Welcome to the Ghost Story Gallery — 2
There's a genre people usually call gallery fiction. Put it in more ordinary terms and you get community fiction—stories whose whole plot turns on a message board. As a rule, that community is just a crowd of different people gathered around one particular subject, and because of that, a lot of the scenes come out light. Cheerful, even.
Which is to say they aren't scary. The novel itself might be working hard to stage a frightening mood, but the community at the center of it almost never is.
"……But this is scary as fuck."
A strange message hung in the air in front of my eyes. The letters were so badly corrupted that reading them straight off was nearly impossible; honestly, at first I couldn't even tell what they were supposed to mean. Luckily, once I looked closer, I could make it out.
"Ghost Story Gallery?"
A gallery for people who'd gotten dragged into ghost stories, maybe. I had no idea. What I did know was that somebody in there had to be able to help me. I went in at once, clinging to that hope.
"……."
Hard to say whether that was bad luck or good. Unlike the message that had first appeared, the gallery itself came through in a normal font, so I could actually read the words. The contents, though, were wrong in a way I couldn't quite name.
"……The fuck is this?"
An awful lot of the titles sneered at humans, as if the people writing them weren't human themselves. No way…….
"No. No, it can't be."
They'd just been stuck in ghost stories too long. This wasn't an ordinary internet gallery to begin with. It had to be some in-joke, a meme the board had cooked up for itself. Every one of them was a normal person. They had to be. My hand shook as I opened one of the posts and started to read.
"……."
Something cold slid through me. My heart was hammering, and I couldn't have laughed if I'd wanted to. Terror flooded my head along with a reality I couldn't deny, and I stumbled back on instinct, as if my legs were about to give out. I understood it whether I wanted to or not.
"……This is a gallery where the anomalies live?"
No people?
"For real?"
I couldn't believe it. No—I didn't want to. The reason I was in this mess had to be a ghost story in the first place, and now the gallery those ghost stories lived on had appeared right in front of my eyes? Why?
"I'm losing my mind……."
That wasn't a joke. I felt like my sanity was about to slip. What the hell was happening.
"Is this real."
Just in case, I opened a few more posts. Maybe only the first one was weird, and the rest were normal. I tried to hold on to that hopeful little faith. The cold, bare face reality offered me was too cruel to hold even those broken scraps of expectation.
"……They're all the same."
Nothing but posts no human would ever have written. None of it was normal. I'd wanted so badly to believe it was just people playing a bit. Apparently not.
"So that's why they call it the Ghost Story Gallery?"
If it really was a community where ghost stories lived, the name fit. I read a few more posts and tried to get a feel for the board. More than anything else, there was still a chance an actual person was in there somewhere.
"Ngh."
It hit me then. A headache, sudden and vicious, with no reason I could name. It got worse every time I read another post—bad enough that my skull felt ready to split. The kind of pain you can almost endure, and still can't quite stand. Hundreds of needles, pecking at my brain.
"Don't tell me this is from looking at the gallery."
Stare at it for long and something seriously bad was going to happen. I didn't need to take on any danger I could avoid. I stopped reading and tried to get my thoughts in order.
"Whatever else is going on, getting out is what matters."
And I still had no idea how. Nothing in the posts qualified as a hint. Nearly all of them were about tormenting humans, or wanting to.
"Should I just ask outright?"
If I described my situation in detail and asked, I might at least get a clue. I had to throw that idea out almost at once. An ugly thought had come up, and it wouldn't leave.
"What if they find out I'm human?"
If that gallery realized I was human, what would those anomalies—already dripping malice toward people—do to me? They might show up out of nowhere and kill me. Or worse: something that would make dying the better option. The odds were good enough. So I wasn't going to leave a single line that said I was human. Right now, I had to be careful about everything.
"Then I don't have a way out."
I'd have to think a little longer. That was when it came again.
Knock. Knock.
The knock, back. I flinched, startled all over again, but this time I got myself under control quickly and crept up to the door without a sound.
"What now?"
Was there some kind of trigger? Was I supposed to knock this time? A hundred thoughts crowded in, and not one of them was a clear answer. I wanted to do something. I hesitated.
"……So there really is only one way?"
Stay like this and I'd be crushed under a ceiling that was about to come down. If that was the alternative, I needed to look at that community again—the one place I might still scrape a clue from. Reading it made the headache worse, yes. It would still beat dying.
I opened the gallery once more and started reading.
This time I have to read something that can actually help me.
From what I'd seen, those anomaly bastards were weirdly sincere about tormenting humans. Maybe that was why they had a habit of serializing the whole thing in real time. They seemed to want a reaction, or advice. For all I knew, some anomaly was watching my situation right now and posting a live commentary. I had to find that post, and fast.
If it's that post, it'll help. It has to.
I searched on purpose for words like school and classroom and combed through post after post. Every time I looked, the pain in my head swelled. I had to keep looking anyway, if I wanted to live.
I read more posts than I could count. And then—
"Found it."
A post that looked like my situation.
The photo in the post looked familiar. I clutched my aching head and stared at it.
"It's identical to this place."
The same as the room I was standing in, down to the last detail. The worn blackboard. The lockers buried under dust. Those glass shards, laid out in the same regular pattern, left me certain it was the exact same Dilapidated Classroom.
If any post has a hint, it's this one.
I went straight to the comments.
Nothing useful. I checked the other posts too, in case something helpful was buried in one of them.
"Goddamn it."
Nothing special there either. In the end a deep despair settled over me.
"……No. Not yet."
It was too early to give up. There had to be another way. I drew a long breath, and the damp air seemed to pass all the way down into me—deep enough that I could smell mold at the tip of my nose. Once I was calm, one method came to mind.
"What if I write a comment myself?"
If I left a comment that might draw a hint out of them, and got a reply, I could get out. I was sure of it.
"Posting and commenting both work, after all."
I'd already confirmed that. There'd been a chance I wouldn't be able to leave anything at all, so I'd tested it beforehand, just so I wouldn't screw up. I could upload a post without any trouble. No problem there.
"……."
My hands and feet shook anyway, hard. Honestly, I was terrified. If they figured out I was human here, I couldn't even begin to guess what would happen. All I could do was pray I wouldn't get caught, and write.
"You son of a bitch!"
The curse tore out of me before I could stop it. Fun? A person was about to die, and this bastard thought that was fun? I almost fired a reply that was nothing but swearing, then forced myself calm.
Not enough clues yet.
If the knock came, answering it with a knock was out. Which meant I had to stay still. That alone wasn't enough. I needed more. I clenched my teeth and kept writing.
I had no choice but to shut my mouth. Hollow with despair, I left one last comment.
I honestly felt like I was about to cry.
"What?"
I couldn't escape? I was just supposed to die crushed under the building, or die jumping off it, or get eaten by an anomaly?
"……."
I don't want to die. I want to live. However you look at it, dying like this is too empty.
"This isn't fair."
An irrationality I'd never once met in real life, and I was going to die because of it. Everything was about to end, just like that.
I dropped. My legs folded, and I sat hard on the floor.
"Wh-what am I supposed to do now……."
Please. Somebody save me.
"……."
In the very instant I was ready to give up on everything, shards of glass caught my eye.
Come to think of it, what do those glass shards mean?
Was this just a grotesque room, and they'd happened to break in a neat pattern? No. No way. I already knew the original. And the way that original put a ghost story was this: if it was a ghost story, then even the smallest thing was never an accident. It meant something.
"Then."
I couldn't tell whether it was a good idea or a bad one. But a method worth trying once had surfaced in my head.
I decided to try it, and I didn't hesitate.