Liston raised the lantern to illuminate the ceiling above, but found no water-soaked and discolored wood, and no water droplets falling.
The air was filled with uniform, infiltrating moisture, so rich that he felt like he was at the seaside in the evening. The sea breeze brought the evaporated part of the endless water, covering all directions, not too cold, but with an unavoidable sense of grandeur.
And here is just a small room, which looks out of place in Wendeng Port where the weather has been sunny for several days.
"You want to tell me that the so-called person who 'stays in the room all day' evaporates out of thin air?" Liston pulled the boss into the room, holding the lantern almost to the window, "What does this mean?"
There was some anger in the tone to cover up the panic. The doors and windows locked from the inside and the extremely humid room created a boiling fear in the subconscious. It was the rejection of incomprehensible abnormal things and the inability to accept the supernatural that deviated from logic.
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 development just answered his question, that is, it was about clarity, and there must be something deeper.
The terrifying correlation, he couldn't accept that the only person who had opened the joint was missing.
What's more, he has already been involved in it, and not knowing the truth will make him sleepless.
"This is impossible..." the boss whispered, whether he was frightened by the strange disappearance or the pressure from Liston.
Liston walked around the floor in the room. The wooden boards were quite solid and reliable, and none of them were loose or shifted. "Is there any way to bolt the door or window from the outside to the inside?"
It's not impossible if you think about it carefully. If you have a thin and hard tool and some skills, you can probably do it. He removed the wooden bolt on the inside of the window and examined it under the light of a lantern.
It is a hard and straight piece of wood, at least two fingers wide. It is made of good wood and is slightly heavy to hold. You can use a thin object to push it open through the gap. But if you want to insert it back, it cannot be done from the outside.
Already.
The boss did not 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 rejected the suggestion first. He put down the wet quilt in his hand and said resolutely, "You don't want more rumors about your hotel to be haunted, right?"
"Yes, please go downstairs first, we will solve it ourselves." Liston agreed, touching his pocket, and the coins inside clinked, "Oh, by the way, we will discuss the compensation for the door bolt later.
"
"No need." The boss left the room as if running away, leaving behind a series of rapid footsteps.
Lucius picked up the quilt and rubbed it carefully with his palms, confirming 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 clue?"
Liston walked to the door, looked out, made sure there were no outsiders in the corridor, and closed the door. The difference in humidity between the doors was still very obvious. The water seemed to have "invaded" the room, clearly demarcating two sides.
boundaries.
The inside is an extremely humid seaside, while the outside is a normal dry environment. If Kraft was experimenting with something, he didn't find any utensils at all. It was more like some kind of ghost legend.
In a seaside city like Wendeng Port, there is no shortage of such strange stories, which are spread among the employees and sailors at the port. Liston has heard enough in the tavern about the slender creatures crawling out of the sea in the middle of the night and the wet drag marks.
If there are too many, no wonder the boss wants to find a priest to exorcise evil spirits.
He opened the window, and there was a dark alley below, and the lantern could not illuminate the ground.
"If someone takes Kraft away, or if he wants to leave without being discovered, he still has to go through the window." Lucius put aside his weird imagination and looked down side by side with Liston, "Why don't you go down?
Are there any footprints or anything like that?"
"Then how do you bolt the outside to the inside?"
"There is no need to think about this. Let's just pretend that there is a way that we can't think of for the time being. Let's go down and take a look." According to Lucius's idea, there is no need to follow the steps. You can just guess the results first and then make up a similar process. A typical student
Ideas for coping with assessments.
"It makes sense." Anyway, you won't understand anything if you continue to dwell here. Liston agreed with this view.
So the two of them went downstairs, and Liston insisted on asking the boss to pay the compensation for the door bolt, and even paid a premium. In Lucius's opinion, the price was enough to replace the entire door.
"If we find footprints, should we continue to look for them? There seems to be little oil left in the lamp." Standing at the entrance of the alley, Lucius shook the lantern in his hand. The flames were much smaller than when he first went out.
"Let's wait until we find it." Liston walked into the alley first, not having much hope.
Wendeng Port is not yet wealthy enough to pave every such path with stone slabs. In these areas, which constitute the most complicated part of Wendeng Port's traffic, dirt occupies most of the surface, and the remaining parts are paved by the preferences of nearby residents.
On 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. The abandoned debris makes it rarely visited by people.
