Chapter 2: A Man-Faced Monster

2ND AUG 2021~ VERALUCTL

The desert was a beauty with only half a face of makeup; capricious, eerie, beautiful.

As darkness covered the team, the heat that had threatened to evaporate them during the day disappeared. The vast sky filled with a plethora of stars, bright and dull at the same time.

After setting up the tents, no one seemed to want to sleep as they huddled together and chatted over the top of each other.

An Jie sat at the side and grinned at them, sometimes looking up at the sky with a kind of relief, quiet like a philosopher who had witnessed the trials of time. There was a certain aura around him that all who walked in were helpless but to calm down in.

Mo Yannan couldn’t help but sit down next to him and said somewhat abruptly, “It seems that Mr An has traveled a lot.”

An Jie turned around and smiled at him. If one looked closely, silver strands were already faintly scattered throughout his dark hair. It wasn’t obvious from his face but time had more or less left its mark. Nevertheless, he still was handsome; pretty, even. “I don’t have any other hobbies. I’ve traveled so much these years that my heart has gone wild and I can’t stay in one place for long anymore.” 

He paused. “Professor Mo, it’s fate that has allowed us to walk together. Please don’t be so formal and just call me Xiao An.”

Mo Yannan smiled back. “Then why are you calling me Professor Mo? I’m older than you, wouldn’t it be easier to just call me Lao Mo?”

An Jie shook his head and laughed, not giving a definite answer.

Lao Ma’s eyes seemed to constantly stray towards An Jie. Now, he approached them, passing over a cigarette. “Want one?”

An Jie shook his hands. “Thanks but I quit.”

Lao Ma didn’t insist and took the cigarette back, carefully sniffing it, his face one of enjoyment though his mouth said the opposite. “It’s good that you quit; very good. This thing was called opium in the old days; bad for your body, not for your average person.”

An Jie stared at the cigarette in his hand for a while. “When I was young, I was quite addicted to smoking as well and it still smells good even now. I got into an accident some time ago and I couldn’t smoke, so I just quit. It seems like my heart’s more addicted than my body though.”

When he mentioned an accident, Meng Xiaoming’s curiosity piqued. “An accident when you were traveling?”

An Jie stretched his long legs and yawned. Somehow, just that one movement made Mo Yan think of a wanderer; of a son who left their family behind for freedom and travel, rendering him, a man of tradition, speechless1.

“No way, the captain of the suicide squad has health issues?” Li San’er joked. 

An Jie blinked at him. “My friend, President Mao taught us that the body is the capital of revolution.”

Li San’er laughed. “You’re right. Hey, Captain, where have you been to before? Care to share?”

An Jie thought about it. “Well, there were many places. I’ve passed through the Atlantic Cemetery by boat which was truly a race with death and much scarier than this; I’ve trekked with hiking teams through the Himalayas and Mt Kilimanjaro, though my physique wasn’t great so I didn’t manage to achieve anything; and once, I was almost trapped by an avalanche and god knows how long I walked on the snowy mountain. I almost lost my limbs…”

Mo Yannan stared at him with wide eyes, unable to believe that such a frail looking man had so been on so many great journeys. Out of nowhere, a mild envy rose in his own heart; a desire to experience what he had experienced.

Everyone chatted and gossiped freely, the atmosphere loose and comfortable. Suddenly though, Lao Ma straightened his back, his normally faded, nonchalant eyes sharpening. The rest of the camp jumped and held their breaths.

Lao Ma pressed one hand against the ground, a finger on his lips. “Don’t move, don’t speak.”

He bent down just slightly and listened to the ground carefully.

Before long, even Mo Yannan could hear the sound coming from beneath the sand- some sort of chilling rustling, as if something was approaching them from beneath the countless layers.

Lao Ma commanded the group quietly as if facing a great enemy, “Everyone, get into a circle. Professor Mo, stand in the middle, and Mr Li, please pass the guns around so that everyone has one.”

Li San’er didn’t dare delay and hurriedly opened a bag, taking out a number of guns with a variety of different models. The team had brought a lot of them for the trip, though as for where they came from and whether or not they were legally acquired, despite being an official archaeology team, no-one knew. It was only Shen Jiancheng that was informed of their origin, but he had refused to expand further other than saying that someone had sponsored them. Still on guard, Lao Ma glanced down at the guns, picked up a Desert Eagle, and threw it to An Jie. “Do you know now how to use it?”

