Chapter 9: The Banshee (2)

The more Everly thought about it, the more convinced she became that the banshee might truly exist.

If she compared it to a horror movie, then she and her father, Shelly, were exactly the kind of dull, death-seeking protagonists everyone loved to hate. Clues and warnings were practically being shoved into their mouths, yet they still thought everyone around them was joking. Oblivious and unaware, they turned a blind eye to the lurking danger—and even managed to make things worse by charging straight toward it. From the other side of the screen, the audience would be so furious and anxious they’d slam down their bowls and curse the protagonists as idiots.

She suspected she had seen through the truth. However, tragically, even if she noticed something was wrong, she couldn’t change the situation at all—because she couldn’t speak… Ahhh, damn it! When she got back, she had to practice harder. She was determined to force this disobedient tongue of hers to behave! (╯°□°）╯

Shelly the idiot, of course, couldn’t hear Everly’s violently surging inner monologue.

He simply treated everything explained in the exhibition hall as nothing more than a story. After finishing the account in the second display case, he had already started walking toward the third.

Seeing this, Everly quickly reined in her thoughts and refocused her attention on the exhibits.

The story in the third display case continued directly from the second.

Not long after the banshee was killed, the last placer gold mine in Pukati Town was officially declared exhausted. With no profit left to be made, large numbers of prospectors packed up and left Pukati, heading west in search of better opportunities. Almost overnight, the town fell into desolation, no longer bustling with traffic and noise as it once had been.

The residents who had settled there were unwilling to accept this reality. They sought out the town mayor, Achilles—descendant of the former mayor Sokdis—and hoped that Achilles could, as had been done twenty-five years earlier, hold the […] ritual to call back the gods’ favor and restore Pukati to its former glory.

But Achilles refused them.

“No. I can’t do it… Humans should not pray for power that does not belong to them. That path only leads us into the abyss,” he said.

Achilles lost his only two children in the confrontation with the banshee. Consumed by grief and self-reproach, he withdrew from town affairs and became profoundly dispirited. Perhaps for this reason, when the townspeople—egged on by a fanatical believer—secretly set up an altar and prepared to carry out the […] ritual, he failed to notice in time.

The ritual was presided over by the fanatic, a man named McCoff. Brimming with ambition, he believed that his devotion and loyalty to the god were in no way inferior to Sokdis’s. If Sokdis had been favored by the deity, then he certainly could be as well!

However, for reasons unknown, something went wrong, and the ritual failed.

When Achilles discovered what had happened, he was furious. He immediately ordered the ritual site sealed off and strictly forbade the townspeople from conducting the […] ritual ever again. His iron-fisted measures stirred deep resentment among the townsfolk. The town’s decline had caused their standard of living to plummet, and at this critical moment, the town government—on which they had pinned all their hopes—failed to provide a satisfactory answer. McCoff continued to fan the flames, claiming that Achilles’s actions were meant to keep the power of the “prophet” monopolized within the Plos family…

As tensions built to a breaking point, the conflict finally erupted. In the chaos, someone lost control and accidentally killed Achilles.

The Plos family was small to begin with, and with Achilles’s death, its bloodline was extinguished in Pukati. For the sake of the placer gold mines, the townspeople could only place all their hopes in the […] ritual. Over the following years, Pukati Town conducted several more rituals in succession, but Sokdis may have concealed certain truths back then—without members of the Plos family involved, no matter how many times the ritual was performed, the people were never able to obtain a new “prophet.”

Worse still, the banshee of the sea returned.

She appeared in the icy seawater, among pitch-black reefs, and within the fog that blanketed the town. The lighthouse’s beam was her eyes; the sea and the mist were the tendrils she extended. Wherever her shadow passed, countless families were shattered, forever losing their children… The return of the sea banshee drove more and more townspeople to pack their belongings and leave Pukati. Those who remained did not give up and tried to organize forces to hunt her down. However, without the aid of an exorcist, they could not even locate the banshee’s lair.

“Waves surge high, the fog draws near,

The sea demon comes, the child disappears,

Carried away, never to return…”

This was a poem that circulated widely in Pukati at the time.

At the cost of endless bloodshed and tears, through a long struggle and tense standoff with the banshee, the people of Pukati eventually distilled four prohibitions: do not take children to the seaside; do not take children out on foggy days; do not dry children’s clothes in the fog; and do not let children be exposed to the lighthouse’s light. Any household with children under the age of seven was required to strictly observe these rules—otherwise, they risked losing their children.

Thus, the people of Pukati have coexisted with the sea banshee to this very day.

…

The exhibits in the third display case corresponded to the story on the wall. Placed at the very front were several newspapers reporting the exhaustion of the gold mines and the town’s decline. Next came a black-and-white photograph: in it, a gaunt young man in his early twenties stood atop a raised platform, arms lifted high as he addressed the crowd below. The listeners gathered around him looked utterly entranced—this was presumably a photograph from one of McCoff’s speeches. Behind it, gleaming under the lights, was the dagger that had killed Achilles, mottled with rust, looking at a glance as though the bloodstains had never been wiped away. Further back were a missing-child notice and a stone slab engraved with the poem and the four prohibitions.

That stone slab was the final exhibit in the museum.

“‘Waves surge high, the fog draws near;

The sea demon carries the child away, never to return…’

What a poem full of imagery! Coming here was absolutely the right choice—my head is bursting with inspiration!”

Shelly failed to sense the danger hidden beneath the prohibitions. His entire attention was captured by that ancient poem. He kept reciting it over and over, and the more he did, the brighter his eyes became, a flush of excitement gradually blooming across his pale cheeks.

