Krafft's Notes on Anomalies

After a busy day, falling asleep is not difficult. Even lying on the floor does not prevent the brain from quickly adapting to a comfortable state and going into sleep.

The final stage of this process is generally difficult to detect by subjective consciousness. When you are drifting in a vague sense of falling, you have actually missed the best time to escape.

It was a feeling of losing control. If you think about it carefully, your back is still attached to a solid surface, and the motion receptors in the semicircular canals continue to send messages that the body is moving.

To put it bluntly, it is an abnormal sense of confusion, a mismatch in the positioning of the senses, a moonwalk-like movement forward visually and physically backward.

Kraft opened his eyes. The light from the candlestick had gone out, replaced by pure darkness.

A slight but continuous sound came from outside, one after another, beating against the outer wall of the building, rhythmically. The humidity in the air increases, and water vapor penetrates into the room through the unsealed gaps with the rhythm of the tide, as if the building has been dragged directly to the seaside.

A long, flat square was stuffed into his hand at some point, and a hazy sense of relief urged him to fall asleep again.

The prepared consciousness quickly compared the last memory. The next moment, the body quietly moved out from under the bed, and his hand touched his pocket, where there was a flint prepared in advance.

However, what was taken out together with the sharp-edged block was a thin and tough card, with what seemed to be some familiar font embossed on it.

The rehearsed flow was not disrupted by unexpected clutter. Kraft walked to the brazier in his memory and struck the flint. The crackling stone chips and flickering sparks spattered, and after jumping a few inches, they expanded rapidly and turned into a fire like a horse.

The cloth soaked in fish oil burned fiercely in the brazier. The flames flickered and licked the firewood put into the basin. The light grew and drove out the darkness from the floor to the beams.

At this time, Kraft finally had time to observe the two objects in his hand that should not be there.

On one side is a flat box with a black mirror and a small blue-green card, on which the outline of a portrait can be barely discerned.

The face of the bust on the white background melted and flowed, like baked gelatin, dripping onto the yellow shirt buttoned at the collar, solidifying into small waxy lumps.

At first glance, it looks like the picture has faded, but if you look closely, you will find that it is what it is. The facial features are erased by the molten skin color blocks, losing the human shape, and the strands of adhesion hang like curtains.

There are several block-shaped block letters printed below, but the strokes and arrangement are disrupted and crooked. From a distance it seems that way, but if you pay a little attention you will notice the paradoxical anomaly.

And the flat box Kraft felt that this was not the first time he had seen it. It was also specious, and there was no further reaction after pressing the button.

Putting them next to the pillow on the bed, he picked up the torch and lit it in the brazier. He inspected the room and lit the candlesticks. Except for the inexplicable appearance of illegal items, no discrepancies with memory were found.

Special attention was paid to the position of the bear traps and they all stayed where they were supposed to. This made Kraft relieved. He didn't want to step into an unauthorized move trap when he acted according to memory later, and the two bones in his calf became four.

Open the door, lower your head and bypass the chain bar, and walk into the hallway. Looking down, what is reflected in the firelight is not the stairs. The dark water engulfs the road leading to the third floor. Under the rippling water, the familiar area becomes unknown again.

Fortunately, the location was set up in the attic, otherwise he would be swimming in the dark waters downstairs. The ignorant moment when you first wake up will cause water to pour into the unprepared alveoli, irritating the trachea and causing severe coughing. More water will then be poured in, and finally you will be suffocated in the darkness.

The limited diving experience was not enough to support him in identifying the direction below. Oxygen could not support the operation of the brain. The more panicked, the greater the consumption, and there was a dead end in the water. The back path of the stairs has been cut off, and now only the windows on both sides of the attic remain connected to the outside.

This water level also explains why there is a sound of water outside. The oscillating tide should be less than two meters below the window sill. The water waves hit the rough wall made of earth and stone, smashing the scum and bubbles with a gurgling sound, like a cocci in the trachea. The sound of phlegm rolls endlessly.

Probably humans will never adapt to these waters. Everything here is like a faded door card or a fake electronic device with a white screen that always turns on, with an innate sense of morbidity. They always maintain a general similarity, but at the same time reveal differences in subtle details, intentionally or unintentionally.

The water is as deep as three stories above the street, meeting all the needs of marine life and allowing sharks to swim freely, not to mention those things.

Kraft returned to the room, extinguished the torch, and covered the flames with ashes from the brazier to control the burning a little. He suddenly discovered that this was a semi-confined space with poor air circulation. The possibility of carbon monoxide poisoning was obvious, and he could not open the window for ventilation.

After observing the environment, he retreated to the bottom of the bed holding his sword. There was only one thing to do next, and he waited quietly.

The room returned to silence, except for the small explosion of scattered debris from the burning carbon fire, and the tireless splash of water that blended into the background.

