Shiki awoke in darkness. After a few moments, her eyes adjusted to the little light. A small window on the left let pale light drift in. Shiki twitched her long slender ears and the sound of hard rain filled her world. Lifting her head, she saw where she was. The stone basement of her home, of her shop. Her rope lifted and reached for the fixture on the ceiling, pulling her up. Around her were various boxes full of supplies and neatly organized food crates. Shiki sniffed the air and smelled the stench of rotten turnips., presumably from the crates. She remembered getting fresh turnips only a few days ago. Why would they be rotten? How much time had passed?
Shiki lifted herself higher to stand and slowly shuffled through to the stairs. Her body ached from sleeping on the floor and she felt bruises and the sting of cuts. Shiki trembled up the stairs and looked into the main room her house. Her shop was fine, untouched. dust was over all the surfaces. No bugs. None of her lights were on. Through the windows, rain pounded down on the ground and thudded on the roof and windows. She stumbled through to the backroom, which was her bathroom, to the cabinets in there and pulled medicine out, taking a swig of bitter liquid for her aches and wrapping the little nicks around her legs and arms with bandages. When Shiki finished she stood up and stares into mirror above the sink. Her button eyes were eschew and her noose looked frayed. Scuffs were all over her. Shiki wondered in the muffled silence of pouring rain, ' what happened?' She felt lost, confused, achy all over. As Shiki struggled through her thought process, she decided the best course of action was to find someone. Maybe they could explain all this….whatever it was. Shiki retrieved her black umbrella from the closet and slipped into her black wool cape to protect her bandages.
Slowly, she stepped outside and peered around. The rain had lessened to a misting, causing a thick mist to encompass everything . Shiki slowly looked into the murkiness and the area around her. Weeds grew everywhere and garbage littered the wet ground. Rusted tin cans, water buckets, snapped slingshots and even old furniture layer about. Walking across the stone pavement outside of her home -which doubled has her store, Curious Curios -, she struggled to clear the cloud in her head. She couldn't remember anything. It was all fuzzy and only fragments of memories were arising. A screech. Mumbled conversations. The flash of sliver or something metal. Frothy, dark waves. And the oddest one…a clear image of….some sort of fish…a sea bass, floating in a inky blackness. Shiki shook her head. She had to talk to someone. Maybe she had hit her head or something, maybe while fishing or something. The nearest house was Peanut's and Shiki always enjoyed her relationship with her. Slowly moving through the mist, Shiki felt an odd eeriness. No sounds were heard, no wind blew. It was, in a sense, deafeningly quiet. Only her footsteps through the thick grass were heard. Shiki began to feel something that she hadn't felt in ages.
Fear.
A deep, echoing chasm of fear that rang from her very depths, like some sort of abyssal monster.
She was a creature who associated with the dark, read ghost stories, reveled in the joys of nightmares and phobias. But this unsettling feeling was…something else.
Shiki came to Peanuts cute little purple and pale pink home surrounded by a once stunning garden of cosmos, which now were withered away in a dismay state. A thick stack of mail laid yellowed from an over spilling mailbox. Shiki gave a quick glance at the nearest one. It was dated three weeks ago, from HRA. In fact, all of them from HRA, but none were opened. Shiki knocked on Peanuts door.
"Peanut? Are you home?"
No response.
Shiki knocked again and tried the door, but the door handle was stuck, presumably locked. Shiki leaned over to the window and looked in. The window was clouded with dust and it was dark inside. Shiki tapped the window and called again, but nothing. Maybe she was wandering around, thought Shiki. She decided to go to the town hall and speak with Pelly. Pelly was, though she wouldn't admit it, was a town gossip and she would know what was going on. Venturing through the grass again, she stopped at a few other houses, but no one was home. None of her neighbors were walking about either. They were…gone. Replaced by this malevolent mist and sense of foreboding. Even the trees, that normally were a cheerful shade of green and rich with fruit, loomed evilly over her, their branches bare and gnarled, their trunks appearing skinny with leaves.
Arriving at town hall, she found the door was jammed. Shiki was bewildered. The town hall was opened 'twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week!' as Pelly once cheerfully proclaimed. A few solid pushes made the door give way and Shiki found herself in the dark, dusty and moldy town hall entrance. The offices were empty and the recycling bin was overflowing with trash and refuse. Shiki slipped underneath the divider for the office and looked around, hoping to find some sort of clue as to what happened. She shifted through the mounds of paperwork and found old forms for mortgages, housing plans from Mr. Nook, letters from Copper asking for Booker to be transferred to another position. Nothing remotely interesting arose, except a mildly explicit note from Phyllis to Pete. Shiki turned to leave and stumbled on a floorboard, nearly collided with Tortimer's desk. Using her rope to balanced herself, Shiki saw, leaning against an adjacent cabinet, Tortimer's cane. Strange… as he never let it leave his side. She examined his cane and turned to look at his desk. A single note was tucked under a open planner. Shiki pulled the note out and read.
S
The cloud in her head was now thickening, her confusion growing. Seabass, she thought, that weird fish I remembered. What has that got to do with everything? Shiki shook her head again and suddenly the quiet roar of an engine resonated in the empty hall. Shiki turned to look and saw through the dusty windows an idling car. Finally! Contact!
Shiki rushed out and onto the cobblestone outside. She ran to the car and tapped on the window. "Hello?"
The window rolled down and inside sat a wrinkled old turtle, whose small eyes squinted at Shiki. "'Ello der...Uh..lass."
"What's happened here? Where is everybody? How come the town is so rundown?" Shiki asked breathlessly.
"Woah, Woah der lass. Calm yerself down. I'm just passing through. What's yer name?"
"Shiki, I live here."
"Kapp'n. Listen lass, I turned up to pick up someone. I don't know what's happen' here to yer dear town."
Shiki tilted her head. "Pick up someone? Who?"
Kapp'n turned and dug through the glove compartment and read from a listed sheet.
"A lass called...Er..Mitzi."
Mizti, a young cat that lived on the west side of the town, was an awfully alike to Shiki personality-wise and she often stated to Shiki that she "felt like the only sane one around." Very down to earth. Shiki lifted herself up from the car window and peered into the mist. Suddenly, a figure came sprinting through the mist. Mizti came stumbling, carrying an overloaded case with clothes bursting from its sides. She flung open the car door, tossed her case in and slammed the door behind her. Shiki darted around and opened the door.
"Mitzi, what's happened? Where is everyone?"
Shiki looked into Mitzi face and saw utter fear and hysteria, eyes sunken in and a thick tangle of scars across her cheeks.
"Oh my goodness, what's happened to you?" Shiki asked, terrified and confused.
Mitzi shook and stammered her response.
"Seabass. Se-e-eabass. Yo-You have to leave Shiki. This place...it's cursed."
"Cursed? What do you mean cursed?" Shiki asked, shaking her head in disbelief.
Mizti shook her head rapidly and slammed the door closed, rolling her window down as Kapp'n started the engine up.
"Just leave Shiki. Leave and never return!"
Mizti rolled the window up and the car drove off. Shiki stood staring as the tiny car rattled into mist, watching it fade away. The seed of fear that had planted itself inside her grew into a tiny sapling of terror. Shiki shivered in the sudden menace of the town's square and wondered, for the hundreth time...
What happened?
And what was 'Seabass'?