They’d located Clearwater’s body just after sundown. She wasn’t home for dinner, Pomeroy went out to look for her, and he found her.
As I approached the crime scene, I tried forcing myself into the detached, clinical mindset of an investigator. Then I saw her. She was lying on the side of the road, all twisted limbs and broken bones. Nothing was sitting at the correct angle. One of her eyes stared out at me, as vacant as if the taxidermist had just finished on it. There was no blood, in spite of the ragged wound near her carotid. I had to be thankful that I wasn’t the only one on the verge of a breakdown. Delta’s police department was small and close-knit; of course they’d be hit hard. Even Cascadia seemed to be fighting to hold back tears.
I lied to the officers, of course. “I still don’t know what did this.” I had to look them in the eye to talk to them. I got lucky and they didn’t notice anything. I was so close to telling them. So close.
What made it even worse was the knowledge that it was partially my fault. Yes, Speckle may have been the one to actually do the killing, but I should’ve let Clearwater know what was going on. I should’ve told Homeguard and Hailey to keep track of some of the other ponies in Delta. I should’ve bashed Speckle’s and River’s heads in and staked them the first night I saw them. I should’ve known it was a vampire the second I heard the animals had been drained of blood. I should’ve I should’ve I should’ve…
Fuck keeping secrets.
The next day sort of blurred. The station house, cops and fireponies alike, was very quiet. Everypony, including me, went through the motions. I heard plenty of whispers. I suspected that the entire town had heard of the death long before it went out in the papers. The cafeteria felt very empty over lunch break. I can’t even remember what I did for most of the day.
When my shift was done, Homeguard caught up to me. “Hailey and I both fervently apologize,” he said. “We should have known Speckle would try something like this. It is in the nature of vampires to hurt others, and with you so closely associated with River’s death…”
I didn’t know how long he talked. I only knew it didn’t really help, not even when Homeguard told me it wasn’t my fault. “There was nothing you could have done to prevent Speckle from targeting her. She is a mindless brute, the lowest kind of vampire, and you are but food to her. Should you have tried to stop her…” And on and on. It’d probably reassure me somewhere down the line, but right then? No. If I had been able to tell Clearwater what was going on, she could’ve been prepared. Maybe she could’ve survived.
When I got home, the first thing Levanta said to me was, “Brook… told me what happened to Clearwater. She- She was your friend, right?”
Brook. A young mare who didn’t have a mother anymore, thanks to me. I nodded. “Yeah.”
“I… I’m sorry.” And then she hugged me. I hugged her back, but I didn’t cry. Not quite.
I saw a newspaper. No leads in Seaddle. Damn it.
The next day: another haze. I heard that Clearwater’s funeral would be tomorrow. I didn’t have any actual work to distract me. I didn’t even have any fake work to distract me; Homeguard had to serve a shift at the fire station and, as sexton, Hailey was digging Clearwater’s grave. She left behind a big bottle of wine and a note of apology at the cottage. I downed the whole damn thing over several hours.
At some point, I remember meandering out to the graveyard just so I wouldn’t be alone in Homeguard’s cottage. Hailey worked as she talked. She should’ve known, she said. She should’ve been watching, she said. It should’ve been obvious, she said. Speckle must be able to avoid psychic detection, she said. I told her she didn’t need to apologize. I didn’t blame her, I said. She didn’t do anything wrong.
I saw a newspaper. More disappearances in Seaddle. Still no leads. Damn it damn it damn it.
Finally, Clearwater’s funeral came. A lot of the town turned up. I was acutely aware of just how few ponies I recognized. Clearwater had been right; I had been working too hard. Even Levanta seemed to have more ponies around her, sitting in a group of Brook’s friends. I felt just sort of there. I didn’t even have a eulogy to give her. It wouldn’t have the same amount of power compared to what the other ponies had said. I’d only known her for a week.
After she was buried, I didn’t have much to do or anypony to talk to. I just sort of stood around, trying and failing to look involved. Ponies passed me by; I offered vague words whenever I could. There was only one pony that really talked to me.
