Krafft's Notes on Anomalies

【Face? 】

Coop even took a few steps back, leaned next to Kraft, and took a closer look. Peter was standing on the edge of the light. Behind him was a deep background that the torch light could not reach, a uniform area of ​​lightlessness.

Seeing that Yvonne was safe and sound, William walked back to the head of the team holding a torch. The red and yellow halo of light expanded forward, approaching the distance where the thing emerged.

He took off the hammer from his waist and held it in his hand. He took a half-step to get into a posture and moved to the side to give Kraft room to react.

This is the arrangement that was made early. As a beginner, I don't expect him to provide much help directly. Once something happens, the first person to respond must and can only be a well-trained main force.

He believed that Kraft knew what happened and would definitely respond, but there was still a chill from the sweat and night wind behind his thin shirt.

The darkness receded like water on the bow of a ship, and torches illuminated the space behind Peter. The gray-yellow earthy road was the same as before, and the exposed sand and stones like a low-tide beach separated inch by inch from the darkness.

The largest thing was just a piece of gravel, with no broad face or retreating peepers. The tense spirit was thrown away, like one party suddenly withdrawing its strength during a confrontation. The strength that was finally mustered was in vain and wasted in an indifferent place.

Coop stepped forward and kicked away the piece of gravel. The stone that was not deeply embedded in the ground was easily lifted up and rolled on the road for several weeks before disappearing into the boundary between light and darkness.

There was a vague chuckle in his ears, which sounded somewhat similar to the treacherous contempt and ridicule of the dock employer. He was confused and unconsciously angry, and his eyes swept over everyone present, each one serious or with a hint of emotion. Pointed at the frightened face.

The sound dissipated, and a face-like object appeared. The details were not enough to be recorded, making people question whether their senses were wrong. It is not even possible to confirm whether it is really a face or a laugh. It can only evoke a moment of association and connect the impressions in the memory to supplement it.

It was so close that there was no distance, it was closer than the ear. It was not enough to say that it was blown into the ear hole, and the nearest Peter was still in a daze with his back to him.

William whispered something to the guide, pulled him forward and walked forward, the torch in his hand burning brightly. The sailors returned to the end of the line, and Kraft picked up Yvonne and dusted off her cloak. No one seemed to notice anything strange.

The aperture moved towards Coop, and William raised the torch to bring him into the center of the aperture. This only guarantee did not make him feel at ease. A sense of isolation arose, as if he was isolated from other people and was alone in a world that was infinitely close to this but completely different.

This feeling is stronger than those visual hallucinations and auditory hallucinations, and even reaches the point of being clearly discernible, just like going astray on a fork in the road, and turning around to find that you are far away from your companions.

The road underfoot is the same as before, but there are indeed subtle and indescribable differences. At that "fork in the road", a transformation from familiarity to unfamiliarity occurred.

However, there were no branches on the mountain road. William and Peter were walking past him, hesitantly looking at his hand holding the handle of the hammer. The closer distance conflicted with the intuitive distance, and the subjective feeling seemed to be separated from the audio and visual.

He was on alert like never before, and his sense of crisis forced his memory to dig out similar experiences that had been buried deep in order to deal with the threat.

In his life as a hired worker, Coop never realized that he had such rich experiences that could compare to the strange look and feel at the moment.

No, there are still some.

Apparently completely unrelated things were connected with it. It should be waking up from the bed. The folds of the comfortable sheets were the same as when he fell into the dream. What he held in his hand was not the handle of a hammer, but half of his property - a complete silver coin.

The window similar to the one before sleeping shed light for no reason, like something resembling a face emerging from the empty darkness.

The melancholy of leaving home is even worse than standing on the stern of the Iceberg and watching Wendeng Port disappear into the horizon. There was no sign to remind him that he had left the place he was accustomed to. Only at a certain moment, he suddenly felt the sadness and panic of heading to a strange place he knew nothing about. His heart was filled with soreness and pain, and... fear.

