“Because he left this behind.”
Dr. Hall pulled another shift log from her leather bag.
Elias stared at the rather small leather bag, his expression turning strange.
An evidence bag, medical records, 【Dream-soothing Paper】, a few representative dream records, and now another shift log.
He couldn't help but suspect that this doctor's bag was also somewhat supernatural.
If she kept digging, she might pull out the missing person himself.
“That's all of it,” Dr. Hall explained, noticing his gaze.
“Which page?”
“The last page.”
Elias took the shift log.
Most of the previous entries recorded the wounded taking medication, dressing changes, and sudden high fevers.
Until the last page, where the neat handwriting suddenly vanished.
In its place was a large, heavily drawn pencil sketch.
It was a lighthouse.
The tower stood on black reefs.
The lantern room was dark.
The surrounding sea had been repeatedly scribbled over, the pencil even tearing through the paper.
Beside the lighthouse, a sentence was written in a crooked hand:
“The sea is calling my name.”
The playful look on Elias's face slowly vanished.
The drawing was crude.
There was no precise scale, nor any coordinates marked.
But the outline of that lighthouse, the structure of the lantern room, and the positions of the reefs and foundation—he had seen them all before.
It was that very one.
The lighthouse he had visited with old Crowley.
“What was the watchman's name?”
“Robert Hess,” Dr. Hall said.
“Last night, he left this drawing behind and disappeared.”
“Did anyone see him draw it?”
“No.”
“When the relief arrived, only this log was left in the duty room.”
“Did he write this sentence too?”
“The handwriting matches.”
Elias held the paper closer to the gaslight.
The words “sea” and “name” had been traced over and over, leaving deep indentations on the paper.
It was as if Robert had been struggling to resist sleep when he wrote them.
Or perhaps, he could no longer tell if he was awake.
“I have to warn you beforehand,” Elias said, setting down the drawing.
“Personally, I hold a pessimistic view regarding Mr. Hess's fate.”
Dr. Hall did not object.
A man who, after dreaming of the black sea and a lighthouse, walked alone toward the shore, his footprints ultimately vanishing before the water.
No matter how you looked at it, this didn't seem like a casual stroll.
Elias picked up the usage records for the 【Dream-soothing Paper】 again.
The actual number of sheets distributed was one hundred and thirty-six.
The registered users also totaled one hundred and thirty-six.
Yet, the dream reports compiled by the shelter totaled one hundred and thirty-seven.
The extra one was precisely the drawing left by Robert.
Which meant...
He had never used the 【Dream-soothing Paper】, yet he had entered the same dream.
Not only had he gone deeper, but he had also seen the lighthouse Elias had witnessed with his own eyes.
Things were colliding with the situation in Moon Bay at an incredibly unreasonable speed.
Elias closed the log and pulled out his pocket watch.
There were four hours and eighteen minutes left before the 【Moon Gate】 closed.
From rushing to the Society of Freemen from the warehouse, to listening to the commission details, the seemingly ample time had already been chipped away.
He must return to the warehouse before the passage closed.
Otherwise, “John Constantine's” debut would end with him swimming back to the reef twenty nautical miles away.
That legend would indeed be mysterious.
But mostly, it would make him look like a fool.
“How far is the Third Relief Shelter from here?”
“Fifteen minutes by carriage,” Dr. Hall replied.
“Excellent.”
Elias pocketed his watch and stood up.
“To be honest, I don't have much time.”
“Do you have another commission?”
“Something more important than a commission.”
Not having to swim back was certainly important.
“I need to inspect the scene.”
“Alright.”
The two of them quickly completed the paperwork at the Society of Freemen.
The night-shift scribe stamped each of the supplementary clauses one by one.
Once Elias signed his name, his credit record finally went from blank to “one in progress.”
Leaving the Society of Freemen, they hailed a carriage at the street corner.
Fifteen minutes later, the carriage stopped outside the Third Relief Shelter.
It was a long building temporarily converted from a warehouse.
Most of the windows were boarded up and covered with windproof canvas.
Before even pushing the door open, Elias caught the smell of medicine, blood, and damp bedding.
The shelter was brightly lit.
One hundred and thirty-six wounded lay on crowded temporary beds.
No one was sleeping.
Some were repeatedly washing their faces with cold water.
Others paced back and forth, holding onto the bedframes.
A few with lighter injuries huddled together, telling each other jokes that had no punchlines.
“And then the seal said to the sailor, ‘No, you look like a fish.’”
The storyteller said dryly.
Silence surrounded them.
After a long moment, a wounded man forced a couple of laughs.
Not because it was funny.
But simply to prove he was still awake.
Elias suddenly felt that even if the thing in the dream didn't kill them, letting these people stay awake for another two days would yield over a hundred “mentally stable” madmen.
Thinking about it this way, Landon Asylum's annual quota must be quite easy to meet.
As the two arrived at the entrance, a guard raised a hand to stop Elias.
“The Seventh Agency has ordered the scene to be sealed.”