“Swan,” whispered Cascadia. She wasn’t crying, but her every movement seemed tight, forced, and calculated. “Please, please find the bastard that did this.” It was somehow worse than her blaming me.
If I couldn’t tell anypony the truth, I’d go nuts in days.
I lay in bed, studying the patterns in my ceiling. I wasn’t sure whether I couldn’t sleep or I was forcing myself to not sleep. I almost wished I’d have nightmares; Princess Luna could pop into my dream to fix it, I’d be able to spill the beans to her, and she could… do something. The what didn’t really matter at this point. Something had to be done. What that something was, I didn’t give two shits.
I rolled over to the other side of the bed, hoping the mattress was a little softer there. No luck.
Sheesh, how often had I repeated myself about “doing something”? I felt like cud, chewed up, swallowed, vomited back up, and chewed again, over and over and over. A constant back and forth without getting anywhere. Just like this case. Whatever. I wasn’t the kind of pony that could lounge around. “Doing something” was what I needed.
I felt warm. I kicked my sheets off. I felt cold.
I was crammed in a carriage for a long trip without knowing where I was going or how long it’d take to get there. I had no notion of progress beyond looking back. A deadline for a nearly impossible project was inexorably approaching and I’d barely started working. I’d just wasted two or three days wallowing. Speckle was getting to me, and I had no way to get to her.
I needed something to do, and I was lying in bed with nothing to do.
In the end, I just lay there and let the seconds tick away. I can’t remember when I fell asleep, but then I was walking down a road in the forest, Clearwater at my side. The forest beyond the first row of trees was so dark that I couldn’t see anything beyond angry red eyes staring out at us.
“You look strange,” said Clearwater. “Do you see anything?”
“No,” I heard myself say.
Clearwater stopped and looked at me. Tendrils of darkness reached out from the trees behind her. “Really?”
I watched the shadow wrap itself around her neck. “Really, I don’t,” I heard myself say.
“Liar,” Clearwater said, and she was ripped from my sight.
I was standing at a grimy sink, scrubbing soap off my hooves. They were clean, but I wanted them cleaner. I turned on the faucet to rinse; blood flowed. The stench made me sick to my stomach and my guts churned. Bending over the sink, I retched and coughed up teeth.
“Hey,” a familiar voice said.
I looked up into the mirror. Clearwater’s reflection was staring out at me. Her eyes were purple instead of green. For a second, my heartbeat picked up, but then I remembered that Luna’s eyes were blue. But did that really matter in a dream?
“Quit whining to yourself,” said Clearwater.
“Huh?”
“Don’t ‘huh’, you know darn well what I’m talking about!” Clearwater reached out of the mirror and slapped me. Somehow, it hurt a little. “It. Is NOT. Your fault. NOTHING you did caused me to die. Did you hit me?”
“No,” I said, rubbing my cheek, “but-”
“Did you break any of my bones?”
“No, but-”
“Did you drain my blood through a curly straw?”
“No, but-”
“Did you consciously say to yourself, ‘I know! I’ll get River interested in me so he’ll want to kill me so Homeguard and Hailey will have to kill him so Speckle will go guano crazy so she’ll kill Clearwater!’?”
I gritted my teeth. Wasn’t I allowed to say anything in my own dream? “NO, but-”
“Did ANYTHING you do directly contribute to my death, as opposed to failing to prevent it?”
“NO! But-”
Clearwater leaned out of the mirror again, grabbed me by the shoulders, and shook me. “Then why the bleep is it your fault? Feel bad about it, grieve me, mourn me, exhume me and paint me with clown makeup, but by Luna, remember that it’s not your fault!”
I pulled myself from her grasp and looked down to avoid meeting her eyes. The sink was very clean all of a sudden. “But I…” I mumbled. “I… could’ve-”
“Yeah, you could’ve. She still would’ve. Maybe she would’ve some other way. But you didn’t, and she did, and what’s done is done, so QUIT IT. You’re like a broken record, except that record’s whiny rather than musical.”
