[Face? 】

Koop took a few steps back, leaned over to Kraft, and looked intently at Peter as Peter stood on the edge of the light, behind him a dark background beyond the reach of the torches, a uniform field of lightlessness.

Seeing that Yvonne was safe and sound, William walked back to the head of the team with his torch, and the red-yellow circle of light expanded forward, approaching the distance where the thing had emerged.

The hammer was removed from his waist and held in his hand, and he took a half-step to take a stance, moving to the side to make room for Kraft to react.

This is an arrangement that has been laid out in advance. As a beginner, I don't expect him to help much positively, and when something happens, the first person to react must be and can only be a well-trained main force.

He was confident that Kraft knew what was going on and would react, but there was still a sweaty chill from behind his shirt and the night breeze blowing.

The night receded like water on the bow of a ship, and the torches lit up the space behind Peter, the same gray-yellow pavement as before, and the bare sand and gravel of the beach at low tide precipitated inch by inch from the darkness.

The largest thing was no more than a piece of gravel, no broad, flattened face, and no regressive peepers. The tense spirit was in the air, like one side suddenly retracting its strength in the confrontation, and the strength that had been mustered up with great difficulty was in vain, and it was wasted in an indifferent place.

Koop stepped forward and kicked the gravel away, and the stone that was not deep in the ground was easily lifted and rolled on the pavement for weeks before disappearing into the boundary between light and darkness.

There was a rare and inscrutable chuckle in his ear, which sounded somewhat similar to the treacherous contemptuous ridicule of the dock employer, and he was dazed and unconsciously angry, and his eyes swept over everyone present, all of them serious or a little frightened.

The voice dissipated, and the face-like image appeared, the details of which were not recorded enough to make one wonder if one's senses were wrong. It is not even possible to confirm whether it is really a face or a laugh, but only evokes a momentary association and connects the impressions in the memory to supplement.

It was so close that it was no distance, closer than the ear, and it was not enough to say that it had been blown into the ear, and Peter, who was nearest, was still stunned with his back to him.

William whispered something to the guide, and pulled him forward, his torch burning. The sailors returned to the back of the line, and Kraft picked up Yvonne and dusted off her cloak, seemingly unnoticed.

The aperture moves towards Koop, and William raises his torch and brings him into the center of the aperture. This only guarantee did not give him peace of mind, and the sense of isolation that had nowhere to put arose as if he were cut off from everyone else, alone in a place that was infinitely close to this but completely different.

The sensation was stronger than those visual and auditory hallucinations, to the point of being clearly recognizable, like going astray at a fork in the road, and turning around to find that it was far from its companions.

The road under your feet is the same as before, but there are subtle and indescribable differences, and at that "fork in the road" there is a transformation from familiar to unfamiliar.

But there was no other fork in the road, and William and Peter were walking past him, looking hesitantly at his hand gripping the handle of the hammer, and the closer distance conflicted with the intuitive distance, and the subjective feeling seemed to be cut off from the hearing and hearing.

He was more vigilant than ever, and the sense of crisis forced memory to dig up similar experiences buried deep in the face of threats.

In his life as a hired laborer, Koop didn't realize that he had so much experience that he could analogize the strange perception of the moment.

No, there are.

Something distinctly unrelated was associated, waking up from a bed, the folds of a comfortable sheet the same as when you fell asleep, and holding not a hammer handle, but half of your possessions—a whole silver coin.

The window, which resembles the window before going to bed, shines for no reason, like something that looks like a face emerges from the darkness of nothingness.

The sadness of leaving home is worse than standing on the stern of the Iceberg and watching Wenden Harbor disappear into the horizon. There was not a sign that he had left the place to which he was accustomed, but at a moment there was a sudden grief and panic that had gone to a strange place where he knew nothing, and his heart was full of soreness and tingling, and ...... Fear.

Fear that everything has already drifted in an unfamiliar direction, and that it is too late for one to notice it halfway.

Then something happened that was not conceivable, something broke through the attic window, or a mocking voice broke into my ears.

"No, no, no, it shouldn't be like this." The fingers gripping the weapon rubbed the strap, and the arm trembled. It was probably the same thing, and he vaguely recognized the meaning of the sensation—though he still didn't understand the meaning, only that he was moving away from familiar places, and approaching them.

The laughter-like sound pressed against the eardrums, reaching deeper and scratching at the inside of the skull. This time I heard it clearly, it was coming from the leader of the team, and the torch aperture from William had not yet illuminated the way.

Breathing heavily, his arm tried to swing his weapon, smashing into something, distracting the invisible minions that were about to close, but it coincided with the experience in his memory, unable to make a movement, and was firmly grasped, and the strong force of the hand under the black cuffs pinched the flesh and bones.

"Koop, look over here!" The grip on his hand increased a little harder, and the dull pain slammed under the collarbone, forcing the palm to loosen, and the page hammer fell to the ground and smashed up a cloud of dust.

The view refocused, and Kraft stood in front of him, clasping his right shoulder, restraining the entire shoulder joint.

His right hand was raised high, and he was about to swing the hammer when his heel retreated to the edge of the trail, and beyond that there was a steep rocky cliff.

The others looked at him nervously, afraid to come forward to save him because of the weapon he had held high in his hand, and only when he saw that Kraft had unloaded the hammer did he carefully step forward and pull him back from the edge of the mountain.

"I ......" Koop, realizing what might have happened, hurriedly explained, trying to explain what had happened to him.

"Walking at night for too long is easy to get hysterical, you follow me next." The unfounded assertion terminates the explanation, blocking the unformed second half of the sentence, and Kraft makes a "I know" mouth shape behind the crowd's back.

He let go of his hand and picked up the hammer, grasped the proximal end of the hammer, and handed the handle back to Koop.

Koop hurriedly went to pick up his weapon, but the hand that gave him the grip did not let go, and after making sure that he was conscious, he added, "Remember as much as possible, don't use your weapon blindly, and don't move blindly." ”

The fingers were released, and the hammer returned to Koop's hand.

The team continued on the mountain trail, which finally began to decline after several twists and turns, zigzag towards the valley.

Nearing the bottom, a faint glow appeared at the end of the slope.

A peculiarly shaped pottery lamp, molded into a lifting style, placed in front of the rocks of different colors above and below, filled with lamp oil.

The vertical section of the rock is illuminated by lights, the upper half is the yellow-brown stone common on the mountain road, and the lower half is connected by another diametrically opposed gray-white rock mass, which is clearly divided into two parts.

The sinuous strips are painted on them with some kind of red-black mineral pigment, connected by countless segments, coiling at the bottom, so dense that they are indistinguishable from each other. Stick figures-like patterns are piled up inside the strips, swimming or crawling in all directions in a haphazard manner.

The head end of the strip, or possibly the tail end, rises diagonally upwards. The segment ends there, and an open structure between the valve and the calyx emerges, which is exactly on the dividing line between the upper and lower heterochromia.

The little figures within the strips seemed to find an exit here, releasing into the yellow-brown void. The limbs are only scribbled with minimalist lines, or they are not visible, but the parts that are generally the head and face are particularly prominent, and are depicted in exaggerated proportions.

The draftsman made full use of the upper half of the space to draw these people with imbalances, and even incorporated the details of the facial features on each face, and the painting technique was average but each with its own characteristics.

Coop didn't see the pattern until he got close to the stone surface, perhaps because of the limitations of his painting tools, and he had to spread out the area to accommodate more content, and the faces were painted on the fat side and not so three-dimensional that they appeared wide and flat.

The road skirts the rocks, and the houses are clustered on both sides, and the village is sleeping in the small open windows with no lights.

(End of chapter)