Chapter 129 “Dark Night”
This Translation is hosted on bcatranslation.com
Duncan wasn’t sure how to articulate it, but he felt a distinct change in the atmosphere aboard the Vanished. The ship seemed to resonate with an emotion best described as satisfaction as it surged forward at maximum speed, cutting through the ocean waves.
Walking along the deck, he observed the spectral sails, which appeared to flutter although there was no wind. He paused to gaze up at the mast that towered above him like a sentinel in the night. Tapping the ship’s wooden railing contemplatively, he mused aloud, “You’re tired of aimless drifting too, aren’t you?”
The ship itself didn’t offer any verbal response. Instead, it emitted a slight creaking noise from below deck as if strained by the force of the water against its hull. But the Vanished had its own language—a rope slithered across the wooden planks and dangled next to Duncan, almost as if reaching out to him.
“That’s not exactly endearing, you know. Actually, it’s a bit unsettling,” Duncan remarked, eyeing the rope that now reminded him of a snake. “Is this the same trick you used to scare Alice last time?”
As if responding to his comment, the rope swayed twice before retracting quickly, almost like a child caught doing something naughty.
Duncan took a deep breath, planning to savor the fresh night air, when suddenly, he felt a pulse of energy that seemed to come from a great distance. This wasn’t a sensation emanating from the ship—it was coming from the direction of Pland, the city-state. There were only a few individuals there whom he had mentally marked, and this particular pulse seemed to be originating from Nina’s room next door.
Without wasting a moment, Duncan let his consciousness drift into the abyss of darkness, following the signal. He initially suspected that it might be his niece Nina sending out a distress signal, but to his surprise, it was actually coming from Shirley.
“What’s happened to Shirley?” he wondered, alarmed.
Shifting his focus back to his second physical form located in the antique shop, Duncan moved quickly. He knocked lightly on Nina’s door but received no answer. There was no movement inside the room.
Growing increasingly concerned as he felt another cry for help from Shirley’s mental mark, he decided he couldn’t afford to wait. Pushing the door open—Nina had always had the habit of sleeping without locking her door—he stepped into a dimly lit room. The faint glow from a street lamp outside provided just enough illumination to make out the shapes in the room.
Upon first glance, everything seemed normal. Shirley and Nina lay on the bed, sleeping peacefully, their bodies oriented in opposite directions—one’s head at the foot of the bed and the other’s legs against the first’s abdomen.
“Their sleeping positions are certainly artistic,” Duncan noted wryly.
However, his attention wasn’t truly on how the girls were sleeping. Instead, he was focused on Shirley’s furrowed brow, and more alarmingly, the mysterious black line that seemed to be squirming and moving around her arm. It was a sight that escalated his concern, compelling him to investigate further.
Duncan felt uneasy as he studied Shirley’s condition. To get to the bottom of this mysterious “erosion,” he activated the magical mark he’d placed on her, intending to use the unique capabilities of his ghost fire to illuminate and probe the room. A small green flame materialized beside the bed, casting a muted glow over the surroundings. After flickering uncertainly for a few moments, the flame stabilized.
Yet, it revealed nothing. There was no sign of any “erosion” in the room.
His forehead creasing in puzzlement and concern, Duncan leaned in closer to better examine Shirley’s visibly distressed facial expression. He felt restricted, however, in how much he could use his ghost fire. Because he was unsure of how the spectral flame might interact with living beings, he couldn’t just flood the room with it as he had done in the factory to perform a more comprehensive scan. Even so, the tiny spark of his ghost fire should have reacted if something was amiss.
“The erosion isn’t in the physical world? Could it be in the spiritual realm? Or is it something altogether different?” Duncan muttered to himself, his mind racing through the potential scenarios and options at his disposal.
Deciding he needed to take more direct action, Duncan quickly returned to his own bedroom next door. There, he briskly shook awake Ai, a dove that had been dozing on his windowsill.
“Wake up. We need to go spirit-walking,” he told the bird, who responded with a series of disgruntled coos.
Once again entering a dark tunnel filled with endless starlight, Duncan first steadied his mind before allowing his consciousness to navigate towards his objective. Unlike the more generic marks he had placed on objects like the White Oak steamship or on Vanna, Shirley’s mark had been intentionally crafted by him. This meant it was far more stable and easier to connect with in the spiritual realm.
….
Shirley’s eyes snapped open, and she found herself in a bedroom that felt both familiar and foreign at the same time. Rubbing her temple to shake off the lingering disorientation, she began to sit up and survey her surroundings. Memories of where she was started to flood back, and her eyes widened in an explosive combination of recognition and anger.
