"Since when did you realize we are dealing with the living shadows?"
Inase spoke after they had calmed down.
"It's the adumbrali. I am more surprised that you could figure it out at all." *(1)
"Shut it. Don't underestimate me, I know my stuff when I have to."
The blonde scratched the back of his head in mild irritation, but it wasn't long before he let out a sigh, composing himself.
"So? Will you finally tell me what you are thinking about, or do I have to keep guessing till the end of my life?"
"..." Fine, he'll explain. "They are a hive mind."
That was a good start.
"Whatever information they have, they send it to the seekers who act as they are told. And, it means they were ordered to get rid of us."
Hosen said, mid-treating each wound in his body sequentially.
"You already have an idea of what exactly the living shadows are, so I'll skip it."
Instead, he'd focus on what was really happening in the town. The scientist took a deep breath, preparing his delicate throat for a long monologue. He swore he wouldn't be able to use his voice for the next few days. First, it was him shouting to pull, now this…
Well, here comes nothing.
"Let's start from the beginning.
At first, the adumbrali couldn't leave the painting, so they created fake humans to infiltrate the town—we know them as the seekers.
At the time Roberta's boat went missing, four new people had arrived. Artists tend to be consumed by time, so if they tell you a couple of weeks, I usually assume it was longer than that—so I'm guessing, about a month ago.
Since then, the humanoids settled down and started their lives, pretending to be normal people to appease the locals. While they played out their roles, they also found a perfect place to culminate the energies needed to open the painting's portal and let the adumbrali out.
A cave was perfect for it."
And they hit a bullseye while exploring the nearby caves. In all truth, Hosen thought it would be much harder to find than it actually was.
"They were the ones who wrote the ancient symbols I neutralized, meant to amplify their effectiveness.
It was around that time that Roberta's nightmares had begun. The increased energies gave her more inspiration, which also pulled more eldritch influence into the mansion. During this period, the ancient language activated the connection between our dimensions, thus, the seekers were able to open the crevasses in the ground and push humans into their realm.
That offset a chain of missing people.
It was said they went home at night and never came back in the morning. My understanding is that they were invited for tea, a conversation, and then were dropped to the shadow dimension like I was.
Their bodies were later spat out and hidden in the back of the cave, left there bloodless, with minimal puncture marks on them.
Old Ada; James, who went missing nine days ago (now a bit more); Dorothy; drunkard Dick; among others. Though people started to realize some went missing only recently, as a result, the detective was called."
"And how do you know about that information? I never told you about who they were."
The blonde one cut himself in.
"I glanced into the detective's notebook when he wasn't looking."
A quick one was enough for the researcher to find what he needed. Though, rather than entertaining Inase's dumbfounded expression, he disregarded it and continued.
"The heightened influence allowed the adumbrali to finally ascend into the human realm, but because they can only move on flat surfaces, it would take them a long time to travel to Rockport."
"And they can't move through water. They'd have to become three-dimensional for that."
That is when Hosen stared at Inase like an idiot.
"What?"
"So impatient…"
He was about to get to that point.
"About a week ago, fish had either disappeared or were caught dead in the ocean."
Did that ring any bells?
"I checked the seafood stalls. The fish had the same puncture marks, just like the bodies we found in the cave. The blood was missing, and their eyes were bulging open, their eyelids unable to be shut.
It was hard to realize it back then because fish don't have eyelids, but they died the same way as humans; no blood came out as if it was siphoned out by a thin tube, or a needle, leaving a wound barely visible to the human eye.
You've learned from your own experience what their tentacles can do."
Right. Inase felt his blood being sucked out before the previous night. He also felt how hard it was to fight them because they were able to distort time, make their movements sluggish, slowed-down… With that, it would be easy for them to hunt fish underwater—
"They traveled on the bottom of the sea to reach the shore faster."
Suddenly, it all made sense.
"Bingo." The scientist agreed. "And now we're getting to the tricky part."
Was there something more tricky than putting these events in chronological order?
Inase watched him stand up, not minding the pain of his injuries, and walk up to Ralph's dead shell. On the way, Hosen pulled the knife out of the body's chest.
What proceeded next was absolutely outrageous—a heinous action that would force anyone to turn away in disgust.
However,
It was supposed to be a bloody crime scene, but... No blood came out when the man cut Ralph's stomach wide open and ripped the skin apart to see what was hidden inside.
"Hey! What are you—"
But he stopped in his movement when he saw that the body was empty.
"Huh?"
