The gate to the compound stood ajar, rusted and bent like it had never been meant to close. No guards. No welcome. Just the low hiss of distant voices and the stink of sewage.
Elias stepped through and paused.
It wasn't a compound. Not really. More like a slum packed tight behind the bones of an old prison. Stone and shanties stacked together, sweating in the stale air. Lanterns swayed from bent nails, their orange light crawling over the damp stones like spilled oil.
He followed the narrow street—if it could be called that—stepping over run-off water thick as stew, careful not to brush against the walls where broken glass and greasy rags clung like seaweed.
Men leaned against broken stone in knots of three or four, speaking low and looking up only when they smelled fear. A boy passed him barefoot, holding a knife like a walking stick, blade down, no attempt to hide it.
Somewhere, a woman laughed. It didn't sound like joy.
They called it the Orange District.
Elias had heard the name only twice before—once at the Harpoon in a whispered argument, and once in a police report with half the names redacted. No one in Dunwich said it out loud unless they had to. It was the kind of place you went if you had nothing to lose, or someone else's secrets to sell.
He passed a crooked building sagging under its own weight, curtains drawn thin over the windows, painted in the slow pulse of flickering lanterns. One of the curtains parted. A woman stepped into the doorway, her shoulders and chest bare, she waved at him with a drunken sort of grace.
His eyes followed the curve of her chest without meaning to. That's when he felt it—eyes on him.
He looked past her—and saw a man watching.
Not just watching. Staring.
The expression was carved from something colder than suspicion. It wasn't jealousy. Elias could see that now.
Recognition struck like a wire pulled tight: he knew that face. One of Joseph's men. One of the crew that had tried to stir trouble at the black harpoon.
Elias's thoughts fell back to that day. The way the smuggler had introduced himself—too clean, too quick to name his trade, too eager to meet at the docks after dark. It hadn't smelled right. The detective in him had screamed ambush. They thought he was just some overeager outsider. Maybe a tourist. Maybe a mark. But he didn't scare easy, and when he showed teeth, they backed off fast.
And now here was one of them, standing silent on the same narrow street, staring holes through him.
The man didn't speak. Didn't gesture. Just passed, brushing close, his shoulder heavy with intent.
Elias kept walking.
Jacko, a few steps behind, hunched his shoulders and turned his face, shielding himself from the thug's view.
When the smuggler vanished into the dark behind them, Jacko gave a short nod to a nearby shack. "There," he muttered.
Elias said nothing.
He stood before the door, letting the moment hang.
It was quiet here. The kind of quiet that pressed in on your skin. His hand hovered at the handle.
Then he noticed the lock—snapped and hanging by a sliver of rusted metal.
He pushed.
The door groaned inward. No resistance.
Darkness spilled out like breath from a sick throat.
Elias flicked on his torch.
The beam cut a narrow path through the gloom. He stepped inside. Slow. Quiet.
The room was a wreck. Furniture scattered and overturned. Chairs broken against the walls. Glass crunched beneath his boots—some near the foot of the door, more clustered at the center of the room.
There, where the light finally stilled, was a puddle of blood.
Not fresh.
Not old, either.
---