Chapter 45
One of the crew clutched his stomach and collapsed. Cold sweat poured down his pale face like rain.
“Ah, why all of a sudden… Ah, it hurts…”
“Cough, kuh, khh! Gah!”
Someone’s breathing, who had been coughing repeatedly, suddenly thinned to a whistle. He gasped, his expression one of utter disbelief, and finally shoved his fingers down his own throat.
His face quickly turned blue. Whether his cause of death was a strange illness or his own foolishness, at least the quickness of it must have been a blessing.
“What… is this? What’s wrong with everyone!”
Before anyone could answer the navigator’s question, they collapsed one by one. Beyond the dust they kicked up, those who had headed to the detention center first could be seen dancing.
No, I wish it were dancing. Blood spewed out with their coughs, swirling in the air like confetti. Their arms twisted in impossible directions. Crawling on the ground, they writhed in forms no longer human…
The navigator turned toward the sea.
The closer to the detention center, the more dangerous it felt. This thought dominated his mind like an instinct.
‘What is this, what the hell is going on!’
He suddenly remembered the old sailor’s words. Hadn’t he said that the curses of the prisoners piled up and made the living sick?
‘Why is it coming for us? We weren’t the ones who locked you up! Weren’t you the problem in the first place, being the ones locked away!’
Pathetic fools who couldn’t even escape and died. Even in death, they can’t leave this land and just vent their anger!
Chewing on curses, the navigator tried to ignore the screams behind him as he stood at the bow.
He had to get the remaining people and leave as quickly as possible…
“Hey, you! Don’t come out! Something’s wrong with the detention center!”
Seeing a shadow step onto the deck, the navigator raised his voice.
Was it the captain? Or a lazy passenger?
“Get back in…?”
The one who came out from the ship was a very short woman.
Maybe in her thirties? There was no such passenger on the Lumière.
Her messy black hair was unfamiliar, but even more so was her torso-only body and the arm wriggling out of her mouth…
‘This… is a nightmare, right…?’
A thick forearm struggled. It looked just like a snake that caught prey too big for it. The woman’s mouth, though slow, steadily crushed the forearm and pulled it inside.
The forearm grew shorter and shorter, and the woman, who at first seemed barely a meter tall, gradually grew taller.
At the last desperate flail, as the hand slashed through the air, the navigator recognized the swallow tattoo on the back of it.
It was the captain’s arm.
“Ah… ah…!”
Having swallowed the entire arm, the woman now had two legs and staggered across the deck. As she brushed past the navigator, a smell of glue wafted from her.
It was the same smell that always came from the crude diorama with the black widow spider.
The navigator looked back at the woman. She awkwardly swung her thin arms as if handling a toy for the first time.
Somewhere near the detention center, things with the features of “familiar products” also waved their hands. Some of them still had “familiar bodies,” or more precisely, “parts of familiar bodies,” which were slowly disappearing.
Now the navigator understood the situation.
Taxidermied beasts were coming back to life, using humans as nourishment.
It couldn’t be real, but if it was a nightmare, it was possible.
‘How dare… How dare these beasts…!’
Come to think of it, that woman’s “welcome” earlier was probably meant for the taxidermy pieces, not the crew.
Did she feel some kinship with the beasts just because she was dragged here too? Had she lived like a beast, losing even her dignity?
Suddenly, anger overshadowed his fear.
The navigator thought of the new revolver he had left in the cabin. Even as he did, the beasts that had devoured humans left the ship, and the cursed humans collapsed on the deck.
“Ha, ugh… It hurts, please, some medicine…!”
“Run, run, get to the boat…”
The boat was already sent to the insurance company.
Thinking this to himself, the navigator picked up the revolver. The muzzle, sharpened by rage, soon found a perfect target.
At the entrance to the path leading to the detention center.
A woman, broad-shouldered and low-centered, looked healthy except for those features. She waved her long arms at him.
He couldn’t be sure, but the navigator was certain she was smiling. The same expression the woman prisoner had worn at the end.
‘…Ah, right.’
The taxidermy pieces that arrived today would be free from the curse of accumulated disease. Beasts know nothing of human illness.
They might even keep their bodies, just as they were when stuffed, for their entire lives, perhaps even longer.
‘Filthy bastards…!’
