeup on it. I was so scared..." Mary continued, her voice slow and quiet, but the fear was real. "The last thing I remember was my body flying upward. I flew high enough to hit the ceiling. After that, I blacked out."

  Grace listened as she looked at the photos on her phone. Indeed, there was a brownish handprint on the ceiling, right above Mary's bed. The substance that created the print was indeed makeup, foundation to be exact, proven by the dripping bottle of foundation that was on her nightstand.

  But while Grace was studying the pictures, Basil felt amused. "Tell me, Miss Glean. As you know, your friend, Sally Graves, just died, suicide to be exact. Before dying, she was seen doing some sort of ritualistic. Seems to me that both of you have something supernatural going on in your lives. Any thoughts on why?"

  Mary looked hesitant for a bit before answering, "Back in high school... I and I were the best of friends. During finals, in order to get into a good university, we needed to get a good score. And so we decided to pray at a nearby Buddhist temple for some luck. In the end, both of us failed, and we lost the chance to enter the university. Wanting to vent, we cursed at the Buddhist statues in the temple, loud and clear, blaming everything on them, along with some... quiet vulgar language," she said with a shaky voice, "I'm sure this is the gods' revenge. What else could it be?"

  Basil listened intensely, smiling, grinning in front of this shaky woman. He then turned to Garce and winked, as if signalling her that he solved it. Grace looked at him briefly, almost getting the wrong idea before composing herself. Standing up gracefully, she said her goodbye, a word of encouragement, before heading towards the door. But before leaving, Basil asked a few... simple questions.

  "Oh! By the way. You've been in this hospital because?"

  "That event naturally caused me a lot of shock, so I have to come to the hospital for checkups."

  "That necklace of yours. Looks quite expensive. Where'd you get it?"

  "It was a gift."

  "hmmmmm, what about-"

  Suddenly, Grace pulled Basil away, "Hurry up!" she said as she pulled him by the arms.

  .

  .

  .

  The duo stood back on the rooftop of the apartment, and Grace waited patiently for Basil to begin explaining. Basil was sitting yet again on the edge as if admiring the view. The soft wind blew his hair slightly as his coat swayed slightly. It was quite dramatic... for him at least. To anybody else, including Grace, he looked like a man who was high on all sorts of drugs.

  "So..... are you gonna start or are you gonna sit there all.... gracefully?" Grace finally said, breaking the silence.

  "Yes, my dear Grace." Basil said, "This case isn't supernatural at all. It was a planned, elaborate murder, all planned by Mr Mark Graves and Mary Glean."

  "What? How?" Grace said in shock, "The whole thing was captured on camera! Sally jumped herself! That's stone hard proof!" she said.

  "Hmmmm, not quite," he said as he walked closer to the edge. "Observe."

  "Hey... hey hey hey! Basil, stop!"

  Without another word, Basil stepped off the edge, falling out of sight. In an instant, Grace ran towards the edge, her face full of worry and her hands slightly shaking. But just as she was about the look down, Basil's head suddenly popped out. "Hi ~" he said with a grin.

  Upon looking closer, Garce saw that just below the edge was a small platform located around two meters below. The platform looked old but sturdy, able to handle Basil's weight with no issue.

  "This platform is located at the exact position where Sally could have jumped from. And conveniently, this platform is also just above Mr Garves' balcony. I saw this platform when we were in Mr Graves's house, while I was checking the balcony. It was quite interesting. Remember that new cabinet in Mr Graves' home? Though he said it was used for storage, by the looks of it, it seemed that it was bought just days before Sally died. Why would a husband worry about buying a cabinet when his priority should be to look after his wife? Especially in this context. Additionally. I noticed a small chip in the paint in the far back corner inside the cabinet, meaning he most likely took it apart before. Why? To hide someone."

  "Hide someone?"

  "That's right. The cabinet is a 63-inch by 37-inch by 37-inch (160cm x 94cm x 94 cm). I suspect that Mary, being a pretty petite woman, would be able to fit perfectly in the cabinet. The reason why the cabinet looked like it was taken apart was to take out the shelves within the cabinet so that Mary could fit more easily. Next, Mr Graves used the sleeping pills to knock Sally out at night, all while Mary posed as Sally in the hallways, getting caught by the sameras was all part of the plan. Finally, when Mary (who was posing as Sally) jumped off the edge, Mr Garves dropped Sally from his own balcony. Due to the location of the platform, Mary landed on the platform while also hiding from the camera on the rooftop. Creating the perfect illusion that Sally had jumped to her death."

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  "What about Mary's story?" Garce asked yet again.

  "Simple, it was fake. She knew that she needed to create a reason for Sally's 'suicide', so she and Mark came up with an idea. By planning ahead of time and creating a false narrative for herself. Look at the pictures taken in her house on the night of the incident," Basil said as he signalled Grace to look at her phone, "see how the folds on her bed all pointed towards one point in the middle of the bed? This kind of formation usually happens when a person is standing on their bed. meaning the whole ghost stuff and the handprint was fabricated by her."

  "Ok, but what about the chnting or the fire? Yea,h the fire, how were those things caused?"

