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If Horace had use of just one wish, in this moment he might have wished for better lighting. They were tucked in some out of the way room on some out of the way floor. It was, in retrospect, the perfect size for a closet and not for two people and a filing cabinet's worth of documents. After an hour, the text had begun to run together on the pages like some sort of sludge of black ink and white paper. It reminded Horace of the snow dirtied into slush. The hunter he was with said something, and he looked up, jerking his head dramatically. Horace blinked.

He had not expected her to simply say: "Well, if you think something's there, then go look, Nokoni." Horace couldn't remember the death hunter's name; he hadn't written it anywhere and their noses had both been buried in reports - more than enough words to preoccupy his mind. She'd been painstakingly showing him how to analyze unsorted reports for possible FEAR threats while disregarding possibly false ones. While human-on-human violence was horrible, it was, ultimately, not the organization's concern. Horace had frowned and, for the third time, pulled a certain few sheets of paper closer and (again) dubiously asked if these disappearances should be investigated. The hunter had sighed, run her hands through her short brown hair and told him, in a tone that said she was merely humoring him, to name a couple trainees to go with him. Horace's mouth had opened, lips moving to form the names of a few trusted people, because it really should get checked out. But...

Dylon: because he was a moon and he'd been a competitive swimmer and that might come in handy.
Harley: because a life might be able to extrapolate data he couldn't and Horace knew she hit hard in a fight.

But he closed his mouth without speaking, teeth clicking audibly together. After a moment's pause, Horace smiled and replied: "If I do it correctly, I won't be needing anyone else. It's reconnaissance, after all. Get in, find out what's going on, get out, right?" The death hunter had paused and raked Horace over with a considering look. Then, she'd grunted in acknowledgement and, after a little more talk, the hunter had told him to plan to head out tomorrow afternoon. If it was nothing, she reasoned, they'd only sent a trainee and if it was something... Well, it was Death's job to go out scouting. And so, here Horace was: at the portal, doing the final checks on his gear.

The portal had him emerging suddenly in an alleyway (a foot above the ground in an alleyway), and Horace careened into a brick wall. With a yelp, he caught himself, palms scraping against the brick. Usually the portals were set more carefully - that is, on the actual ground. He turned to frown at where it had been. Ah, the culprit was a high series of steps in the alley, and the portal on generated right on the edge of one. Annoying, that. With a grumble, he popped out onto the main street and began to curiously look around.

He waved to a woman who'd stopped to look at him - the obvious tourist - and received a polite smile in return. Horace had two choices at this point: head tot he store and supply up or go settle into the lighthouse. With a sigh, he peered up at the darkening sky. This had probably not been the best time to begin a mission, with only an hour or so before nightfall. It was almost too easy to believe he'd simply come out to this little town for a spring break kind of adventure (it was his cover story, after all), but there were things to be done, investigations. Horace had an itinerary: itemized and detailed with everything that could be done to uncover if the incidents were FEAR-related or not. The death hunter liked being prepared, even if this amounted to naught. Although he hoped it wouldn't. The division had expended resources (marginally) to send him here and he'd feel awfully foolish if there was nothing. It didn't help that he was supposed to functionally be the leader of this mission - as a one-man mission, he was leader, support, and everything else. It was enough to make him mentally key-smash.

"Grocery store's over there," he muttered to himself and rubbed the back of his neck. Might as well. It looked kind of small and kind of dusty, much like the rest of the town. A bell rang as he pushed open the door and a woman not much older than he skipped over, name-badge pinned jauntily to her southwest patterned cardigan (Marie, it said, complete with a pink star sticker).

"Ya here for break?" the store clerk drawled in her southern, honey-sweet voice. Horace nodded and, figuring nothing bad would come out of it, moved over to chat with her a bit. As she spoke, the clerk's bottle-green eyes moved over him curiously and he swallowed down self-consciousness. She twirled her brown hair around one finger, reminding him that he really shouldn't go swimming at night, asking where he were staying (an exclamation of dismay popped out of her mouth about the light house, and she suggested more blankets). Horace tried to subtly prod her about possible disappearances, but Marie was only unfailingly pleasant and gave away nothing. She did enthusiastically give him some cafe recommendations - those, he filed away for possibly hunting up gossip. The bell chimed and another person flitted in. They made a beeline for Marie and with a wave, Horace moved off.

