Chapter 55 Fifty-five

Louis seemed to be in a dream again, looking down from time to time to make sure that he was holding the tarp bag with his son's body in his hands instead of Churchy's green garbage bag.He remembered waking up the morning after he and Chad had buried Churchie with little recollection of what they had done, but he could still remember those feelings now, so vividly, as if they were in the woods, with him. Some kind of telepathy. Louis walked up and down the trail, now and then finding places as wide as Route 15, others so narrow that he had to walk sideways, and others through the woods.He could smell the strong smell of pine resin and hear the strange scuffing of pine needles under his feet.

Finally came to a place where the trail was relatively steep and stretched.After a while, one of his feet stepped into a shallow puddle, and he felt a little sunken. According to Chad, this is the quicksand area.Louis looked down, only to see the rough grass under his feet, mixed with jagged bushes, and water between the grass and the bushes.He remembered that the night light seemed brighter that night than tonight, and tonight would be even more thrilling. Chad's voice sounded in my ears again: the road below is like turning over dead wood piles, so keep your steps steady and relaxed when you walk.Just follow me and don't look down.

Yes, ok.. so step by step, have you seen any of these plants in Maine before?In Maine or something?What are they called? Leave it alone, Louis.Just... let's go. Louis took a look at the wet grass and bushes ahead, and started on again.He looked straight ahead, without squinting, as he strode from grassy mound to mound.I remembered a sentence that the middle school physics teacher once said before get out of class: Faith is the prerequisite for accepting gravity.When Lewis was studying theology and philosophy in college, the teacher didn't say anything to him, but he never forgot this sentence from his middle school physics teacher.

What he accepted was the ability to bring the dead back to life in the Mi'kmake cemetery, so he held his son's body and walked into the little god's swamp without hesitation.There were much more strange noises under the bushes than when they were last here.Something in the reeds was screaming continuously, with a high-pitched voice.Something swooped past him, maybe a bat. The mist from the swamp began to rise, covering his shoes first, then his calves, and finally enveloping him like a white membrane.He felt that the white light in the swamp was brighter, flashing and flashing rhythmically, like the beating of a strange heart.Louis had never felt so strongly before that nature was a living thing, with magical healing powers... maybe prescient, the swamp was alive, but certainly not with a beautiful musical sound.If Louis had been asked to describe the feeling or nature of the swamp being alive, he would not have been able to, only that it was full of possibilities and forces woven together.In it, Louis felt very small, very ordinary.

At this moment, there was a sound, he remembered hearing it last time, first it was a loud laugh, and then it turned into a sobbing sound.After a moment of silence, the loud laughter broke out again, this time it turned into cries like a lunatic, which frightened Louis' blood almost to a standstill, and the surrounding fog surrounded him like a dream.The laughter disappeared, leaving only the whistling of the wind, which could be heard but not felt.Of course I don't feel it, this place is geographically a depression, if the wind can blow in, it will blow away the white mist... Louis doesn't know if he wants to know what will be exposed if the fog is blown away.

Chad's voices came again: you might hear some noises, like human voices, but it was just the call of the abyss migrating south.That sound carried far and wide, and it was hilarious. "Abby," Louis said.His voice was hoarse, and he almost didn't recognize it as his own, but it sounded like he was amused.God forbid, he does sound funny. He hesitated for a moment, then walked forward again.As if punishing him for hesitating, his foot sank in the grass and he almost failed to pull out his shoe. The sound came again, this time to the left, and a moment later behind him... seemed to be right behind him, if he had turned around he would have seen a bloody, grinning, glowing stare eyes...but this time Louis didn't hesitate, he kept walking while staring straight ahead.

Suddenly the fog in the swamp lost its white light, and Louis realized that Zhang Sheng was looking at him maliciously not far away, muttering something; the eyes on his face were deep-set, shining gray-blue light , like the eyes of characters in ancient Chinese paintings, slanting upward; the mouth is grinning downward, and the lower lip is turned outward, revealing dark brown teeth, which are almost rotten to the gums.But what surprised Louis the most were its ears, which were not ears at all, but crooked horns...not like devil's horns, but ram's horns. This eerie floating face seemed to be talking and laughing.Its mouth was wriggling, and although the lower lip never returned to its normal position, the blood vessels there were throbbing, and the nostrils were flapping, as if breathing, exhaling white air.

As Louis approached, the tongue on the suspended head stuck out, grayish yellow, long, pointed, covered with a layer of scales, and Louis saw a scale curled up, exuding a white worm ; tongue lazily licking the air... the thing was laughing loudly. Louis hugged Gage's body tightly, as if trying to protect his son, he stumbled and slipped in the grass. You may see St. Elmer's Fire, or Runelight as sailors call it.This kind of thing can do all sorts of weird things, but there's nothing scary about it.If you see these weird things and it bothers you, look away... These words from Chad rang in Louis's head, and he was relieved.He began to walk forward again, staggering a little at first, then regained his balance and walked steadily.He didn't look away, but noticed that the face always seemed to be at the same distance from him.Maybe it was a real face, Louis thought, or maybe it was just an image his mind was making in the fog.After a few seconds or minutes, the face was lost in the drifting mist.

This is not St. Elmo's Fire. No, of course, it's not.This place is full of ghosts, this dark place is full of these things.If you look around, chances are you'll see something maddening.He shouldn't think about it, he doesn't have to think about it, he doesn't have to. Something else came by. Louis stopped abruptly, listening to the sound... the relentless approaching sound, and Louis opened his mouth wide. It was a sound Louis had never heard in his life, it was the sound of something alive, a very loud sound, close by, getting closer.Louis heard the snap of a branch, followed by the sound of a gigantic foot in the bushes.The soil under Louis' feet also trembled together.He began to realize that he was moaning under his breath, and he held Gage tightly to his chest again.He was aware that all life in the swamp had fallen silent, and he was aware that the damp air was filled with a strange, disgusting smell like rotten pork.

