Shunbr led them to the tree, one hand held the cigarette, the other still in the pocket. He exhaled his smoke and tilted his head to them; "It's sunny now," he said. "The tree only shoots when it's cloudy."
"The weather forecast told yesterday, it's going to be cloudy this afternoon." He continued.
More than a dozen people were hanged from the tree, but Shunbr showed no expression of fear, his careless, and looked no more than eighteen years old made Wynne wonder whether she was possible to get her $6000.
"Where are the people in your village?" Wynne asked Shunbr. Since entering the village, she hadn't seen a single person. Besides, the land outside the village was deserted. The houses in the village were dilapidated and hollow.
"Most of the young people have gone to the city. The few old people stay indoors." He took them to his house for rest as Shunbr replied.
Shunbr's house was a very old wooden house with cracks in the walls. When they got into the house, Wynne noticed a dirty, blind, and old woman with white hair sitting in the corner with her eyes closed. There was a bowl of unknown soup on the low table in front of her. Seeing that Wynne had been staring at the old lady, Shunbr scooped up a bowl of water and threw it on the low table in front of the old lady: "This is my grandmother, who lived more than a hundred years!"
"Wow, wow. That's fucking awesome!" George thumbed the old lady up.
"Where are your parents?" Wynne asked as she surveyed the tattered home.
Shunbr was unhappy and ignored her question. Seeing this, George quickly changed the subject to payment stuffs. Shunbr smiled disdainfully at him: "All the people in the village are afraid of death, would love to pay you if you can solve the problem."
But at the moment, the sky outside, when Wynne wasn't aware of became gloomy. Worried instinctively, Wynne took out her whistle.
With a loud bang, a huge lightning tore through the clouds above the village and fell straight down towards the huge willow tree! A thick black mist rose from the root of the willow.
Shunbr asked them to go upstair to the attic, then he pointed to the giant tree not far away and said, "Look, those things gonna coming out!"
Along the direction of his hand, Wynne saw many shadowy figures hung appeared from the branches. Even though the black fog cut them off, Wynne could sense that they were grim corpses with hideous faces, and whether by the wind or by chance, the heads of those deads was blown to look back the direction they were standing as they looked. It was dark, and they were staring at the three of them, with weird, threatening eyes, as if they were trying to live in the fog!
Wynne was a little freaked out by the dozen eyes, so she called out George.
"George?" Nobody responded. Looking around, George and Shunbr had left her side at an unknown time! She was the only one left in the attic.
At that moment, her mind was a little confused. She heard the sound of a door opening downstairs, quickly looked down and it was George sleepwalking straight through the black fog towards the willow tree. And Shunbr followed behind, probably felt her staring at them, the whole head of a strange 90 degree turn, violently looked up at her! He probably unexpected Wynne was still in the attic, full of surprise and anger: "Why don't you come down yet!"
Looking at his red eyes, a terrible feeling rose in her mind!
"What do you want to take him to?" Asked Wynne, standing in the attic, nervous and scared. Shunbr glanced at the tree, then disdained at her; "to be an oblation for sure!"
An oblation? To whom?
She was still deep in thought when suddenly the great willow tree began to shake and the dead bodies fell from the tree like ripe fruit.
After the bodies fell to the ground, in the thick fog from the willow tree, apparently dead people, stiffly stood up. "They're coming. You can't run away." Shunbr laughed at her. His words just dropped, dozens of bodies under the willow tree, started to walk toward them!
Wynne had no idea to handle such weird thing without Dooley's alert.
Now she kept repeating Dooley's words in her head, that if she defeated these things, he would leave her. Only if he left, she would go back to her normal life! With this in mind, Wynne tried to calm herself down to face the terrifying creatures.
The corpses rushed towards George, who was closest to them.
With George's life on the line, Wynne picked up the Porgu whistle, and blew it at the corpses.
"Pir,pir, beep, beep... " Came the sound of a witch's whistle.
Porgu whistle could refrain from all kinds of the reptile spirits. She was going to beat these things she thought and to encourage herself, she cursed a few times of shit Dooley, was it not for whom such a thing couldn't be happened to her.