The smell hit him the moment he dragged the suit into the cramped, wood-paneled sanctuary of his shed. It was a thick, cloying scent of brine, rotting kelp, and ancient silt—the kind of stench that only comes from things that have been buried in the dark for decades. Arthur winced, wondering just how many lifetimes that canvas had been soaking in the depths. He heaved the sodden bundle onto a heavy tarp on the floor, the wet fabric slapping against the plastic with a heavy, wet thud.
He reached into the suit’s sleeve and pulled out one of the larger stones. In the dim light of the shed, it didn’t look like much—just a jagged clump of impurities, caked in hardened sand and grey mud. It was a messy, ugly puzzle that would take hours of scrubbing and soaking to solve, but the exhaustion was finally catching up to him. He wiped his hands on his jeans and stepped out, clicking the padlock shut.
He looked back at the shed, his mind already racing toward the morning, but little did he know what the new day was actually going to bring.