Chapter 1633: The Lost Village
Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio
There were photographs on the investigation report and on the first page, there was a strong white man in a thick leather coat and a big cotton hat, standing in front of a low, small cabin. The photograph was a little blurred due to the quality and time. It looked a bit creepy and faint.
Li Du read on. There was no sign of life in the village. Rabel did not think much of it at that time. There was a questions and answers record in the report.
Q: Have you been to this village before?
A: No, it is my first time here in the far north area. You know, Mr. Cop, there is a story about Wendigo in the snow in the north. We hunters are scared of him because he eats people.
Q: Then why did you enter the village without thinking twice?
A: Sir, I was cold and hungry, and I felt like I was going to die, so I didnʼt think much about it when I saw the village. I had contact with the Inuit people before. Although they had weird customs, they were friendly and welcomed guests and at least they could save my life.
Q: Tell me, what did you first see in the village? At first glance, what did you see notice?
A: The first thing I saw was the houses, the layer of snow, and smoke from the kitchens. Actually what really mattered was not what I saw at first, but what I felt. When I got near the village, I felt there was something wrong with it, it was very weird.
Q: Why?
A: I am a hunter. I have a gun, I have dogs, you know, Newfoundlands, a very courageous breed. However, when they got near the village, they suddenly laid down on the ground all at once and refused to go any further.
I didnʼt think much about it at first. I was too tired and hungry and was feeling very cold, so I went into the village by myself. However, the village was quiet, without a sound, you know what I mean? I approached the village, but there was no sound at all…
Q: What does this mean?
A: I just felt weird and I didnʼt think much about it because I was really tired and hungry and cold and I felt like I was going to die and I just wanted hot water, or even better, hot milk.
Then when I thought about it, I realized the weird thing was that there was no barking. The Inuit are like us, hunters, and have many dogs in every house. However, when I entered the village, there was no dog barking. It was very odd…
Li Du continued to leaf through the dialogue, which revolved around the visitor’s first impressions of the village.
The hunter, named Rabel, entered the village and shouted a few times, but no one came out. He thought he was on the verge of breaking down, and his voice was hoarse and low, which was a possible explanation why no one heard him, so he pushed open a door at random.
There was no one in the room, but there was hot water in the pan on the hearth. He did not care too much for good manners and drank some hot water first. He then searched through the kitchen and found something to soak in the hot water to eat.
With the hot water and some rest, his condition had improved significantly. He felt strange just after that and searched around the village.
To his surprise, he found that not only was food being cooked in some of the houses in the village but also that the villagersʼ belongings and granaries were in perfect order and had no trace of being moved at all.
However, there was no life in the village, no man, no dogs, not another animal.
At that moment, he realized something. He thought something had happened to the village. Something that had taken the people away. However, it was hard to say what. There were no traces of a fight in the village. The Inuit people were very tough. They kept dogs and have guns at home, and each of them was good at fighting.
As Rabel thought of it, he noticed another odd situation. Not a house in the village had dogs, knives, or guns left around. All the weapons in every one of the houses were gone.
From this point of view, it looked like the village has been attacked by some horrible beast, and the villagers took their guns and dogs to fight it off. However, that didnʼt make sense either, not only because there was no sign of fighting in the village, but also because there were no footprints or other tracks in the snow around it…
Rabel felt terrified and left the village with his dogs, despite the exhaustion he still felt. He found the nearest police station and reported the situation.
The report continued to describe the situation. A few hours later, the royal Canadian mounted police arrived at the scene, according to the investigation report. At that time another hunter, Armand Laurent, and his two sons passed by this place too.
The Laurent family lived in a nearby settlement that was in conflict with the Inuit village, so the Canadian police seized them and questioned them as suspects.
The results of the investigation were still very unclear. The relationship between the white hunter villages and the Inuit villages was not good. After all, both sides were direct competitors and both relied on hunting for survival. However, they had quarreled at the most and did not get into any bloodshed before.
Armand came to the Inuit village because yesterday some hunters in his village saw the Inuit digging up their ancestral graves. The white hunters didnʼt know what they were up to. Therefore, they asked Armand and his sons to come and check what was going on.
The Canadian mounted police went to the white village and found that there were no casualties and no signs of fighting around the village, suggesting that the Inuit village had not disappeared as a whole because of having clashes with them.
At this point, they investigated the Inuit graves and found that as Armand had said, all of them had been hollowed out.
Now it was even stranger. The Inuit village had lost not only the living but also the dead!
The police and the white hunters realized something big had happened.
Disturbing the graves was a taboo for the Inuit, and doing so on a large scale was unthinkable. Therefore, if the Inuit dug out their graves and took away the dead bodies of their ancestors, it meant that it was their will to give up their place.
So, where did they go?
The final stage of research was fruitless. Because the village was so close to Lake Angikuni, the RCMP guessed they might have entered the lake.
They were right. They went to the lake and saw some dog poop, suggesting that Inuit dogs had been here.
However, they could not find much more than this, and eventually, the case was closed and labeled as a mystery, with at least a hundred people in a village disappearing without a trace.
In fact, there was no record of the name of the Inuit village, or the number of people or dogs, because the Inuit did not consider themselves Canadian, even though they stayed in Canada, and did not cooperate with the Canadian officials.
“These Inuit disappearances sound very similar to Steveʼs,” said Li Du after reading the report.
Brother Wolf pointed to a picture on the report and said, “Yes, very similar, and look at the island of Angikuni. It is not far from the shore, but the survey report did not mention the island.”
Then he pointed to a paragraph at the end of the report as he said this. “And here, boss, that is something to watch out for, too.”
