The City by the Sea

Four

"My boy was eight. Eight and a day, he said that morning. Mama, I'm eight and a day... and I said, yes. Yes, baby, you are. Eight and a day. That's all he'll ever be. We knew that people had died, but they were all women. Three women dead, and we didn't know why. They mayor hadn't said at that point. My husband, he was worried about me, but … but we never even thought…

"He liked to watch the sunset by the docks. My husband comes back with the day's haul, and then the three of us, we go to watch the sun go down. Our ritual. The best part of the day for all of us. Then, when the sun had set, we'd walk home. We live right off Sea Road, so it is a straight shot up the docks to our home. The biggest road in the City. We felt safe there … why wouldn't we? We reached the intersection at Sea and Horn, and that's when it happened."

Levy lifted her pen from the paper as the woman's pause dragged on without any more words.

"Ma'am? I know this is hard, but I need..."

"Yes. Yes, I know. I know." She took a deep breath, but her eyes remained dull. She didn't cry. She didn't even shudder when retelling the story of what was undoubtedly the worst day of her life. "He stopped walking. I didn't notice at first. My husband and I were discussing the day's catch, and maybe me going to visit a friend of mine close to the Capitol. It would be good to … good to get our son out to see the world. Harder, when you get older. So we didn't notice that he stopped at Sea and Horn. Not until he screamed for me.

"I turned. I don't even remember turning, but I must have because I watched him fall. I don't remember moving, but before he screamed again I had pulled him into my lap. My husband was next to us, calling out for help. We didn't know – we still didn't know – that it had anything to do with the deaths of those others. That was some killer, some sick person. This was … this was nothing. My boy was in pain, that's all I knew. There was blood... his foot was injured, his leg. That's why he fell. That's what I knew. But he hadn't stopped screaming."

Another long pause. It felt invasive, but Levy cleared her throat, and the woman resumed speaking.

"I noticed that his other leg had begun to bleed. It didn't make any sense to me because it hadn't been injured. When he fell, when I caught him, only his left leg was bleeding. But now they both were. By that time more people had come, and a board was brought. My husband began lifting him to place him on the board so that we could take him to the City doctor, but then, in my husband's arms, a … a chunk of his cheek … it just vanished. And there was blood there, too. I saw it. We all saw it. There was nothing wrong, nothing at all wrong with his cheek, but then it was gone before our very eyes and nothing had touched him.

"I grabbed on to my husband and my son, and kept holding on to them. We never put him on that board. We held him tight between us, and our neighbors surrounded us. We begged and cried and prayed, but nothing we did made any difference. Bit by bit our son died; bit by bit he was taken away from us, from me. Bit by bit that thing took him. It took half an hour."

"I'm sorry bu-"

"Just ask," not a hint of anger or sadness. Levy wondered how many times she'd repeated the story. Levy wondered where her husband was. The woman had come alone.

"Half an hour to be finished, or half an hour to … to die?"

"To finish. My son died at something like fifteen minutes."

"But … he … he had to have lost a lot of blood..."

She nodded. "At first, yes. But then it seemed to stop. He was disappearing, but only the non-vital parts at first."

Levy closed her eyes, trying to block out the woman's blank expression, trying to imagine the scene, to understand it. "What was the last to go?"

"His face. The very piece of him to vanish was his face."

"And you saw nothing? Felt nothing? Heard nothing?"

"No. If not for what was happening, I would have said it was just my husband, my son, and me on that road."

Levy made a notation on her paper, and bowed slightly. "Thank you, ma'am. That's all."

She left without another word. They'd talked for almost an hour. Levy didn't know her name. Few of these City folk gave her their names. Insular didn't begin to cover the place. Even if The City by the Sea didn't have a monster hunting the streets, it certainly lived up to its reputation of creepiness.

She had talked to a dozen witnesses, and they had all reported some variation of the mother's story. An invisible, non-corporal creature that consumed its victims until all that was left was blood. Absolutely all. Not a single hair.

Well, the clothes were left, she supposed, but those hadn't been any help. They were no different than any other set of stained clothes Levy had ever set eyes on. Clues were scarce.

During her interview, a storm formed and broke over the City. The sound was quickly reminding her of the exhausting walk between Longroad and The City by the Sea, and the many hours after arriving pumped on adrenalin and very little food.

"One more," she told the man who had taken on the duty of seeing people in and out of the mayor's office, "and then I need to sleep."

He nodded as he ushered in a woman who was at least 100 years old, possibly even 200. Levy could hardly see her mouth or eyes they were so shrouded in salt-water-and-sun dried wrinkles.

"This one was there for one of the other mages," the man told her before leaving to give them some privacy.

"The youngster's right," the old woman's voice was like silk, completely at odds with her appearance. Strong, smooth, rich, and somehow luxurious. A gift to hear. Levy's muscles relaxed marginally, and her hand – clinched as it was around her pen – loosened. She even unbent enough to smile.

"You're the first person I've had who is reporting on the mages' deaths. Please tell me all that you remember."

"I suppose you've been told of the fog. The mornings have been full of fog these two weeks. Not exactly unusual for this time of year, what with the heat and the rain, but even before the first mage was taken there was a sinister feel to the weather."

"How do you mean?"

Her arms lifted to mime carrying, and her sleeves slipped back to reveal equally wrinkled hands and strong wrists. The way the muscles flexed with the gesture, Levy suspected the woman still worked. "I handle my grandkids' and great grandkids' nets. Nine of them, and not a one any good at making or mending nets," she clicked her tongue. "The morning after the first death, there was fog. I walked through it to take a mended net to my granddaughter, and – I'm not sure if you'll understand – the mist tasted rotten. The salt tasted more sour than bitter, and the water in the fog felt laced with oil.

