Here we go.

Cover Art: Kirire

Chapter 40

There were times Blake hated the steps they had to go to for the job. That was presumably why the salary was so eye-wateringly high, so you'd suck it up and trek in the shallows of a trash-covered beach despite knowing there was some stick-thin water monster prowling the shallows who had, by now, surely taken notice of your existence.

Being a sensible sort, she felt the correct course of action upon discovering a monster was in the water was to avoid said water. The thing could obviously come out onto land and they'd at least be on an equal footing there, as opposed to dragging their limbs in the water as they struggled to breathe. Blake shuddered at her overly vivid imagination and reminded herself that if the anomaly hadn't harmed them while they were spaced out and in party mode then it probably didn't want to harm them at all.

Probably.

Hopefully.

Maybe…

"Aren't you going to come in and help?" called Jaune. He was shin deep in the water, his suit legs pulled up above his knees and his fancy shoes balanced atop a washed-up crate on the sandy beach. How he dared walk barefoot in this trash heap she didn't know.

"I thought I'd keep watch."

"Blake…"

"It's a bad idea for us both to be in a dangerous situation. Who will rescue you if the creature attacks?"

"Blake, it's shallow water. It's fine."

"Do you seriously think it's the water I'm worried about!? The water is fine; the water doesn't concern me; it's all the things in the water that do."

"The anomaly didn't harm us. I don't think it's violent."

"I don't think these hypodermic needles are violent either but I don't want to go swimming with them," said Blake, eyeing some sharp glimmers in the sand. In a party place like this it wasn't hard to imagine they'd been used for drugs. "If I was a sea monster I'd be offended at what the people here were doing to my home."

"Honestly," said Jaune, "maybe it is…"

Not angry enough to attack anyone because there hadn't been any reported disappearances, but concerned enough to come up and have a look around. Blake sighed and nudged a washing up machine drum with her shoe, toppling it over a binbag full of cans. This couldn't all be San Valeo's trash. A lot of it must have swept down from Vale. With space being limited, and most of the world being uninhabitable due to Grimm, there wasn't much thought put into waste disposal. You could toss it all in the ocean and trust that 99% of the time it would wash up somewhere humans weren't. There were plenty of ecologists and scientists who disagreed with it all, but humanity wasn't so prevalent on Remnant for it to be a problem. The residents of San Valeo might have disagreed.

"If you're going to just stand there and be useless then go find something else to do," shouted Jaune. He sounded more annoyed than usual, which was probably the hangover talking. "Go look around. Scout the place. But remember – we meet back at the hotel no later than six, and we don't go out again until morning."

"Sure thing, dad. I'll be back before my curfew."

Jaune shook his fist. "Don't make me come up there!"

A part of her thought it a bad idea to leave Jaune in the waters with trash and a confirmed monster, but she trudged back up the beach all the same. There was a dividing line between where the trash ended and the sand began, and it was so straight that she had to assume the locals were responsible. The boy working the counter had said he and his mother had given up clearing it, so maybe all the residents could do was come down with a tractor and shove it all back so they kept some beach to themselves. It was still a mess and she wouldn't be caught dead sunbathing on it.

San Valeo itself was quiet. It was too early for much to be going on and a lot of people were sleeping off hangovers. The few out moved like ghosts. Neon signs were turned off, and lights were out, making the resort look even more dead than usual. Climbing the wooden steps up onto the pier, Blake looked out over the beach, and Jaune splashing in the water like a lunatic, and then further beyond, where the beach continued past the confines of San Valeo and on along the coast. Trash had washed up all up and down it for about a kilometre, likely due to currents, but it was much worse outside San Valeo, covering the sand all the way up to grass.

"This place is Vale's dumping ground. No wonder it lost its popularity."

"I know," said a voice behind her. "It's terrible, isn't it?"

"Hm?" Blake turned. "Oh, Mr Sprucewood." The man they'd allegedly come for had red rings around his eyes, a popped collar, and he was yawning into his fist with his sketchbook under his other arm. "You're out early today."