People always have erratic thoughts when they are quiet, and Kraft recalled the few times he went hunting with his grandfather.

The hunting of the Wood family is certainly different. In many cases, it is not done for food at all, but because of necessity. The mountains on the back are home to a large number of beasts that have not yet learned to respect these two-legged creatures. When one of them visits too frequently, it must be cleared away.

Usually these tasks are taken care of by the young men trained in the castle, but young people who are clumsy will inevitably make mistakes. A simple brain may not be as smart as a bear that has lived for a long time. The momentum can be used to scare away small beasts, but it is not suitable for experienced predators. For those who don't, the effect is about zero.

At this time, it was Old Wood's turn to take action, taking this opportunity to stretch his muscles and lead the team on foot into the mountain forest that ordinary hunting would never go deep into.

They walked on the deep layer of rotten leaf litter, the clammy tree trunks were covered with moss, and ferns and miasma spread out from the gaps.

Searching in the general direction in such a forest often requires patience. Just like confrontation training, precious time and energy are consumed in silence, waiting for the other party to reveal the flaws that are bound to appear.

It could be a piece of moss that has been torn apart from the bark of a tree, a path made by fallen fern stems and leaves, or it could be the sound of wet clinging in the tide that breaks the monotonous cycle.

Old Wood showed them how to open the jagged animal trap, place it on the road it likes to pass by, fix the iron chain into the strong trunk, cover it with thin soil, camouflage it with dead leaves, and lurk nearby.

Next, if nothing else happens, you will clearly feel the approach of a creature that is far larger than you.

At first I thought it was just the background sound I was used to hearing, but the ripples came one after another as usual, and the liquid that was shot up high fell back to the surface, which was no different from what I heard while waiting.

Then there was a beat that failed to follow, and the resonance split. The vortex rotated, and the undertide surged up and broke through the water layer above. The separated sea water scratched across the smooth surface, as if avoiding something that did not exist.

The auditory manifestation is that part of the sound of water disappears for no reason, a mysterious void appears under the window sill, and the sound disappears.

The mumble-like dense beat was replaced by rising musical tones, with high and low voices playing in unison, each echoed by cascading echoes, gentle and urgent, composed of countless vocal cords chorusing, and slender channels providing resonance modification, forming a Waves of sound.

Kraft held his breath, crawled out from under the bed, and picked up a can of fish oil. He may suffer from concert PTSD for a long time after returning. Fortunately, there is only a church choir in Wendeng Port. The worst he can do is not go to St. Simon's Square to feed the seagulls in the future.

The songs rose and the light lit up.

The constant and soft white light flickers in and out in a breathing manner, gradually adjusting and stabilizing. It changes from a thick and rich color to a natural light that is close to light and bright, and is extremely bright.

A few rays of white light leaked from the cracks in the wood and stuck to the wall, overwhelming the warm tones of the brazier lighting, signaling its arrival.

The music increased again and became more penetrating, covering up the sharp sound of the teeth on the tendrils grabbing at the cracks in the stone. The wet and heavy limbs alternately stretch out, the built-in joints bend and twist, and the muscles contract. The main body rises from the water, and the water film slides down from above like a waterfall, and the sound of dense water droplets is like a shower.

Finally, all the sounds stopped outside the window, and the attractive and steady white light shone into the room along the crack of the window. At first sight, there was a desire to open it.

Separated by a window panel, it is waiting for its unknown prey to open the window to greet it.

It feels like an anglerfish. The trick of lighting up is simple but surprisingly effective. Few people can refuse such a wonderful and reassuring light source when they wake up in the middle of the night, but unfortunately, there is one here.

Weighing the oil can in his hand, Kraft took two more steps to the side to avoid the direct white light. More than once, he felt that this light was infinitely close to the most perfect moonlight he could imagine, so bright and clear that he couldn't help but have an uncontrollable good impression.

This must not be as simple as pure light. It is mixed with a special attraction mechanism that can work on humans. It is the same as the anglerfish using the phototaxis of deep-sea creatures.

From a certain point of view, this can be good news. Creatures that like to hunt like this have more or less defects in movement, either not fast enough, not flexible enough, or unable to move at all.

The human movement system is human after all. It has not considered the normal load of several times the body weight. No matter how optimized it is, there is a limit. Thinking about it in reverse, maybe it didn't originally live in the water, but it used this kind of movement system and could only spend most of its time in the water to reduce the force?

His guess was probably right. The angle of the white light was slightly skewed. The thing outside couldn't even stick to the wall stably for a long time, and its posture had to be adjusted. This gave him a lot of confidence.

However, the first thing to change was not the side of the silent confrontation. With keen hearing, he noticed that the sound of the tide outside the window on the other side behind him suddenly stopped, and the wet and sticky sound that he had just tasted could be heard.

[I’m afraid its scientific name must have a plural form]