"They arrived about a month ago, right? Which means the timeline would fit."
What was left on the ground was covered in skin and muscle tissue, but no organs could be found in sight except for the core—his so-called heart—which stopped functioning the moment Inase's blade pierced it through. It was clear as day now,
Ralph was a seeker—a monster, created by the adumbrali, who could guise as a perfect human being and lure the prey to the shadow dimension, but…
"It seems that seekers only resemble humans on the surface, but internally, they are incomplete."
The scientist nodded to himself in understanding.
"Two days ago, we found two dead bodies." Hosen carried on,
"But they didn't have these symptoms." What was tricky about that? "You said it yourself, it was a murder."
"That's what's important."
Why would the deaths be different after the detective and they had arrived?
"It was a fake-out. The seekers killed a man normally to mislead the trail about their existence. From the two bodies that we saw, one was a human, but one was not."
"?" Inase tilted his head in confusion. "But both died the same way?"
"I poured blood over the second one, along with soaking the ice pick with it." The other finally admitted.
"You idio-!" He held his tongue, "It wasn't your blood, was it?" Then, eyed him suspiciously.
"Of course not."
The memory of Hosen's bloody hand resurfaced in his mind. Now that he remembered it clearly, he did notice a glistening object in his hand… An empty vial. He shook it in his fingers like he was showing off his grand prize.
"There went my precious blood sample…"
His partner sighed regrettably at the thought, unhappy that the flask he slipped close to the first body to take the blood for future experiments was wasted like this.
Seriously, this guy… There was something scary about him.
"If you tampered with a crime scene more than you already have, you could've said so earlier!"
"I needed to mislead the locals."
"And am I included in that group?"
"…" Yup, you didn't matter. Sorry to break it to you. "I didn't trust you yet back then."
But, from the context and after what they just survived, now he did. He saw how reliable that man could be… to which, the blonde himself let out an audible sigh.
"...so, what are you implying? What is the state of both bodies? Explain everything in detail, man!"
Now that the guy messed up with proof, it was hard to keep count of what was real and what wasn't. Inase needed to organize the information once again, so as not to make it more complicated than it already was.
So, Hosen continued.
"Since the victims of the living shadows are left without any visible injury, that's why I couldn't find a murder weapon near both of the bodies of George and Mark, and planted a false one to calm down suspicions.
No weapons in sight, yet, the first body, George's, was left bleeding out, killed by a clear stab to the heart.
The second one, Mark's, was found with bulging eyes that couldn't be closed and with no wound on his body, yet his blood was completely gone. Which means, one of them had to be the adumbrali's creation. Which one of them was human, you think?"
The scientist asked, letting his buddy think for himself.
"Well, the second one, right? That Mark guy. He had been killed the way the adumbrali kill, obviously.
Blood sucked out, but no wounds found. If they wanted to fake death so that they could keep their existence a secret, they would have splashed blood on George's body so that we'd think he was a human.
Then, leave Mark bloodless so that we'd think he was a victim of the monster we suspected."
Inase described his thought process.
"No, that's dumb." He quickly stopped him.
"Hey-"
"That's what they want you to think." He explained. "It was the first one."
"Urgh…" Inase scratched his head in frustration. "Why would they even do something so complicated?"
"Exactly, that's why." There was a ghost of a smile on him, a rare imagery. "They are smart, these lil' ones." He commented, quite entertained by their ruse.
These sneaky bastards, he didn't expect them to have developed an intelligence.
"There were two possibilities that came to my mind at first. Before I understood the difference, that is.
One, that Mark was a human who killed the culprit, which is why George's death was different than any of the other. But, this one was not probable, for two reasons:
George was a long-living local. He couldn't have possibly schemed the adumbrali's attack for decades.
And two, if he was a killer, then how would the disappearances continue, and why would Mark be killed afterward? George would need accomplices, and from what I know, he lived alone.
For that to happen, he'd need more than one seeker to cooperate with the plan.
Hence, another hypothesis came to me."
This was an important part, he underlined.
"Swapping the killing method." Of course, "The seekers did it to complicate our investigation. They didn't want anyone to realize what was happening; keeping us in the dark from figuring out their existence by using confusion—an exception to their usual killing pattern—was their best solution.
It was already suspicious enough that four new people arrived here before us. If weird things happened around this time, the blame would be on them.
Then, what would be a better choice than to be the monster's first victim to take the heat off themselves? So Mark volunteered for this role… He was killed with the adumbrali puncture, pretending to have his blood siphoned out since he didn't have any in the first place.
