Rule Strange: Urban Legends That Don't Exist

Chapter 65 [Undead] Jack Bardo
"Leah will take Vivienne to pray. The relationship between the two of them is very good, almost becoming... um, sisters."

Johnny McGowan laughed twice.

"The analogy is not exact, but ... it is what it is."

"I'm very pleased that Liya treated Vivienne so well. She must be an excellent guardian after I die."

Speaking of death, Johnny Mergowynn was silent.

There was fear in his eyes.

"I don't want to die so early, I have to do something... I believe in Leah, but Leah is Vivian's stepmother after all... If Vivian loses her father, she must be... definitely very sad. "

He faced the camera, his eyes gradually firmed up.

"I want to live."

His tone became more and more serious.

"My memory is getting worse and worse. I don't know how long I can last."

He seemed to muster his courage.

"I have a secret."

His voice gradually lowered.

"I know a guy... When I was doing business down town, I knew a strange guy who... he was not like normal people.

His name is Jack Baldo. "

When hearing this name, a memory suddenly popped up in Chen Yan's head.

Due to the huge cultural differences, Asians are not sensitive to the names of the imperial people, and they usually cannot distinguish the similar names of the imperial people.

But the name Jack Baldo left a deep impression on Chen Yan.

He clearly remembered hearing the name before—he had heard it mentioned by Jerlock Sif in a public phone booth at the zoo at night.

[Undead] Jack Baldo.

Vivian's father actually knew this guy!

"That's old stuff... Jack Baldo is a strange man who lives on incense..."

Johnny McGowan lowered his voice.

"He lived on incense tainted with human ashes!"

When Chen Yan heard what he said, he immediately remembered that in the story Jerlock Sif told his third uncle, the undead Jack Baldo once begged a corner girl to light his cigarette for him.

It turned out that that cigarette was contaminated with human ashes...

Chen Yan felt that the air in the basement was even colder.

"Jack Baldo... he seemed dead, but not quite dead.

He exists alternately in two states of [living corpse] and [normal person]. I don't know how long he has lived. "

"In a sense, he is almost immortal-as long as he inhales the incense in time, he can get out of the state of a living corpse, return to a normal human state, and continue his own life."

Jack Baldo does have a sort of zombie-like state.

The more Chen Yan thought about it, the clearer it became, and he even remembered the scene that Geralt Sif had described back then:
[Jack Baldo's entire face has rotted to the point of dryness, like a dried corpse, and only the whites of his eyes are left, like the undead in some fairy tales of the choral group...]

Johnny McGowan spoke firmly.

"He can hang himself this way, and so can I."

His confidence was soon overtaken by fear, and he became incoherent:
"I'm not trying to survive, but I just can't let go of Vivian.

I figured I at least needed to do something.

Fatherly love is a very important thing, isn't it? "

"At least... At least wait until she becomes an adult before I die..."

Johnny McGowan stretched out his hand with a desolate face and turned off the camera.

Chen Yan saw the white scene in front of him turn black, and lost the picture.

He silently put down the phone.

Undead... Undead, what exactly is it?
Turned into such a living corpse, alive with incense stained with ashes, is this really the so-called "immortality"?

Such "immortality"——what's the point of living like this?

The projector is still running, and the picture will appear again soon.

This time, when Chen Yan saw Johnny McGowan in the picture, he was taken aback!
In the picture, Johnny Mogowan has completely turned into a zombie-like thing!

His whole face was completely dry, like a dried zombie.

With festered skin, no lips, a mouth full of white teeth and gums in front of the screen - almost exactly the Jack Baldo that Geralt Sif once described!
He is terminally ill.

He has become undead!

The only difference is that his eyes are not as white as Jack Baldo's.

His left eye is already covered with white shadows, while his right eye is still the round pupil of a human being.

That round pupil seemed to prove that he still had human reason.

The scene behind him also changed.

Chen Yan could vaguely see that behind Johnny Mogowan seemed to be a dark alley in a back street.

The dark alley is cold and cramped, the bricks on the wall are already damaged, eroded by wind, rain and time.

There was no one behind Johnny McGowan.

The trash cans on the street obscured his figure, so that when looking in from the back street, he was completely invisible.

He held a cigarette in his hand, with white shredded tobacco in it.

Is this... the kind of cigarette that is stained with ashes and can renew the life of the undead?

He raised his trembling hand in front of the camera, holding a lighted match in his hand, and lit the tobacco.

He greedily took a puff, as if the shredded tobacco was his whole life.

White smoke billowed from his nostrils, ears, eyes, and festered skin.

The expression on his face gradually changed to doubt.

He froze for a while, then quickly stuffed the cigarette into his mouth and took a deep puff.

A cigarette burns out in seconds as the light of the butt flickers.

The expression on his face became more and more confused, and the emotion in his only normal eyeball became more and more frightened.

Chen Yan read something from his expression——

What worked for Jack Baldo, cigarettes didn't work for Johnny McGowan!

Johnny Mergowynn sat down on the ground and opened his mouth wide, but there was no roar—his tongue was rotten.

He wanted to cry out, but no sound came out;

Want to cry, but the lacrimal gland has completely dried up;
Want to die, but ordinary suicide is useless to this body that has become a living corpse.

The white shadow gradually filled all his pupils.

"Bah..."

There was a dull sound from the microphone of the mobile phone, which was the sound of the camera falling to the ground.

Distorted footage from the camera captures Johnny McGowan's next astonishing move:
With his head down, he staggered out of the dark alley like a drunk.

A corner girl in cool clothes saw him and wanted to strike up a conversation and do his business, but he hugged her and bit her shoulder.

The corner girl screamed and struggled desperately in his arms, even took out a knife and stabbed him in the neck.

But that doesn't help.

He dragged the corner girl into a dark alley.

The screams gradually died down.

The screams eventually turned into "cracking, crackling" gnawing sounds.

The scene in the picture is getting darker, the dusk is fading away, and there are no street lights on the back street, and no one knows what happened in the dark alley.

Chen Yan didn't know how long he had been waiting.

Until Johnny Mergowyn's bloody face appeared in front of him again.

The face had returned to its normal appearance, and Johnny Mergowyn was alive again.

But he was not happy, and even panicked.

He opened his mouth, but no words came out.

He reaches for the projector.

So, this video is over.

(End of this chapter)