Those things dared to mock us. They cursed us. They made us sick and devoured us. They defiled our brave voyage in the most humiliating way!
His anger reached its peak.
But even with all his rage, the gunpowder would not ignite.
“Ah…”
His clenched mouth slowly opened. Pus dripped out.
At the sound of crunching, the navigator looked down at his own legs.
Somehow, in the water pooling on the deck, hermit crabs had gathered to sample his tattered flesh.
***
Alice looked down at her palm. It was a habit that came out whenever she tried to organize her thoughts after a long lecture.
But maybe she had been tense the whole time listening to the story, because the purple nail marks pressed into her palm only made her mind more scattered.
Alice massaged her palm, confirming that the capillaries were doing their job, and slowly organized her thoughts.
“So… the souls of the prisoners cursed you, but only the animals that were dragged here were accepted as comrades, and the taxidermy pieces, free from the curse of disease, were revived as new bodies.”
Of course, animals are not 100% safe from human diseases. There are diseases both sides share, and some that are harmless to one but deadly to the other.
But the horrors this land brings are closer to curses aimed at humans than real diseases, so perhaps non-humans fared better.
“And the volume that was insufficient to be reborn as humans… was made up by consuming weakened humans…”
“…That’s right.”
“And in those bodies, the souls of the prisoners and the spirits left in the taxidermy pieces mixed…?”
“Souls are for humans only! If beasts had such things, carnivores would have died long ago, tormented by crazy rabbit ghosts! The ones pretending to be villagers now are all prisoners, I bet!”
Alice didn’t agree with that.
The look in Madame Adelaide’s eyes when she reminisced about the “land of endless summer” was clearly picturing a world beyond the reach of humans on this continent.
Besides, she had said precisely, “On the day we settled in Reki, this land read our pain and set the standard for sin.”
The prisoners at the detention center were abandoned there at different times. The only residents with a definite time of settlement were the taxidermy pieces.
“Just as a body grows through stem cells, control likely lies with the animal that forms the root of the body. The prisoners’ souls probably played a role more like a catalyst.”
Just as the sailors became the nutrients for the new residents.
Not something to say in front of the angry navigator, though.
“Whew… Thank you so much for the explanation. I think I understand now.”
Even if you can’t understand, you have to learn.
The logic of modern science that supported Alice’s life fell silent in this case. After all, there was a man in front of her with half his lower body nothing but bone.
Superstitions handed down from the Middle Ages seemed more rational as a backdrop, and the things she’d experienced in the village fit together like puzzle pieces.
It was only natural that she couldn’t find any commonalities among the residents of Reki, whether religion, hometown, or criminal record.
They were samples brought here for their lack of commonality. The taxidermy pieces, who knew even less about each other than the humans, must have created the “village rules” through all sorts of trial and error.
The falling puzzle pieces led to more hypotheses and questions.
Nathan’s group hadn’t been baptized by the disease.
Did the mechanism of the curse change the moment the village was reborn? Thanks to that, these sailors were lucky, or perhaps terribly unlucky, to survive just before death?
If so, what do they want…
‘Ugh…’
Suddenly, thirst broke the chain of questions.
Her tongue was drying up.
‘It’s been about an hour and a half since I took the medicine.’
Alice looked at the faces of the sailors and others… though most of their facial muscles weren’t in good shape.
Calvin seemed satisfied just telling the story of Reki.
But another sailor next to him was clearly sizing Alice up and down. There was even a man who hid behind a pillar when Alice looked like she was about to meet his gaze.
‘They seem friendly for now, but I can’t be sure. How did Arno get attacked?’
She didn’t think he would have sided with the villagers in front of these people…
But there was no point in bringing up Arno now.
After weighing the remaining time and the importance of her questions,
Alice asked an important question, one she’d have to accept whatever consequences it brought.
“Is there any way to leave Reki?”
***
While reading the chart, Nathan couldn’t get Alice’s name out of his head, instead of medical terms.
He could trust the medicine. The problem was Alice’s ability.
“There are definitely intelligent beings in the sea… But knowing Alice, I hope she doesn’t make them angry.”
Maybe I should have sent her with a scalpel.
Finally, when Nathan closed the chart he couldn’t focus on,
Someone knocked on the clinic door.
“Doctor… May I come in?”
