1888: Memoirs of an Unconfirmed Creature Hunter-Chapter 77: Terrifying Nursery Rhyme

This was a dwelling completely different from the spacious apartment on Baker Street.
There were no gleaming brass door plates, no tidy corridors maintained by dedicated staff.
As Lin Jie walked up the slightly narrow wooden stairs that creaked under the wear of time, he could clearly smell the sour odor of cabbage in the air, along with the musty scent emitted by old, damp wood.
This was the London of ordinary people—crowded, noisy, but resilient.
When Arthur Weston opened that apartment door with its peeling paint, the warmth and aroma that rushed out formed a barrier separating the gloomy, cold world outside.
"Oh, Mr. Lin! Please come in, come in! It must be freezing outside!" Weston's face blossomed with genuine delight.
The cuffs of his starched, faded shirt still bore ink stains from organizing archives.
The apartment wasn't large and looked somewhat cramped, but it was kept spotlessly clean by Mrs. Weston.
A pot of richly fragrant Irish lamb stew simmered, its brown broth bubbling, the sweet scents of carrots and potatoes permeating the air.
"Good evening, Mrs. Weston." Lin Jie smiled and handed over an exquisitely wrapped paper box he held.
It contained the latest Parisian fruit pâte de fruits he had specially selected from a high-end confectionery on Regent Street.
"A small gift, I hope you like it."
This gift was quite expensive, far beyond the spending power of an ordinary clerical police officer, but for the current Lin Jie, it was nothing.
And for the Weston family, it was both a respectable token of gratitude and a way for him to offer help without hurting their pride.
Mrs. Weston was a gentle, somewhat careworn typical British middle-aged housewife. Seeing the beautiful packaging, a flicker of unease crossed her eyes, but it was mostly gratitude.
She carefully accepted the candy box, thanking him repeatedly, then placed it on the mantelpiece as if it were a treasure.
"Uncle Lin!" a clear voice rang out.
Lily Weston, that radiant little girl, wearing a clean cotton dress, ran out from her room.
During their last meeting at the café, this learned and gentle older brother from the East had left a deep impression on her.
This break after the recent operation was not just physical rest for Lin Jie, but also a spiritual "return."
After receiving Arthur's invitation letter, he had set off immediately.
He needed to frequently return to this mundane, everyday life filled with the warmth of ordinary human existence to stabilize his mental anchors and avoid having his mind affected by the anomalies of various UMA cases.
After dinner, the Westons busied themselves in the kitchen, while Lin Jie sat before the warm fireplace reading Lily's beloved "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" to her.
"...And so Alice drank from the bottle, and her body began to shrink rapidly, smaller and smaller, until she was as tall as a table leg..."
Lin Jie narrated this bizarre fairy tale in his magnetic voice.
Lily curled up in a small armchair beside him, chin in her hands, listening with rapt attention, occasionally coughing. Her shadow, stretched long by the dancing firelight, was cast upon the wall behind her.
It was a peaceful, harmonious scene.
Yet, just as he turned to a new page to continue reading, Lily seemed somewhat distracted.
She no longer asked questions like "Why does the White Rabbit look at his pocket watch?" as before, but instead hummed a faint melody softly to herself.
It was a melody Lin Jie had never heard before.
It didn't resemble any of the cheerful nursery rhymes circulating through London's streets and alleys.
Its tune was strange, the transitions between scales filled with dissonance, the sound carrying a chilling quality that could seep into one's heart.
"Lily?" Lin Jie stopped and asked gently, "What are you singing? This song is really special, I've never heard it before."
Lily seemed startled from her own little world. She blinked her innocent large eyes, shaking her head somewhat confused.
"I don't remember very well..."
As she spoke, she used her innocent childlike voice to softly, haltingly sing out the lyrics behind that melody:
"There was a crooked man, who walked a crooked mile..."
"He found a crooked sixpence, upon a crooked stile..."