"W-Wanted to clear my head for a bit," he said between yawns. "Ah. To be honest I'm missing home, my wife, and the kids. Funny how much I miss them when I've only been gone a few days."

"It's been weeks," said Blake.

"Anyway." Mr Sprucewood leaned his arms on the railing. "You're right about the refuse. One of the plans I'm considering is some kind of seawall to block or divert it. That'll only be a temporary solution however; there will need to be some kind of collection and disposal or the refuse will simply pile up and flow over the seawall. I'd toyed with the idea of sloping it to divert currents and take it elsewhere but I'd need someone with more experience with ocean currents to assist with that. I'm a civil architect, not a nautical engineer."

Blake hummed, not really all that interested. The man couldn't register anything she said about the missing days – which was still weird in her opinion. She and Jaune were both aware of the amount of time they'd been here, and they would have gladly left by now if not for the anomalies. She had to wonder if he saw things differently, or if he wasn't living in a world where San Valeo still appeared to be alive and bustling. Probably not the latter. He could see the trash, after all. Blake noticed the lack of his sketchbook and asked, "No work today?"

"Later. As I said, I need to clear my head. I think I must have had something to drink last night."

There was an opportunity there. Blake pushed off the railing and feigned a yawn of her own. "You did. I saw you slumped over the bar. You should go for a walk up and down the pier. I find the sea salt air helps clear my head."

"It's not a bad idea." He pushed off and began walking. "Have a good day."

Blake turned without answer and power-walked back to the hotel. It was breakfast time, but quiet, and the boy at the counter was asleep again after a long night's work. She slipped by them and up the stairs but walked past her and Jaune's room. The hotel was in disrepair and was being cleaned sporadically, and probably by the boy from before. Overworked and likely underpaid, he did just enough to get by, which meant most of the door handles in the hotel were coated in a thin layer of dust. Blake pulled on her black gloves and trailed her fingers across each, pausing when she found one that didn't leave a smudge of dust on her finger.

The room had been used recently. She tested it. Locked. A simple lock, though. It was an old hotel so it was a key and keyhole rather than an electronic card lock. Pressing herself flat to the door, she subtly drew Gambol Shroud and teased the tip of the blade in between the door and the frame, right by the lock, then began pressing her weight upon it. It wasn't long before a dull crack sounded and the wood warped just a little. Teasing back, she widened the crack on the doorjamb and pushed with her other shoulder, teasing the bolt out the hole in the frame and working the door open. If one looked closely, they'd see the damage, but Sprucewood came back hammered every night as it was and would never spot it. He might even believe he caused it in a drunken moment come morning.

Mr Sprucewood's room was a mess. Discarded clothes, bottles, stationary, and empty plates that really needed taking to a dishwasher. There was a smell of stale aftershave and musty sheets that turned her nose up, but she walked in and closed the door behind her. It'd take a while yet for him to walk the pier, but that was no reason to idle. She went past his suitcase and a picture of his wife and kids, and quickly found a leather carrying case that she unzipped. Inside were a collection of undoubtedly expensive sketching pencils, pens, and such, and in the middle of it all a large A3 notebook of thick, artist's paper.

"Let's have a look what you've been drawing," said Blake, kneeling and opening the sketchbook up on her knee.

The first picture was an artist's sketch of San Valeo from a distance, likely drawn as the boat came in. It wasn't high art by any means. Instead, it was a quick and dirty sketch, lacking in extreme detail but still better than she could have managed. There were little scribbled notes here and there about the first view, first impressions, and other things he could use. There were also arrows pointing to bits with words like "too much refuse" and "eye drawn here" on them.

The next picture was a sketch of the hotel they were staying at – first from the outside and then, on the same page, a snippet of the inside including the bar and a blocky and hastily sketched version of the boy behind the counter, the piano, the stage, and the chairs. Nothing unusual so far.

