Traces of the Deceased
Strangely enough, the figure took a step back. Then, with a creepy creaking sound, it turned its body around and began advancing one step at a time in the direction I needed to go. Its unsteady, limping gait didn't waver its center of balance, though.
Ugh. Looks like the odds of this being an invitation just shot up, huh?
Visually, it was still bright, but the overall vibe felt like a basement with not a single point of light. The chill was still there, but it wasn't the actual cold of my body—the warmth in my clenched fist still carried the tepid air.
Suddenly, my field of vision widened diagonally. Forty-five degrees to each side. This room wasn't square; it had a door at the corner. Or rather, there was no clear boundary separating inside from outside, so calling it a room I had entered was ambiguous.
Before I could fully assess the layout, chunks of what looked like human remains—stuck to every corner like haphazardly discarded trash—fixed countless eyes on me, drilling into my sight.
I called them "human pieces" because that's exactly what they were: people sliced apart and lumped together like garbage in the corners. Whether those pieces were alive or this was a place where the dead lived on, I couldn't tell, but they were staring at me with clear intent.
If they'd crawled toward me, I'd have screamed and bolted backward, but fortunately, they just stayed put. I wished it was an illusion, but the eerie blue glow embedded in their eye sockets shifted to follow my movements.
Would've been better if it was just my imagination.
In the center of this quadrilateral room where I'd entered from a corner. Maybe the only light source was here—a waterfall of illumination poured down from above.
Beyond the edge of the light, in the dark space, the gazes from the meat piles clinging up to the walls stared at me like stars.
And at the center of the light, in the middle of the room, the black silhouette that had guided me this far raised an arm reduced to nothing but bone and skin.
Thinking it was about to do something weird, I halted. But it pointed a finger at the floor.
The overwhelming stares encircling the walls had distracted me, but there, where its finger aimed, lay something familiar. Not something I'd seen often, but one I'd have to get sickeningly used to from now on.
A grayish-white school uniform.
That caught my eye first, then the person wearing it.
Objectively, it wasn't a child but a teenager close to adulthood. And not just one person. Or rather, by body parts alone, about 1.4 people—but counting heads, it was three.
Beyond a face split in half, a boy wept bitterly. There was a girl—clearly of a horned race originally—who'd grown horns that pierced both her eyeballs. Above her, a girl with nothing but bones below the collarbone stared blankly at the ceiling, expressionless.
For a split second, an impulse surged to purify this whole area with fire, but reason mercilessly crushed the emotion.
Those watching me from the shadows with faint blue glows weren't the ones who made the three sprawled here. The conclusion hit my brain before the reasoning, though explaining the evidence right now would be tough.
The cuts were too sharp. The vertical bisect on the boy, the wound on the horned girl's neck—they were all excessively clean. The girl gazing vacantly at the ceiling had an impossibly pristine injury, too. Like it had been deliberately made that way.
If the surrounding things had attacked, the cross-sections were far too precise. Even the meat lumps had no sharp protruding teeth. No weapon capable of such wounds was in sight.
At best, there were human arms, but even with superhuman strength, wounds like these wouldn't result—that much was obvious with a moment's thought.
By chance, my eyes met the half-remaining boy's. With his one surviving eye wide open, he mouthed something, but only a leaking shhheak-shhheak escaped.
As his remaining half flapped, the girl atop him rolled her eyes toward me. Then she furrowed her brow.
Hostility? Or something else? If I didn't know, best to ask. And to converse, there was one obvious first step.
"Hello?"
A greeting. Holding my pad awkwardly as I spoke, I felt all three focus on me. Sound probably wasn't carrying, but with the pad, maybe we could communicate somehow?
I approached them. The pitch-black figure standing beside them and the meat-lump trash shoved into the corners weren't irrelevant concerns.
But the situation was just bizarre—no elements seemed poised to harm me. So I advanced without hesitation.