I'm afraid that everything has already shifted in an unfamiliar direction, and people won't notice it until halfway, when it's too late.

Immediately, something inconsistent with his cognition happened, something broke through the window from the attic height, or a sarcastic and mocking voice broke into his ears.

"No, no, no, it shouldn't be like this." The fingers holding the weapon rubbed the straps, and the arms were tense and trembling. It was probably the same thing. He vaguely recognized the meaning of this feeling - although he still didn't understand its deeper meaning. He only knew that he was far away from familiar places and approaching them.

The sound like laughter stuck to the eardrums, penetrated deeper, and scratched the inside of the skull. I heard it clearly this time. It came from the head of the team, coming from the path ahead that had not yet been illuminated by William's torch.

Breathing rapidly, his arms tried to swing the weapon, hit something, and scatter the invisible claws that were about to close, but it overlapped with the experience in his memory. He was unable to make any movement and was firmly grasped. The hand under the black cuff The strong force caused pain to the bones and flesh.

"Coop, look here!" He grabbed his hand with more strength, and a dull pain penetrated under his collarbone. His palm was forced to loosen, and the hammer fell to the ground, kicking up a cloud of dust.

His vision refocused, and Kraft stood in front of him, clasping his right shoulder and restraining the entire shoulder joint.

His right hand was raised high, and just as he was about to swing the hammer, his heels retreated to the edge of the mountain path, and beyond that was a steep rocky cliff.

The others looked at him nervously, not daring to step forward to save him due to the weapons they had held high in their hands. Seeing Kraft remove the hammer, they carefully stepped forward and pulled him back from the edge to the mountain path.

"I..." Coop, realizing what might have happened, hurriedly explained, trying to explain what happened to him.

"Walking at night for too long can easily lead to hysteria, so follow me." The unfounded conclusion ended the explanation and blocked the unformed second half of the sentence. Kraft said "I know" behind everyone's back. Mouth.

He let go and picked up the hammer, held the hammer near its head, and handed the handle back to Coop.

Coop quickly went to pick up his weapon, and did not let go of the hand that handed him the handle. After making sure that he was conscious, he added, "Remember as much as possible, don't use weapons blindly, and don't move blindly."

The fingers loosened and the hammer returned to Coop's hand.

The team continued to move forward on the mountain road. After several twists and turns, the road finally began to decline, heading toward the valley in a zigzag pattern.

It was estimated that when it was near the bottom, a faint fire appeared at the end of the slope.

A strange-shaped pottery lamp, shaped like a lift, is placed in front of rocks of different colors above and below, filled with lamp oil.

The vertical section of the rock was illuminated by lights. The upper half was made of brown stone that is common on mountain roads, and the lower half was continued by another completely opposite gray-white rock mass, clearly split into two parts.

The winding strips are painted with some kind of red and black mineral pigment, and are connected by countless segments. They twist at the bottom and are so dense that they are indistinguishable from each other. Stick figure-like figures accumulate within the strips, swimming or crawling in all directions.

The head end, or possibly the tail end, of the strip is raised diagonally upward. The segments end here, blooming into an open structure between the valve and the calyx, just on the dividing line between upper and lower heterochromies.

The small human figures in those strips seemed to have found an exit here and were released into the yellow-brown void. The limbs are simply scrawled with minimalist lines, or are not shown at all, but the general part of the head and face are particularly prominent and depicted with exaggerated proportions.

The artist made full use of the upper half of the space to draw these unbalanced people, and even incorporated details of the facial features on each face. The painting skills are average but each has its own characteristics.

Kupp didn't see the pattern clearly until he got close to the stone surface. Perhaps it was due to the limitations of the painting tools. In order to accommodate more content, the area had to be spread out. The faces were painted to be fatter and less three-dimensional, making them appear wide and flat.

The road skirted the rocks, and stone and mud houses were clustered on both sides. There was no light in the high-open small windows, and the village was sleeping.