7/4/17
The Dungeness
Weāre at the Dungeness Inn. Itās the only place to stay in Deadwater. This placeā¦ God itās weird. I donāt know the full history of it, but according to August itās had a rocky one. It was founded on the strength of its Dungeness crab harvest, but apparently the crabs suffer mass die outs periodically and no one knows why. The die outs tend to plunge the town into poverty and despair. The last few years have been good I hear, but decades of an uneven economy have taken their toll.
None of that is weird, I know. Itās the place though. It feels, expectant? I donāt know. I get the sense, when Iām here, that we are merely stepping into the pause between battles in a great war. The land, the ocean, itās like theyāre holding their breath, waiting for the fighting to begin again.
I took August the Knocking Swamp, the swamp he was hired to help destroy when he was alive. Itās beautiful, but like everything here, it feels haunted. Maybe it is. The nokken actually existing would not be the strangest thing Iāve ever seen. You can read a little more about the swamp, the nokken, and Augustās life in Deadwater in this post.
But I digress. At the inn I drew The Sun, a card of enlightenment and vitality. And, as it turned out, a bad card for August. Deadwaterās residents believe that their current good fortune is, in part, thanks to the Circus in Black, a kind of goth, alt-circus where all the actors are all dark and creepy. The circus, as it turns out, is camped right in the field where August buried his treasure. Theyāve been camped there for a couple of years at this point, and donāt plan on leaving anytime soon.
He thinks he can spook them into leaving. But as we drove by to check out the circus, and I smiled at a guy in an amazing goat-man costume, I realized these people were not going to spook easily. We may have to come up with an alternate plan. I just have no idea whatā¦
I want this to be a novel or mini-series.