Chapter 12: Captain Ghost and the Cursed Mannequin
Chapter 12 The Ghost Captain and the Cursed Mannequin
On either side of the wide nautical table, Captain Duncan of the Lost Country and Alice, the cursed mannequin, sat facing each other.
The atmosphere between the two (though neither may be human) was anything but cordial.
The doll, who calls herself “Alice”, still looks a bit nervous, and even though the ghost captain has promised her temporary safety, even a cursed doll can’t settle down in front of Duncan’s face, which is naturally +10 to intimidation.
She was currently sitting on the lid of her coffin in a dignified manner, but her fingers, quietly pinched together and gripping the edge of her skirt, gave away her uneasiness.
Duncan, for his part, was silent for the moment, observing the …… “lady” in front of him in thought.
A mannequin driven by an unknown power, a clearly not flesh and blood, but can talk and walk and even have a certain body temperature “supernatural individual”, if he was in his hometown, it is to be on the approach to science – and at least three and a half episodes.
Duncan does not know like Alice such dolls in this world belongs to what kind of existence, but in the past few days with the goat head with the process he also sideways to understand some information, he knows that although the world exists “extraordinary vision”, but a variety of extraordinary things are not something unusual visible things, and in front of this doll lady! ……
Duncan guessed that even in this strange and unusual world, she should belong to some kind of special existence.
His guesses were not unfounded – the mechanically-powered ship that had collided head-on with the Lost Country was new and possessed a well-trained crew, and he had seen with his own eyes many of the sailors aboard that ship stick to their posts despite being in a state of great fear, as well as a large number of unintelligible internal Inside the ship, there were a large number of compartments and objects whose purpose was not clear, many of which were depicted with complex runic markings, and the style of those markings was very similar to the symbols on the surface of Alice’s “Hearse”. ……
In other words, it is very likely that the purpose of the voyage of such an up-and-coming ship is to escort …… or “escort” Alice, the cursed mannequin.
Duncan adjusted his position in the seat, and watched Alice with a restful but serious look in his eyes – there was no doubt that he had a new “guest” on board.
But on the other hand, the doll lady didn’t seem to be a scary person, and she seemed to be quite timid.
After all, she hadn’t even said anything to her side when they first met, and she had even lost her head in fear.
“Excuse me ……” probably because Duncan’s prolonged silence and gaze brought too much pressure, Alice finally couldn’t help but speak up, “And …… “
“Where are you from?” Duncan finally withdrew that rather stressful gaze and asked in a more calm tone.
Alice visibly froze, as if reacting to the implications of Duncan’s question, and only after a few seconds did she gently tap her fingers on the ornate wooden box underneath her body, “From here.”
Duncan’s expression momentarily stiffened a bit, “……”
“Of course I know you were lying in this crate before,” he coughed softly twice, “but I’m asking what you’re coming from – location, see? Do you have a hometown? Or something that could be called a place of departure?”
Alice thought hard again, and shook her head quite frankly, “Can’t remember.”
“Can’t remember?”
“What is a doll’s hometown?” Alice folded her hands in her lap and answered demurely and earnestly, “Most of my memories are of the box in which I lay, transported from place to place, and occasionally I can vaguely sense someone walking or watching outside of the box……. Ah, and I remember some of the whispered conversations, the men who watched outside my crate, talking about things in fearful and nervous tones ……”
Duncan raised his eyebrows, “Talking about something? What were they talking about around you?” “Just some boring trivia.”
“But I became curious.” Duncan said seriously – he was sure those were probably really just boring trivia, but right now he really needed to learn all he could about the world, even if it was just the content of the raucous gossip of the ordinary people of the world.
“…… Well, the most common thing I hear is a name, Anomaly 099 – they seem to use that to refer to me and my crate, but I don’t really like it, I have a name,” Alice said as she recalled, “Other than that there was the occasional time I heard them talk about seals and curses and stuff, but mostly the memories are fuzzy. I would sleep when I was in the crate and didn’t really listen too hard to what was going on outside.”
The mannequin spoke nonchalantly, then added as if suddenly remembering something, “But I do remember what I heard recently, it would have been before I came to your ship, the voices talking outside the crate frequently mentioned a place, the city-state of Prand, that seemed to be their destination… . should be my destination as well?”
“The city-state of Prand?” Duncan’s eyes turned inward, making a mental note of the name.
He had finally learned another bit of something useful, though he wondered when that bit of useful information would come in handy.
He then lifted his head and gazed once more at the doll lady in front of him, “And beyond that?”
“Other than that, I mostly just sleep, Your Excellency Captain,” the doll lady said in a serious tone, “When you’re barricaded in a large casket-like box, with drowsy murmurs and whispers drilling into your ears all around you, what else is there to do but sleep? Sit-ups in a coffin?”
The corner of Duncan’s mouth twitched.
A graceful beauty when she was well-groomed and her head wasn’t falling off, but in reality not only would she be paddling the coffin boards and riding the waves, but she’d also be popping out garbage that would choke a person to death out of nowhere.
He quickly constructed a new image of this Ms. Alice in his mind.
However, he still maintained the image of a stoic and dignified Captain Duncan on the surface, and with a mere noncommittal hmmm he went on to speak, “So, other than being passed out in a wooden crate, you know nothing at all about the outside world, and you can neither tell me how the world has changed nowadays, nor can you tell me exactly where any of the harbors or city-states are located. ”
“I’m afraid that’s the case, Your Excellency Captain,” Miss Mannequin nodded her head in a serious manner, and then immediately afterward, as if suddenly reacting, her eyes widened slightly as she eyed Duncan rather nervously, “So …… are you planning to again throw me off the boat again? Because I’m not worth anything anymore?”
Before Duncan could say anything, he heard Alice follow up with, “Well, I understand, this is your ship after all, but can you not stuff cannonballs into the box this time? Speaking seriously …… eight cannonballs is slightly too much ……”
It was obvious that the doll lady wasn’t in a very good mood – but didn’t quite dare to snap out of it.
Duncan is also very embarrassed, he is mainly embarrassed in the first to the box into the shells when completely did not consider after the party to discuss this matter calmly – at that time he only box lying Alice as a standard horror movie cursed dolls, full of images floating in the mind are toward this style of painting go! …… How did he ever think that this cursed mannequin didn’t come out of a curse, but TM came out of the quad?
So the preparations made in the early stages to fight against the horrible curse now all turned into embarrassment.
However, Duncan’s good thing is that he has a thicker skin, and that majestic and gloomy face is just like a knife and axe carved into his face, as long as the peripheral nerves don’t short-circuit he can still be taut, so he forcibly ignored the embarrassment brought by the eight shells, and just shook his head in a cloudy manner: ”I haven’t thought about whether or not I want to throw you off the boat yet, after all, it seems that you always have a way to get back on the boat again, and I’m am just a bit curious as to why you have to return to the Lost Country ship over and over again. I can see that you’re actually very jealous of me, and of this ship – in that case, why not stay away from this danger?”
“Is this ship called the Lost Country? Well, I do have a little …… fear of you and your ship, but isn’t the depths of the sea more dangerous than that?” Miss Mannequin gazed silently at the spectral captain in front of her, in her vision behind this tall man was an infinite obscure nothingness, that obscurity overlapped with the real scene in the ship’s cabin, as if the two worlds had been forcibly iterated, but more than this vast to suffocating shadow of nothingness, those from the infinite sea more “deep But more than this huge and suffocating shadow of nothingness, those things from the “deeper” part of the infinite sea were even more dangerous to her as Abnormality 099, “Is there anything in this world that is more frightening than the deep sea?”
(Mom yeah!)
(End of chapter)