PFC Chapter 4239 Possession by Evil Spirits (9)
Chapter 4239 Possession by Evil Spirits (9)
Chapter 4239 Possession by an Evil Spirit (19)
"Have you met Schiller too?" Peter asked.
Bruce nodded and said, "Yes, but he's very elusive, and I don't know what he's doing. He was the first one to arrive, but he doesn't seem to want to be noticed by the evil spirit, so he's been avoiding him."
Peter knows more about Schiller than Bruce does, because Spider-Man Noir travels throughout the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and Nick Fury often hires him for dirty work at high prices; the number of high-ranking officials from the three major empires who have died at his hands alone is in the hundreds. He has a deep understanding of various Marvel heroes. Of course, he doesn't know the inside story and, like the other heroes, believes that Schiller is an counterpart from a different universe.
“Schiller is a professional, and under normal circumstances, he would not passively avoid it, unless being noticed by the evil spirit would be a more terrible thing.”
"Does being discovered mean death?" Bruce speculated.
Peter shook his head and said, "Probably not. Schiller told me I've been discovered, but I'm not dead, though there might be some more troublesome consequences. But none of that matters; we need to figure out how this world works."
"Have you gathered any intelligence over there?" Bruce asked.
“This town was controlled by the Mormons a long time ago, and we found their scriptures in the church. In addition, Kate and I suspect that some force hostile to the Mormons may have wiped out the people in the town.”
Peter briefly told Bruce what he knew and what he speculated, and Bruce said, "The clown we encountered who came back to life was a member of a circus, and that circus is probably involved in the evil business of human trafficking..."
The two exchanged information and immediately connected their leads. Bruce thought for a moment and said, "The circus era was probably the period when the Mormon Church in town started and developed. I estimate it was several decades ago, based on the age of Linda, the youngest person in town, which is her grandfather's generation."
“This is probably how this town developed,” Peter said. “Great Valley’s location isn’t great, and there aren’t any decent big cities around, but judging from various clues, this town was popular for a while. To support tourism and the service industry, you need a large enough population. The town’s original population was too small, and the birth rate from inbreeding would be very low. Only by trafficking people through the circus and forcing them to have children could the town’s population grow explosively.”
"That is indeed the most likely speculation. However, as far as I know, not everyone agrees with this, especially missionaries who have been to other places. For example, Linda's father may not have fully agreed with the doctrine and may even have wanted to escape."
“And what about Aunt Kane?” Peter said. “Since Linda’s father doesn’t approve, and her mother is an outsider, how could an outsider be more supportive of such doctrines than a local, and even accompany him back to a place like this?”
But suddenly, as if something had occurred to him, Peter said, "That might not be Aunt Kane."
"What do you mean?"
“I know this may be a bit shocking, but I have to say that Kate and I saw Aunt Kane’s body in the bathroom.”
"what?!"
Peter recalled, "At that time, we knew that Aunt Kane might be dead, but we thought she was an evil spirit that had just come back to life. But what if someone else was controlling her body?"
"The clown we encountered in the circus warehouse also suddenly came to life from a corpse state, and now it seems that it may also be the work of an evil spirit. The same evil spirit may be controlling these corpses."
“But there are also things that don’t make sense,” Peter continued. “If Aunt Kane was originally a good person and was only possessed by an evil spirit after her death, why would she have allowed her own daughter to have a child so early?”
“She might have been controlled before that,” Bruce suggested, raising a startling possibility. “A wealthy girl like Aunt Kane, if she were to get out of control or escape, the consequences could be catastrophic. If you were the cult leader, would you spare her life? It seems that she might have been dead and possessed the moment she stepped into town, the only way to ensure that she could never escape or expose what’s going on here.”
“But I don’t understand, if this evil spirit is someone from the town, how could it imitate Aunt Kane so well? Even Kate didn’t notice anything wrong with it.”
Peter is actually alluding here that Kate is Batwoman and a professionally trained police officer with a keen eye for detail. Furthermore, Batman himself has met Aunt Kane and didn't notice anything amiss. Controlling a complete stranger is no simple matter. If the evil spirit were a poor person, it wouldn't exhibit those habitual, subtle movements when controlling a rich person, making it easy for Batman and his team to spot the flaws.
“This proves that evil spirits may be able to peer into people’s memories, which is why they can imitate so perfectly,” Bruce said. “Or rather, this may be their specialty. Otherwise, how could they have tricked so many people into this world of memories?”
Bruce briefly explained to Peter his speculation about this spiritual world, namely that the people here might not only be townspeople, but also tourists who have come to visit Great Valley over the years.