Elias pulled out the commission document from the Society of Freemen.
“I'm here to help.”
The guard looked at the newly registered name.
“John Constantine?”
“He is the investigator I hired,” Dr. Hall said, stepping out from behind him.
“The commission has been registered, and the deposit has been paid.”
After verifying the stamp, the guard could only step aside.
“Do not touch anything in the sealed area, and do not disturb the wounded.”
“Don't worry,” Elias said, taking back his document.
“I usually only disturb the problem itself.”
The guard was clearly not reassured by this.
Upon entering the shelter, Elias didn't ask to examine the patients.
One hundred and thirty-six people.
If he questioned them one by one, the 【Moon Gate】's frame would be cold by the time he finished.
Moreover, the most important clue did not lie with the wounded.
“I want the distribution records for the 【Dream-soothing Paper】,” Elias said.
“All the dream drawings, and the list of names written by others.”
“Now?”
“Now.”
Dr. Hall called over two guards.
Before long, a thick stack of drawings and registration documents was brought to the temporary office area.
The previously assembled Moon Bay nautical chart was also brought over.
Elias first unfolded all the papers.
“Arrange the drawings according to the order the 【Dream-soothing Paper】 was distributed.”
“Do not assemble them according to the coastline.”
Dr. Hall froze for a moment.
“Why?”
“If this were just a collective hallucination, what over a hundred people saw should be chaotic.”
“Some would be close to the lighthouse, others far, with no pattern to the sequence.”
Elias tapped the distribution records.
“But if someone is using them for surveying, their field of vision would advance in a specific order.”
The two guards immediately organized the drawings by number.
The first sheet.
The second sheet.
The third sheet.
The sheets of paper were laid out one by one, covering several pushed-together tables.
The originally chaotic coastline gradually revealed a different order.
The earliest drawings were located on the outer fringes of Moon Bay.
The perspective was very high and far away, showing only a blurry coastline and scattered reefs.
The subsequent drawings began to push inward.
The outline of the coastline became clearer and clearer.
Shallows, waterways, and gaps between the reefs appeared on the paper section by section.
Further on, the observation point had crossed the outer edge of Moon Bay.
The unlit lighthouse also gradually became clearer, moving from a distant black dot to a distinct shape.
Each drawing was a supplement to the area that the previous one had failed to capture clearly.
With each entry into the dream, the perspective crept a bit closer to the lighthouse.
The office area gradually fell silent.
Only the rustling of shifting paper remained.
Dr. Hall's face slowly lost its color.
“They really are drawing a map.”
“No, no,” Elias shook his head slowly, his eyes fixed on the perspectives that were closing in on the lighthouse.
“The map is just the result.”
“These wounded people have no idea what they are drawing.”
His finger traced a path from the outer edge of Moon Bay all the way to the lighthouse.
“They are scouting the path for something that cannot see Moon Bay.”
A chill ran down Dr. Hall's spine.
The nightmares of one hundred and thirty-six people hadn't just connected by accident.
Something was borrowing their eyes.
If one pair wasn't enough, it switched to the next.
Starting from the outer fringes of Moon Bay, testing bit by bit, drawing closer bit by bit.
Until the path to the lighthouse was clear.
“The proxy list,” Elias said, holding out his hand.
Dr. Hall immediately handed him another record.
The severely injured could not write, so the names on the paper were written by the night watchman.
And the person responsible for writing them was none other than Robert Hess.
Elias picked out the 【Dream-soothing Paper】 sheets written by Robert and found the corresponding drawings by their numbers.
The first sheet was located on the inner side of Moon Bay.
The second was even closer to the lighthouse.
The remaining few happened to be concentrated in the deepest part of the nautical chart.
And the drawing Robert himself had left in the shift log fit perfectly right after the last one.
The wounded before him had cleared the view of the coast for that thing.
Robert was then dragged into the dream to complete the final stretch.
“Normal 【Dream-soothing Paper】 only recognizes the name written on it,” Elias said, tapping Robert's name.
“A name is the anchor to enter a shallow dreamscape.”
“But when writing the name, the writer also leaves a faint spiritual trace on the paper.”
“Normally, this tiny trace has no effect.”
“Yet, after these sheets completed their original anchoring, they followed the spiritual traces left during writing to find the proxy writer.”
Dr. Hall looked at the pencil-blackened lighthouse.
“So Robert didn't just happen to have this dream too?”
“No,” Elias said, recalling the characteristics of the 【Dream-soothing Paper】.
“One hundred and thirty-six sheets of paper gave it one hundred and thirty-six observation points.”
“But the people before were too far away; they couldn't see closely enough.”
“So, it followed the residual traces and went after the person who had written their names for them.”
Elias placed Robert's drawing at the very end of the line.
The dark window of the lighthouse faced everyone.
“So, he didn't just happen to become the one hundred and thirty-seventh person.”
“It was because the people before him couldn't see closely enough, so it dragged in the very person who had written their names.”
Elias looked up at the pale Dr. Hall.
“Quite logical, isn't it?”
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