"It wasn't," the woman shook her head. "The water left no mark on me or my clothing, and oil stains as easily and as badly as any other thing, but my clothes and skin were as clean as when I left. Still, I couldn't shake the feeling of oddness I got from that morning. Three days later there was another fog. A few days after that we had four mornings of fog in a row. That's when the guild-mage died."

"And you were there?" Levy asked, though the answer was obvious.

"Yes. Taking that same net to my granddaughter. Girl's hopeless with her nets." She cleared her throat and the skin around her face swayed. Levy bit her lip; the image she made, wrinkles and muscles and voice, was becoming more and more humorous to her. She blamed the sleep deprivation. There was nothing humorous in The City by the Sea. "I met the woman, Kandic her name was, near the intersection of Port and Painter. That's one up from Port and Park, the intersection for the docks."

"Right." Levy consulted Map, which still glowed at her side.

"She told me that she was making a study of the town. Trying to discover if any pockets of evil were hiding. I told her that if a pocket of evil were to hide somewhere in the City, it wouldn't be on Port Road. Port's the second largest road in the City, after Sea. Nothing can hide on Port. She laughed and said that for an invisible force, any place could be a hiding place.

"She was odd like that," the woman mused, "laughing about evil on our bloodied streets. But she was right. As she stood there laughing and looking around the intersection, I saw that her nose had started to bleed."

"Her nose?"

"Yes. Her nose."

That was unusual. All of the others she had interviewed told her that the victims were injured from the outside. Being consumed, eaten. A bloody nose suggested that the first wound was inside the body. Levy leaned forward.

"And what happened next?"

"By that time we all knew what was happening. We knew most of the details, too many had died at that point for anything to be kept secret-"

"It was being kept secret?"

"At first. They didn't want anyone to be afraid. Or to leave the City. This is high season for us. Lots of fish migrate away from the west of Fiore in the winter, but now every type of fish you could think of is less than a day's travel from our shores. And to reap that bounty we need all hands either at sea or supporting those on the water. So they, the mayor and them, were trying to keep the story quiet. Didn't work. You can't hide that many deaths, not when they're so violent, and not when the victims are so young."

"True. I'm sorry I interrupted. Please, continue; you suspected that Kandic was being attacked?"

"Yes, dear, I did. After her nose, I saw blood in her hair. From her ear, though it took me a moment to figure out where the blood was coming from. I'd heard stories about other victims. Some friends of my sons came and told us that his neighbor had heard one of the girls screaming during. But that Kandic, she didn't scream."

"Why, do you think?"

"Well, by the time the worst was happening, she'd already gone. The nose, the ears, like I said, and some from her eyes, but very little. She fell to the ground. I tried to catch her, but my arms were full of the nets, and I'm not as quick on my feet as I once was. Her head cracked on the stone. I think she was dead before, but if she wasn't, that had done the job."

"And then?"

The woman shrugged, "And then it ate her, just like all the others."

But it wasn't like the others. It wasn't a thing like any of the others, but the death.

"And her clothes were left, like with the others?"

"Yes."

Levy put her hands flat on the desk and met the woman's eyes, tucked deep inside her skin, "And the blood?"

"All there. All left."

"But very little before she fell."

"Couldn't fill a cup." She tilted her head to the side, "It was not fresh. She didn't bleed as a live person would bleed. I can barely remember her bleeding at all, but it was a horrible sight … When she was gone, there was red everywhere. I hadn't touched any of her but her head, put it in my lap like it could give her some comfort," she snorted, "but my skirts were stained and stiff with the stuff."

"But you don't remember how that happened."

"No," and there was wonder and confusion in that silken voice. "No, I don't."

Levy didn't understand what it meant, but being different than all the rest made it an important fact.

"What went last?" she asked, a final question before she sent the woman away and made for her own bed. (And likely my own nightmares.)

"Her torso. The limbs went first, then her head … Her hair was eaten away from the scalp … fell into my lap, loose, and then disappeared," a shudder rocked her small frame. "Then the rest. And last was the torso."

"Thank you, ma'am. I appreciate everything you told me, and I'm sorry you had to relive the experience."

"Anything to make this horror end," the woman told her while she pushed from her seat and turned to the door. A crisp nod, and the woman was out of the room, leaving Levy to ponder her story.

"The limbs, hair, head, and finally the torso..." she tapped her finger to her chin and spun around in the large chair. "But it wasn't the limbs that went first," she disagreed with the woman's statement. "Dead before she fell, it couldn't have been the limbs." She stopped the chair so that she could stare out of the window at the frantic waves and the slap-happy rain.

"It was the brain that went first," Levy finally told the dreary view of The City by the Sea. "Brain first and torso last. The only one to be taken in that way, and she a mage. That has to mean something, but what?" She yawned.

There was an answer there, she could almost touch it, but her exhaustion was keeping her away from grasping the piece of truth that would reveal what she was missing. She would sleep for a few hours, and then, when she woke, she would solve this puzzle.

Backup would come, but until it did, Levy was determined that no other person of The City by the Sea would die by the monster's will.

Author's Note: So there's that. At this point I'm considering upping the rating to M. I might just be getting too graphic for the T rating.

Anyway, thank you very much for reading, and please remember to review. I appreciate it greatly.