Whatever this thing is, it's a huge thing. Louis looked up higher and higher, full of doubt and fear, as if he was watching a rocket being launched.The thing was plodding toward him, and Louis could hear a tree—not a branch, but a whole tree snapped off—falling nearby. Louis saw something. The white mist was turned a stone gray by the body of the thing for a moment; the thing was more than 60 feet tall and an invisible ghost, but Louis could feel the drafts as it passed and could hear The sound of heavy footsteps as it fell to the ground and the sound of mud and water gathering after the thing walked through the swamp.

For a moment, Louis believed he saw two orange flames flickering high above his head, like eyes. Then the sound began to disappear, and as it left, other life in the swamp slowly began to make sounds.The thing went north, and the sound became smaller and smaller, and finally it was completely inaudible. Finally Louis started walking again.His shoulders and back ached like hell, and he was crippled as if in a one-piece underwear from head to toe, and hungry mosquitoes, newly hatched this season, were biting him and feeding on his blood. It's the Wendigo Ghost, God, that's the Wendigo Ghost, the kind that roams around the North Country, the kind that turns anyone it touches into a man-eating monster.That's it, the Wendigo ghost just walks by 60 yards from me. Louis thought, telling himself not to be so ridiculous, to be like Jud, walk through the pet cemetery and try not to hear or see, those things are Abbie birds, St. Elmer's fire, upstate New York Cows in Yankee's stables, whatever jumping, crawling, slithering or shambling creatures in the world.Let there be God in the world, and Sunday mornings, and white-robed Anglican priests—but let there be no dark, filthy horrors in the world, especially at night in space. As Louis walked with his son in his arms, the road under his feet became hard again. After a while, he came to a fallen tree. The crown of the tree was faintly visible in the white light of the mist, like a giant green feather duster in the hands of a housekeeper. The tree was broken, or bitten off, the cut was new, and there was still yellow-white sap flowing from it.Louis touched the slime while climbing.At the other end of the big tree there was a big hollow, and the grass and bushes on the ground had been trampled into the dirt. Louis couldn't believe it was a footprint.He could have climbed the mountain and looked back to see if there was such a mark, but he didn't, he just walked forward, his skin was cold, his mouth was dry, and his heart was beating fast. The sound of shoes on wet mud died away quickly.For a moment Louis heard footsteps on pine needles again, then on rocks, and he was almost at the foot of the hill. The terrain became higher and steeper again.His calf hit a rock and it hurt, but it wasn't just a rock.He reached out his hand clumsily and touched it. It was a stone step, carved out of the stone.Chad's voice came again: Just follow me and we'll make it to the top. So Louis began to climb, and that euphoric feeling came back, another victory over fatigue—at least he didn't feel so tired.He counted the steps in his mind, and the night wind was getting stronger, blowing his clothes, blowing on the tarp that wrapped Gage's body, making a sound like the sound of a sail full of wind. Once Louis looked up at the sky and saw a sky full of stars, but he didn't recognize any of them, and looked away again, feeling a little offended.Beside him was a stone wall, not smooth at all, but jagged, like ships in places, badgers in places, and frowning faces in others.Only those stone steps are smooth. Louis climbed to the top, head down, shaking, breathing air.It feels like a needle is stuck in my lung. The wind stroked his hair, as if he was dancing; the wind whistled in his ears, like a dragon roaring. The night light is brighter tonight, is it because it was cloudy that time, or did he not see whether it was sunny or cloudy that time?It doesn't matter.But he could see it, and that was enough to terrify him. It's like a pet cemetery here. Of course you know this, whispered a voice in Louis's head.You know, or should know, there is no centripetal shape here, he thought, but a spiral, he thought, as he looked around at the piles of rocks that marked the cemetery. Yes, on this boulder, Louis saw a huge spiral shape, built by ancient people.But there were no real markers of the graveyard, and every pile of stones that had been raised was flattened because the things in the graveyard crawled out of it when they came to life.But the stone still maintains a distinct spiral as it falls. Has anyone seen these from the air?Louis thought casually.He thought again of the desert paintings done in South America or the Indians.Has anyone seen these things from the air, and if so, what would they think? Louis knelt down, put his son's body down, and let out a sigh of relief. Finally his consciousness returned to reality.He cut the tape around the pick and shovel with a knife, and the tool fell to the ground with a loud noise. Louis also rolled over and lay on the ground with his limbs spread out, staring blankly at the stars for a while. What is that thing in the woods?Louis, Louis, do you really think that when the climax of this drama comes, it will do everyone any good? But it was too late to quit, and Louis knew that. Besides, Louis murmured to himself, maybe it would end well.There is no gain without adventure, and perhaps no love without adventure.I still have my medical kit, not downstairs but the one on the high shelf in the bathroom.The bag I sent Chad to pick up the night Norma had her heart attack.There are syringes in the bag, and if something happens...something bad...no one will know but me. His thoughts turned into a muffled prayer, and he knelt down to find the pick and began to dig.Each time he raised the pick and lowered it, Louis leaned over the handle, like an ancient Roman dropping on his sword.Slowly the pit began to take shape and gradually deepened.Louis took out the stones, most of which he set aside.But he also left a few stones behind. Use them to stack a graveyard marker.