The closer I got, the more horrific the details emerged. The boy was sliced nearly vertically in half. The one girl was basically a ball, thanks to her erratically grown horns and severed neck. The girl lying atop, looking at me with pity for my wretchedness, had nothing below the ribs.
A sharp metallic tang hit, followed by a sticky, curdled-milk rot.
The black figure retreated step-for-step as I neared—considerate or not, it let me focus on the ones in the same uniform.
"Who are you guys?"
As I said it, I saved the video on my pad, pulled up the notepad app, and flipped it for them to see.
Guessing my intent, the boy on the floor reached out with his lone remaining arm first, trembling as he tapped the pad with shaky fingers.
Something I'd missed till now: an orange line on his uniform collar. Too large hands for a third-year, though.
As I watched his finger hover over erase repeatedly, a gaze poked my cheek from the side. Only one person visible, but her remaining collar bore a purple line.
Then, as if to hand it back, the boy's arm lifted from the floor. I took it and turned it around to read.
I am Philip Goldberg, 6th year at the Affiliated School.
The moment I read it, the world stretched out like a pulled taffy strand. I stood still, but the path I'd walked pulled away entirely, dragging me back to my starting point.
The instant I stood where I'd first opened my eyes—
[Good morning. It's time to wake up.]
—cheerful wake-up music blared, and I opened my eyes.
A dream? The bone-deep chill and pungent stench still lingered in my memory. My oddly heavy body—bedhead or from walking all night, who knew.
Then a weight in my hand. I turned my head: the pad.
Why was the pad in my hand? The pad! I snatched it up and checked the screen frantically.
If I'd been holding it right up to that point and it wasn't a dream, everything I'd done should still be there.
But the pad was pristine. It should've dropped in that space, scratched on the surface—no marks anywhere.
Uh... so it was all a dream?
Calmly checking the pad, the "6th year, Philip Goldberg" memo was gone too.
Should I just call it a dream and go back to daily life?
But the sensations etched in me were too vivid and deep to dismiss as mere dreaming.
Too incomprehensible for a dream, anyway.
Still. I checked the pad again. Battery first. I'd carried it so long there—it should've drained. And it had.
Okay. That checks out. Wait, no—if I'd left it on while dozing, it could've drained anyway.
Recall what I did there yesterday. Wandered in, thought the setup felt like urban legend bait, acted accordingly.
Video. Right—to pull up the notepad, I'd remembered saving the video.
Should be in the saved folder. I checked. There it was. The video file, intact.
I tapped it immediately.
[The file is damaged.]
Unfortunately, it wouldn't play.
Ugh. Of course. No way it'd work properly.
But the video's existence itself was strong evidence, right? Oh, yeah—one more way to check if it was a dream.
When I entered that weird space, I definitely got a text from Lambda Lilion. But it was all garbled, unreadable.
I tapped to check messages. There—incoming from Lambda Lilion, confirming it wasn't a dream.
Unlike the dream version, this one was intact.
No mention of the first photo I sent. So, did I just glimpse the dead and have that dream?
But then, what's with "Philip Goldberg"? Sounds way too legit for this world.
Part of me wanted to let it go, but ignoring someone I'd "met" felt wrong. Too many years ahead to carry this nagging regret.
Yeah. I checked the time. Plenty before class, so I should document what happened there.
If possible, look up if a missing 6th-year named Philip Goldberg in a purple-trimmed uniform exists.
First, send the busted video with that free detective service maybe-Lambda can use. If no reply, I'll hunt on foot.
If nothing turns up, chalk it up to a wild dream.
Prefer it wasn't real, but the world doesn't always oblige.
And of all people, my seniors. Orange and purple lines. Can't ID the head-only one, so skip it. Purple and adult-sized: at least six years my senior. Orange: plus two more.
Maybe keep adding six forever.
Can't say for sure, but it soured my mood lumpily.
To clear it, I needed to know something. Not everything, but enough to mentally close the loop.
So, just that much effort. Washing this creepy feeling from my life? Worth the work.
I bundled the broken video file with a detailed account of that dream-like otherworld and fired off a long text.