That way, he and his group would seem innocent to us and the locals."
These monsters couldn't have complicated it more if they wanted to. Well, they at least have succeeded in confusing and derailing their investigation.
There was just one thing that still didn't match up.
"From the written materials about adumbrali that we know… Seekers were always male, so… How would Miss Virginia be wrapped in all this?"
Was she kidnapped and forced to play house with them three? Was she threatened? Terrified? Or maybe did she cooperate out of her own will? Did she really fall in love with and marry Mark, a seeker? Were her feelings ever true?
Inase deeply wondered about that.
"And who said there couldn't be females made?"
Giving back the knife to its owner's hands, the man stood from Ralph's body and directed himself to the door that connected his and the lady's part of the house. He guided them through, where they entered the familiar layout of a humble kitchen with an old armchair in the corner.
"From the texts I've studied, it was said that seekers appeared as a perfect male, but nowhere did it say that these monsters couldn't create a female-looking vessel."
There, he pointed at the figure of a woman sitting in it,
Her shape had melted into that barely recognizable of a human. Her skin, like layers of molten wax sliding off a candle, dripped down the furniture and made a gruesome puddle on the dirty floor.
Miss Virginia barely looked like herself.
Inase's nose scrunched once the pungent smell of burning flesh had hit his nostrils. He couldn't help but pinch it in disgust.
"She had fulfilled her purpose," of softening suspicions of the townies upon their arrival, Hosen spoke. "Maybe that's why she wasn't perfect like the other three. She was made in a hurry."
"This… is definitely something new to us. So their whole group was humanoids created by the living shadows, huh?"
The blonde didn't think that the sight of a melting body would get him this badly, of all the things that he had witnessed so far.
Especially not the woman whom they had met, seen her cry, and cheered her up.
"It wouldn't have crossed my mind."
"Well, we don't know much about their existence." Hosen doubled on this thought, "Not enough was written about them in the archives either, but we know that the seekers definitely aren't human. They don't bleed."
A lightbulb lit up above Inase's head, "Ah, you noticed it back when we first visited her," about the time when she cut vegetables—she cut herself deeply and quickly covered the wound with a towel.
"Yes."
"That would make sense… You connected the dots pretty quickly."
The blonde would have dealt with everything by brute force; he wouldn't have thought of reasons and results. All the whys and hows were not for him.
Inase would rather train his body than his brain.
Without his new partner around, he wouldn't have gotten even half of the truth hidden behind this case.
"So you're saying that they sacrificed one of them on purpose to their masters, all to keep themselves hidden for longer?"
"I would insinuate that, yes."
"That's so messed up." To be killed by their own creator, he wondered how that would have felt…
Guessing what he was thinking, Hosen added rather quickly,
"They couldn't have possibly felt anything. Though it's hard to believe how well they were able to mimic emotions."
Emotion, the only sophisticated thing that no other creature could replicate. It was reserved only for humans, yet the seekers developed well enough to be able to mirror it perfectly.
"Do you really believe in the feelings of a monster?"
Could they feel whatever they showed?
The unrequited love, the grief after a loss, the fear, the happiness, or the sadness?
The scientist's eye turned to his buddy, who scoffed in dispersal instead—he has had enough philosophical thoughts and questions for the whole next month.
"Nah." He shook his head. "Not in the slightest. A monster is still a monster; who would ever believe their act."
The rowdy one spewed nothing but words of harsh truth.
"Who would ever be deceived by the words of an empty vessel? The emotions they showcase are only meant to plant a believable lie. They can try however they want, I won't waver from their fakery."
All to trick people, nothing more, nothing less. If they were so gullible as to believe every word, they would have already died right after birth. They would never be so prone to trust a monster, would they?
"How pathetic of them."
The transparency in Inase's tone made Hosen laugh internally.
"With all of that out of the way, we now know what we are supposed to do, at least." The white hair concluded. "We have to cut off the adumbrali's dimension, destroy the portal, and get rid of the last seeker."
"We still don't know where the fourth friend of theirs is, or what he looks like," Inase added.
It was concerning that they had never met him; it would be hard to catch him before he brought another victim to this house without any intel.
"But since they don't bleed, we just need to poke a hole in each person to see if they do. Easy job."
"Indeed. We need to catch him before anything bad happens-"
But then, a blood-curdling scream from outside suddenly tore through the air, slicing their thoughts apart and leaving a tense silence in its wake.
*(1) from: "The Abyss" by Robert A.W. Lowndes, 1941