“It seems that’s exactly right,” Peter said, stroking his chin. “Now the history of this town is roughly clear: At the end of the last century and the beginning of this century, the Great Valley Circus toured the United States, causing a sensation and attracting many tourists. However, the so-called circus was nothing more than a tool for human trafficking, and the religious forces entrenched in this closed town took advantage of this tourism boom to kill or imprison tourists in order to further expand the population. But one day, some accidents occurred, causing a massive drop in the town’s population, and the town could hardly continue to develop. And today, it has become a dead town, and the few living people may be puppets controlled by evil spirits.”
Bruce nodded, confirming the speculation, and then said, "We can't directly assume that the evil spirit is definitely a member of the Mormon Church. After all, as you said, the destruction of the town didn't benefit the Mormons at all; it seemed more like the work of their enemies. As for why it continues to drag people down after taking its revenge, it's possible that it has lost its humanity and reason. This spiritual world might have emerged from this, a means of self-preservation for those Mormons. Because they could no longer survive in the real world, they created this spiritual world and set it up to be exactly what Mormons like: there's no tea or coffee, no music or art, no outside information, not even a hospital. If you're sick, you just need to pray, and all you can do is engage in religious fraternity activities—isn't that exactly what those high-ranking Mormons want to see?"
"That's true. They even brought in tourists from other places who had been persecuted by them before, just to expand their population. Their reproductive desire is really perverted."
Bruce paused for a moment, then continued, "So now it seems that the evil spirits control the real world, and the Mormons control the spiritual world. But given their irreconcilable differences, they are unlikely to be content with this and will definitely want to completely eliminate the other and seize their territory. Our presence here is proof of that."
"Under what circumstances did you come here?" Peter asked.
“I went to the waterfall and found some clues, but I got soaked. On the way back, I developed a fever, and then everything went black, which led me here.”
"Me too. I was in a car accident before, and the wound on my head was never treated. I bled a lot, and I may have had some symptoms of excessive blood loss. When I went to the cemetery to look for clues, I lost consciousness."
“This wasn’t an accident,” Bruce said. “It seems we can only enter the spirit world when we are very weak. If we are not weak enough, the master of the spirit world might try to interfere with the real world, causing us to get injured through various accidents, forcing us to enter. Many tourists may have entered in this way.”
He paused for a moment and then asked, "How exactly did the car accident that caused your head injury happen?"
“To be honest, I don’t know,” Peter said. “I just remember seeing something, and when I came to my senses, the car had already overturned.”
"You don't have any memory of that time?"
Peter nodded and said, "I haven't been feeling well lately, and I even had a fight with Kate, so that's how it is."
“Something’s not right,” Bruce said. “This could be someone’s doing something wrong, and so am I. I was actually in pretty good shape, but after I got into town I started having nightmares all the time, and I caught a cold after spending the night in that abandoned house. If that hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t have had a fever.”
“Your suspicions are indeed very valid,” Peter said. “If the real world and the spiritual world are hostile, then they must both want to win over people from each other’s worlds. It’s possible that the master of the spiritual world is using tricks to hurt and weaken us, so that he can pull us in.”
“No, it’s possible it wasn’t actively pulled in,” Bruce said. “Schiller told me he hadn’t been discovered by the evil spirits yet and warned me to be careful, which suggests it might be a passive process. Once someone becomes very weak within the town’s boundaries, their spirit is drawn into the town. And if they lose themselves here, they might never get out.”
“Wait a minute,” Peter said. “Schiller said he’d found me, and I thought he meant when I entered the spirit world, he saw me. But is it possible he’s been watching me ever since I entered town?”
Bruce immediately realized what was going on and said, "He probably wanted to use the car accident to drag you into this mess, but the accident didn't cause enough damage, and your willpower was strong enough that he didn't succeed."
“But what’s so special about me?” Peter said.
Bruce recalled the gun he had seen on Peter's waist when he helped the people who had overturned the car. It was a standard police pistol. So he said, "Because you're a policeman, and a policeman from Westville."
"You mean, because I'm a policeman, if I disappear here, a lot of people will come looking for me, which will lure people from the city here, and then he'll find a way to pull them into his mental world?"
“It’s probably worse than that.” Bruce was clearly more pessimistic. He said, “You said you had no memory of the moment you were in the car accident. Is it possible that you were already possessed by an evil spirit at that time?”
Peter broke out in a cold sweat, for he suddenly realized why Schiller had reminded him that way. He said, "If my spiritual body is here, then who controls my body from the outside?"