Getting an audience with Silas Blackwood felt like petitioning a glacier. Martha practically had a conniption when I asked, eyes wide as saucers. "The Governor? Oh, sir, he's a busy man... the Church... it's not..." But money talks, even in silent hellholes. A silver coin pressed into her damp palm, and a reluctant message was sent. An hour later, I was escorted by a silent, stiff-backed man in drab clothes to a heavy annex building adjoining the church – part town hall, part ecclesiastical fortress. Cold stone, high ceilings that swallowed sound, the air thick with dust and quiet authority.
Silas Blackwood sat behind a massive, scarred oak desk. Patriarch. Governor. Whatever. He looked carved from the same grey stone as his town: late sixties, iron-grey hair swept back, face lined but hard, eyes the colour of flint. Beside him, standing with unnerving stillness, was High Priestess Elara. Blackwood bone structure was evident – sharp cheekbones, a similar severity – but where Silas radiated terrestrial power, Elara felt... detached. Clad in robes of deep, murky blue-grey, her eyes were pale, almost colourless, holding a depth that felt unsettlingly empty. Calm. Both of them radiated a chilling, absolute calm.
"Mr. Thorne," Blackwood's voice was dry, precise, like pages turning in a forgotten tomb. "Welcome to Haven's End. Our hospitality is simple, but we trust it suffices. Now, Martha indicated you had... inquiries. Regarding our recent visitors."
"Appreciate it, Governor," I nodded, keeping my tone neutral. "The government investigators," I clarified, keeping my own tone neutral, reporter-flat. "Fifth team sent here. Vanished. My paper's interested."
Elara spoke, her voice soft yet carrying unnervingly in the stone room. "Visitors come. They observe. They depart. Such is the way of things beyond the Veil." She didn't gesture, but the capital 'V' was audible. "They completed their assigned tasks, filed their reports with the appropriate authorities, and departed Haven's End. No incident."
"All five? Together? Seems odd, Governor," I pressed gently. "No lingering questions? No loose ends?"
Silas didn't blink. "Their work was concluded to their superiors' satisfaction. We provided every courtesy. High Priestess Elara and the Church offered necessary... contextual guidance. They left via the coastal track before the last high tide." He steepled his fingers. "Our community is close-knit, Mr. Thorne. We value order. The Fog – God's Veil – protects as well as obscures. The Church interprets its mysteries for the faithful. Outsiders," his flinty eyes locked onto mine, "are transient. Their understandings are often... fragmentary."
I saw the trap. Push too hard, become the 'loose end'. But I couldn't resist. "Fragmentary, sure. Like finding a snapped government-issue bootlace behind a pew cushion in your church yesterday. Didn't seem part of a tidy departure."
A beat of silence. Thick. Cold. Elara's pale eyes didn't waver, but the temperature in the room seemed to drop another degree. Silas's knuckles whitened slightly where they pressed together. The calm remained, but now it felt like the stillness before a landslide.
"Curious what detritus transient souls leave behind," Silas said, his voice dangerously soft. "The Church is ancient. Many things accumulate in shadows. We focus on the light, the guidance offered." He leaned forward infinitesimally. "The town looks after its own, Mr. Thorne. We suggest you focus on the... surface aspects of your story. Enjoy the unique atmosphere of Haven's End. Briefly."
Dismissed. Stonewalled by practiced serenity and veiled menace. Fuck their hospitality.
Needing air that didn't taste like incense and intimidation, I headed for the waterfront. The Fog was thicker here, tasting of salt, decay, and that damned metallic static. The harbour was a graveyard of rotting piers and listing, derelict fishing boats, skeletons picked clean by time and brine. Desolation hung heavier than the mist.
Treading carefully on slick, weed-covered stones near the high-tide line, something unnatural caught my eye. Partially buried under damp kelp and driftwood: a patch of heavy-duty, olive-drab canvas. Government-issue tent fabric. I kicked aside the slimy vegetation. It wasn't just discarded; it was shredded. Long, ragged tears, like claws the size of my forearm had ripped through it. And the stains. Thick, viscous patches, black in the gloom but glistening with an unnatural, iridescent sheen where the weak light caught them. Not blood. Nothing like blood. It smelled coppery, sharp, and deeply, organically wrong. Ichor.
As I stared at the grotesque find, a sound cut through the muffled silence of the harbour. Not the cry of a gull, not the lap of water. A wet, rhythmic clicking. Like enormous, chitinous claws tapping slowly on stone. It came from the direction of the main docks, swallowed by the impenetrable wall of Fog. Click… click… scrape… click…
My skin crawled. Instinct screamed run. I backed away slowly, eyes fixed on the swirling grey curtain where the sounds emanated. Whatever made that noise wasn't human, and it was close. I didn't breathe. The sound didn't come closer. It just... persisted. Echoing in the muffled grey. I backed away slowly, silently, leaving the shredded tent and its terrible stains to the mist.
Back at The Drowned Sailor, Martha was polishing the same mug. She didn't look up as I entered. "Supper's cold," she stated flatly.
"Not hungry," I muttered, heading for the stairs.
Her voice stopped me, low and utterly devoid of inflection, like reciting a shopping list: "Don't talk about the fog-born. Don't look too long at the murals." She finally glanced up, her eyes wide with a terror so deep it had calcified into routine. "And never," she whispered, the word barely audible, "never walk the Fog after curfew." She shuddered, then added, even softer, "...the Fogborn hear."
She went back to polishing, the rasp of the rag the only sound except the wet clicking still echoing in my head. Fogborn?