Krafft's Anomaly Notes

Chapter 55 The Awakening of the Drowned
Liston raised his lantern to illuminate the ceiling above, but found no water-soaked wood, no water dripping down.

The air was filled with even and soaking moisture, so rich that he felt that he was on the beach in the evening, and the sea breeze brought the transpired part of the endless waters, covering all directions, not very cold, but with an unavoidable sense of grandeur.

And here is just a small room, which looks out of place in Wendeng Port, which has been sunny for several consecutive days.

"You want to tell me that the so-called people who 'stayed in the room all day' evaporated out of thin air?" Liston pulled the boss into the room, and put the lantern almost on the window. "What does that mean?"

There is some anger in the tone to cover up the panic, the locked doors and windows from the inside, and the abnormally humid room create a subconscious sense of fear, which is the rejection of incomprehensible abnormal things, and the supernatural that deviates from logic cannot be accepted Expand.

He instinctively wanted to leave this weird room, escape from this incident, so as to return to a calm and ordinary life, but this kind of development just answered his question, that is, it is about clarity, and there must be a deeper level Horribly related, he couldn't accept that the only person who had broken the joint was missing.

What's more, he has already been trapped in it, and if he doesn't find out the truth, he will have trouble sleeping and eating.

"It's impossible..." the boss whispered, he didn't know whether he was frightened by the strange disappearance or the pressure from Liston.

Liston stepped on the floor in the room. The wooden planks are quite solid and reliable, and nothing has been loosened or shifted. "Is there any way to fasten the door or window to the inside from the outside?"

It's not impossible to think about it. If you have enough thin and hard tools and some skills, you can probably do it.He unbolted the wooden bolt on the inside of the window and examined it by the light of the lantern.

It is a hard and straight wooden strip, at least two fingers wide, made of good wood, slightly heavy in the hand, and it can be opened from the gap with a thin object, but it cannot be inserted from the outside if you want to insert it back. up.

The boss didn't answer his question, but retreated to the door, "Mr. Liston, maybe we can go to the church and find a priest who can help."

"No, no." Before Liston could speak, Lucius vetoed the suggestion first.He put down the wet quilt in his hand, with a firm attitude, "You don't want your hotel to have more haunted rumors, do you?"

"Yes, please go downstairs first, we will solve it ourselves." Liston echoed, touched his pocket, and the coins in it collided, "Oh, by the way, we will discuss the compensation for the door bolt later. "

"No need." The boss left the room as if fleeing, leaving behind a series of hurried footsteps.

Lucius picked up the quilt, rubbed it carefully with his palm, and confirmed Liston's feeling, "It's wet, why is it like this?"

"I don't understand either. You have been with Kraft for a long time, so you don't have any clues?"

Liston walked to the door, looked out, confirmed that there were no outsiders in the corridor, and closed the door.The difference in humidity between the two doors is still very obvious, and the water seems to have "invaded" the room, clearly drawing the boundary between the two sides.

The inside is an abnormally humid seaside, while the outside is a normal dry environment.If Kraft was experimenting with something, he didn't find any utensils at all, more like some kind of ghost legend.

In a seaside city like Wendeng Port, there is never a shortage of such strange stories, which are spread among the hired workers and sailors in the port.Liston had heard enough of the slender creatures crawling out of the sea in the middle of the night, the wet trails in the tavern, no wonder the boss wanted a priest to exorcise evil spirits.

He opened the window, and there was a dark alley below, and the lantern couldn't reach the ground.

"If someone takes Kraft away, or if he wants to leave without being noticed, he still has to go through the window." Lucius put aside his weird imagination and looked down side by side with Liston, "It's better to go down See if there are any footprints or something?"

"Then how do you bolt the outside to the inside?"

"There's no need to think about this. Let's just assume there's a solution we can't think of for the time being. Let's go down and have a look." According to Lucius's thinking, there is no need to follow the steps step by step, just guess the result first and then make up a similar process. A typical student Coping with assessment ideas.

"It makes sense." Anyway, if you continue to stick around here, you won't understand anything. Liston agreed with this view.

So the two went downstairs, and Liston insisted on asking the boss to pay off the compensation for the deadbolt, and even paid a premium.Lucius thought that was enough to replace the entire door.

"If we find footprints, shall we continue to search along the footprints? It seems that there is not much lamp oil." Standing at the entrance of the alley, Lucius shook the lantern in his hand, and the flames were much smaller than when he just went out.

"Let's wait until we find it." Liston walked into the alley first, and he didn't hold much hope for it.

Wendeng Port is not rich enough to lay stone slabs on each of these small roads. In these parts of the most complicated traffic in Wendeng Port, soil occupies most of the surface, and the rest is paved according to the preferences of nearby residents. Gravel and gravel.