Springing out of bed, she unleashed a torrent of curses into the air. “Damn it, damn it, damn it all! Not this again, not this again!”
Here, in this otherworldly space, she wore light pink pajamas, quite unlike the ones Nina had given her. Her voice also seemed to have reverted to a younger, less mature version, one that existed only in her memories.
“Stop torturing me! Stop torturing me!” Shirley screamed, her voice reverberating in the darkness. She lashed out with her arms and legs, pounding on the weathered wooden walls. She even went so far as to try to gnaw at the doorknob in a futile attempt to escape. No matter how hard she tried, however, she couldn’t open the door. All she could do was huddle in the doorway, whimpering as morning light began to trickle through the cracks, further deepening her sense of hopelessness and despair.
A series of soft footsteps approached from the other side of the door, breaking the heavy silence that had enveloped Shirley. Then came a gentle voice, one that tugged at the deepest recesses of her heart: “Shirley, Shirley? Are you awake? Are you still mad?”
Hearing her mother’s voice, Shirley’s body shook violently. Tears welled up in her eyes, and she pressed herself tightly against the door as if doing so would grant her a glimpse of the person speaking from the other side.
“Shirley, your dad and I are going to go buy you a birthday cake. You’ll be happy when we come back, won’t you?” her mother continued.
Shirley’s emotions erupted. “Don’t go,” she first whispered, her voice shaky. But her plea quickly escalated into a desperate, gut-wrenching scream, “DON’T GO… DON’T LEAVE! DON’T LEAVE ME ALONE! PLEASE, I BEG YOU, DON’T LEAVE ME!”
In this dream, she couldn’t hold back her anguish any longer. She started to sob uncontrollably, her cries escalating to a feverish pitch: “DON’T GO OUTSIDE! DON’T GO OUT THERE!”
Despite her desperate cries, time followed the cruel script of her haunting memory. She heard the sounds of her parents leaving—the rustle of her mother picking up her purse, the mechanical noise of a key turning in the front door lock.
Shirley collapsed onto the floorboards, feeling as if every part of her was disintegrating. The click of the door signaled the commencement of an agonizing countdown.
By the time her heart had beaten one thousand and two hundred times, she heard distant exclamations of fire.
At one thousand and six hundred heartbeats, the acrid smell of smoke began to seep in through the cracks in the door.
When her heart had beaten one thousand and eight hundred times, the ambient glow that flooded through the cracks of the door turned an alarming red, as though the city itself had been plunged into a cauldron of molten lava.
Finally, at two thousand heartbeats, a thunderous, muffled bang crashed through the front door. It was a sound reminiscent of a monstrous creature invading her home.
The door to Shirley’s own room then gave way, splintering and shattering as if it were made of paper rather than wood.
What emerged was horrifying—a creature of pitch-black darkness, a hound cloaked in a miasma of malevolence. This was not Dog, but a malefic entity. And at that moment, the dark hound seemed to have identified its target: the six-year-old girl standing petrified before it.
Shirley looked into the eyes of the dark hound and knew this wasn’t her friendly partner but a sinister reenactment of her painful past. As the hound prowled into the room, a sickening sound followed— the sound of tearing flesh and crunching bone.
Though one of her limbs was being horrifically consumed by the dark hound, Shirley remained motionless and eerily silent, not even letting out a scream in response to the agonizing pain. Her entire being seemed to dissolve into a numb, almost ethereal emptiness. She found herself pondering the timeline of her past ordeal—how long had it taken for this dark hound to transform into her loyal Dog? A day? A week? Her memories were murky as if submerged in a thick fog.
As these thoughts swirled in her mind, her consciousness began to wane. The contours of her dark dream started to fade, blurring at the edges of her peripheral vision. Just then, her eyes detected something—an anomalous figure beside the bed. This was a deeper shadow, something that shouldn’t exist in this familiar yet tormenting nightmare.
This shadowed figure seemed to have been there all along, standing like a sentinel rather than just appearing out of thin air. This was a new development, one that contradicted the repetitive and torturous nightmares she had suffered countless times before.
Finally breaking the ominous silence, the shadowy figure spoke, its voice laced with an otherworldly gravitas: “I did not intend to pry.”
As these words reverberated in the nightmarish void, a flicker of green flame burst to life, briefly illuminating the immediate surroundings and revealing the face concealed behind that mysterious shadow.
God that is cool, and, while we recieved some indication of Shirley’s past, it sure does hit different huh
It certainly was quite the kick in the teeth, huh.