Chapter 18
A September afternoon. The sunlight was particularly harsh.
Alice gazed toward the thicket she needed to head into. Even though it was broad daylight, the excessive sparkle made the world look like a stage set.
If she took a few steps, deceived by the beauty, the darkness beyond the thick curtain would swallow her whole in an instant.
‘Don’t think useless thoughts.’
It was midday. And the village had been safe for the past few days. Children and young women had been walking around freely. In fact, it was Arno and Alice themselves who were closer to being villains.
‘Carefully take two steps, about 1 meter. Just walk a hundred paces.’
Rustle, rustle. With each step she took, the sound of the wind echoed her cautious movements. Alice flinched several times and unconsciously lifted her heels.
Counting to ten, then counting again…
Before she knew it, Cherry’s house had disappeared behind the trees. The fence marking the village boundary began to come into view. Unlike the old and worn-down shelter buildings, the wooden fence was oddly well-kept.
She was almost there. Had she taken a wrong turn? She thought she heard a presence from beyond the fence.
Alice opened her mouth.
“Arno…”
But the timid first syllable was drowned out by a strange groan.
“Guh, uh, urgh…!”
And then came…
The sound of someone struggling.
Thud, thud. Heels struck the ground. There were sounds that seemed to hit flesh too. Alice swallowed Arno’s name and looked in the direction of the noise.
Inside the fence, someone was on top of Arno, choking him.
“Y-You!”
Saliva and rage dripped from his twisted lips. Arno lay on the ground, unable to even groan as he struggled beneath him. The punches he threw at his opponent’s arm were gradually losing strength and spreading out.
There was no need to watch any longer.
Alice was grateful for her choice to bring her medical bag.
“Ahhh!”
With a thud, the medical bag struck the assailant’s jaw perfectly.
The bag flew out of her grasp from the impact, and the man’s body tilted sideways. She hoped he’d crash to the ground and stay there.
But his fall didn’t last long. His body stopped moving, though his face didn’t.
His bloodshot eyes turned toward her.
“You too… are you… one of them?”
Just five words came with dozens of gasps for breath. Despite his sternocleidomastoid muscles bulging like tree roots with each breath, his chest barely rose at all.
And below that…
Nathan’s words came to mind:
‘He crawled in literally dripping with pus and serum.’
‘His belly must have been torn open on the rough road while crawling in.’
‘His insides began to rot, gas filled his stomach, and his distended belly skin weakened like a foolish frog from a fairy tale…’
On top of the man’s swollen belly, blood that had been wandering inside pooled at every corner of its honeycomb-like openings and finally found a small gap…
Plop. Plop.
With a bizarre knocking sound, his belly opened up.
Digested matter resembling wet soil spilled out through every hole covered in blood. The man seemed to realize what had happened to his body as he looked down at himself in shock.
He tried to hold his belly as if embracing a pocket with holes but his trembling hands only smeared the color of foul-smelling liquid across his belly skin.
The man looked back at her again.
It was hard to read any expression on his blood-soaked and pale face, but Alice clearly saw him pleading for help in his gaze; she was confident she wasn’t mistaken about that.
However, it was Arno who first reached for the fallen medical bag beside him.
“Ughhh!”
With a scream-like shout, Arno swung his hand wildly. The assailant’s right arm bent awkwardly as he fell over Arno’s body; taking advantage of that moment when his upper body tilted reflexively, another cracking sound erupted from above…
The man couldn’t even scream anymore as he fell over completely.
His large body slowly slid down. Arno cursed under his breath as he crawled out from beneath him.
Alice confirmed what Arno was holding—a mallet used for orthopedic examinations—its end matted with hair and blood.
“Arno! Th-this man!”
Alice rushed toward her patient while dragging along her wide-open medical bag; of course, she expected reality wouldn’t be what she hoped for now.
There would be no patient here anymore—only one corpse collapsed with its brain spilling out.
***
“Ha, ha, ha.”
Nathan chuckled. Alice imagined stuffing a curtain into his mouth.
“I told you. I don’t know if it’s a curse, but the phenomenon itself is real.”
“Okay, I believe you now.”
“I’m really glad to have a true ally. Though I’m not thrilled about the corpse we’ve got!”
“……”
“Don’t ask for help.”
“I won’t.”
Alice tied a handkerchief around her face instead of wearing a mask and approached the table where the corpse lay. In the meantime, Arno had brought a bucket of water that might be useful.
About an hour ago, in front of the man’s corpse, Alice hadn’t asked many questions about the situation. It was obvious what had happened. The errand boy that Arno had let in and out of the village must have returned with a stomach ache, realizing he had been used and then attacked Arno.