The back alley of the hotel is not often visited by people, and the owner naturally has no time to improve the narrow road surface of the house, and the discarded sundries make it rare for people to visit.

The soil that lacks sunlight is mixed with some perishable garbage that has been dumped down, and it is mixed into a soft texture. If you can't fly, you will inevitably leave footprints on such a dirt road.

Even so, it is not easy to find these traces at night. The weakened firelight requires people to bend down to inspect the ground. Every step forward, they suspect that they have missed the traces in the dark corners.

In just over twenty steps, the two of them insisted on walking for a few minutes, and walked around to the location directly below the corresponding window in the back alley.

"Did you find anything?" Lucius supported his waist, his spine made a creaking sound due to lack of movement, and he could only see Liston's footprints as he walked behind.

"I found out that I should wash my shoes when I go back." Liston carefully lifted his feet and took two steps back, giving Lucius his seat, "You go ahead instead, my eyes are going to be blurry, I'm afraid I'll miss something. "

Regarding the matter of finding footprints, Liston no longer had any hope. Since there were no footprints under the window, it would be difficult to find the rest.

The two switched positions, with Lucius in front.

Lucius still maintained a serious attitude, shining his lantern on every corner, trying to find clues.Under the dim light, the spirit is extremely concentrated.

He walked around a pile of debris, and when he turned his head to check, a pale face came into his eyes without warning.

The bloodless skin seemed to have been drained of the liquid it needed to survive, and even the lips were pale blue and whitish.

"what!"

With a high degree of concentration and a limited field of vision, this face caused a huge impact in an instant.The indistinguishable state between life and death magnifies people's fear of specious and similar things, and falls into irrational and extreme horror emotions.

Lucius fell to the ground, backed up on hands and feet, and the lantern rolled aside and went out in the dark.

"What's the matter?" Liston pressed his shoulder, the voice and the strength on his shoulder effectively soothed his emotions.

"It's right there, the face..." Lucius was still in shock, pointing at the pile of debris at the edge of the light. From this angle, he couldn't see what was behind him, so he was suddenly frightened by the face that appeared at the moment when he walked around.

It's not that Lucius has never seen dead people, but in this environment, even a loud roar in his ear can scare people to death, and meeting a face unexpectedly is too terrifying.

Lifting Lucius up, Liston pushed him behind him, put one hand on his chest, and walked around the debris pile with the lantern.Lucius watched nervously behind him.

"Kraft?!"

In the light, Liston's expression twisted, as if he saw something incredible.

"What?" Hearing the name, Lucius put aside his fear and quickly stepped forward to look at that face.

What was completely exposed to the light was Kraft's iconic blond hair. The familiar face was too pale and strangely strange, completely unable to see the usual healthy image.

If it weren't for the hair color and the long sword hanging around his waist, he would almost be recognized as another stranger who looked like Kraft.

Liston put down the lantern, put his fingers under Kraft's nose, and his weak breathing proved that at least life still existed in this indistinguishable shell.

"Alive, we have to take him out." He held Kraft by one shoulder under his arm, and Lucius hurried up to lift the other.

"wet?"

A cold and damp feeling permeated from the contact surface, and Kraft seemed to have just been fished out of the sea, with wet clothes all over his body.

Holding Kraft's wrist, it was cold.Liston has only felt this temperature in a few patients, most of whom were soaked in ice water for too long, or suffered from hypothermia caused by drowning, and life passed with the lost heat.

"Come on, we're going to carry him to a warmer place."

……

……

Kraft was placed in the front hall of the hotel closest to the stove, white mist visible to the naked eye steamed from his clothes, God knows how there was so much water in it.

Lucius pulled him away, pressed the side of his neck, and let go after counting silently for a while, "Fortunately, at least there is no problem with the pulse, and the body temperature is getting better."

"I just have a question, what are these?"

Some white substance remained on the fingertips, which was brought down from Kraft's body, including the dried part of his clothes, which also had a slightly rough feel to the touch, and powder could be rubbed off.

Liston and the boss squatted beside him, and rubbed Kraft's body like Lucius. This powder was some kind of extremely small crystals, and the large ones reflected light by the fire.

Before he could stop it, the tavern owner stuck his finger into his mouth and licked it.

"Bah, is it salt?" He spit to the side, the bitter and salty taste is not like edible salt, but directly from the dried puddles on the beach.

But where does the sea water come from in the back alley of my hotel to make people see through?The boss suspected that his sense of taste was wrong, so he stretched out his hand to try a little more.

A cold hand blocked him, and when no one expected it, Kraft lying on the ground opened his eyes, with a strange look that he had never seen before.

(End of this chapter)