Thanks for the response a.p. I'm sorry I can't list the dir due to security reasons.
The VM is a .vmdk that is an image that we deploy to a few ESXi hosts in different environments. It seems as though the VM-000001-s001x.vmdk files are created when vSphere is attempting to create a snapshot.
The descriptor for the VM-000001.vmdk file is correct and points to the correct s00x.vmdk files. All the files the descriptor file points to exist.
VM-000001.vmdk has entries of:
RW 4192256 SPARSE "VM-000001-s001.vmdk"
RW 4192256 SPARSE "VM-000001-s002.vmdk"
RW 4192256 SPARSE "VM-000001-s003.vmdk"
etc.