Chapter Text
A cool breeze of early fall sent a small handful of prematurely ripened leaves spiraling perpendicular to the docks.
“C’mon, Gwen, we shouldn’t be here.” A woman with long brunette twin-tails stood indignant behind a chain-link fence.
“Relax. You didn’t worry this much when we snuck into that old fox shrine.”
The docks were surrounded by a fence tipped with barbed wire. Curiously, this corn of thorny barbs was a relatively recent addition, gleaming and pristine, while the fence itself was worn and dilapidated.
A redheaded woman flung a common doormat over the barbs.
“C’mon. Be sure to catch this on camera.”
The daredevil woman performed a flying leap over the fence. The doormat was hardly necessary, as she cleared the barbs by several feet. All the while, her darker-haired companion held a shaky camera phone to record the act.
“We’re going to get in trouble.”
“P'shaw. No, we won’t,” said Guinevere. “C’mon, Sushang. Do a flip!”
Sushang eyed the fence with trepidation. She was carrying all their recording equipment. Even with the mat protecting her from the barbed wire, could she truly clear the fence? The young exchange student hesitated, took a step back, judged the distance, then took another step back.
A gate swung open. Rusty hinges made a deafening grinding sound.
“Eeeek!” Sushang clutched at her chest.
This was it. Cardiac arrest was nigh. This is how she died.
Guinevere was left waiting at the door as her good friend Sushang rode out a quick panic attack.
“It unlocks from the other side,” Guin said simply.
“R-right. Thanks.” Sushang weakly stumbled over, still out of breath.
Together, the pair entered the abandoned docks under the cover of a moonless night.
+++
Hysilensmouth Port. Open Sunup to Sunset. Absolutely no admittance after dark. KEEP OUT.
The wooden sign was displayed at the start of a long pier. It was a duplicate of more austere signage placed all along the chainlink fence.
Someone really doesn’t want us snooping around in here, Sushang thought, eyeing the gently lapping waters off the dock. They seemed oddly inviting despite the eerily still atmosphere.
“So, let’s get this started, shall we?”
Guinevere—or Guinaifen, as her old exchange student moniker and current social media handle would attest— ran up to stand in front of the sign. That was Sushang’s signal to drop their big bag of recording equipment somewhere high and dry and get set up.
“I don’t know about this…” Sushang said even as she held a professional-quality handheld camera.
“You didn’t have any reservations about us sneakin’ around that shrine outside of Shanghai.” Guinaifen tested out various poses, always thinking of what was going to be part of the thumbnail. “What gives, Sus? Aren’t those supposed to be extra-vengeful ancestral spirits?”
“I figured if we did meet a ghost I could at least talk to ‘em to beg for forgiveness,” Sushang said. “These are American ghosts. Who knows what I could possibly say?”
“Eh, if we see any, just let me do the talkin’,” Guin said with her characteristic gusto. “Now roll the film, will ya?”
It was a digital camera. There was no film to roll, definitionally speaking. Still, the camerawoman pressed play and began to record.
“Hysilensmouth. A forgotten and dilapidated fishing hamlet not far from Boston,” narrated Guinaifen. Its canneries long since shut down with the decline of the fishing industry. The town tried rebranding as an oceanside tourist destination, until…”
Guin motioned for Sushang to pan along the docks. Despite the town’s billing as a ‘dilapidated fishing hamlet’ the dock was quite new.
They had an editor. A quiet girl from Sushang’s Uni back in Shanghai, who did the editing for them. She’d splice in stock footage of a shipwreck, add in some scary music. Poor girl was even more frightened than Sushang, refusing to ever observe the paranormal without a video editing screen in the way.
Guinaifen mugged for the camera, holding a flashlight below her face. “… Until twenty years ago… disaster struck! A great ferry disaster, leaving only a lone survivor!”
Again, the editor would handle transitions. Sushang merely panned out over the dark but placid waters. A far cry from the choppy seas that caused the old boat accident.
“Your girl Little-Gui is here on a field trip. We’re going to uncover the truth about the Hysilensmouth ferry disaster! Could it have been an elaborate boiler explosion, as the authorities say? Or could it be… underwater aliens?!?”
Sushang shot Guin a look but said nothing. The fiery redhead called cut. Together, the pair walked down the dock, with Sushang filming Guinevere all the way.
“We have an exclusive interview with the sole survivor of the great ferry disaster coming up,” said Guin.
The video was waiting for them back in the college dorm. Safe and sound.
“Lots of places for excellent footage of the bay,” Guin said. “They say the water gets deep fast. One of the deeper bays on the East Coast. We should come back here in the daytime.”
We should have done that first. Sushang wanted to protest.
Water lapped at the dock’s edge.
“Alright.” Guin pulled her shirt up over her head. “I’m goin’ in.”
The waters would be chilly this time of year, but not freezing.
“Hey, Sus. Why do you keep coming with me if you’re terrified of ghosts and all things supernatural?” Guinaifen asked, struggling to bring her shirt over her head. “I mean, roping you into the episode at that shrine was one thing. But you signed up as an exchange student to follow me back to Misk U…”
Sushang stared at Guin’s torso. Beneath the shirt she wore simple, athletic board shorts… an a teeny, tiny orange bikini top, matching her hair.
“No… n-no reason,” Sushang said, evasive.
“Woo!” Without warning, Guinaifen dived into the deep, cold waters. A cannonball splash got Sushang’s shoes wet.
