Chapter 367 A case
Chapter 367 A Case
Annie left happily, looking completely unsuspicious of anything – after all, she was just a little kid.
The old caretaker, however, stood at the entrance of the cemetery for a long time, looking at the direction of Annie’s departure, and it took an unknown amount of time before he reacted with a jolt, and then his fingers slightly trembled as he touched his breast pocket, from which he took out a tube of potion and poured it into his mouth.
He felt much better.
“This is too evil …… must be reported to the Cathedral at once …… The God of Death is above …… this is too evil ……”
The old man muttered, turned around and darted in the direction of the caretaker’s hut, closing the door behind him and heading straight for the old, plain-looking desk next to the bed – a cover on which, when opened, revealed delicate pipes and valves, buttons and pulls.
Several metal capsule compartments lay quietly in a compartment next to the pipes.
The old man took his letterhead from the desk drawer, sat down, picked up the pen next to him, and began to write a quick report, then rolled up the report and slipped it into the metal capsule compartments, then opened the pipes in the dark compartment of the desk, and placed the capsule compartments in the grooves.
“May Bartok bless this pipe with the rushing airflow in it …… May the valves run smoothly and not jam, deflate, or burst – and may the differential machines in the Sorting and Delivery Center make no mistakes.”
With a brief benediction, the old man reached down and pressed a button next to the pressure pipe, waiting for the green light in the dark compartment to come on before pulling the lever next to the button again.
An odd gurgling sound came from deep within the pipe, sounding like the movement of airflow being blocked, but it soon faded, and the hissing of the normal operation of the pressure pipe and the sound of the capsule device sliding rapidly followed.
The old man looked at the pipe with some concern and muttered, “…… It can’t be because the letterhead mentioned the matter of the higher existence, affecting the machine, right ……”.
After a while, on behalf of the “swift pieces” delivered to the higher sorting center of the two green lights lit up, the old guards finally put down their hearts, closed the lid of the dark compartment.
……
Alice walked down the street holding a large paper bag, looking around the buildings with curiosity, observing the city, which was very different from Prand, and observing the lives of the people in the city.
Inside the bag were the things she had just bought from the corner store – some vegetables, eggs, and frozen hard butter and two pieces of lamb, which were the ingredients for today’s lunch.
Alice had been able to go shopping on her own, though not very skillfully, and had occasionally gotten the amount of money she had to change wrong, but she had been trying to learn it all – getting better every day, though not by much.
She bowed her head slightly, cradling the paper bag in one hand and fumbling a slip of paper out of the bag with the other, confirming its contents.
There were letters written in crooked handwriting on it, a list of today’s shopping, part of which consisted of words she could read and write, and the other part of which was replaced with simple drawings – she had written the list herself, with a lot of effort.
Making her own menu for each day, planning the ingredients she needed to buy, writing her own shopping list, going to the store herself – trying to figure out the amount of change, and then trying to get home on time, if it all worked out, made the Captain happy.
Alice would be happy too.
Confirming that the list and the contents of the paper bag were in order, Ms. Mannequin put away the note with satisfaction, and continued on her way to her temporary quarters on Oak Street.
But just when she was halfway there, a commotion coming from the street corner suddenly caught her attention.
She looked up to the direction from which the sound came, and saw about a dozen people gathered beside a rather old-looking residential building, some of them pointing at the upper floors, and all of them were discussing something, with occasional sounds of “that woman is crazy”, “the poor man! “The poor man”, “The church has been alarmed”, and so on.
Alice couldn’t help but slow down her pace, getting slower and slower, and finally stopped, looking hesitantly in that direction.
That was …… hilarious, and the captain said not to make a random scene, because if your head fell off in a crowded place, the hilarity would be too great.
But it looked really interesting over there, and the things they were discussing …… seemed like something the captain would be interested in.
Alice got tangled up and moved her feet that way and then that way in a tangle.
“I’ll just go and see what’s going on …… It’s to help the Captain gather information …… This isn’t just a casual hobby, it’s a very serious hobby …… “
Alice put all her intelligence into convincing herself, and then she succeeded.