A powerful urge to create welled up from the depths of his heart. Without lingering any longer in the town center, he carried Everly out of the museum and hurried home. He casually set the baby down somewhere, then grabbed his drawing paper, paints, and other supplies and plunged headfirst into his new studio.

This frenzied, all-consuming state—Shelly’s total immersion in painting—lasted a full half month.

During those two weeks, aside from eating, sleeping, and feeding the baby, he spent every waking moment painting, deaf to all the noise and disturbances of the outside world.

Unlike her carefree, good-for-nothing father, Everly—having gone through the townspeople’s warnings and the museum’s carefully laid-out story—was now convinced that the sea banshee truly existed. As a result, she kept a vigilant watch on the weather outside every day through the tightly shut glass windows.

Pukati Town lay by the sea, and because of the terrain, whenever the sea breeze rose, the moist air would travel up along the headland. When it reached the top, where Pukati was located, it cooled and condensed, forming a thick white fog that blanketed the town.

Foggy days were common here. Over the course of half a month, heavy fog descended three times in total.

Fortunately, since Shelly was constantly painting and had no time to mind her, she spent all three foggy days curled up safely on the large bed indoors, passing them without incident.

Unfortunately, Lady Luck would not stand by Everly’s side forever.

One morning, half a month later, when Shelly opened the tin of formula, intending as usual to make Everly a cup of ice-cold, refreshingly chilled milk, he discovered that the formula had run out.

Because Pukati Town had no stores selling baby supplies, Shelly had failed to restock Everly’s formula on his last shopping trip. Then, he had been completely absorbed by the museum’s banshee story and thrown himself into painting. In his momentary negligence, he didn’t realize the formula had run out until it was completely gone!

The nearest source of formula was in neighboring Kate Town—a round trip by car would take half a day. Considering that it wasn’t easy to make the trip, and with winter approaching, Shelly decided to pick up not only formula and diapers for Everly but also a few thick, warm outfits.

Of course, buying clothes meant bringing the baby along—Shelly had no ability to gauge sizes with his eyes! So, lying on the bed and practicing her “ah-ah” sounds, Everly didn’t get her bottle. Instead, she got her useless father’s clumsy hug.

“Ugh, it stinks!”

Thanks to Shelly’s negligence, Everly hadn’t had a proper bath in half a month. Bringing her closer, a strange odor wafted to his nose, and he frowned in distaste.

“If I’m going to take you out in public, I need to clean you first—don’t want people saying I abuse children…” he muttered as he grabbed her. In the bathroom, his technique was rough as he soaped her up and scrubbed her all over. Seeing the dirty clothes she had taken off, he decided to save time by tossing them into a basin and giving them a few careless wrings while washing her.

After the bath, her hair was dried and she was dressed in clean clothes from the cabinet—Everly was once again a “ninety percent new” little baby.

Stepping out of the bathroom, Shelly went into the yard to hang the laundry, leaving Everly temporarily on the sofa. She leaned forward, “ah-ah”-ing, reaching out endlessly toward the outdoors—

No, don’t! Although the weather was clear and sunny, she had a bad feeling… Stop, useless father! Can’t the clothes just dry inside? Don’t hang them outside!

Shelly didn’t understand Everly’s baby language.

He was still thinking about the unfinished paintings in his studio. Once the clothes were hung and he saw that Everly’s hair had dried, he eagerly went to the town center, paid for a car, and set off for Kate Town with Everly in tow.

This trip had taken longer than expected. They had encountered road construction and had to take a large detour. By the time they finished shopping in the neighboring town and returned, it was nearly evening.

The car drove up the slope and onto Pukati Town’s quiet streets. Through the gaps between buildings, Everly saw a brilliant sunset hanging on the horizon—vivid, fiery clouds lighting up most of the sky.

It looked like Pukati had been sunny all day.

Everly’s anxious heart sank slightly.

But she still didn’t dare to relax completely—her baby clothes were still hanging out in the yard. Until she saw Shelly actually take them in with her own eyes, she wouldn’t feel fully at ease.

She waited silently. Finally, “Screeeech—!” The car stopped at their doorstep.

Shelly paid the driver, telling him to wait, and got up first, carrying Everly back into the house. As they passed the yard’s drying rack, Everly seized the opportunity: she lifted one hand to pinch the soft flesh of Shelly’s cheek, while the other pointed straight at the clothes on the rack. Her body leaned forward, and from her mouth came a series of urgent, halting “Ko… ko-ko…” sounds.

What she meant to say was “clothes”, but for a baby just six months old, that word was far too complicated to pronounce.

Luckily, her effort wasn’t wasted. Attracted by her sudden, unusual behavior, Shelly followed her gaze—and quickly spotted the clothes hanging on the rack.

“Oh, right, I should bring the clothes in,” he said.

Everly’s heart leapt. Without needing any reassurance, she let go of her tormenting grip on her clueless father, snuggling back into his arms as he carried her to the sofa and put her down. Then he returned to the car to bring in all the baby supplies they had purchased.

With everything brought inside, Everly looked at Shelly expectantly, her eyes silently urging him to go into the yard and retrieve her clothes.

But in disappointing her father in the “forgetful” department, Shelly did not disappoint—he completely forgot about the clothes while fetching another item!

He bent down to scoop up his incessantly “ko-ko”-ing daughter, carried Everly to the bedroom, and prepared a bottle of milk with cold water for her dinner. Once she was settled, Shelly turned away without a second thought and went straight to his studio.

“……”