The sun-deprived soil is mixed with some of the perishable garbage that was dumped down, and 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 and examine the ground. Every step forward, they suspect that they have missed the traces in the dark corners.
After a short walk of more than twenty steps, the two of them walked for a few minutes and arrived at the location directly below the corresponding window in the back alley.
"Did you find anything?" Lucius held his waist, his spine making a clicking sound due to lack of movement. Walking behind, he could only see Liston's footprints.
"I found that I should wash my shoes when I get back." Liston carefully lifted his feet and took two steps back, giving up his position to Lucius. "You should walk in front instead. My eyes are dazzled and I'm afraid I'll miss something."
"
Liston no longer had any hope of finding footprints. Since there were none under the window, it would be difficult to find any traces in the rest of the place.
The two changed positions, with Lucius in front.
Lucius still maintained a serious attitude, shining his lantern on every corner, trying to find clues. Under the weak light, he was extremely focused.
He walked around a pile of debris and when he turned to look, a pale face came into his eyes without warning.
The skin that lacked blood seemed to have been drained of the liquid it relied on for survival, and even the lips were pale blue and whitish in color.
"ah!"
With a high degree of concentration and a limited field of vision, this face caused a huge impact in an instant. The state of being indistinguishable between life and death amplified people's fear of seemingly similar things, and fell into the irrational extreme.
Horror emotion.
Lucius fell to the ground and backed away on his hands and knees. The lantern rolled aside and went out in the darkness.
"What's wrong?" Liston pressed his shoulders, and his voice and strength on his shoulders effectively soothed him.
"It's right there, the face..." Lucius was still in shock, pointing to the pile of debris at the edge of the light. From this angle, he couldn't see what was behind it, so he was only frightened by the face that suddenly appeared at the moment he walked around.
It's not that Lucius has never seen dead people, but in this environment, even a loud roar in the ear can scare people to death. Meeting a face unexpectedly is still too scary.
After helping Lucius up, Liston pushed him behind him, put one hand on his chest to protect his chest, and held the lantern around the pile of debris. Lucius behind him watched nervously.
"Craft?!"
In the light, Liston's expression was distorted, as if he had seen something incredible.
"What?" Upon hearing the name, Lucius put aside his fear and quickly stepped forward to look at the face.
What was completely exposed to the light was Kraft's signature blond hair. The familiar face was too pale and shockingly unfamiliar, and his usual healthy image could not be seen at all.
If it weren't for the color of his hair and the long sword hanging on his waist, he would have been recognized as another stranger who looked like Kraft.
Liston put down the lantern and put his fingers under Kraft's nose. His weak breathing proved that at least life still existed in this body that was indistinguishable from life to death.
"He's still alive, we have to take him out." He held one of Kraft's shoulders from under his armpits, and Lucius quickly lifted up the other side.
"wet?"
A cold and wet feeling seeped from the contact surface, and Kraft felt as if he had just been fished out of the sea, with soaked clothes all over his body.
Holding Kraft's wrist, it felt cold. Liston had only experienced this kind of temperature in a few patients. Most of them were immersed in ice water for too long or suffered from hypothermia caused by drowning. Life was lost as time went by.
Heat passes.
"Hurry, we have to carry him to a warm place."
…
…
Kraft was placed in the front hall of the hotel closest to the stove. White mist visible to the naked eye steamed out of his clothes. God knows how there was so much water in it.
Lucius pulled him further away, pressed the side of his neck, counted silently in his mind for a while, and then let go, "Fortunately, at least the pulse is fine and the body temperature is getting better."
"I just have a question, what are these?"
There is some white substance remaining on the fingertips, which was brought from Kraft's body. Even the dried parts of his clothes have a slightly rough feel to the touch, which can be rubbed into powder.
Liston and the boss squatted next to each other, imitating Lucius and rubbing Kraft's body. The powder was some kind of very small crystals, the larger ones reflecting light near the fire.
Before he could stop him, the tavern owner put his finger into his mouth and took a lick.
"Bah, is it salt?" He spat aside. The bitter salty taste was not like table salt, but fished directly from the dried puddles on the beach.
But where did the sea water come from in the back alley of his hotel to soak people all over? The boss suspected that his sense of taste was wrong, so he reached out and wanted to squeeze a little more to taste.
A cold hand blocked him, and when no one expected it, Kraft opened his eyes while lying on the ground, with a strange look that he had never seen before.