Case 01:
The Missing Dullahan
GLENN WAS FULL OF QUESTIONS.
Apparently, he had woken up in the afterlife. A fairy (who normally spoke only two or three words at a time), had told him so, very eloquently. However—
“Wait a second.” After a temporary bout of nearly falling apart, he had calmed down. But still he couldn’t accept the fact that he was dead. After all, he was here, existing and still clearly conscious. How could he believe that he had died?
“If I’m dead…what am I? What is this?” Glenn asked.
“You exist only as your soul. Are you not aware? If your soul stays in your body, you become a zombie or a skeleton, and if only your soul remains in the living world, you become a ghost. Surely, you’ve seen a great many of these beings in Deadlich Graveyard City.”
“That…”
Glenn gave it some thought. Kunai Zenow was a flesh golem made by stitching together dead body parts, and she’d said she could hear dead souls speaking to her. The concept of the soul of a living being existing separately from the flesh wasn’t something that made sense in biological terms, but having remembered the phenomena he had seen in Graveyard City, Glenn couldn’t deny that souls did exist.
“However, some souls remain in their deceased body. And it is rare to make it to the underworld completely intact,” Cottingley explained, turning his head up to look at Glenn.
Glenn wondered about that word—intact’
“So then—why am I in the streets of Lindworm? If this is the Underworld as you say…does that mean the Underworld is exactly the same as Lindworm?”
“No, that is just how you are perceiving it.”
Glenn looked puzzled. He was confused by the fairy’s choice of words.
“It looks completely different to me. I see a quiet, dark, and decaying world. Town, you say? I only see a handful of buildings,” Cottingley countered.
“But—” Glenn tried to protest.
“Perhaps you have not completely crossed over yet. Only the truly deceased may gaze upon the underworld in its true form. If you are able to see this realm as a town you know well, perhaps that is evidence your soul is still connected to your physical body,” Cottingley offered.
Glenn flinched at that. He wondered how this world looked to Cottingley.
“Sometimes people see the world in a way that is convenient to them. Seeing the Underworld can be too much for a living being’s mind to handle, so it is likely they transform it intuitively.”
“Is that how it works?” Glenn asked.
“It’s a good thing I came. If you were completely dead, there would be very little chance of you coming back to life,” Cottingley continued.
Glenn sighed. If Cottingley was to be believed, that meant there was still a chance Glenn could be revived.
“So…does that mean you came to save me…Mr. Cottingley?”
“Did I not mention that? Ah, I suppose I did not. Obviously, whether or not a human lives or dies is of no concern to me, but there is no measuring the distress that our dear Miss Sapphee would suffer if you were to die. Furthermore, there was something unsettling about the abrupt visit of the Dullahan. As a fairy, I cannot ignore—”
“Excuse me, can you please get to the point?”
“I…came to save you,” Cottingley answered curtly, annoyed. “For now, I need you to get a grasp on your situation. You’ve been cleanly separated from your body and now exist only as a soul. There is a chance—if only a slim one—that you may come back to life. Perhaps it would be easier for you to understand this as a state of apparent death, or a near-death experience.
“Yes, thank you.”
Glenn accepted this explanation. A near-death experience… Those on the verge of death saw many strange things, and as a doctor, Glenn had read numerous such reports. Many had said they saw a river flowing nearby.
“A…river?” He looked at the seemingly bottomless canal. This aquatic sight was part of the Lindworm that Glenn knew well. Perhaps his subconscious was trying to tie this world to Lindworm? “Huh? Er…if that’s the case, does that mean that you are dead too, Mr. Cottingley?”
“Wh-what did you say? Nonsense!”
If this was the afterlife, surely Cottingley being present here meant he was also dead? Such was Glenn’s reasoning. But this clearly angered Cottingley.
“Do not subject me to human criteria! Fairies do not possess the same concepts of life and death in the first place! We are not bound by such rules. The reason fairies can come here is…because this place is extremely close to the fairy realm where we were born!”
“Close…you mean where you came from?” Glenn prompted him for clarification.
“Ah, well of course, when I say ‘close,’ I am referring not to distance but the fact that the dimensional phase is in the same vicinity. In that sense, it is fair to say that we fairies exist in the form of something similar to spirits.”
Glenn looked puzzled again.
“Ah, well, that is not important now. There is a more urgent matter at hand.” Cottingley flew up to Glenn’s level with a buzz. He looked directly into Glenn’s eyes, his own half-open eyes seeming to convey the depths of his knowledge. “Let me ask you, as a doctor. What does it mean to be alive?”
“Right… It means all organs are functioning, and you eat, excrete, sleep, and reproduce. In other words, repeated metabolic processes while also passing life to the next generation,” Glenn answered without hesitation.
Cottingley nodded, seemingly satisfied with that answer. “Correct. And we fairies do not eat or reproduce. Only the Queen Fairy can give birth to new fairies. Common fairies experience neither life nor death. This will not change for all eternity.”
Glenn looked at the fairy quizzically.
“The dead are the same. They are already dead, so nothing will change. They do not grow or metabolize. The Underworld and the fairy realm share similar characteristics, and therefore, I describe them as ‘close.’”
It was a unique perspective.