It was the third sketch where things took a turn. This one was taken from outside, on the pier, looking out over San Valeo's waterfront stores and bars. It started from left to right, with more detail on the left implying he'd started drawing there. The stores were closed down, boarded up, and just like they were outside now. The sketch began to change, however. About two thirds of the way through the pencil strokes began to waver and become more jagged, less precise, and there were people there. Low effort like he always drew them, little more than rectangles on legs with no hands. An architect's method of implying a crowd without having to go into too much detail. The problem was that there were a lot of them, and that the stores were alive and well – neon signs, drinking, carnival games. They were all there.

"He sketched the false reality the anomaly showed him," mused Blake. "Even if he can't remember it, the sketch persists like our footage did. Interesting."

The next sketch was a street. Blake couldn't place where. San Valeo had a lot of narrow streets as the waterfront led off into houses behind, but this one was narrow and claustrophobic with an air conditioning unit attached to a wall above, and a few small doors with gated frames over them to the left. There was a hastily sketched cat sat on the right wall. There was also something over that wall and around the corner – and she said something because the sketch was messy. He must have been intoxicated by that point, and it was a squiggly mess of lines that wobbled up and down like how a child might draw beams of light coming out the sun.

Turning the page showed an altogether different sketch. Suddenly, it was clear. Beautifully drawn. Artistic. The lines were confident and straight, the shadows powerful and black – so black that he must have used a whole pencil on it. The picture was of a door, sunken into a wall, with cracked and faded wood coming to life so vibrantly, and mail stuffed out the letterbox and trailing down onto the welcoming mat. There was a window smashed but some tarp had been nailed over it to provide some shelter. Why Sprucewood had chosen to stop and sketch this one door, she didn't know, but it was too conspicuous to be ignored. Blake pulled out her scroll and photographed this picture and the last one, planning to show Jaune and search it out. Putting the scroll down, she turned the page.

And recoiled.

There were no sketches this time, no drawings, but words. A lot of words. They were all written in jagged swipes of a pencil, some going off the page entirely, or digging through and ripping it. The handwriting grew worse toward the end, becoming messy and indistinct.

Memories. Summer. Happy. Party. Fun. Best memories. Summer holiday. Dancing. Singing. Escape boring life. Have fun. Lose self. Make memories. Meet people. It's fun. I love it here. I hope the party never ends. I want it to last-

The final words were illegible, though not hard to guess at. He wanted it to last forever. Who was he? Sprucewood? Was this still him at that point, or was this the anomaly talking through him? Blake took another photo, pointless as the page probably was, and then turned to the next, only to almost drop the sketchbook in her panic.

It was a thin, stick-like creature with an impossibly thin body supporting an oddly shaped head that looked far too large for its own skeletal structure. The head was bulbous and pointed, like an insect crossed with a horse, except that half its face was a pair of eyes. Crystalline, with little squares across it like a zoomed-in fly. It had no mouth that she could see, nor any other orifices, but it had two arms and at the end of those arms were hands. Of a sort. The hands were tiny little nuggets of bone or chitin, but the fingers – oh god the fingers – they were at least two feet long and thin like wispy branches or threads of cloth that reminded her of the horrific legs of spider crabs, except thinner and much creepier.

Blake's trembling fingers took another photo, and then she took the scrapbook and tore the page out, scrunching it into a ball. Evidence like this, even a sketch, couldn't be allowed to exist. The last pages of the book were empty and he did her best to hide the fact a page had been ripped out at all before shoving it back in the case and putting that back where she found it. Slipping out the room and closing the door behind her, she shoved her hands into her pockets and made her way outside, passing Sprucewood coming back in the entrance as she left.

The beach was empty.

Jaune wasn't in the water.

"Shit, shit, shit," swore Blake. "I just knew you'd go-" A hand pressed down on her shoulder and Blake almost screamed.

"What?" asked Jaune, stood behind her with wet pant legs but looking fine. "You look like you've seen a ghost."

