Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, it's a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope.
- Dr. Seuss
Inside his private mansion, on his Whalestrand estate, Cleveland Jeremiah Sharpe sat in his study and polished the dagger.
The newly-christened Sharpe Manor was not really his. It had sort of... fallen into his hands, like most things had. But it had been acquired long before the purchase of Aqualand had ever come to fruition, as sort of a safety net in case things went south in America. And while they hadn't per se, he had been started to be viewed through a lens of suspicion for a while. A lens he didn't particularly want on him for extended periods of time. In any case, it meant no more expensive and boring long-distance flights to inspect the parks progress.
In fact, the way that Sharpe was looked at in Whalestrand was refreshing. There was none of the inherent cynicism of America - it was all wide eyes and outlandish gossip. It was almost like he'd started afresh, with how many wild stories and flights of fancy buzzed in the press and on the street like inquisitive wasps. Was he a wilful dreamer, brought up from poverty in some far-flung farming state? The product of infidelity between a rich countess and some vagabond? A charming rogue from some other dimension, or perhaps another planet? Plenty of speculation, but very little detail.
That was good. Keep things vague and the punters filled in the details themselves. And when you let them do that, you had them in the palm of your hand.
The winter sun was low, so even the largest window permitted only a little light into the room. But what little that did come in still made the metal of the short, pointed blade gleam dully against the clinical white of the cleaning cloth Sharpe ran over it.
The dagger was not the only unusual thing in his study. On the furthest wall, a large engraved mezzotint depicting some old-world country manor marred the pale surface like a black bruise. Rows of glass cases showed other curiosities - masks, bas-reliefs, statues, arrowheads, jars, a strange whistle. Locked in its own separate case with an iron padlock, a canine skull grinned without mirth from behind the reinforced glass. Something on the mahogany desk faintly glowed and span, the pinkish-purple light throwing weird highlights on the sharp, eagle-like face of its current owner.
It would be trite and inaccurate to say that Sharpe did not believe in the supernatural. In a world that persistently proved that the supernatural existed, such beliefs were the equivalent of putting a hessian sack over one's head to escape the sunlight. Far better to say, perhaps, that he had no romantic ideas about the supernatural. He saw them for what they were and attached no greater significance or fable to them. He put no stock in superstitions or flights of fancy - he stripped the phantom and the banshee and the alien bare and saw their bones, without finery or adornment.
And that meant he saw their worth.
