Heavy rain.
It was a cloudburst, like one never seen on the sunny shores of Pleasant Valley: a sudden tempest that had begun with a single lightning bolt, which had broken the sky in two, and let thick grey clouds pour through the cracks like a weeping sore.
For most citizens, this was a freak act of nature, but nothing more - A consequence of global warming, or the prelude to an even bigger storm.
But for the Stand Users of Pleasant Valley, it felt as though there'd been a fundamental shift in the environment around them, as though one of a hundred candles had been extinguished, and the room they were in had become one one-hundredth darker.
It was happening again.
October 22nd, 2000. Another misleadingly named Pleasant Valley Sunday. It was moving slowly into late afternoon, teetering on 4pm, when civilians were even allowed close to the crime scene.
Another suspiciously un-suspicious death. At 1pm, Damien Bourke was found dead in the bathroom of his beachfront home. It usually overlooked a sandy white beach which sloped easily into blue ocean, but today the rain turned the sand into a wet, grey clay, and the clouds made the ocean black. The house's windows, like eyes, seemed to glaze over at their loss.
Damien had been found stood up, with his face pressed into the shattered surface of his bathroom cabinet's mirror. This wasn't the cause of death, but he was heavily disfigured for it. His heart had apparently stopped beating sometime between brushing his teeth and shaving earlier that day.
Police on the scene found no evidence of foul play, and so saw little harm in letting old-time neighbours approach the scene, within reason.
They'd made a similar call four months earlier, at Havana Reddy's residence... a mere five houses down the waterfront.
But thunder clapped raucously between the valley walls, and the rain drove most people back to their homes, their curiosity decidedly less resilient than their beach-born aversion to the damp.
By the time 4pm came about proper, only a dozen or so people remained, some of them seemingly family. Almost half of them were Boomtown Rats.
They watched with their backs to the beach, lined up in silence as they truly absorbed what had occurred here, like a mourning party.
Obviously, the immediate answer was a sudden, tragic death: but there was more than that. There was something in the air that mingled with the earthy scent of petrichor, something that seemed sickly sweet to the nostrils, but bitter and coppery when it laid itself across the tongue. The residual vestigium of a foreign body - the leftover presence of a Stand. And not just any Stand, but a powerful one: one with so great a presence that it remained hours and hours after the Stand had left.
Certainly more powerful than any Stand in the Boomtown Rats' assembly.
Bruno spoke first, peering out through the droves of watery streams pouring from the canopy of his black umbrella- fittingly somber, but only brought out in the interest of maintaining his pompadour. He'd taken the cigarette from his lips and held it limply in his left hand, tapping the butt rhythmically with his thumb as he'd exhaled a billow of smoke towards Umbrella Beach. No parasols out today, those that'd been left by tourists had been lost to sea the minute the storm had arrived.
Then he'd said, in a low voice, "Right. Any of you guys feel like snooping around?"
It was a cloudburst, like one never seen on the sunny shores of Pleasant Valley: a sudden tempest that had begun with a single lightning bolt, which had broken the sky in two, and let thick grey clouds pour through the cracks like a weeping sore.
For most citizens, this was a freak act of nature, but nothing more - A consequence of global warming, or the prelude to an even bigger storm.
But for the Stand Users of Pleasant Valley, it felt as though there'd been a fundamental shift in the environment around them, as though one of a hundred candles had been extinguished, and the room they were in had become one one-hundredth darker.
It was happening again.
October 22nd, 2000. Another misleadingly named Pleasant Valley Sunday. It was moving slowly into late afternoon, teetering on 4pm, when civilians were even allowed close to the crime scene.
Another suspiciously un-suspicious death. At 1pm, Damien Bourke was found dead in the bathroom of his beachfront home. It usually overlooked a sandy white beach which sloped easily into blue ocean, but today the rain turned the sand into a wet, grey clay, and the clouds made the ocean black. The house's windows, like eyes, seemed to glaze over at their loss.
Damien had been found stood up, with his face pressed into the shattered surface of his bathroom cabinet's mirror. This wasn't the cause of death, but he was heavily disfigured for it. His heart had apparently stopped beating sometime between brushing his teeth and shaving earlier that day.
Police on the scene found no evidence of foul play, and so saw little harm in letting old-time neighbours approach the scene, within reason.
They'd made a similar call four months earlier, at Havana Reddy's residence... a mere five houses down the waterfront.
But thunder clapped raucously between the valley walls, and the rain drove most people back to their homes, their curiosity decidedly less resilient than their beach-born aversion to the damp.
By the time 4pm came about proper, only a dozen or so people remained, some of them seemingly family. Almost half of them were Boomtown Rats.
They watched with their backs to the beach, lined up in silence as they truly absorbed what had occurred here, like a mourning party.
Obviously, the immediate answer was a sudden, tragic death: but there was more than that. There was something in the air that mingled with the earthy scent of petrichor, something that seemed sickly sweet to the nostrils, but bitter and coppery when it laid itself across the tongue. The residual vestigium of a foreign body - the leftover presence of a Stand. And not just any Stand, but a powerful one: one with so great a presence that it remained hours and hours after the Stand had left.
Certainly more powerful than any Stand in the Boomtown Rats' assembly.
Bruno spoke first, peering out through the droves of watery streams pouring from the canopy of his black umbrella- fittingly somber, but only brought out in the interest of maintaining his pompadour. He'd taken the cigarette from his lips and held it limply in his left hand, tapping the butt rhythmically with his thumb as he'd exhaled a billow of smoke towards Umbrella Beach. No parasols out today, those that'd been left by tourists had been lost to sea the minute the storm had arrived.
Then he'd said, in a low voice, "Right. Any of you guys feel like snooping around?"