An Jie seemed to be fully relaxed, not feeling a shred of danger as he stood next to Mo Yannan. Sure enough, adventurous people had nerves thicker than telephone poles2. It was only when he saw the gun that he put up his guard, his shoulders hunching in slightly as he caught it perfectly. He lowered his eyes and loaded it in a surprisingly orderly manner.

As An Jie adjusted his position, Mo Yannan noticed his side profile. He suddenly felt that his eyes were very bright, like they were shining under the starlight. Then, a gunshot rang out and he jumped mentally. A thin wisp of smoke floated out from Lao Ma’s gun, the bullet buried under the layers of sand. The rustling quieted for a moment as everyone’s eyes focused on that spot where the bullet had entered.

A scream rang out, sharp, shrill, and spine-chilling… The most ghastly of all, that it was a woman’s.

Mo Yannan’s legs wobbled as he shakily clutched onto An Jie’s jacket. “Was… Was that a human? Did we hit a human?”

An Jie’s eyes stared at where the scream came from and shook his head, expressionless. “Humans cannot walk underneath the sand, don’t worry about that-” His voice rose slightly. “That thing most likely isn’t dead; everyone be careful, I can hear…”

Before he could finish his warning, the sand in front of them burst up almost two meters into the air. Eerie hissing accompanying its rise; a monstrous being dug itself out of the sand from nowhere. Not a single person retreated. After seeing it clearly, they were frozen stiff.

At first glance, the monster looked like a giant spider, eight furry legs stretching in different directions, each leg almost two meters in length with scythe-like blades on their insides and outsides. But it could not be a spider. Aside from Harry Potter, a spider this size was unheard of, and even in Harry Potter, none of the spiders dragged a tail behind them!

Li San’er opened his mouth as if in a trance. “Oh God… look- look at its head, it’s got a head, it’s got a head…”

Every animal had a head. Li San’er came from a grave-robbing family and could have been said to have seen things that normal people wouldn’t have dreamed of, and yet, he had been terrified speechless. By the thing with a head.

Because the thing had on it a human’s head. A woman’s head, its hair dragging on the floor and tangled between its legs, the black strands attached to its skull fluttering brokenly with its movements.

That face was even heart-shaped3, so pale that it was almost blue. Even though it had all the outlines of proper features, it was like they had been painted directly onto that skin, as still as stone. The thing stood in front of the team, its face’s eyes as vacant and empty as dead fish’s, staring straight ahead and bulging slightly out of their sockets. It was horrifying; disgusting. Unspeakably so.

The eeriest thing of all was the bullet wound, clear in the center of the face’s forehead.

The team formed into a row. Mo Yannan was barely able to stand, half his weight leaning against An Jie. An Jie used one hand to support him, his gaze never leaving that man-faced monster in front of them.

Lao Ma swallowed, sweat slowly forming on his hands. He glanced across everyone and carefully whispered to Shen Jiancheng, “That thing’s definitely not here to help, I definitely hit it.”

“You did. I heard it just then; it was definitely the sound of a bullet hitting flesh. Ma-ge4, what is that thing?” Shen Jiancheng didn’t say anything, perhaps from shock, but An Jie cut in, his voice extremely quiet, his lips barely moving.

Before he finished speaking, the monster suddenly took a step forwards, staring menacingly at them.

Li San’er felt a cramp forming in his leg. “It’s over, it’s over, this big sister looks like it’s going to eat us for entree,” he said, even smelling his armpits, his face bitter. “We haven’t showered in days; does this sister like pickled entrees?”

Meng Xiaoming failed to grasp his sense of humour. She hadn’t blinked in a long time, her nerves under intense pressure, and with a tremble, her gun fired itself. A bullet flew out, hitting right into one of the monster’s legs. The monster tripped and roared in fury, the human head spinning around in a full circle. It lunged at her.

Meng Xiaoming screamed, a strangely similar sound to the roar of the monster. It pierced shrilly across the cool night, again and again like knives slashing across their hearts.

Lao Ma shouted, “Disperse! Everyone, disperse!”

An Jie suddenly pushed Mo Yannan into Meng Xiaoming, the impact shoving them both away from the monster. The monster didn’t care about lofty morals or sacrifice though- its giant body pushed An Jie down, the starlight above dragging long shadows from each of its scythe-like legs. Mo Yannan’s eyes widened and he wailed. 

“An-!”