“You comin’ in?” Guin said, grinning, as she treaded the water.
“I… shouldn’t.” Sushang looked away. “Have to protect the equipment…”
And so, the camerawoman stayed on shore wearing her frumpy exchange student’s college blazer with M.U. emblazoned on the front.
“Hey! Bitch-ass ghosts. Where ya at?!” Guinaifen shouted as she did laps back and forth in front of the pier.
“Guin. People will hear!” Sushang frowned.
“Oh, relax, will ya. The water’s fineeee,” Guin said.
Sushang looked back to the edge of the dock. She half expected to see some spooky-looking dockmaster come out to hassle them. They could face jail time for this. Sushang could have her visa revoked! She supposed Guinaifen was always under threat of being sent packing home back when they shared a dorm in Shanghai. But unlike Guin, Sushang was a model student.
“Hey, we should get back,” Sushang began. “Can always drive back up in the morn—”
A splash like a stone being dropped into a deep pool brought early punctuation to the cautious girl’s admonishment. Sushang turned, and Guinevere wasn’t there.
“Guin? Guin?”
The water was dark. She could be hiding under the dock, just waiting to scare her faint-hearted camerawoman, perhaps… Or she could be in trouble. The waters were unfathomably deep, not too far out from shore.
“Guin? I’m… I’m coming out there.”
There was no one she could go to for help at this hour. By the time she left the docks and found someone, anyone who could assist, it would be far too late. There was a round lifebuoy at the dock’s edge, which Sushang took and threw into the water.
She couldn’t exactly dive in blind. Sushang went for the bag of supplies and pulled out a camera. With the press of a button, the flash bathed the water in light.
The water was eerily still, with not even a minor air bubble to indicate Guinevere’s location. Sushang’s heart raced.
“Where… are you?” Sushang said, her voice weak. She tried the flash again. She ought to be able to see some faint outline of Guin’s silhouette beneath the waters.
“你喺邊度?!”Sushang’s voice cracked as she failed to think of the appropriate English words.
Guinaifen breached the water near the lifebuoy just as Sushang fired off a third camera flash. Sushang snapped a picture by accident, then dropped the camera on the boardwalk and screamed.
+++
An image, now-famous on social media, sat blown up on a screen in a dingy private eye’s office: A frightened co-ed leaping out of the water. Tossing the life preserver aside in a mad, desperate attempt to reach out for the dock. A veil of water and harsh reflection of the camera’s flash obscured what this college student was fleeing from. But in ultra-high definition, a distinct pair of long, slender nails could be interpreted as slinking out of the dark waters to grab at her shoulder and face, dragging her back into the depths.
Skeptics called it a trick of the light. These slender limbs were just seaweed, they argued. Normally, Kafka would be chief among these skeptics. But personal experience gave her doubts. It was an investigator’s hunch. There was something nefarious at play. Just like twenty years ago.
Kafka, private eye extraordinaire, lounged about in her cramped New York City office. She took a puff of a cigarette. There was a wail of a siren outside, near constant in the city. She swished the blinds shut. It barely helped.
The victim was a twenty-year-old streamer popular on supernatural corners of Youtube. Normally anyone daring to swim through Hysilensmouth Bay in the dead of night would be assumed to have drowned. The naturally conspiratorial subscriber base of their missing vic led to rumors running rampant. All manner of freelance and amateur investigators had descended on the sleepy northern town. There were many coves and grottos that a person could get lost in. If the streamer wasn’t recovered soon, some of these amateurs were going to get themselves hurt.
Evidence on the Lil Gui case passed by Kafka’s desk first. Often, before it reached the police. She had strings to pull when a case inspired her. And this case had a personal connection that animated Kafka.
Missing person, huh. Normally, it would be an open-and-shut case; the victim drowned somewhere out there. But…
Exclusive interview with the lone survivor of the Hysilensmouth Ferry disaster of twenty years ago! [Draft!] [Raw Footage!] [Make it Extra Spooky HuoHuo!] – the video sat frozen on the other monitor of Kafka’s dual setup. Their editor was in Shanghai, and the title required some machine translation. Still, the interview was in English. Kafka recognized the subject and the background implicitly.
That cheery redhead was back, not a care in the world. Oblivious to the doom that would meet her that very night. Guinevere held a professional-looking microphone. To her right was a mousey-looking girl with prematurely grey-silver hair.
“Now, Stelle, I understand you haven’t spoken to this to anyone in two decades?” the interviewer asked.
Stelle’s golden eyes looked at Guin, then at the camera. Using her hands, she made the sign for ‘No’.
A lie.
She talked in her sleep, even when it was otherwise impossible for the young woman to speak of her own accord. Even years later, when the young woman was in college, she muttered out panicked, sleepy words as she relived the ferry disaster in her nightmares. Stelle had also, via sign, voluntarily shared a scant few details with the woman who saved her, so long ago now…
Kafka paused the video. There wouldn’t be any information in this interview that the private eye did not already know by heart. She could recap the case notes on the train trip north anyway.
It would be wise to stay in Boston. The commute to Hysilensmouth was only about an hour. But Kafka’s purple nails stroked the image of Stelle’s cheek, frozen on her screen.
I think I can find a place to crash on-site, Kafka thought with a thin smile. The investigator closed up shop, locked her modest office, and made for the Acela corridor’s northbound train.