Krafft's Anomaly Notes

Chapter 350: Throat of Darkness
"The Lord looks upon us as parents look upon their own children. As long as we sincerely repent, no fault is unforgivable." Dominic's voice became gentler.

He is a cautious explorer, groping in the mental maze of vague and obscure words, approaching something that is just a touch away.

At the moment when the basket maker was hesitant and ready to reveal his true feelings, the thing revealed an incomprehensible glimpse, and before he could think carefully, it disappeared among the fragmented information.

Perhaps a rise and fall of tone, a seemingly unintentional frown, metaphorically suggests that it has been there.

"Give Him those burdens that seem too heavy to bear, because the Lord understands your struggles better than you do, and He hears every word."

When he came to his senses, his hand was already on the other person's shoulder, as if giving calm and gentle encouragement, or pushing the person to take the first step.

"My father, he may have done something to disturb the peace of the deceased." Saying this seemed to consume all the strength in his body. Little John buried his face in his arms and hunched over.

Field looked around vigilantly to make sure no one was passing by.

"Why do you say possible?"

"I didn't see it myself, but his time there was... very strange."

Unlike the way a son describes his father, the emotional tone in his language is changing, losing temperature at a speed he himself doesn’t even notice, sliding towards a stranger’s distance and even a hint of fear.

A maverick family member, a gifted craftsman, a father that his children are proud of, after all these labels are torn off, what remains are strange behaviors that even the family members find incomprehensible.

"I can't describe it to you. He was weaving things all day long as usual, but something had changed. It was no longer a job for him, but an obsession."

Little John wiped his face, raised his head again, and looked at the old but sturdy top of the house. "The roof we use now was also made by him."

"I'm sorry for going off topic. I just wanted to let you know that although he is a bit of a loner, he is not that kind of person."

"I understand what you mean. Even Saint Peter denied three times that he was my Lord's disciple. Given the fragility of ordinary people, it is normal for them to be temporarily lost due to external temptations. It is nothing more than a kind soul being temporarily covered in dust."

"Thank you, thank you, thank you."

The monk beside him sat with his back to the light, his peaceful face immersed in the shadows along with his own. The light from behind spread along the contours of his body, outlining a soft and hazy halo.

Little John looked almost in tears, the pressure brought by that incident seemed to be much greater than he had imagined.

After repeated assurances, he was finally willing to speak to the Heavenly Father's waiter, tearing open a corner of his memory and letting the dark fog that had accumulated for a long time flow out.

Even after several years, some details are still as clear as if they had happened yesterday.

It was an overcast afternoon. My father, who had been busy processing branches all day, suddenly stopped and, for reasons other than eating and sleeping, rarely took his eyes away from the winding and expanding spirals.

He hadn't stood or walked for a long time in a long time. The work of collecting raw materials and selling finished products was left to his son. He often didn't step out of the house all day long. He was busy from morning to night, and the finished products filled half of the house.

Little John had tried to persuade him, but only received meaningless silence. Sometimes he would wake up at night and hear the slight sound of branches bending and twisting. Of course, the family would not waste candles at night, and he could not imagine why and how his father finished weaving.

Perhaps the answer is the back that is bent like the soft branch in the hand, the hands with stiff shoulders and elbows but extremely flexible wrists and fingers.

His bloodshot eyes were sunken in his sockets, and his pupils were dilated because he had worked in a dim environment for too long. Sometimes they were unusually bright, with a light that was lit after peeping into some secret. But he hardly went out to communicate with others, and everything he knew came from what Little John told him.

They were all trivial matters in the village, such as who had a baby recently, who was lucky enough to get a job, and who had passed away.

My father just listened quietly without saying a word.

That day, very suddenly, he left the homemade chair with dents, picked up a basket from the pile, took the rusty shovel, and said he was going out for a walk. At first, little John did not think much about it. It was not a bad thing that his father was willing to go out for a walk. Maybe it was a sign of improvement.

He took the opportunity to tidy up the place where his father usually sat, gathered small branches to make a fire to heat bread for dinner, and sat at the door waiting.

The barren fields after the autumn harvest were covered with sharp wheat stubble. The raindrops fell gradually and densely, the clouds became darker, and the moist and rotten wind blew in from the mountains, rolling up the grass stalks and throwing them silently into the distance. The wind carried the sour smell of fermented plant remains.

He began to feel worried. The cumulonimbus clouds, which had turned into dark gray, were stacked and intertwined, blurring the boundary between day and night. They were slowly rolling under the push of the strong winds in the sky, reminiscent of the newly built ceiling of a house: dense and dim, with deep, subtle water-like textures that could be discovered upon closer inspection.

It is a precursor to heavy rain. Local residents are most familiar with this kind of weather. Unless they have something on hand that they cannot let go of, they will rush to find a place to take shelter.

The noise of people returning in droves rose and died away, the sparks in the furnace went out, and the sky turned completely dark.

The heavy rain was falling like lead sheets. He called his neighbors and friends to try to go out and look for her, but they could not light a fire in the rain and could only see less than two steps away. Even his voice was drowned out by the sound of water and they almost got lost.

Everyone was soon forced back, gathered together by the fire to keep warm and pray for a miracle to happen.

The waiting time was extremely long and torturous, and he only remembered the continuous thunder. Perhaps it was a psychological effect, he always felt that the thunder was different from usual, lacking regularity, more frequent and terrifying, and every time it sounded, his body would subconsciously tremble.

Finally, around the middle of the night, when everyone had given up hope and were ready to wait until the rain stopped the next day before making any further decisions, my father came back.

Covered in mud, my soaked shoes made a dull sucking sound with every step, as the mushy ground grabbed hold of me, as if it was trying to pull me back into the rain.

On that crazy rainy night, without even a scratch from slipping, he pushed open the door in full view of everyone, grabbed a wicker basket filled with something, and asked everyone to leave the house, including his son.

This brought the already unfamiliar relationship between the family and the neighbors to a freezing point, so much so that when the stonemason accused old John of destroying the cemetery, no one was willing to stand up and say a few good words.

There was even news among those present that he was in a hurry to drive everyone away in order to deal with the stolen goods.

As for the basket, when little John returned from his kind neighbor's house the next day, it was empty except for solidified mud.

"I shouldn't have left at that time. Even if my father did something wrong, I should have stayed and persuaded him to repent."

"So, even you can't be sure whether he really did something to disturb the dead?"

"Yes, he didn't say anything. Not long after that, he went out on another rainy day and never came back. We only found the basket he left behind, and we didn't find the body in the valley nearby." Little John grabbed his disheveled hair. He could never get over the ending that was not really an ending.

He still feels that if he had not fled that night out of inexplicable fear but had stayed to give advice, things might have turned out differently.

"Maybe he felt he couldn't stand the town's opinion, so he left?"

"He had almost nothing with him except the backpack. Where could he go?"

The whole thing gave off a strange smell, and Dominic vaguely felt that he had grasped something, just a layer of paper away.

"What do you remember about that night?"

"It's very dark." An inexplicable fear was brewing. Dominic could feel the shoulders under his palms begin to tremble, as if he was back to that night. However, even the narrator could not tell what he was afraid of.

The darkness is scary, but not so scary that it would scare adults.

"There was thunder all night, and we didn't see a single flash of lightning."

It seemed as if something invisible was roaring and devouring.