The Drowned Sailor wasn't hard to find. It was the only building on the muddy excuse for a square showing a flicker of light – a single, greasy window beside a door that looked like it had weathered a century of bad decisions. The sign, a crudely painted sailor being dragged under roiling waves by skeletal hands, creaked on rusty hinges. Cheerful.
Inside smelled of damp wool, stale pipe smoke, and something vaguely fishy gone off. The air was marginally warmer than outside, but thick with the same watchful silence. A woman stood behind a scarred wooden counter, wiping a mug with a rag that looked dirtier than the mug. Martha, according to the crooked nameplate pinned to her shapeless cardigan. Her eyes, wide and watery blue, darted to me the moment the door groaned shut, then flickered nervously towards the shadowed staircase behind her, then back. A smile stretched across her face, tight as a drum skin.
"Welcome to the Sailor, sir. You'll be needing a room?" Her voice was high, brittle. Hospitable like a noose is welcoming.
"Elias Thorne. Press." I dropped my case. The thud was obscenely loud in the quiet. "Got anything dry?"
"Just the one room free, sir. Top of the stairs, end of the hall. Quiet spot." She pushed a heavy ledger towards me, her fingers trembling slightly. "Sign here, if you please."
I scrawled my name. "Place seems… peaceful." I kept my tone neutral.
"Oh, yes sir. Very peaceful." Her eyes darted again, not meeting mine. "We keep to ourselves. Governor Blackwood sees to order. And the Church…" She trailed off, as if mentioning it required caution. "The Church provides guidance."
"Governor Blackwood? Runs the show?"
"The family always has, sir." She handed me a heavy iron key, cold as a grave digger's shovel. "Since the Founding. Silas Blackwood, current. A… steady hand." She said it like reciting a line. "Room's two shillings a night, paid in advance. Supper's at six, sharp. Miss it, you go hungry."
I paid. The coins felt greasy. "Heard some government folk were through here recently? Investigators?"
Her face shut down faster than a bank vault. Blank. Smooth. Rehearsed. "Oh, them. Yes. Came, did their work, filed their reports, left. No trouble. Very efficient." The words were flat, devoid of inflection, like stones dropped one by one into a deep well. "Finished their work and left."
"All of them? Five, wasn't it?"
"Finished their work and left." She repeated, staring fixedly at a knot in the wood grain of the counter. "No trouble. Governor Blackwood saw them off proper. Room's at the top, sir. Supper at six."
Right. Message received. Fuck off, outsider.
Hauling my case up the groaning stairs felt like climbing into a coffin. The hallway was narrow, dark, smelling of dust and mildew. The few doors I passed were firmly shut. No sounds came from behind them. No radio, no voices, no snoring. Just the oppressive silence, thick as the Fog outside the grimy window at the end of the hall. My room was about what I expected: a narrow cot, a washstand with a chipped basin and pitcher, a single rickety chair. A small, high window looked out onto swirling grey nothingness. The air tasted stale, charged. I felt watched, even here. Paranoia? Maybe. Or maybe this whole damn town was a set of eyes.
After dumping my bag, the Church called. Not literally, thank Christ, but the bossman wanted local colour, and that spire was the only colour this grey hole seemed to have. Besides, if the town prayed to something, knowing what it was seemed prudent before it decided to eat me.
Stepping back into the square was like entering a stage set for a ghost play. A few figures moved, bundled against the damp chill. A man shuffled towards what might have been a general store, head down, shoulders hunched. A woman hurried across the muddy expanse, clutching a basket, eyes fixed straight ahead. Their movements were stiff, economical, like clockwork figures winding down. Conversations, if they happened at all, were hushed whispers snatched away by the Fog before I could catch a word. Eyes slid over me, then quickly away. No curiosity. Just… awareness. A profound, heavy isolation pressed in, underscored by the constant, silent watchfulness. It wasn't just quiet; it was held breath.
The Church of the Veiled Eye loomed. Ancient stone, dark and slick with moisture, seemed to absorb the weak light rather than reflect it. Heavy, brutal. No soaring Gothic arches here; this was a fortress carved by giants with a grudge. The windows weren't stained glass, just narrow slits like arrow loops, cutting deep into the thick walls. And the gargoyles… Christ. Not your standard pious demons. These things leered down, twisted mockeries of sea-life – things with too many limbs ending in claws or suckers, mouths gaping in silent screams, bodies suggesting shells and tentacles frozen in stone. They seemed to writhe in the shifting Fog.
The heavy oak door groaned open under my push. Inside was cold. Colder than outside. The air was still, thick with the smell of old stone, damp earth, and something else… brine? Incense gone rancid? Light filtered weakly through the high slits, barely illuminating the nave. It was vast, empty, oppressive. The walls… they were covered in murals. Faded, ancient things. At first glance, biblical. A storm at sea. A burning bush. A gathering of robed figures.
But the longer I looked, the more my skin crawled. The storm clouds weren't just clouds; swirling shapes within them resolved into thick, grasping tentacles. The burning bush seemed surrounded by a halo of too many, lidless eyes peering from the flames. The robed figures… their postures were wrong, subtly hunched, their faces shadowed and indistinct, hinting at features that weren't human. Geometric patterns woven into the borders seemed to shift in the dim light, resolving momentarily into complex shapes that hurt the eyes to focus on – spirals that looked like coiled serpents, angles that suggested impossible limbs.
And everywhere, central in scenes of supposed divine intervention or creation, obscured by stylized rays of "light" or swirling "mist," was a recurring shape. A tri-lobed silhouette, like a cloven hoof or a three-fingered claw, often balanced on three distinct, thick legs. It wasn't overtly monstrous, just… profoundly alien. Wrong. A sense of immense, crushing age and deep, unsettling wrongness pressed down on me. The silence wasn't empty here; it hummed with a low, sub-audible thrum I felt in my bones. And the feeling of being watched intensified, crawling over my skin like invisible insects. Not from the empty pews, but from the walls themselves, from the shadows pooling in the corners, from the unsettling murals. I needed air. Real air.
I turned to leave, my boot catching on a warped floorboard near a rotting pew at the back. Stumbling, I dropped my pen. Swearing under my breath, I knelt to fish it out from the gloom beneath the pew. My fingers brushed against damp wood, gritty dust… and something else. Stiff, synthetic fibre. I pulled it out.
A short length of bootlace. Dark green. Standard government issue. The exact kind investigators would wear. Snapped, frayed at one end.
It lay in my palm, cold and accusatory, while the ancient, wrong walls seemed to press closer in the suffocating silence of the Church of the Veiled Eye. Finished their work and left, my ass.