"He bought a crooked cat, which caught a crooked mouse..."
"And they all lived together, in a little... crooked house..."
The lyrics themselves carried the illogical eeriness and absurdity characteristic of old nursery rhymes.
But when paired with that unsettling melody and sung softly by an innocent twelve-year-old girl, a chill instantly crawled up Lin Jie's spine.
His nerves, made sensitive by his [Reverberation Touch], tingled faintly at this moment.
This isn't right.
Lin Jie closed the book in his hands and asked in the gentlest, most natural tone he could muster, "This song is very interesting. Did someone teach it to you? A classmate at school, or..."
"No," Lily shook her head again, a trace of childish pride on her face, "I just knew it myself. Look, Uncle Lin, I even found the thing from the song!"
As she spoke, she pulled something out of the small pocket of her dress as if presenting a treasure, offering it to Lin Jie.
It was a coin.
An old-looking Victorian era sixpence silver coin.
Its surface had become somewhat blurred from years of circulation and friction.
But unlike ordinary old coins, this coin's shape showed a slight, unnatural "crook."
It wasn't as if it had been violently bent by human force.
Even the profile relief of Her Majesty the Queen on the coin was affected by this warp, the corner of her mouth curved into a strange, seemingly smiling yet not smiling arc.
"See, a crooked sixpence!" Lily said proudly, pointing at the coin with her little finger, "I found it last month by the stile near our door, just like in the song!"
Lin Jie's gaze locked onto the coin, his heart sinking uncontrollably.
A nauseating spiritual aura emanated from that silver coin.
His mind immediately began racing at high speed.
An ordinary girl suddenly learns an eerie nursery rhyme unknown to anyone.
Then she "coincidentally" finds a spiritually polluted "token" matching the description in the nursery rhyme right outside her own home.
These two events connected together point towards only one chilling conclusion—
Lily has likely already been marked by someone, or some UMA.
Since he first met Lily, her complexion had always been poor, and she often coughed;
it seemed it wasn't simply illness.
Lin Jie's heart surged, but the expression on his face remained gentle.
It would be best to resolve this matter discreetly himself, trying not to spread panic to the Weston family.
He also forcefully suppressed the impulse to reach out and touch that coin.
With his [Reverberation Touch] ability, a single touch would immediately allow him to "see" the coin's origin and all the information about the thing behind it.
But the consequences, unprepared as he was now, were unpredictable.
"Wow, that's a really amazing discovery, Lily." Lin Jie smiled in admiration, "You're such a lucky treasure hunter. But these old coins can sometimes be a bit dirty. It's better to let your parents keep it safe for you, right?"
He skillfully persuaded Lily to hand the coin over to Weston, who had come over upon hearing them.
Mr. Weston didn't think much of it, just praised his daughter a few times with a smile, then casually placed the crooked sixpence into a pottery jar on the mantelpiece used for odds and ends.
That location was seared into Lin Jie's memory.
It was getting late, so Lin Jie stood up to take his leave.
The Westons warmly saw him to the door, with Mrs. Weston even packing some of the stewed lamb into a clean takeaway container, insisting he take it back for lunch tomorrow.
"Thank you again for visiting, Mr. Lin. Lily looked absolutely delighted today." Weston said sincerely at the doorway.
"I enjoyed it very much too. Next time, I'll bring a new storybook." Lin Jie responded with a smile, though a heavy weight pressed on his heart.
Just as he was about to reach the stairwell corner, he felt a sudden prompting and glanced back.
Through the dim hallway light, he took one last look at the apartment door that had just offered him warmth and solace.
In that instant, his pupils sharply contracted.
He saw the doorframe, which should have been rectangular, its top right and bottom left corners momentarily "warp" like a reflection disturbed by a stone thrown into a lake!
The distortion lasted less than a tenth of a second before immediately returning to normal, so fast it seemed like an absurd hallucination caused by the light and fatigue.
But Lin Jie knew it wasn't a hallucination.