13 Minke Street

Reaching out a hand and finding the switch, he turned it on. With a ‘pop’ sound, the light came on.  

Karen kept walking down, entering the basement.

Often, the perception of horror doesn’t come from actual objects, but from one’s own imagination.

When decorating the basement, the Inmerales family certainly wouldn’t have designed it with a gloomy or oppressive atmosphere. But at night, even if you painted the walls with Barbie-pink color, with two corpses lying inside, you still wouldn’t find it ‘cozy’ or ‘cute’.

The sobbing continued.  

It came from Aunt Mary’s workshop.

Karen walked to the workshop door. It wasn’t locked…because there was no need to lock it. 

Karen stopped and didn’t hurry to turn the door handle. Instead he first turned back to look behind him.

The hallway behind him wasn’t pitch black due to the lights. But the spiraling ramp leading upstairs to the first floor was still dim; it was hard to see clearly.

Closing his eyes, he took a deep breath. Karen hoped to smell the sweetness of warm milk. Unfortunately he didn’t have a dog’s nose.

Thinking of dogs, Karen lowered his head to take a look. The retriever from before, who had seemed so enthusiastic when Karen let it into the house, didn’t follow him down into the basement.

What a jerk.

He reached out and grasped the door handle. In that instant, it was as if a ‘channel’ was suddenly switched, and a sense of disorientation came over him. It wasn’t strong, but he could clearly feel its existence.

Then, that ‘sobbing’ sound from the workshop abruptly stopped.

Karen looked back again. The light bulb in the hallway behind him still maintained its normal brightness. 

Creak…

Twisting the handle, he pulled open the door. Then, he immediately reached out his hand to find the light switch by the door as fast as he could and pressed it.

Click…

The light in the workshop turned on.

Light, ample light, could bring tremendous psychological comfort.

On the two stretchers in the workshop lay Mr. Jeff and Mr. Mauson. 

Jeff’s face was plastered with rouge, making him look radiant. 

One could see the make-up was a bit heavy-handed. His hair was also combed into a middle part and hair gel was applied, making him look…too lively. Jeff probably hadn’t looked this spirited when he was alive.

Mr. Mauson looked much more normal in comparison. There wasn’t thick makeup, just more attention paid to details and looking natural. He seemed to really be sleeping peacefully. 

While working on the corpses, Aunt Mary fully practiced ‘favoritism’. The difference between welfare and normal packages was evident here. 

Of course, if Aunt Mary had known earlier that Mr. Mauson’s children planned to cremate him, poor Mr. Mauson might really have had to compete in ‘glamour’ with the young man Jeff beside him.

Karen walked past Jeff and went to stand in front of Mr. Mauson. The sobbing from before had an elderly feel, clearly not made by a young person like Jeff. It could only have been…Mr. Mauson.  

But after standing in front of Mr. Mauson, Karen only saw him lying there silently, with no other anomalies.

Looking around, he dragged over a stool with wheels next to him and sat down, propping his feet up on the stretcher’s lower railing. 

Karen tilted his head slightly, and just kept staring at Mr. Mauson like that.

At the same time, his peripheral vision would glance through the open workshop door from time to time, paying attention to the hallway…hmm, mainly at the spiraling ramp at the end of the hallway. 

Time passed by for a quarter of an hour.

In this quarter of an hour, everything was calm and quiet.

Whether you’re human or ghost, show yourself! Give me some reaction! Karen sighed, ready to leave. A warm bed was more alluring late at night after all. 

Standing up, as he walked past Mr. Mauson, Karen noticed his collar button was undone. So he reflexively reached out to button it back up for him.

However, the instant his fingertips touched Mr. Mauson’s neck, Karen suddenly felt dizzy in his mind.

This sensation was like getting high, and his body also staggered a bit.

Karen immediately steadied himself, leaning back against the wall. 

“Wuwuwu…“

The sobbing sounds came again.

Karen immediately looked up. Mr. Mauson lay still in front of him.

But in the corner, there seemed to be another figure curled up sobbing. 

Seeing this, Karen didn’t scream in fear. He had already mentally prepared himself. 

Also, for Karen, seeing a ghost was much better than not seeing one. For the latter, he would have to suspect that something was wrong with his own mind and psyche.

So compared to the realization that he had gone mad, Karen was more inclined to accept that this was a crazy world.

“Mr. Mauson?” Karen called out tentatively to the curled up figure in the corner. 

But that figure seemed to not hear him at all. There was no response, only continuous sobbing to itself.

