Greywater (Part 2)
Greywater has a way of settling back into routine after something bad happens. It doesn’t forget. It just files things away. We write the reports, take the statements, bury the bodies—sometimes literally, sometimes not. Then the town keeps moving, because that’s what it’s always done.
For about a week after Stoker Street, nothing happened.
No new attacks, no sightings, no more scraps of paper. A few reports of staircases in the forest trickled in, but those were normal.
If anything, people were a little quieter. Carmine’s closed early for a few nights. The vampire kids stopped lingering out past midnight. Even Thomas stopped bringing anything more exotic than venison into the break room.
It almost felt like whatever had happened had passed.
And yet there wasn’t peace. Everyone went about their days more or less normally, but despite our best efforts to disguise or ignore it, we all had the same feeling: the sense that the other shoe was about to drop.
A week to the date of the Stoker Street incident, it dropped.
The call came in just after sunset.
“Unit Greywater-2,” Lorenzo said over the radio. His voice had that same wrong edge it’d had a week prior. “We’ve got reports of an armed individual on Maple and Third. Multiple callers. Possible assault in progress.”
I glanced at Geraldine. She was already setting her tea aside.
“Any indication of species?” I asked.
“Human,” Lorenzo replied. Then, after a pause: “But… behaving erratically.”
That pause did more for my nerves than the word “armed.”
“Copy that. En route.”
Maple and Third was about as normal as Greywater got.
Small houses, white picket fences, a park down the block where kids—human and otherwise—usually played during the day. There was a bakery on the corner that sold cinnamon rolls the size of your fist. Mrs. Dalton ran it. Sweetest woman you’d ever meet, twice as much as the goods she sold.
When we pulled up, the street was chaos.
People were keeping their distance, clustered behind parked cars and mailboxes. No one was screaming, which somehow made it worse. They were watching.
At the center of the street stood Mrs. Dalton.
She was holding a large kitchen knife, and there was blood on her apron that she was wiping from the blade, not sadistically or callously, but as if it was an inconvenience.
For a moment, my brain refused to reconcile the two images. It was wrong, unnatural.
Geraldine stepped out with me, her handgun loaded with hex rounds and her hand near the holster.
Mrs. Dalton wasn’t swinging wildly.
She was… pacing.
Measured steps. Back and forth across the street, like she was following lines only she could see. Every so often, she’d stop and gesture with the knife.
“No, no,” she huffed, voice sharp with irritation, like an exasperated teacher. “That’s not your mark. You’re too far left. It won’t work if you’re not in the right place.”
She pointed—not at anyone in particular, just into the air.
Adam Jackson was sitting on the curb nearby, clutching his arm, grimacing, a scarlet line running down his bicep. Blood seeped through his sleeve, but it didn’t look like a killing blow. More like he’d been corrected, like a misbehaving student.
I drew my pistol.
“Ma’am,” I called out, keeping my voice steady. “Greywater PD. I need you to put the weapon down.”
She didn’t even look at me.
“You’re late,” she tutted. “You’re all late. We’re already at the end of the first act.”
Geraldine came up beside me, her voice lower.
“That’s not hysteria,” she said quietly. “Listen to her; she’s completely lucid.”
I didn't say anything, but I realized she was right. There was no crazed rambling or screaming; just an annoyed old lady with a blood-stained apron and knife.
“Ma’am,” I tried again, louder now. “Put the weapon down.”
This time, she stopped.
Slowly—very slowly—Mrs. Dalton turned to face us.
Her expression wasn’t rage.
It was deep, genuine confusion.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
I hesitated.
That wasn’t the response I’d been expecting.
“Ma’am, you’re armed and you’ve injured someone—”
“No,” she said, shaking her head slightly. “No, you’re not supposed to be here yet.”
She looked between Geraldine and me like we’d just walked into the wrong room.
“I’m terribly sorry, but this isn’t your scene,” she added. “You come in after—”
She gestured vaguely with the knife, as if trying to remember a cue.
“The blood, after the blood, yes,” she finished, as if forgetting that there was already blood present. “Those were his instructions.”
A murmur rippled through the onlookers.
My grip tightened on my pistol, my heart pre-emptively shattering at the idea of seeing the sweet lady I had bought a cinnamon roll from the day before go down with a bullet in her head.
“Whose instructions?” I asked. “What are you talking about?”
Mrs. Dalton frowned.
“The Director, of course,” she said, like she was talking about the mayor or a local pastor. “He’s already watching, you know. He said if we get it right this time, the curtain will—”
She stopped mid-sentence.
Not because of us.
Because something moved.
I didn’t even see the Elder arrive.
One second the space beside Mrs. Dalton was empty.
The next, it wasn’t.
They were taller than Rûng. Thinner, too. I knew them: Knoschretha (or “Nosh”). Their form shifted in a way that made it hard to focus on directly, like my eyes kept sliding off them. Tentacles unfurled in a blur of desperate motion.
All of their faces—three that I could make out—were fixed on Mrs. Dalton. For the first time since I’d known them, an Elder looked afraid.
“Stop,” they hissed, all voices speaking at once.
Mrs. Dalton blinked up at them.
“Oh,” she said, relieved. “Thank goodness! You’re part of this scene too. Good. I wasn’t sure if—”
Nosh moved.
There was no warning. No hesitation.
One moment she was standing there, the next she was completely wrapped in tentacles, the knife clattering to the pavement. A low, resonant sound filled the air—not quite a word, not quite a note.
Mrs. Dalton went limp, just like that.
The entire street went silent as the grave.
“What the hell was that?” I demanded, lowering my weapon but not holstering it.
The Elder didn’t respond immediately.
They held Mrs. Dalton suspended for a moment longer, then gently—carefully—lowered her to the ground. One of their limbs brushed against her forehead as if checking for a fever.
“She will live,” they said finally.
Geraldine stepped forward, eyes narrowed.
“You placed her into a coma,” she said. Not a question.
“Yes.”
“That was not your call to make,” I cut in. “That’s a civilian. We had her contained.”
All three of the Elder’s faces turned toward me.
*”You did not,”* they said.
Their tone wasn’t defensive or angry, but not apologetic either.
It was certain,
A chill ran down my spine.
“Then explain it to me,” I said.
There was a pause.
It wasn't the kind where someone is thinking of what to say, but the kind where they’re deciding how much you’re allowed to hear.
“The name she used,” Nosh said slowly, “is a safe one.”
Geraldine’s expression shifted, just slightly.
“Safe compared to what?” I asked.
The Elder didn’t answer that.
“When a mind begins arranging the world into acts,” they continued, “it is no longer fully its own.”
I thought back to Stoker Street.
To Edmund’s shaking voice.
Places, everyone.
My stomach tightened.
“This is connected,” I said. Not a question this time.
Another pause. Then:
“Yes.”
Around us, paramedics were moving in, cautiously now. Officers were starting to take statements and were bagging the knife to take to the station. The normal rhythms of a scene reasserting themselves.
But it all felt… thinner.
Like something had peeled back, just for a moment.
I glanced down at my notepad. At some point, I’d started writing. I didn’t remember when. There were only four words on the page, in handwriting too neat for me, yet my finger and thumb bore the subtle pressure of the pen. It said:
Act One Ends
Intermission.
I stared at them for a long moment. My handwriting was never neat, but it had never been this messy either. Just like the note I found at Stoker Street.
Then, without really thinking about why, I closed the notebook. I began to walk to the car before I did a double-take. The moon was just beginning to rise…except for the briefest moment, I could almost swear I saw two moons hanging side by side, like mismatched stage lights. I blinked. There was only one.
Just like always, I thought, then paused.
Why did I tell myself that?