Krafft's Notes on Anomalies

"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 was a cautious explorer, groping in the maze of the mind composed of vague and obscure words, approaching something that could be touched and gone at a touch.

At the moment when the basket maker was shaken and ready to reveal his heart, the thing showed an incomprehensible glimpse, and before he could think carefully, it disappeared from the fragmented information.

Perhaps a pronunciation with an ups and downs in tone, a frown that seemed to be unintentional, metaphorically hinted that it had been there.

"Give Him those burdens that you feel you cannot bear, because the Lord understands your struggle better than you do, and He will hear every sentence and every word."

When he came to his senses, his palm was already on the other's shoulder, as if it was a calm and gentle encouragement, or pushing someone to take the first step.

"My father, he may have done something to disturb the peace of the deceased." Saying this sentence 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 passed by nearby.

"Why do you say possible?"

"I didn't see it with my own eyes, but he was very strange during that time."

Unlike the son's description of his father, the emotional color in the language was changing, losing temperature at a speed that he himself did not notice, sliding towards stranger-like alienation, and even a little fear.

A maverick family member, a gifted craftsman, a father that made his children proud, after all these labels were torn off, what was left was strange behavior that the family found unreasonable.

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

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

"Sorry for going off topic. I just want you to know that although he is originally more withdrawn, he is not that kind of person."

"I understand what you mean. Even St. Peter denied three times that he was a disciple of my Lord. It is normal for ordinary people to be lost for a while because of the fragility of the outside world. 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 was immersed in the shadow with himself. The light from behind spread along the outline of his body, outlining a circle of soft and hazy halo.

Little John almost cried when he saw it. The pressure brought by that incident seemed to be much greater than he imagined.

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

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

It was a cloudy afternoon, and the father who had been busy dealing with branches all day suddenly stopped, and rarely moved his eyes away from the winding and expanding spirals for reasons other than eating and sleeping.

He had not stood up and walked for a long time for too long. The work of collecting raw materials and selling finished products was handed over to his son. He often did not step out of the house all day, busy from morning to night, and the finished products filled half of the house.

Little John had tried to persuade him, but only gained meaningless silence. Sometimes when he woke up at night, he would 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 his father completed the weaving.

Perhaps the back that was bent and arched like the soft branches in his hands, and the hands with stiff shoulders and elbows and extremely flexible wrists and fingers were the answer.

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 ignited after peeping into some secret. But he hardly went out to communicate with others, and all the things he learned came from Little John's retelling.

They were all trivial village matters, 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 one from the pile of baskets, took the rusty shovel, and said he was going out.

At first, Little John didn't think much about it. It was not a bad thing for his father to take the initiative to go out for a walk. Maybe it was a sign of improvement.

He took the opportunity to clean up the place where his father often sat, collected small broken branches to light a fire to heat the bread for dinner, and sat at the door waiting.

The barren fields after the autumn harvest were covered with sharp wheat stubble. Raindrops fell gradually and densely, and the clouds became more gloomy. The wet and corrupt wind blew from the mountains, rolled up the grass stems and threw them silently into the distance. The wind carried the sour smell of fermented plant debris.

He began to worry. The cumulonimbus clouds that had turned into black and gray were stacked and intertwined, blurring the boundary between morning and evening. They rolled slowly under the push of the high-altitude strong wind, which reminded people of the newly built ceiling of the house: dense and dim, and if you look closely, you can find the subtle deep texture of water vortex.

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 can't let go of no matter what, they will hurry to find a place to hide.

The noise of people returning in groups sounded and disappeared, 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 him, but they couldn't light a fire in the rain. They could see less than two steps away. Even their voices were drowned out by the sound of water. They almost got lost.

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

The waiting time was extremely long and tormenting, and I only remember 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, it would cause the body to tremble subconsciously.

Finally, around the second half of the night, when everyone had given up hope and was ready to wait until the rain stopped the next day before considering it, his father came back.

Covered in mud and water, his soaked shoes made a dull sucking sound with every step, and were caught by the mushy ground, as if to pull people back into the rain.

A perfect version in 16-9-1 book-1 bar!

On that crazy rainy night, he didn't even have a scratch from slipping. In full view of everyone, he pushed open the door, grabbed a rattan basket filled with something, and asked everyone to leave the house, including his son.

This brought the relationship between the family and the surrounding area, which was not familiar to the point of freezing, 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 from the people present that he was in a hurry to drive everyone away just to deal with the stolen goods.

As for the basket, when John returned from the kind neighbor's house the next day, there was nothing in it except 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."

"In other words, even you can't be sure whether he really disturbed the dead?"

"Yes, he didn't say anything. Not long after, 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 next to him." John grabbed his messy hair. The whole ending that was not an ending made him unable to let go.

He still feels that if he had not escaped because of inexplicable fear that night, but stayed to persuade, things might have developed differently.

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

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

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

"What do you remember about that night?"

"It was very dark." An inexplicable fear was brewing. Dominic could feel his shoulders under his palms trembling, as if he had returned to that night, but even the narrator couldn't tell what he was afraid of.

Darkness is indeed scary, but it's not enough to scare adults so much.

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

It seemed like something invisible was roaring and swallowing.