Karen stood up and walked towards ‘Mr. Mauson’, but his vision formed a kind of ‘disconnect’ from reality. As he walked towards ‘Mr. Mauson’, the distance between them didn’t get closer, but remained constant. 

When Karen’s face was nearly pressed against the opposite wall, ‘Mr. Mauson’ was still curled up in the faraway corner.

This supernatural, unchanging distance didn’t scare Karen. Rather, it piqued his curiosity to explore.

“So what I’m seeing isn’t a real existence?”

Upon muttering this, Karen bit his lower lip. “I just said something stupid.”

Then, Karen tried spreading his hands and slowly shifting his position.

The next moment, the curled up figure of ‘Mr. Mauson’ also started moving, no, shifting in parallel to Karen’s movement. 

This feeling… it was like a projector hung on his forehead.

Was this…a soul?

Karen wasn’t sure about the material of this thing. After all, with the distance, he couldn’t reach out and touch it.

But, Karen suddenly had an idea.

As Karen kept turning, the sobbing ‘Mr. Mauson’ and the Mr. Mauson lying on the stretcher were aligned in the same direction.

After adjusting the direction, Karen started ‘focusing’ again, moving forward and back to align the sobbing ‘Mr. Mauson’ with the dead Mr. Mauson as much as possible.

In fact, Karen didn’t know why he was doing this either, but it felt natural. Ghosts should be placed together with their corpses, right? He should at least try to do it.

When the two overlapped, Karen clearly saw the previously curled up ‘Mr. Mauson’ suddenly stop sobbing. Then, very confusedly, he stood up. Under Karen’s gaze, ‘Mr. Mauson’ lay down on top of his corpse.

The whole process was fast, extremely smooth and fluid.

And the moment the two completely overlapped, Karen felt like a hand fiercely grabbed his brain – yes, the brain, not the forehead, not the back of the head, not the scalp, but deep inside his brain. 

With a squelch, it clenched tightly. And yanked out violently!

“Mmph…” Karen let out a pained grunt, and he fell to his knees on the floor. Fortunately his instincts made his hands brace against the tiles, otherwise he’d be paying tribute to Mr. Hofen from this morning.

Even so, Karen clearly saw drops of blood dripping onto the blue and white ceramic tiles before him. 

His nose…was bleeding again.

Karen covered his nose with one hand as he started getting up with great difficulty.

As he stood up, Mr. Mauson, who was lying on the stretcher, also slowly sat up.

Their actions were almost synchronized, silently in-tune with each other. 

“Hmm…” Karen let out a low breath.

Although he knew that all these ‘suicidal’ behavior stemmed from his own initiative, seeing a corpse sitting straight up in front of him still gave him an immense shock to his mind and spirit.

The shock brought some panic, some confusion, some bewilderment, and…absolute excitement!

Mr. Mauson gradually changed his posture, from sitting on the stretcher to kneeling on it. His eyes were open, but they had no color – he had monotonous grayish white eyes.

“Please… Please don’t burn me… Don’t burn me… Cremation of the flesh… no forgiveness… Cremation of the flesh… no forgiveness…”

Karen swallowed, watching Mr. Mauson worshipping and begging to him like in a religious ceremony.

According to Aunt Mary, the doctrine Mr. Mauson believed in prohibited followers from cremating their flesh. For a devout follower, there were only two ways to demonstrate loyalty to their faith…’life’ and ‘death’.

‘Life’ referred to the moment of joining the faith, while ‘death’ symbolized one’s own end, as well as the continuation of life in a religious sense.

The “sobbing” Karen heard before was Mr. Mauson’s grief and resentment. 

“Mr. Mauson? Mr. Mauson?” Karen tried calling out to him.

“Please… Don’t burn me… Please don’t burn me…” Mr. Mauson still repeated his pleas.

Oh, so there was no way to communicate directly. Was the only thing left his ‘instincts’?

Or in the terminology I was used to in my past life, namely…obsession.

But how did all this happen?

Aunt Mary, Uncle Mason, and Mina never said anything about any anomalies with the corpses. That meant this world should still be normal in the eyes of normal people. 

But with Jeff first, and now Mr. Mauson, I’ve encountered this kind of anomaly from the deceased twice in a row.

Karen had to suspect…no, could almost ascertain that all of this had an inseparable reason related to himself. The trigger medium should be within himself.

Was it because of the original ‘Karen’? Or was it because of my own ‘awakening’?

“Please…don’t burn me…don’t burn me…don’t burn me! Don’t burn me! Don’t burn me!!!“

Karen noticed Mr. Mauson’s speech speed starting to quicken. His shoulders began trembling slightly. His originally dull gaze were now gradually being filled with bloodshot eyes. 