With one hand pressed to her head and one clutching a paper bag, Ms. Doll quickly made her way over to the assembled group and joined them in looking up at the residential building in front of her.
Unlike the small, two-story building that the Captain had temporarily rented, the building in front of her looked older and more confining, with narrow windows and external gas pipes that looked crowded and confusing, as if a number of separate occupants were gathered inside the building.
The discussion of the surrounding crowd was disorganized, and Alice couldn’t understand what was going on even after listening for half a day, so she cautiously tapped the shoulder of the person next to her and asked politely, “May I ask …… what’s going on here?” The man next to him was startled, but after seeing that the one who spoke out was just a young girl wearing a veil, he relaxed and raised his head to point upwards, “A woman went crazy and had to say that she killed her husband and tried to strangle her own child …… First the sheriff was alarmed, and now even the church people have arrived, I don’t think it’s a small matter.”
His words just fell, the side will have another person to speak: “said even the church people have arrived …… will not really what is not very good things?”
“…… I hope nothing serious happens,” a woman mumbled from the crowd, “I live downstairs from them, if something really happens, we won’t have anywhere to go… …”
“Whether or not anything happens, it’s best to go to the church today, get the priest to help with an exorcism, it’s always good to be careful.”
The crowd around them were talking and discussing again, and it was quickly getting to areas that Alice didn’t understand, she got a little lost in the mess and her vision slowly drifted into mid-air.
A light, fluffy thread floated in her vision, and more thin threads stretched out from nearby residential buildings, fluttering in the air like strands of hair swaying in the wind, stirring the sky silently.
Alice blinked suddenly.
She suddenly noticed that some of those threads floating over the city-state appeared to be extraordinarily illusory and transparent, even flickering like a poorly-contacted electric light.
……
The old residential building smelled faintly of mold, the obsolete piping system had a slight leak somewhere, the sound of dripping water reached her ears from time to time, and the guards dressed in black and carrying canes and lamps were gathered in the living room, making the already insufficiently spacious house look more and more constricted.
A long-haired woman with disheveled hair nestled in the corner of the couch, her head bowed as if in shock, occasionally muttering slurred sentences.
Two black-clad guardsmen stood beside it specifically to watch over the unhinged woman.
The guardsmen were examining the clues remaining in the house, where they had been busy for two hours.
A gray wind blew across the hallway just then, through the open door, and swirled into the living room.
The guardsmen stopped what they were doing and saluted the gray whirlwind.
Agatha’s figure stepped out of the whirlwind and swept her gaze across the room.
“What is the situation now?” She looked up to one of the highest ranking Guardsmen on the scene.
That captain of the guards was a sharp woman with short black ear-length hair, and in the face of the gatekeeper’s inquiry, she immediately stepped forward, “We collected a small amount of ‘mud’ samples on the floor of the lavatory, and confirmed that they are consistent with those collected earlier.”
“Progenitor ……,” Agatha said softly, then frowned, “A small amount of samples? How many? Only that many?”
“About a test tube’s worth,” the female captain with short hair raised her hand and gestured, “That’s all the sample there is – we’ve searched the entire building, and there’s only a little bit left on the floor of the lavatory. ”
Agatha murmured, then turned her head to the long-haired woman huddled in the corner of the couch.
“She’s the person in question?”
“Yes,” the junior captain nodded, “she rents here, we’ve investigated, clean birth, no previous criminal record, is an acting accountant for a nearby firm, plus her husband used to work in the Boiling Gold Mine- -data shows that he had died in a mining accident three years ago.”
Boiling Gold Mine …… mining disaster ……
Perhaps influenced by recent events, Agatha instinctively noticed the words, then she settled down before coming next to the woman who still kept chanting.
“Ma’am – I’m the Keeper of the City State, you’re safe now,” Agatha said in a hushed voice, quietly using the power to soothe the spirit, “Tell me, what happened? ”
The long-haired woman on the couch heard the voice, and the trembling in her body stopped abruptly, followed by some unknown vague mumbling before she suddenly looked up.
Eyes still lingering with fear and madness stared deathly at Agatha.
“He’s back, he’s back …… I killed him, I killed that monster …… in the bathroom! It melted in the bathroom!”
(End of chapter)