Chapter 39

Walking down the street, Kit pulls his robe closer around him, the chilly air biting into his skin. Over the following days, the fog had mostly dissipated and was no longer as dense but it hadn't gone away completely, traces of it still lingering in the air. He was able to breathe and the fog wasn't that much of a bother anymore, but the temperature had drastically dropped with it, and now it was more like winter than summer.

The streets are all deserted; almost no one wants to come out anymore. Not after what happened.

After the first day, when the whole situation with the DHPH had gone down, things had mostly calmed down, in a manner of speaking.

He'd heard from Kat what happened later. It had been over the phone, the conversation too brief to go into any details, but the general idea had gotten across. The person they had sent from the DHPH had barely shown up, only arriving to pass on the message and leaving as soon as possible.

The official story was that the forest was acting up (absolutely no mentions of a demon or anything similar), and that there was absolutely nothing to panic about, that it was all under control. But because the evil energy had tainted everything and everyone so thoroughly, it was a public health risk to let someone that had been contaminated out of the town.

Evil energy, in certain quantities, was almost like a viral disease in that it could spread from person to person. Once "contaminated", the person would start experiencing symptoms like a gastrointestinal infection. If gone completely untreated, the organs' tissue itself would start to rot, spreading through the whole body. But this was, of course, only if exposed to extreme quantities of evil energy, and the blood rain, though certainly shocking, hadn't been enough to reach those levels. It wasn't really enough to be "contagious" to other people.

But this was something the common public was not aware of. If the Department of Health and Public Hygiene said so, it's not like they could argue against it.

The real reason the town was being quarantined was so that no one outside the town would know about what was going on. (No one that didn't have enough rank anyways.) If all of a sudden a large number of people were seen evacuating their homes, it would be obvious something, something definitely not good, was going on. But if everyone was kept quarantined…

To keep all this very hush-hush, and depending on how things turned out, so would be the story the higher-ups would give. But for the time being, keeping this matter out of the public eye was priority. A scandal like this would only cause public unrest, something the government wanted to avoid at all costs.

'Maintain the public order.' Wasn't that the very mission of the Bureau of Magical Affairs? It wasn't public safety; it was all about control.

And so, everyone had been told not to go out of their houses if necessary; no one was to leave town (unless they had enough money for a bribe, that is), and now the town had become like a ghost town almost overnight. For the most part, the only people one would see out nowadays were public service employees or anyone along those lines.

It wasn't surprising. After what happened, people were scared. And to make matters worse, more strange and disturbing events, though on a lesser scale, had been popping up all over the place. Barely a week has passed, and they were already spread thin, the cases too many for them to handle. Kit hadn't gotten a single chance to even catch his breath, the cases coming in faster than they could be solved. That is, if they could even be solved. (And all of this on top of the missing person investigation. Really, the whole situation was too much, more pressure than he could handle.)

A few days ago, a stream (really more like a ditch) near the outer area of town, almost bordering with the forest, had suddenly been clogged with animal corpses. Like a never ending nightmare, the corpses, rotting flesh and waste flowed down the stream in a gruesome parade. In the morning, when one of the people living nearby had perceived the stench of the decomposing bodies they had gone over to investigate behind their house. Seeing the gut-churning scene, they had done what any normal person would have done and ran. Hours later, Kit had been at the scene.

(It had barely been 7 am, but since he hadn't even been going home to sleep, just taking quick naps when exhaustion won him over at the office, he had been the one person available to take up the call when a very distraught "client" had called in.)

Not surprisingly, nothing could be done about it. The only measure they could take was to have those people living closest to the stream move to another area ('only temporarily' they said, but whether that was true or not was not something Kit is too sure about). Day after day, the corpses kept piling up, until it was no longer a stream but more a mass grave.

Now he's coming back not because he is here to do anything about it, but because in all places where there had been unusual activity related to the demon's presence, he had been leaving "sentinels" with the hope of finding some sort of clues (whether about the missing person or the identity of the demon, either would be helpful). With the ink life summoning technique he could leave a little ink creature in each location and if any unusual activity was detected and the summon received an overcharge of magical energy or absorbed any evil energy, the spell would be undone and they would explode in a shower of black ink. Having performed a simpler version of the mind-linking technique on them, he would be alerted if this were to happen. Which is exactly what had happened just a few hours ago with the ink creature he had left stationed here.

Approaching the yellow tape line of the closed off area, a sense of deja vu, the premonition that something bad would happen causes a chill to run down Kit's spine.

"You're back again, sir?" the guard asks when he sees Kit. From the amount of times Kit had to come to the area, the guards already know him by sight.

"Mhm."

"You've been coming here an awful lot lately. Must be a real pain in the ass, eh?"

"Well, you know, it's the job. Nothing I can do about it."

"Ah, you're right about that." The guard lifts the tape to let Kit pass. "Doesn't make it any better though."

"Ah, before I forget," Kit addresses the guard, "has… have you noticed anything out of the ordinary in the area lately?"

"Hmm." The guard strokes his chin. "Not really. A few days ago some stupid kids tried to sneak in here on a dare, but other than that… Why? Did something happen?"

"No, no. Just asking," Kit lies. "Forget I asked."

Leaving the tape line behind, he heads down the small hill leading towards the stream. The place looks the same; no way to block out the overwhelming stench, and even after having seen it so many times, the sight of all the animals' dead bodies still makes Kit's insides churn. He does his best to ignore it and goes to the spot where he had left the ink summon, a bit farther off from the stream, partially hidden around some trees. Sure enough, there, on the ground, is the splotch of black liquid, the remnants of what used to be a tiny ink mouse.

So something did happen… But what?

Kit makes his way down the stream, looking for any clues he might find. The more he spends walking here, the more bearable the smell becomes, but the cold seeps into his bones, and after half an hour, he's shaking, drenched in a cold sweat, and miserable. He's been walking uphill, the physical exertion has him panting for breath, and he is almost at the end of the stream with still no clues as to what could have set off the alarm.

The stream itself goes into the forest, but when Kit reaches the edge of the forest he stops. He takes a few minutes to catch his breath, leaning his back against the nearest tree.

'Damn it all to hell. What if it was just a fluke?' Kit closes his eyes, considering the possibility. 'It's pointless. I should just head back…'

He opens his eyes. Dozens and dozens of animal corpses float downstream, their bodies bloated and the flesh falling off and rotting, flies swarming all over them. Birds, rabbits, squirrels, badgers, foxes… All sorts of forest animals: dead.

Kit feels his mouth sour. Truth was, he'd always had a bit of a weak spot for animals, and seeing them like this… The poor animals… What did they ever do to deserve this?

Watching absentmindedly as he is, he almost doesn't notice the one element out of the ordinary. In between all the decomposing bodies, most of them falling apart or already unrecognisable, telling one apart from the other was only possible if one were paying close attention. Which is why, it is only a split second after it has floated past him that Kit notices it.

At first, Kit almost can't believe his eyes. That… That couldn't be… He must be imagining it…

He rubs his eyes, blinking a couple of times to make sure it's real.

But sure enough, there, in between all those animal carcasses, is… a human hand!