Humming thoughtfully, he immediately gravitated towards the Doritos, snagging a bottle of caffeine pills on the way. Proper, nutritious supplies.

He could tell the water would be a little chillier than ideal; the breeze coming off of it sent small goosebumps ghosting up and down his arms. And although gentle waves crested across the beach, it was a sand and rock and not exactly a tourist-y type of picture perfect. But Horace liked it. It felt a little rough, a little disused. There was a more popular, more standard type of beach further down - the kind with fine grains of sand and the smell of suntan lotion. He dug his toes in the damp sand here and felt rocks p***k his feet. Throwing aside all thoughts of easing himself into the water, Horace rushed forward, breath whooshing from his lungs.

It was cold. He moved his arms out in long strokes, heading away from the shore. Despite the initial shock, there was something almost calming about the way the chilly water sluiced around his body, tugging at his hair, his swim trunks. If Hattie or Dylon had been there, he'd have pushed them in first. With Jan - he wondered if Jan liked swimming. There was so, so much he still didn't know about him. Horace had avoided voicing his thoughts concerning Jan, except for small slip-ups on twitter, all still carefully dancing around his name. It was tiring. Honestly, he didn't want to talk about it. Everything was all twisted up, nothing like the methodically carved (it was perfect, wasn't it - preternaturally so) circle on his chest. Everything was easier if he only remembered the before, even if Horace knew enough to pick apart the past lies from truth. But the way Jan had always said "I love you" like it was a surety, an unchangeable truth he could cling to, wrap himself around the same way he wrapped himself around Jan. If Jan would just... if he never lied to Horace again, Horace thought he could find it within himself to be content. Not happy, not quite, but content. He did not deserve more than that, anyway.

With a gasp, he flung his head out of the water. Hair never flowed back slickly like it did on T.V. It clung, stuck around his eyes, tangled in his earrings. He took a moment to simply not think as he untangled it, smoothed it back. Horace tread water, turning to watch the moon, waxing, as it shone across the bay. Everything felt surreal, as though this were a dream and he would awaken any moment to find himself...home. Was Deus home now? Home was a place he made for himself, something he could pack up and store inside his stuttering heart and unfold in each new place. His dorm room didn't feel like home. Horace's thoughts came to an abrupt halt as something ghosted along his ankle, seeming to wrap around it and tug. He kicked out, hoping to scare away a fish or loosen the seaweed. And then, again. He frowned and swam away, eyes darting down to his feet. There was nothing there that he could see. Somehow, the shore seemed too far away, with his plastic pouch laid on the beach - his glasses and his phone. Without his glasses, the world looked ephemeral, hazy and almost ethereal. Something circled around his ankle again and he bobbed in the water as it pulled. He went down, his head going under before, finally, whatever released. Jannisari hissed a warning in his head.

Horace came up spluttering, arms flailing wildly as he booked it back to shore. What the <********>.

With a new-found sense of porpoise (Dr. Jannisari did not find his pun funny, but he had no one else to tell it to, so Horace decided she must suffer for his craft), he set out to canvass the town. The memory of the ghost ship was burned into his mind and he could not help but think it was connected to the misfortunes of the town. And, whether it was or wasn't, he would find out somehow, thought it was still most certainly a threat and liable to grow into something much bigger if left unchecked.

---

'-nothing left to say, say, say...

Horace paused, halting his footsteps towards town. The childish voices came from along the beach, drifting up eerily with the sound of the gentle waves. Slowly, he picked his way along the beach.

'down with the ghost ship in the bay, bay, bay...

"Hey-" he called out, then cut himself off as the children scattered with a series of delighted shrieks. There was no point in chasing after them - he'd only look horribly suspicious running after children and demanding they explain a silly rhyme. Horace made a sour face, shoved his hands in his pockets, and continued onward.