Leaving him as another “foolish victim ignoring warnings,” like the researcher who’d died in August, wasn’t an option. Before being discovered by the residents, they moved the body to Arno’s accommodation, which was relatively close.
As soon as they closed the door, Arno grabbed a poker and a pocket knife. It was obvious how those would be used immediately. Alice stopped him, saying she wanted to perform an examination first, and Arno didn’t refuse her.
Soon Nathan arrived with his medical tools and sat cross-legged in a corner of the confinement facility, chuckling to himself.
Alice opened her mouth.
“I’ll begin.”
The first thing to do was carefully remove the blood-soaked shirt. The skin was stuck to it, making it difficult from the start. Even Arno, who had been looking down expressionlessly at first, swallowed hard.
“Should I heat up some water?”
“No need.”
Nathan interjected.
“Alice will handle it since she brought it up herself. But can you explain the situation to me?”
“There’s not much to tell. That guy used to be an errand boy I hired sometimes. This time, though…”
While the men talked, Alice focused on the corpse with its shirt pulled back.
The irregularly torn flesh resembled a net, with fat and blood mingling together and shining like pomegranate seeds.
Where should she start examining? Not wanting to inflict more damage on the deceased, Alice took her time deciding where to enter and ultimately made an incision from above the pubic bone up to the lower abdomen.
The belly opened up. The stomach opened, revealing clotted blood that she wiped away with a soaked cloth.
She expected contents to spill out but found it was a chaotic mess inside like stew that had been thrown together without care. Alice searched for what she thought was the ileocecal valve, tracing the paths of the colon and small intestine.
‘…Rotten smell.’
The distinctive odor of intestines overtaken by Pseudomonas bacteria filled her nostrils—a smell she sometimes encountered from patients who hadn’t recovered after surgery. The end result usually led to death from sepsis.
Alice asked Nathan,
“The professor and his researchers fled on the 10th and returned dead on the 12th?”
“On the 13th. Well, even if they left the clinic on the 10th, they could have hidden at the beach for a few days before finally leaving.”
She couldn’t believe that someone’s insides rotted away in just three days, yet here was an even worse case before her eyes.
Nathan leaned forward slightly.
“That errand boy seems better off than those researchers I knew back then? Look there; you can see his pancreas. When I saw it back then, even that was rotting away.”
“The stomach also looks relatively intact. Is it empty? Arno, do you know when this person last ate?”
“He said he didn’t even get to eat lunch today; I’m not sure about breakfast.”
“Let’s assume the food-filled parts decayed first. Did he show any signs of illness recently? Difficulty breathing, for instance?”
Earlier he hadn’t been able to breathe properly at all and had been using his accessory respiratory muscles as well; however, Arno shook his head in response.
“He seemed fine when he was talking with me at lunchtime; health was his only strong point.”
“Has he suffered any major injuries recently?”
“I don’t know about injuries; he said he lived quietly after getting out of prison but he was quite hot-tempered.”
If his words couldn’t be trusted, the body might offer clues. Alice ripped the sleeve of his shirt.
For any fighter, their arms tell the story of their battles.
From his fingers up through his deltoids, scars all over his arms revealed the rough contours of his life experiences. But aside from those scars, there were no recent wounds or even scratch marks that could have resulted from injury.
To allow Pseudomonas bacteria to take over would require either suffering from illness or having sustained serious injuries—one or the other must have happened.
‘Should I check his back too…? No, let’s look at his stomach first and check his heart and lungs.’
Alice reached for the saw; first starting with rib cartilage…
At that moment Nathan sighed heavily.
“I was waiting to see when you’d give up. Enough already.”
“Professor.”
“You know I don’t believe in curses either; there must be some scientific explanation for this. But we can’t explain what’s wrong with that belly either? So why are you picking up that saw again? Do you think you can find out something I couldn’t during my last examination?”
“…No.”
“Then stop.”
Nathan leaned back deeply into his chair again but Alice couldn’t put down the saw yet. In her mind, simulations were already running wild.
First cutting through rib cartilage, then removing between the sternum and collarbone…
“Alice. Why aren’t you putting the saw down?”
“But Professor…”
Knowing Nathan would get angry again, Alice continued speaking until the end.
“If we end this now… this person will really die in vain.”
For a moment Nathan lost words as he twisted his lips into a smile that was closer to distortion than joy.
“Ha, ha, ha! What, cutting his bones apart will give his death meaning? He’s not going to be less dead just because you chop him into pieces!”
“……”
“I don’t know if it’s pride or academic curiosity driving you, but don’t act like it’s noble, Alice Boucher!”
Finally Nathan stood up from his chair heavily and snatched the saw from Alice’s hands without resistance from her.
Arno’s previously complicated expression changed as he stood up too—not at all to help Alice.
“Can we dispose of the body now?”