"S-Shut up." Blake gagged on air and shoved him away. "You need to see this." She offered him her scroll and pointed him to the images she took. Jaune's eyebrows rose. "These are from Sprucewood's sketchbook. The door caught my eye, and the last one. The anomaly from the water."

"It definitely looks like a second anomaly. Nothing about that screams party spirit, does it?"

"What about this door?"

"It's suspicious. That's for sure. We'll have to go looking for it. Maybe that street, too. That's for tomorrow, though. It's late enough that I'd rather we not go roaming around San Valeo and get caught by the anomaly. I found something I want us to check out first, though. It shouldn't take long."

/-/

It was a cave.

Secluded, tucked in against the rocks, and about six hundred metres outside of San Valeo's walls down the coast. It was angled in such a way as to be completely invisible to people in the resort, and there were so many rocks that spotting it from the water would have been a challenge as well.

"I hate this," said Blake. "I absolutely hate this."

"It'll be fine." Jaune turned on his scroll torch and stepped inside. The dark didn't bother her faunus eyes much, but it was what might lay inside that worried her. The walls were slick and damp and coated with moss like slime. Tiny crabs scuttled out the way as the beam of light washed over them. "Come on. I want to see if we can find any evidence of our friend. We've got some cameras we can set up as well."

Blake kept Gambol Shroud out even if Jaune was confident enough to go unarmed. The place wasn't big as far as caves went; it started narrow and then opened up into a large circular chamber with a pool of water in the middle that hinted at a second underwater tunnel beneath. If Jaune suggested they don scuba gear and go down there then she was going to stab him. Thankfully, he didn't.

"There are some bones over here."

Blake shuddered. "We should leave!"

"Fish bones." Jaune rolled his eyes and waved her over. "Calm down. Look, someone has been eating fish – even de-boning them first. I don't know of many animals which do that." True to his words the bones were separate from one another, like someone had picked them out and tossed them away. "There's no sign of a campfire. Fish are safe to eat raw, aren't they?"

"Some are. Not all. And it's safer to cook them."

Growing up on Menagerie came with its perks, fishing knowledge being one such.

"I'm going to set some cameras up," said Jaune. "We'll monitor them from the hotel and then go looking for your mysterious door tomorrow." He set up two tripods and then also set down a notebook and a pen. "It might be able to write," he said. "And even if it only scribbles then that's more evidence. This thing has lived around people for a while without hurting them. I don't think it's unreasonable to say it might be capable of communication."

Blake couldn't leave the cave fast enough. Her eyes kept darting to the pool in the middle as if she expected to see two glowing orbs looking back. They never did, and it remained empty and clear, but she was sure it was down there. Sleeping, maybe. Or watching. She wasn't calm until they were well out the cave and entering back into San Valeo, and even then she kept imagining eyes in the water watching them. It was when they got back into the hotel that she finally accepted she was safe.

Jaune set their computers up in their room and they huddled around them for a bit. Outside, things seemed quiet. Looked quiet, too. They couldn't see any shadow people from the window, all but proving it was either an anomaly-caused hallucination or that you only got drawn into the dimensional shenanigans if you were outside when it happened. A knock came at their door and the boy from the receptionist desk brought them some food, delivering it with a tired smile and looking shocked and delighted at Jaune's hefty tipping.

"Thank you, sir! Thank you! Thank you!"

"Nice kid," said Jaune, sitting back on the bed once he'd gone. They picked at their food, Blake at the window and looking outside. She was curious if opening it would cause them to be susceptible to the anomaly, but not curious enough to potentially kill themselves if her drunken mind decided to throw herself out a window. There were one or two people out, no doubt hooked by the anomaly. They were certainly moving oddly, swaying about and pointing in excitement at seemingly nothing. It was strange to watch, especially how they moved out the way of things that weren't there.

"Movement!" said Jaune.

"I know. I'm watching."

"No. The cameras! We've got movement!"

