Chapter 12

Chapter 12: The ghost captain and the cursed Doll.

On the two sides of the wide chart table, Captain Duncan of the Vanished sat facing Alice, the doll who was under the curse.

The air between the two of them – though maybe neither of them was actually human – was not what you would call friendly.

The doll who called herself “Alice” still looked a little nervous. Even though the ghost captain in front of her had promised her temporary safety, in front of Duncan’s face that seemed to come with a natural +10 intimidation bonus, even a cursed doll like her clearly could not calm down.

She kept a dignified posture as she sat on her own coffin lid, but the fingers quietly pinching the hem of her skirt gave away her unease.

Duncan stayed silent for the moment, studying the “lady” in front of him while he thought.

A doll driven by some unknown power, clearly not made of flesh and blood, yet able to speak, walk, and even feel a bit warm to the touch – a “supernatural subject” like this, back in his hometown, would have made it onto Approaching Science, and it would have run for at least three and a half episodes.

Duncan did not know what kind of being a doll like Alice counted as in this world, but in the past few days of dealing with Goathead he had picked up some information in a roundabout way. He knew that even though this world had “supernatural Visions”, such extraordinary things were not something you could see everywhere. And the doll in front of him…

Duncan guessed that even in this strange world full of Anomalies, she had to be some kind of special existence.

He had reasons for this guess. The mechanical ship that had collided head-on with the Vanished was very new and had a well-trained seafarer crew. He had seen with his own eyes that even when they fell into great terror, many sailors on that ship still held their posts. Inside that ship were many compartments and items whose use he could not make sense of. Many of them were covered in complex rune markings, and the style of those marks was very similar to the symbols carved on the surface of Alice’s spirit coffin.

In other words, the purpose of that advanced ship’s voyage was very likely to escort – or rather “guard and transport” – this cursed doll, Alice.

Duncan shifted his posture in the chair and fixed a calm yet serious gaze on Alice. There was no doubt that his ship now had a very remarkable “guest” on board.

But on the other hand, this doll did not really seem like a frightening figure. She actually seemed quite timid.

After all, right when they met, before he had even said much, she had gotten so scared that her own head had fallen off.

“Excuse me…”

Probably because Duncan’s long silence and gaze put too much pressure on her, Alice finally could not help speaking. “And…”

“Where did you come from?” Duncan finally withdrew that oppressive gaze and asked in a calmer tone.

Alice clearly froze for a moment, as if processing what he meant. After a few seconds, she lightly tapped the ornate wooden box under her. “From here.”

Duncan’s expression turned a bit stiff. “…”

“Of course I know you used to lie in that box,” he coughed twice and said. “But I’m asking where you came from – as in place, understand? Do you have a hometown? Or some kind of point of origin?”

Alice thought carefully again, then calmly shook her head. “I can’t remember.”

“You can’t remember?”

“How could a doll have a hometown?” Alice folded her hands on her lap and answered with dignified seriousness. “Most of my memories are of lying in the box. I lay in here, being carried from one place to another. Sometimes I could vaguely feel people walking outside the box or standing guard… Ah, and I remember some low whispers. The people watching outside my wooden box talked about things in voices full of fear and tension…”

Duncan raised his eyebrows. “Talked about things? What did they talk about around you?”

“Just some boring trivial stuff.”

“But I’m curious now,” Duncan said very seriously. He believed they might really have been trivial matters, but right now he needed to learn about this world in any way he could – even from the noisy idle talk of its ordinary people.

“…Fine. What I heard most often was a designation, Anomaly 099. They seemed to use it to refer to me and my box, but I don’t like it. I have a name,” Alice said as she thought. “Besides that, I sometimes heard them talk about seals and the curse or something, but most of those memories are blurry. When I’m in the box I sleep. I don’t listen very carefully to what’s going on outside.”

The doll spoke slowly, then suddenly seemed to remember something and added: “But I still remember what I heard most recently. That should have been right before I came to your ship. The voices talking outside the box kept mentioning a place, the city-state of Pland. That seemed to be their destination… and should have been mine too?”

“The city-state of Pland?” Duncan’s eyes grew thoughtful as he silently noted that name in his heart.

He had finally learned something useful again, though he did not know when this bit of useful information would come in handy.

Then he looked up and fixed his gaze on the doll again. “Aside from that?”

“Aside from that, I mostly just slept, Captain,” the doll said solemnly. “When people seal you inside a big box like a spirit coffin and there are endless drowsy whispers drilling into your ears around you, what else can you do but sleep? Do sit-ups in your coffin?”

Duncan’s mouth twitched.

She looked dignified, and when her head was not falling off she was an elegant beauty. But in reality she not only paddled across the waves on her coffin lid, she also suddenly came out with snarky lines that could choke a person.

In his heart he quickly built a new picture of Miss Alice.

But on the surface he still kept up the image of the calm and stern Captain Duncan. He only made a noncommittal sound and then went on: “So, aside from being groggy in the wooden box, you know nothing about the world outside. You can’t tell me how this world has changed now, and you can’t tell me where any harbor or city-state is located.”

“I’m afraid so, Captain,” the doll said seriously, then suddenly seemed to realize something. Her eyes widened a little and she stared nervously at Duncan. “So… are you planning to throw me off the ship again? Because I’m not worth anything?”

Before Duncan could answer, Alice went on: “Fine, I understand. It is your ship, after all. But this time, can you not stuff cannonballs into the box? Honestly… eight cannonballs was a bit much…”

It was clear that this doll was not in a good mood, but she did not quite dare to throw a fit.

Duncan also felt very awkward. The main reason was that, back when he had stuffed the cannonballs into the box, he had not considered that he would later have to calmly discuss the matter with the person involved. At that time he had treated the Alice lying inside the box as a standard cursed doll from a horror movie. All the scenes in his head had followed that style. He had never thought that this cursed doll had not crawled out of The Grudge at all, but was more like something that had walked out of a courtyard comedy instead.

So all the early preparations he had made to fight a terrifying curse now turned into sheer embarrassment.

Fortunately, Duncan had a thick skin, and that stern, gloomy face of his looked as if it had been carved there with an axe and a knife. As long as his nerves did not short out, he could keep a straight face. So he forced himself to ignore the embarrassment caused by those eight cannonballs and just shook his head lightly. “I haven’t decided yet whether to throw you off the ship. After all, you always seem to find a way back on board. I’m just curious – why do you keep coming back to the Vanished? I can see that you’re actually wary of me, and of this ship. Since that’s the case, why not stay far away from this danger?”

“This ship is called the Vanished? Fine, I really am a little… afraid of you and your ship, but compared to that, isn’t the deep sea even more dangerous?”

The doll stared quietly at the ghost captain in front of her. In her sight, behind this tall man stretched endless dim nothingness. That darkness overlapped with the real scene in the cabin, as if two worlds had been forced together. Yet compared to those vast, suffocating shadowy voids, the things that came from the deeper parts of the Boundless Sea made someone like Anomaly 099 feel even more danger.

“In this world, is there anything more frightening than the Deep Sea?”