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Chris yawned, moving onto a new newspaper, he breathed frustrated, looking over to the clock on the wall. He had been in that vacant library for three whole hours, nothing slumped down leaning onto a table reading, he looked down at the article, it was an older one, browned with time. Within his hours of reading he found that there had indeed been many more murders of the same in the area, and many having the same type of occupation. Working at the manor. Chris frowned staring down at the paper, he could not be sure, many had not stated where they worked, but knew there to be a link of sorts.

Chris placed the papers back into their boxes, setting down all the lids. He strode back up the library, he smiled to the librarian, who tried hard to ignore the boy turning her head pretending to be occupied with something else. Chris took no notice and walked out the building, heading to the registry office, down the road.

It was a long tall building built in a line of high street shops and houses. He walked in, finding a familiar face at the desk.

“John?”

“Christopher!” John said gleefully, standing up from his chair. John looked at Chris hanging onto his eyes, he grew a foolish grin watching them, like a predator staring at prey.

“What are you doing here? Christ do you work here?” Chris spoke moving close to the reception desk, his face looking about the room, unaware of the perplexing look on John's face.

John shook his head looking a bit muddle, but smiled up at Chris, “Doing my apprenticeship here,”

“At the registry office?” he questioned confused.

“Yeah my mum works here, so she got me on one of their schemes.”

Chris opened his mouth, but closed it quick, “right,” he said in an unsure manner, “anyway john, i don’t know if you can help me with something, i want to look at some deaths records,”

“Death records? Why’d you want to see that?”

“It’s hard to explain.”

John chattered his teeth together just as the way he had done back in school as Chris remembered, “you know if you can’t it’s fine, i’ll just-”

“No, i’ll let you see them, but it’ll have to be quick, my supervisors already giving me shit about how i left the reception unattended.”

He worked around the desk, meeting Chris, “what type of death records are looking for?” he asked.

“I need to look into some old ones, like a few centuries maybe.”

John whistled, “alright, we’ll have to go to the basement then.”

“Basement?” Chris questioned, following along as John shepherded him down a short corridor.

“It was a wine cellar before the owners sold the house over to the council, it was in their family for generations,” he rambled, though Chris paid little attention, looking to the dark walls, and to where paintings hung, they were skillfully painted, every stroke seen. A portrait of a woman standing at an edge of a cliff, wearing nothing but white and a veil, caught Chris’s eye, she looked almost ethereal in the tones crafted, Chris looked closely to the metal name plate, seeing the date engraved as seventeen ninety six, the artist by the name of a Mr Daniel Peterson. Meanwhile John carried on to prate. “Which is odd as my mum always says, they just disappeared after that, never heard from again, left a crap ton of stuff behind. Though the museum got most of it. it all being Victorian and such, but we managed to keep some paintings, as you can see.” As they moved down the corridor, Chris could not help to notice that most of the paintings displayed were by an artist of the name Daniel Peterson, the same who had painted the woman by the cliff. It seemed he had a fondness for the coast and sea, seeing as most of his paintings consisted of them.

“Who’s Daniel Peterson?” he asked,

“Oh, um I think he was a local artist in his day, I can't be sure though, my mum's the one who knows about the history. but I think Peterson is the name of the family who owned this house.”

They soon came to some steep steps, climbing down, John unlocked the door, swiping his ID bag through a slot. “Okay, I think I can give you about ten or fifteen minuets. Do you need help finding the records, there's quite a few.” he opened the door, the sensors turning on the lights.

Chris shook his head, “I’m surprised you don’t have a database,”

“The council hasn’t been giving us much funding for a few years, and it would take a while to transfer all the births and deaths from the later centuries, and no one really needs them anyway, so there's no rush.”

“Well thanks anyway john.”

“No problem.” he turned to look at Chris, looking at his eyes, he pulled his eyes away smiling dimly, “still friends with Matius and James?”

“Yeah,”

“Thanks good,” he nodded, “I'll see you when you're done. Ten minutes okay?”

“Got it.” Chris said with his thumbs up. John left smirking, closing the door. Chris wandered down the aisles of the many upon many filing cabinets. Going to the oldest dates they had, through all his searching, his theory was proven correct, all the causes of death that were found in the woods, or near the sea, all had similar wounds and injuries, torn out guts, parts of flesh and skin missing, torn limbs, and all the ones found in the forest were people who had worked on manors grounds, weather that be maid or man servant, cook or valet. It was strange but what was stranger was that all the deaths were written as un-inclusive, Chris sighed, wondering what it all meant.

He left the basement feeling a bit more odd about his town, wondering what more could be discovered about Nereid, what more of the history, a history he realized he knew nothing of, and what more was the manor hiding?