An Jie’s slender-looking body suddenly bent down, twisting at an unbelievable angle as he fell sideways onto the ground. Those curved blades passed by his ears, the hair by his temple shaved off, landing softly on the sand. Mo Yannan’s legs were now wobbling like noodles as Meng Xiaoming covered her mouth and Li San’er stared in shock.

A giant mouth suddenly opened from the monster’s stomach, its fangs splayed, a rotting stench hitting An Jie’s face. He remained expressionless and as the monster opened its bloody mouth to bite down, he jerked his hand into its mouth, a few dull gunshots following immediately.

The surroundings fell silent.

Saliva mixed with purple blood dripped from the monster’s mouth, its entire body from its stomach to its back now shredded. It began to scream, an ear-piercing sound both like a human’s yell and a beast’s shriek. They watched as its giant body collapsed. An Jie pulled out his bloody arm in an instant and quickly jumped out from under the falling monster, kneeling next to it, panting.

“An Jie!” Mo Yannan was still trembling but he was the first to jump up, almost crawling over. “You- you- you…”

An Jie’s brows furrowed a little, placing the gun beside him with a movement that was difficult to tell was purposeful or casual, and scrutinized the wounds on his arm.

Li San’er stood up next. “Quickly, quickly, find the first ait kid! The saliva of this monster better not be venomous!”

Everyone else began moving as if waking up from a dream. Li San’er grabbed the first aid kit, Meng Xiaoming helped treat the wounds, and Mo Yannan acted as their assistant. Lao Ma looked thoughtfully at An Jie and the gun next to him before crouching next to Shen Jiancheng, carefully inspecting the corpse of the monster.

Fortunately, despite how scary the wounds looked, they didn’t hit anything vital, and the unnatural teeth of that man-faced monster were not venomous. It seemed like it was a creature with a naturally strong physique, not needing venom.

Shen Jiancheng and Lao Ma put on a pair of gloves and flipped the corpse, revealing its huge mouth to everyone else once more. It was almost a meter alone in diameter, not a single gap between its teeth when closed; even sharper than the beast’s legs. Lie San’er rapped the exposed teeth nervously. “This big sister has great oral health huh? There’s not even a gap left for insects.” He rubbed his finger against a tooth accidentally and almost immediately, a wound appeared. Li San’er gasped. “My god, my good brother An Jie must have moved very fast; if he was slower by even just a second, he would’ve lost his entire arm! My man, did you come from a Shaolin temple?”

An Jie smiled but didn’t give him an answer, his eyes staring unblinkingly at the human head.

Lao Ma looked up and saw his gaze. “What, do you also think this head is odd?”

An Jie was silent for a moment. “Is that an organ grown on an animal? It’s far too human-like.” He stretched his wounded arm out to be treated. “Is it possible to do an autopsy on it for a closer look?”

“Didn’t Meng-jie5 learn how to do an autopsy?” Li San’er said carelessly. “Open it up then and take a look.”

Meng Xiaoming turned to look at the head on top of the monster and frowned as if forcing back disgust. She hesitated for a while before saying, “I did learn some things about autopsy, but…”

“I’ve also learnt it. How about this; I’ll do it, and you’ll assist me,” An Jie nodded to his arms. “I won’t be able to move that well, so I’ll have to trouble you, Ms Meng.”

Author’s Notes: I’m hardworking I’m hardworking I’m hardworking

1The word used here to describe An Jie is 浪子, which Google Translate translates to ‘prodigal son’, a reference to the biblical tale of a son who left his father behind with the inheritance he was given and wasted all of it. It is also a general description for people who are not tied down by the moral and legal obligations. They’re people who left their homes, and mostly used for people who live in debauchery or faraway wanderers.

2Their reactions to the things around them and their ability to read the situation is lacking.

3A face with a very pointy chin. In Ancient China, it was believed that pointy faced chins such as triangle and heart faces were faces of misfortune and that the owner would die early, hence the ‘even a heart shaped face’. You have to wonder what Ancient China would think of anime…

4Brother Ma, where ‘brother’ is used more akin to a term for familiarity or friendship. Usually, he’s called Lao-Ma, where the term ‘lao’ means old. It acts as a familiar-casual prefix for an elderly person. ‘Ma’ is his surname which means horse in Chinese. It’s… a pretty common surname in China. (L: …what are you trying to say here Vera)

5Older sister. A familiar-casual suffix for a female older than the speaker. They do not need to be related by blood.