Chapter 290 The coffin and the caretaker

Chapter 290 – The Coffin and the Caretaker
A cluster of dim and unusually twinkling starlight caught Duncan’s attention.

That cluster of shimmering light and the surrounding starlight is vaguely different, its illusory weak light as if a transparent phantom, and the flickering appearance of the uncertainty gives a person a kind of will dissipate at any time – Duncan in this chaotic space is not not seen a weak flash, but those flashes of light, even if weak, will not be presented as this kind of illusory dissipation of the appearance. The flashes of light, however, even if they were weak, they would not take on this illusory and dissipating appearance.

He frowned slightly.

Faint flashes of light often mean a recently dead body, but at the same time faint and almost transparent illusory sense …… what does it mean?
He reached out a finger and gently touched the bit of light.

In the next second, he felt his consciousness suddenly cross a long and endless boundary, projecting from the Lost Country ship into a brand new shell, cold and numb sensations spreading from all his limbs, then the numbness faded away, and he began to feel the touch of his skin, as well as the slow beating of his heart.

But for some reason, he always felt that this new body was extraordinarily heavy, manipulating it as if it was separated by a thick curtain – it took him a great deal of effort before he could barely move his fingers, and it took him the same amount of effort before he could get his eyelids to open a slit.

There was darkness before his eyes.

Was it a blind man? Or blindfolded?
Duncan subconsciously fumbled to raise his hand to confirm the condition of his eyes, only to feel his arm bump into some hard, cold obstacle just as he raised it, then he raised his other arm, only to bump into something just the same.

He felt around and finally realized that he was trapped in a …… container.

It was a coffin.

Duncan lay still in the darkness, silent for a long time before sighing, “Well, it makes sense ……”

Being trapped in a coffin while possessing a corpse was indeed a very reasonable unfolding – two consecutive unrestricted possessions before that would be a rare occurrence.

But how did it just happen to be reasonable at this point!
With a sense of irritation that made him laugh and cry, Duncan seemed to understand a little of what Dog and Vanna had been feeling when they were faced with the “reasonable unfolding on the Lost Country”, but now was clearly not the time to continue to lament– he had to find a way to get out of the coffin. He had to find a way to get out of this coffin.

Otherwise he’d have to give up the body he’d chosen for himself and pick another body in the darkness of that chaotic space, and probably get trapped in another coffin.

Duncan began to move his arms and legs, trying to push the flap over his head as he familiarized himself with the senses of this not-so-well-used and unfamiliar shell; by banging on the surrounding coffins just now, he had already confirmed from the thumping back that the coffin wasn’t buried in the ground, and that it was probably just temporarily parked somewhere, which meant that he would be able to get out of the place if he pushed the flap over his head.

However, the lid was more difficult to deal with than he thought – it was nailed down, possibly even with extra latches, and the body he was occupying was so “inferior” that the sensations coming from his limbs were even weaker than the one he had first occupied in the sewer’s sacrifice field. The feeling from his limbs was even weaker than the corpse he had occupied the first time he had been in the sacrificial ground in the sewers, not to mention pushing open the lid of a nailed coffin, even moving around was extremely difficult.

Just how weak a dead person was this?
“Hello! Is there anyone out there? I think I can still be resuscitated! Get a doctor – or if not, a coroner ……”

Duncan yelled helplessly as he pushed on the lid of the coffin above him, not minding that it would scare anyone or cause any trouble – after a short period of time to get used to it and feel it, he had already confirmed that this body was in a terrible state, and could not be used for a long time, and he thought that it was the same as the “sacrifice” that he had occupied for the first time. “Sacrifice”, this is also a disposable shell, since it is disposable …… then there is nothing to worry about.

No matter who is attracted, as long as you can get up to see the surrounding situation on the line, good luck can also collect some information, anyway, the worst is directly trapped in this coffin, it can not be worse.

At this time, he even had time to think, wondering if he should ask Alice about his experience – how did that mannequin escape from the coffin with the boards nailed shut and several turns of chains? Was it just natural strength?
In the dead silence of the cemetery mortuary, the thumping sound and hoarse low call seemed particularly abrupt.

Of course, the caretaker would not ignore this sudden strange movement.

