Run: 2026-02-16-01KHKAC24Z58M1RQ03BHG5FQBQ

Rain pinned the harbor town beneath sheets of glassy darkness as the ferry horn moaned across sleeping water at midnight. Detective Mara Ellison stepped off the pier, collar raised, watching gulls circle like cautions scribbled onto the stormy sky above. The inn waited uphill, shingles sweating, windows dark except one square bleeding amber through curtains drawn with reluctant hands inside. Mara smelled iodine, old rope, and smoke clinging to the hedges, a harbor's inventory signed by invisible tides this night. Inside, the lobby grandfather clock halted at two, a brass sentinel pointing forever toward a promise it couldn't keep alone. The manager, pale and blinking, met Mara beneath an antlered shadow and whispered, someone upstairs will not answer anymore tonight. They climbed creaking steps, each groan persuading silence to loosen, revealing threadbare runner, salt stains, and a faint mechanical ticking. Room thirteen's door stood ajar, a teaspoon glinting on carpet like a discarded moon, its bowl sticky with crimson threads. Inside, the air was theatrical, heavy velvet draped over breath, and the window rattled despite the locked, obedient latch there. On the bed lay Mr. Carrow, landlord, eyes astonished by nothing, throat smiling wrong, postcards fanned like guilty feathers nearby. Mara counted three wet rings on the nightstand, then one missing coaster, a careless absence glowing brighter than fingerprints here. Outside, the ferry mourned again, and somewhere below the waves, the town's truths shifted like anchors dragged by sleepwalkers slowly.