Blake hurried back to the bed in time to see one of the cameras splash into the water. She thought for a second that the anomaly was trying to destroy them, but then the camera was moving – swimming. "It's carrying the camera with it?"

"Does it want to show us something?" Jaune sound excited. "They're waterproof so it should be good for a while."

The camera's view showed that they were going deeper – not out into the ocean, but deeper out the shallows, off the edge of what must have been the pier. The water was cloudier and murkier, and there was yet more garbage on the seafloor. In the midst of all that was the shape of a boat, however. It was a small thing, little more than a plastic polymer boat with an engine on the back capsized and half-buried in the sand.

The camera came to a stop and stared at that for a long time, bubbles rushing up past the screen, and then it was let go. The camera turned end over end, briefly catching sight of something moving away in the water before it broke the surface and looked up at the starry night sky.

"Well," said Jaune. "That's one way of communicating with us…"

"We're going diving tomorrow, aren't we?"

"Yep. But we'll check out that door first as well. You can go search for the door while I secure us some diving equipment and a boat to take us out."

/-/

The morning was grey and drizzly and Blake tugged her raincoat up over her head and used her hand to shield her scroll as she looked down on it. The sketches she'd photographed weren't the best things she'd ever seen, but they were good enough to work by. Looking ahead and down several more times, she felt she'd found the street from the first. There was the back end of an air-con unit above her head and to the right, and doors to the side. No cat, but it was raining. This was the place.

Walking down it, she didn't feel any unusual compulsion or sense of danger. Sprucewood must have come in the late evening when the anomaly was taking hold, but it was early morning now and San Valeo was quiet but for the rain. Her shoes splashed in the puddles as she walked down the narrow street, past doors she compared with the one in the next sketch. These were too nice, however. Still in use. The grated metal over the doors was still there but left open in places. She could imagine them being more useful back when San Valeo was filled with drunks who might collapse against any door. They weren't necessary now.

Rounding the corner, she paused and looked back down at her scroll. The door ahead looked too similar not to take notice of, and sure enough it was an almost perfect replica. The building was a thin one trapped between other homes, with a single door and a window on the floor above it. The metal gate was open, but the door was faded and a smashed window had been boarded up with tarp and wood. Sure enough, the letter box had overflowed, and now a small pile of mail lay at the front of it. She wasn't sure why anyone continued to deliver to an obviously abandoned home. Blake also wasn't sure why she bothered knocking on it, and sure enough there was no response from inside.

This time, however, she'd come prepared. The White Fang taught many skills, most illegal, and Blake had picked up a few. Kneeling, she inserted a metal wire into the lock and began to rake it back and forth, applying pressure while using a metal rod to push and turn the lock. Lockpicking was an art she hadn't exactly mastered, but raking the pins wasn't artful. It was an amateur technique that would fail on any decent lock, but which made a mockery of cheap brands. After about a minute of raking back and forth and heating little clicks, the lock gave way and turned, and Blake stepped over the pile of mail and inside, closing it behind her.

It occurred to her after that such might be a terrible move, but this wasn't the Welcoming House and it didn't try and eat her. The place was damp, rotted, and abandoned, with threadbare carpet, mouldy walls, and horrific spiderwebs in the corners. The floor creaked underfoot as she stepped inside and peeked into the living room and then the kitchen. They were empty.

Empty of people, anyway. The living room had books and magazines out, and there was a photo album out on the low table opposite a dusty television. Blake peered over and swiped the dust away to find the album filled with pictures of younger people posing on the pier, smiling and laughing. It took her a few minutes to figure out which of them was repeating from picture to picture – a youngish woman with blonde hair who might have been in her early twenties. The rest changed, either new friends, or just partygoers that she'd met on nights out. The dates by the photos showed they were twenty years ago.