A dangerous atmosphere began to spread in the air.

“Mr. Mauson?” 

Karen tentatively called out again, while slowly shifting his body. The beginning of things was a bit strange, but their development seemed to be proceeding according to the ‘norm’ he could understand, such as…what a corpse would do after it suddenly ‘woke up’.

However, just as Karen had circled around Mr. Mauson’s side….

Mr. Mauson suddenly raised his head.

“You people…actually want to burn me!”

In a flash, Mr. Mauson’s eyes were completely covered in blood. His body also violently jerked upwards. Yes, jerked upwards. Muscles, bones, the overall coordination of the body seemed to not exist at all. But he still propped himself up, like a fish thrown onto the shore, bouncing up!

Bang!

Karen felt a heavy blow against his back. His whole body pitched forward. 

After falling over, Karen immediately braced his hands against the floor and turned his body over. At the same time, Mr. Mauson crawled toward him, his hands quickly reaching for Karen’s neck.

Karen lifted his knee and thrusted it towards Mr. Mauson.

But this body was indeed rather weak – he had poor health to begin with. Also, Mr. Mauson’s weight now seemed heavier than when he was alive. 

Not only did Karen’s knee fail to push him away, but under Mr. Mauson’s pressure…he was pressed flat to the ground.

“YOU ACTUALLY DARE TO BURN ME!!!“

Mr. Mauson opened his mouth.

And bit down on Karen’s chest.

Boom!

Karen felt like his chest was being hammered with a stone. It was very painful, but the anticipated bloody injuries didn’t appear. That’s because Mr. Mauson had lost all his teeth when he was alive and had to use dentures to eat.

So Mr. Mauson’s bite just now was fruitless. 

But Mr. Mauson’s hands were already gripping Karen’s neck, exerting force. His legs, torso, all wrapped around Karen tightly like an octopus. 

Karen pushed hard with his hands, trying to break free, but his struggle seemed somewhat futile at the moment.

Nearing total despair, Karen could only turn his head towards the workshop entrance.

“YOU DARE BURN ME!!!” 

Mr. Mauson was deranged!

Pa!

It was a sound like metal colliding, or perhaps a lightbulb shattering.

Or maybe…

Like the snap of a finger?

Karen couldn’t clearly distinguish the sounds anymore, but a sense of relief washed over him. Phew… I’m saved.

However, after that sound, 

“Ahhhhhhhh!!!!!! Burn me! Burn me! BURN ME!“

Mr. Mauson, already deranged, now completely went berserk. 

Karen felt the hands around his neck tightening even more than before, as if his neck was about to be snapped.

Like twisting a sausage, the hands grabbed both ends of his neck and twisted in opposite directions, waiting for one end to… burst open.

Karen now had a sensation like his eyes, ears, and nose were about to explode.

“You dare…burn me!”

“You dare…me!”

“You dare…”

“Burn…”

Suddenly, it was as if Mr. Mauson reached a breaking point. His body stiffened and collapsed.

With the restraint gone from his neck, Karen began to gasp for air. The air in the basement wasn’t fresh, but it smelled especially sweet to Karen at this moment.

This wasn’t an exaggeration. He was bleeding from his throat and his nose. And his nosebleed was seeping into his mouth.

Karen pushed Mr. Mauson off himself, using his hands on the ground to slowly shift his position until his back rested against the wall, where he stopped.

Turning his head, he looked towards the door again.

Dim light glowed in the hallway, and far away, it was pitch black as before.

Karen put one hand on his face.

After a while, he lightly patted his forehead several times with his blood-stained palm.

“Hehehe…”

He laughed, and then took a deep breath….

And started cursing this world again and again in Chinese, a language that didn’t exist in this world.

“What the fuck is this bullshit world…”

…

At the spiraling ramp connecting the basement to the first floor, Diss stood silently.

Sitting next to him was the black cat Poe.

Diss turned his head, looking at Poe, and asked, “What he said last, was it a demonic language?”

The black cat lifted its head and looked at Diss.

The next moment, astonishingly, it spoke in a woman’s voice:

“I’ve lived for two hundred years, and never heard of any demon…that could create its own language.”

Then, Poe added, “And one so…complex and obscure.”

Translator’s Dilemma: 

Hello, I’m the local translator for this novel. I’m conflicted about something. It’s about the name of the cat. I’m not sure if I should continue using ‘Poe’ as its name or change it to ‘Pu’er’ as shown in Google Translate. Gimme some suggestion, guys. Also, thank you for reading.