The door of the guard’s hut was pushed open, the light of a lamp illuminated the path leading to the mortuary outside the hut, and the gloomy old man with shadowy eyes and a stooped waist walked out from the house, holding a lamp in one hand, clutching a high-powered double-barrelled shotgun with the other, and staring at the direction from which the sound came with his yellowed and cloudy eyes. “The …… cemetery is overly busy tonight.”

The old man grunted in an unkind tone, casually hanging the lamp on the iron buckle at his waist, then crossing the triangle emblem on his chest, lifting the double-barreled shotgun and slowly walking towards those coffins.

The coffin was still thumping, and the dead man in it was banging rather insistently on the barrier between him and the world of the living, and as he did so he demanded that those outside help him out.

“Anyone? Come and help, I think it’s a misdiagnosis!”

“Quiet down!” The caretaker held his double-barreled shotgun, the click of the safety disengaging crisp in the night, and the stooped old man stared deathly at the casket, a furious cry escaping his lips, “It’s time for you to go to sleep – you belong to another world now, and there’s no place for you in the world of the living. ”

The pounding in the coffin suddenly stopped.

Duncan judged the voices outside, it would be an old man, close to him, and there had just been a soft thud of a metal mechanism knocking, perhaps the sound of a weapon.

It was good that there was someone – it would be one more way to get in touch with information about the outside world, whether he got out or not.

“You’re welcome, I’d like to know what’s going on here,” Duncan cleared his throat, contemplating how to maximize the value of this shell so that he could pry some more information out of the people outside the coffin, “I’m trapped in this …… coffin, but there must be some sort of misunderstanding here, I’m still alive, and listen, my voice is actually kinda neutral.”

“Breathing is a common illusion among the dead, and attachment to the world of the living is a paranoia left on the cerebral cortex by the subconscious mind, it’s true that it’s not very acceptable, but Bartok has prepared a better home for your soul,” the old caretaker stared intently at the casket, one hand still holding the shotgun, while the other had already immovably sketched the air with the the emblem representing the god of death, and then fished out a small packet of dry powder from his pocket, applying a portion of the powder to the barrel of the shotgun, and scattering the rest as much as he could on the ground, “Lie down quietly, you should already feel sleepy, it is the call of the lord of death, obey it, it is for the good of us all.”

The contents of Death Lord Bartok’s teachings – Duncan silently memorized that part, then cleared his throat and continued to circle, “…… But I still think I can salvage it, in case it’s a misdiagnosis. ”

The old keeper with the shotgun in hand frowned, for some reason he felt that tonight’s “agitator” wasn’t quite the same as any he’d encountered in his career, the voice in the coffin sounded a little too sensible, even bargaining, but he quickly shook his head and put that stray thought to the back of his mind:
“With all due respect, you lost your footing next to the guardrail of the engine shaft and fell straight down into the mine tunnel a hundred meters deep, the back of your head bursting open, and the mortician had a hell of a time putting your skull back together – sir, it seems to me that your misdiagnosis is difficult to . . extremely high.”

Duncan listened to the voices coming from outside the coffin and silently raised a hand to the back of his head.

“…… Well, I’ll admit that I seem to have hurt myself a little too badly to leave this coffin in this physical state indeed,” he sighed, “Excuse me.”

The old caretaker was silent for a few seconds, silently lighting the other spare carrying lamp at his waist and hanging it on a stake closest to the mortuary table, while not moving, “You’re welcome – you know your manners compared to most manics. ”

“Oh? You run into this sort of thing often?”

“There’s always a few corpses a year that aren’t too keen on staying in their coffins, most of them try to get out of it in more violent ways, with only a few exceptions trying to negotiate a solution,” the old caretaker grunted, “but even the ones that do know how to negotiate are only making delirious gibberish. The dead always think they can come back from the dead, but in reality …… that door to the great Bartok is not so easy to cross.”

The old guard shook his head and kept talking while keeping an eye on the flame of the lamp on the stake next to him – he knew that the dead did not have any real reason, it was just the afterglow of the dead soul’s obsession, which was consumed especially fast during the conversation, and by the time the one in the coffin had reached his senses, he would have no more sense than the one in the coffin. When the coffin’s sanity was exhausted, his “extra overtime” would be over for the day.

“The restless, the living dead, and the dead coming back to life are three very different concepts,” the old man rambled, “Crossing these boundaries requires incredible strength, great pain, and a very rare opportunity, sir, so don’t embarrass yourself. ”

(End of chapter)