"Someone who used to come on holiday here a lot," said Blake out loud. The sound of her own voice helped make the place feel less lonely. "Maybe they loved the place so much they bought a house here." She flicked through a few more pages, finding many of them the same. The latter ones began to change, however. The photos often included a boat, and many were taken out on the water. The woman was missing as well, and for a moment she thought the photos might be anomalous themselves until she noticed a thumb in the corner of one. "She's taking the photographs. Happy couples out on the water. Ah, she came here and opened a business."

A boating business. The boat in the water. The anomaly. Blake grimaced. Had the woman become the stick-like anomaly somehow? Were they related? Was it the same boat? It was hard to compare a boat in a photo to a sunken and no-doubt wrecked one in a grainy footage of an underwater camera. There was just no way to tell. Also, that shot had been taken barely out the shallows. Even if a boat did capsize and sink, the people on it probably could have just swam back to shore. The current came into San Valeo if the garbage was anything to go by, so they should have been safe. And there hadn't been any signs of bodies on the camera footage.

Blake set the album down and made for the staircase, testing every step before she put her weight on it. Some were damp and cracked under her and she had to climb around them. The second floor was as abandoned as the first, but at least there weren't any nasty surprises. Two bedrooms and a bathroom – all uninhabited. No bodies, much to her relief. What she did notice were a lot of nautical decorations like life safety rings, pictures of boats, and even a framed boating license. Janice, read the name on it, but no surname. It didn't look all that official.

The house hasn't been used for a while. How long? It can't be years or the mail would have stopped being delivered. Months, then. Long enough to become like this but not long enough for someone to come and repossess it. Blake had heard stories of elderly people dying in their homes and not being discovered for days or weeks. At least that hadn't happened here. But Janice clearly went and vanished and hasn't been back in ages. Did something happen to her?

It was the creepiest thing she had ever done – and that said a lot – but Blake went and collected some of the letters that had come inside the door, and brought them to the living room. Opening them, she peeled out various letters and scanned them. Some were bank statements, others were bills, and yet more were just promotional things like takeaway deals and such. There were some that seemed to come from friends, however. Or family. There were some birthday cards among them, and then one or two more asking her to "get in touch" and expressing concern and worry. Then there were more bills. A lot of bills. By now, all the utilities had been cut off, but there were some very threatening letters telling her that would happen if she didn't pay.

And then she found letters from her bank telling her that applications for a business loan had been rejected, and a personal recommendation from her account manager that she really ought to consider giving up on trying to revive a dead business. There was a note in pen written at the bottom saying: "I know San Valeo means a lot to you but it's a dead industry and you're only digging yourself a deeper hole. As your account manager I can't agree with you putting in more and more of your personal funds. You're going to run out eventually and you'll have nothing to show for it. Call me. Let us talk about wrapping this up and reclaiming some of your investments from selling the assets. Things aren't going to get better. San Valeo isn't what it once was. These things happen, Janice. It's not your fault. Sometimes running a business means knowing when to stop, especially when it's because of situations outside our control."

The note ended there, and Janice had obviously never read it. Blake set it down and took a deep breath, then removed her scroll and called Jaune. "I found the place," she said. "The owner, a Janice, ran a boating company here in San Valeo. Things were going bad, though, and she couldn't cover her bills. Probably because of the low footfall in the resort."

"Makes sense," said Jaune. "I'm amazed the hotel is still running but even that only has two members of staff. Any sign of her?"

"No. Janice has disappeared and been gone a while and the place is completely rundown. There's signs her family aren't even aware of where she is or what happened."

"Bad news, then, and all signs toward that boat on the bottom of the water." Jaune sighed. "I've chartered us a boat and some diving equipment. Had to buy the latter off someone who used to run it as a business. He had to shut down as well because there just aren't any customers nowadays. Get back here and we'll check it out."

"On my way."

Closing in.

Unlike me, who is now being told the insurance companies "cannot find a garage to take my car because their approved ones are all too busy" and so now it's somehow my job to ring around and find a garage that can take it.

Christ, this is a lot of work for what I was told would be a painless process in which the insurers would handle everything.

Next Chapter: 13th February

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