---

"Hey, hun, jus' so ya know ya can't be runnin' 'round willy-nilly about tha shore at night, ok?" It was said rather unexpectedly by a broad, liberally freckled woman who smiled like it was going out of style. "Jus' a few months ago, a young man drowned out there - night surfin'. Ain't that a damn shame?" She moved closer to Horace and patted him lightly on the arm.

"Be careful, hun." And just as quick as she approached him, she swung off onto the street, cheerily whistling.

---

"Did you hear?"
"Oh yes, they all nearly drowned."

Horace sipped his coffee and swore that he felt his ears grow three sizes. The coffee here was, unfortunately. nothing special - Horace never though he'd prefer something on the island over something out in the world but it was a fact. Jordan's coffee was fantastically leagues above this over-roasted mess in his cup. But coffee, he supposed, was coffee, and this little cafe had the added value of being a gossip hub. He listened intent as the three people at the table next to his chattered on about various incidents that had happened in the town. It all matched up with his previous research.

"Mhmm! It makes me never want to go swimming again!"

---

Cornered, Horace simply decides it might be best to lean back and let the old man talk. The words washed over him, slightly disjointed things spilling from too-eager weathered lips. Horace wasn't sure if the man was crazy or just liked attention or some combination of the above with a healthy dose of the dramatic, but he certainly loved recounting his story. The girl at the counter rolled her eyes and hissed that they'd 'heard it before, Earl'.

Nevertheless, Horace dutifullly worte it down, his neat shorthand marching evenly across the page. There were pirates and curses and lost treasure and, of course, victims who were drowned and then conscripted to serve on the ghost ship. Horace had the sneaking suspicion that none of it was true - aside from the actual ghost ship.

---

He'd wandered back into the small grocery store, waving a greeting at the store clerk. There were two of them today: the girl from yesterday and an older man with a stern look around his eyes. He wandered over to the drink cooler when something in the newspaper rack caught his eye. A headline in bold lettering prompted him to pick up the paper: CURSED WRECK: 2 PEOPLE DEAD.

Horace thumbed idly through it until he got to the article. He hummed as he read. Apparently, there was a shipwreck in the bay and a few of the excavation team had died while trying to see if it held anything of value. Frowning, he flipped back to the front of the paper - ah, it was quite old, but... At least two people had died while diving and it was deemed too dangerous and not lucrative enough to pursue further. There was a map included, pinpointing the exact spot of the wreck. Interesting. Horace folded up the paper and walked over to the counter to pay for it and a coke.

There were so many of them that they crowded the room, half-phasing through beds, through the cabinet, everywhere there was space... everywhere there wasn't space, there was a ghost. It was more than a little overwhelming. Think, he told himself. He was outnumbered, but he had a pendant if it got bad and

{horace!} was all the warning he got as a ghostly hand shot out and latched around his throat. Sharp nails dug into his skin and he froze for a split second, eyes going wide. Then he lashed out, twisting away and landing a punch on something solid.

HP: 32/40
DMG: 4
CHG: 1/3

Mob HP: 96/100

The fact that he'd reached into the mass seemed to enrage them. With a statrled noise, he barely managed to dodge as the bookcase came toppled down where he had stood, pushed over my many hands. Breathing heavily, he skirted around a table.

HP: 24/40
DMG: 0
CHG: 2/3

Mob HP: 90/100

Jannisari pulsed quietly, her voice dry in his mind, and he took the hint. Horace was only a trainee and and he needed to use his charges where he could. Of course, he was limited - he knew his and Dr. Jannisari's bound was only so strong. Regardless, he weaved away from the ghosts, putting a bed between most of them and himself. He clicked his tekkos together and the spark rose, dancing feverishly before crashing on him.

{Thanks, Dr. J.} he thought, swallowing against the metallic taste in his mouth.

HP: 40/40
DMG:
CHG: 0/3

Mob HP: 80/100