  "Oh my... I sometimes wonder if you're actually a detective." He replied with a monotone voice, "In Mr Garves' home, I saw a few things: a small jar of what seemed like drying oil, a few portable, plug-in speakers, and perfume. Gathering all the facts, you can form a story. The chanting is easy; what most likely happened was that Mr Graves likely hid the speaker in multiple areas in the home. Say a room has four sides, and you place one speaker on all four sides and play an audio from all the speakers at the same time, in the same volume, it makes it nearly impossible for the listener to locate the source of sound. The husband likely played chanting sounds in the middle of the night on a low frequency, which messed with the effect more, causing a lot of psychological damage. He simply pretended not to hear it to make his wife seem insane. Next is the fire; this is just simple chemistry. Drying oil goes under self-oxidation under high temperature, but compared to other substances, the temperature is pretty low, only around 30°C. Looking at the Temperature for the day of the incident, we could see that it was a pretty hot day for fall, 31°C. By applying the oil onto Sally's clothes, self-oxidation kicks in, and all it needed was a small spark for the reaction to hit. And in place were burning scents were everywhere; it was inevitable. The perfume was probably used to mask the smell"

  Grace stood there, amazed as she heard Basil's explanation. All of what he said makes sense based on what he saw. "That was... amazing..." she said as he helped Basil off the platform.

  "It's actually quite elementary, my dear Grace," he replied with a proud smile on his face.

  "But.... that raises some more questions." Grace said slowly, "You don't have evidence. And what's the motive?"

  "Most likely an affair of some sort," he said, "Mary had a faint smell of cologne on her while we talked to her, a cologne that smelled mighty similar to Mr Graves' cologne... but rest can only be solved if we talk to them..."

  .

  .

  .

  Mary Glean and Mark Graves ran around in room 1738 like monkeys. The place was messy, clothes and belongings scattered on the floor, suitcases opened wide on couches, stuffed with everything a man or woman needs. They knew they messed up. Why on earth would they ever listen to him? to his tricks? to his lies about being promised a good life together? Sure, it was desperate times, Mary was jealous of Sally because her story was a lie. The only person who failed the exam was Mary Glean, while Sally got the good life. Mark had grown tired of Sally; their marriage had turned dull and lifeless. He wanted something new. They had convinced themselves that they would be the perfect match, thinking that to achieve that, killing Sally was the only option. But who would have predicted that THE Basil M. House would be the one to take on the case?

  They wanted to run away, as far as they could, as far from the detectives, as far from him. But it was too late. dragging their suitcases, they hurriedly went for the door. But upon opening it, they saw four men dressed in black, hoodies covering their faces and masks as dark as the night sky. On the floor, bits and pieces of cameras were on the floor, and in each of their hands, a hatchet.

  Slowly, in a moment of fear, they ran back into the room, locking themselves in the bedroom, but the men in black didn't show concern. One by one, they entered the home until the last one closed the door. And moments later, the sound of a door breaking and screams echoed from their rooms... muffled screams, so nobody could hear them.

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  .

  Just as Basil and Grace were about to leave, a sudden ding sound was heard from Basil's phone. It was a message sent from an unknown number. "What is it?" Graced said as she leaned closer to see. The number was indeed odd. The number didn't seem to be a phone number from London, another country perhaps.

  "Not sure." Basil said with a shrug, "Probably nothing important."

  But when Basil opened the message, His eyes widened with shock. Seeing his expression, Grace also read the message.

  ???????? ???????? ????????, ????. ??????????, ?????? ???????????? ???????? ?????? ???????????? ???????? ?????? ???????? ??????. ??????????, ?????? ????????????'?? ?????????? ?????? ?????????? ?????????? ???????? ????????????. ??????????????????, ?????????? ?????????? ???? ?? ?????? ????????... ???????????????????? :)

  The two of them sprinted out of the rooftop and down the stairs as fast as they could. Hoping that the message was just a hoax, a prank, a troll. But it wasn't. Arriving at room 1738, they saw nothing but an unlocked door. Slowly, Grace walked in front of Basil as she pulled out her gun, ready to shoot. Opening the door, the two of them were horrified. They saw Mark and Mary's bodies lying lifeless in the bedroom. Their bodies were hacked and slashed with a weapon with brutal force, their faces almost unrecognisable. Grace went into action, calling for backup immediately, reporting two dead bodies, one male and one female, in room 1738.

  Basil went into the living room. The message was clear. There was one final clue that he overlooked that caused two deaths. But what was it? What could he be? What did he possibly overlook? Basil turned his head frantically, his eyes darting at every object in the house, the lights, the random piece of dust, the corner of a table. Nothing. Until he remembered something...

  "?????? ?? ?????? ???????? ???????? ?????????????? ????? ?? ???? ???????? ??????????????,"

  "????, ?????? ???? ?????? ?????????????????? ???????????? ???? ???? ???? ?? ?????????? ??????. ?? ?????????????? ???? ???????????? ????????, ???? ?? ???????? ????."

  His eyes flickered as he turned his head towards the painting. The collage, which was not on the ground, wasn't an artwork, but a clue planted by someone. Basil looked at the images that made the collage. total of 9 images of chessboards. Each one had a trail of pawns that, when connected with the other images, formed a curvy "Y" shape. That's what Basil thought as well.

  "Oh, how stupid of me..." he said under his breath.

  Each pawn trail wasn't making a Y, because by simply rearranging some of them, it made a circle that looked much better. However, what stumped Basil was the image on the top right, the part that actually made the Y, a Y. It was a curve that extended outward on the side, a straight line of pawns.

  Basil's heart raced. He smashed the artwork on the floor, glass shards flew everywhere, and the images fell out of the frame. The sound alerted Grace, who was still in the bedroom, "What the hell are you doing?!" she said angrily, but Basil ignored her. From Grace's perspective, it seemed like Basil was sitting on the floor, obsessively playing with images, or more accurately, puzzles. She walked closer to see what exactly this man-child was doing. But what she saw shocked her.

  Rearranging the images, Basil discovered that the pawns don't make a Y at all. But instead, a Q. The curved Pawn trails connected perfectly to make a circular shape, and the last image completed the circle, with a tail on the bottom right. This was the clue Basil overlooked; it was the clue that got two other people killed.

  "How disappointing..." Basil said.