………

Something strange happened.

The strange things I am talking about are not the sensational rumors that the ignorant people in the countryside have heard before.

After all, telling ghost stories has long been a popular form of entertainment among miners. Old Yorkson, in particular, could always make up some strange stories with new twists.

The strange things I refer to are a series of strange and unusual rumors that have spread among the miners.

The first thing is what happened at Little Hooker's ranch.

After young Hooker left his career as a miner, he burst out with great passion, devoted himself to the planting business, and successfully reclaimed some land.

Although his suspicion was still not cured, he spent more time than cultivating the land. He built a tight wall around the land and spent a lot of money to rebuild a house on his own land.

To build this house, he even demolished all the houses in the town to obtain building materials.

But one day, the miners at the foot of the mountain accidentally broke into his territory after drinking too much.

Under that moonlit night, a drunkard sat down on a rock outside Little Hooker Plantation, carrying an unfinished half bottle of wine, and opened his hazy eyes to identify the correct way back.

Later, he was always used to drinking in pubs, and before his alcohol-paralyzed brain completely failed, he would tell the people around him about the terrible experience that day, like a hard-working farmer, infecting everyone with fear.

in the minds of the listeners.

"You know I'm not a timid person... hiccup..."

"But that night, I heard a sound in that wasteland."

"The sound came from a distance, maybe because I drank some wine, and it felt like it was coming from the surface to the bottom of the water. It was blurry..."

"It doesn't matter if I drink too much, you know how much I drink...I said...don't interrupt me..."

"I thought it was Jeffrey and the others who were looking for me, so I responded loudly to their call."

"But as my voice continued to spread, I felt that the voice was getting closer..."

"That is definitely not a human sound!"

"It might be some kind of wild beast, it might be some kind of large bird, or it might be a whale emerging from the sea... No matter what it is, it is definitely not a sound that any of the bastards sitting here can make..."

"The alcohol in my head slowly faded away at that moment, and I stopped responding when I realized something was wrong."

"But the voice kept getting closer to my position, and the sound it made became clearer and faster, as if it was waiting for me to further expose my position."

"That thing is following me!"

"The alcohol instantly turned into cold sweat and came out of my body... Oh my god, I still feel the same when I think about it now... Can any kind person replenish the lost alcohol content for me?"

"Thank you for your generosity Pablo...Gulu, grunt, I continue..."

"I heard clearly what the sound was. The sound was hoarse and rapid, and it couldn't even be described as any sound I had ever heard. The breathing of beasts, the flapping of birds' wings, the flipping of fish, and the flying of insects.

, I know them all very well. These voices are full of life..."

"But this voice is dead and silent, as if making sounds is not its instinct, but a means of torturing itself..."

"I describe it as a wild dog..."

"That sound is the guttural sound made when chasing, intimidating, and frightening the enemy. It is exactly the same as the hound my family raised in the past..."

"By the way, I still remember the dog's final roar when it was slaughtered by the starving family, full of hatred and anger towards the living..."

"I collapsed on the ground and couldn't walk. I could only hear the sound slowly approaching from a distance. Finally, I determined its location..."

"It stopped right behind Little Hook's fence! There's only one wall between us!"

"It found me!"

This ridiculous story appears several times in his description of drunkenness.

But in fact, there were no animal footprints where we found him the next day, and there were no wounds on his body. He was just curled up in a posture of extreme fear, and fell under an old tree.

As a small town police chief, I can only use my limited knowledge to determine that this is an incident of drunken auditory hallucinations.

………

The second thing, several of us witnesses originally swore not to tell anyone, but I don’t think anyone here will find out, so let me briefly describe it.

On a certain day, probably the day after the full moon, Sirius hung high in the sky that was not yet fully illuminated by dawn.

A few of our old friends came back to the mine to mine, preparing to continue the unfinished work of the previous few days and widen the mine pit by one layer.

For safety reasons, our mine is mined layer by layer. After each layer is mined, the structure is reinforced, and then a direction is determined downward before digging one layer deeper. In this way, we have already dug a layer.

Come out of the 20th or 30th floor.

This structure also reduces the gravity of the lower layer as the minerals and soil above are transported away, creating a balance.

But when Antonio was looking for the first level of the mine stairs, something strange happened.

The wooden ladder that we remembered as being located in the northwest corner of the first floor has been moved to the northeast corner.

The difference between the two is at least ten meters, and there are no traces of filling or excavation at all, as if it was born to be there.

We suspected that our senses were affected by the harmful gases in the mine, so we quickly ran outside and took a deep breath for a long time. We did some tests that Old Yorkson taught us to test our sensory abilities, and then returned to the mine for inspection again.

But the situation has not changed. The ladder of the mine is still firmly fixed at the northeast corner where it should not exist...

We checked down to the fifteenth floor. Among them, the third, fifth, eleventh, and twelfth floors showed the same obvious displacement, and the magnitude was incredible.

The other layers have also changed to varying degrees, but they are not that far away from the locations in our memory.

Originally, due to the different soil structure and mineral distribution of each layer, we followed the optimal plan to find a breakthrough for the next layer, resulting in completely different ladder positions for each layer.

Unexpectedly, this behavior has now caused our cognition to deviate to varying degrees.

But in the next few days, we did not find out that this change had any special impact on our mining, so under the call of Old Yorkson, everyone jointly concealed this matter.

After all, life has to go on, right?

………

The third thing!

The third thing happened!

This incident really saddens me so much that I don’t want to describe it...

You will never know how much this incident affected my fascination with this place!

Antonio is dead.

I discovered it.

One morning, we were about to go mining in the mountains as planned, but we still couldn't wait for Antonio to show up.

We thought that as usual, he was so drunk in the pub the night before that he was absent from work the next day, so we didn't pay much attention.

But on the way to the mine, beside the Little Hooker Plantation, we saw Antonio's bloody body.

It was like being thrown down from a high place by a giant and landing on a hard rock.

Horrible.

In the meantime, I was allowed to omit the investigation of various clues, the interrogation of town personnel, and the interrogation of the most suspicious prisoner, Little Hook.

In the end, we had no clear evidence to prove that this matter was related to him. However, at the suggestion of Old Yorkson, we carried out protective control on Little Hook on the pretext that the murderer might be lurking around Little Hook's plantation.

.

That is, detention under another name or more.

Little Hook's expression at that time was a mixture of calmness, humiliation, fear and forbearance. It was so complicated that I couldn't read any effective information from his face. He finally gave up the defense and just told us to remember to put him in the plantation soon.

Ripe pumpkins picked.

I must have been so angry that I was so absorbed in Antonio's misfortune that I forgot to pay attention to other aspects of the town.
Chapter completed!