For being my mind’s image of Clearwater, she sure didn’t talk like Clearwater. But her voice sounded like Clearwater’s. And maybe it was just the sound of her saying those things, real or not, but I felt… not just forgiven, but absolved. If the pony who was affected the worst didn’t think it was my fault, why should I? I swallowed. “Th-thanks,” I said. “Sorry.”
“Anytime,” Clearwater said with a grin. “I’m here whenever you need me.”
I raised my head from the sink. “Dreams aren’t always this straightforward and self-explanatory, are they?”
Clearwater giggled. “Hey, don’t ask me why your mind’s acting like this. I’m just a dream. A somnial hallucination. Your subconscious must be really sick of you.”
I grunted. It made too much sense. My conscious was growing sick of me.
“Hope you sort this all out. Adios, amiga.” Clearwater saluted and walked out of the mirror.
“Hey! Wait!” I yelled. I pushed at the mirror, but it was solid. “Don’t go yet! I need to tell you-” But I didn’t get a response, and I knew I wasn’t going to. I sighed and looked out the window. An upside-down Princess Celestia swam by through the green sky, pausing only to say, “She’s right, you know.”
I twitched and woke up, panting. My coat was pinned to my skin with cold sweat. I rolled over and dragged myself through the dark house to the bathroom.
As I toweled myself down, drying off the sweat, I couldn’t stop thinking about the dream. I was borderline lucid; had Luna come into my dream to tell me what I needed? It hadn’t sounded much like her; was it my subconscious trying to tell me what I already knew? Or was I just imagining things? Did it actually matter?
I wrapped the towel around my tail and pulled as much water out as I could. I’d never been one to assign meaning to dreams; they’d always seemed to me to be semirandom images spat out by a brain running on low power. But if my subconscious was flat-out telling me to quit whining, chances were I needed to quit whining.
When I took a look in the mirror, I recoiled from myself. My reflection looked haggard, with sunken, slightly bloodshot eyes and a scraggly coat and a mane even I thought was too messy. Had my guilt really taken that much of a toll on me? Or was I still stressed from before Clearwater’s death? I’d never had a break since that night with River.
I looked out the window. The Belt of the Morning Star was barely visible above the trees, a line of soft pink below the night sky. Just before seven, I guessed. I shocked myself by not immediately knowing what day of the week it was. Today was… Sunday, right? I’d run into River on Saturday-Sunday night, talked with Crystalline on Monday, nothing on Tuesday, Clearwater died on Wednesday… Yeah, today was Sunday.
Whatever the cause of my dream, it was right. I needed to stop blaming myself and move on. I needed to stop looking at the difficult tasks ahead of me and moaning, “This is impossible!” I needed to tackle them. I stared in thought as the sky slowly reddened. Eventually, I hammered out a to-do list for at least the next day or so.
What could I do? Stay in the loop. I kept getting surprised by vampire stuff. Not anymore; I’d ask for Homeguard and Hailey to tell me everything they thought might be important about vampires. Powers and abilities they might not have covered, other aspects of vampire society besides Crystalline, history, anything. I thrived on knowledge, and if I could help it, I wasn’t going to let myself get led around simply because Homeguard didn’t want to tell me something. And if he thought I’d be frightened, I’d just tell him that story about the basilisk.
What could I do? Get creative. Throw together some really out-there story for Cascadia and the rest of the police. Make it so outlandish they wouldn’t question it. I’d been too focused on the story sounding reasonable. After all, I was the expert, and if I said, say, a muroni had been driven down from the Frozen North, who were they to question that? (And that specific idea wasn’t a bad one, really.) I’d need to run it past Homeguard, first — I only had a week to get the story “written” before Cascadia sent off for an arcanist.
What could I do? Fix that damn shed. I’d been putting it off for a week and I still had Clearwater’s nailgun. I needed to get some planks.
Well, first I needed to get some more sleep.