Welcome to the Ghost Story Gallery - 3
What I was about to do wasn't anything special. I didn't even have the confidence to call it the right answer. I was only putting up a fight because I didn't want to die, and sitting still until I gave up was never going to be an option. If I wanted to live, I had to try something. The thought really was that simple.
"Think this'll hold?"
I was piling every desk and chair in front of the door. Stacked tight, the way you'd raise a wall, they didn't come apart easily, and because I'd fitted them together like puzzle pieces, the barricade stayed solid even when I shoved it with my hands. Solid enough that even a monster would need a moment to get through. There was a reason I'd gone this far.
"I'm calling the doppelganger on purpose."
They said if you knocked back when it knocked, the doppelganger appeared, which meant it would come in through the door. I was going to have to open that door eventually if I wanted out of here, so I might as well meet the thing head-on. They'd said physical harm was impossible, so its body was probably something past human. All I could do was pray it wasn't overwhelming. These desks and chairs would buy me a few seconds while I ran.
No idea how fast it is.
At first I'd thought about shaking it somehow and getting out of the classroom. But if the doppelganger was faster than me, I'd only end up caught, so I had no choice but to come up with something else. What I was about to try was that something else.
"Hoo."
Hauling the desks had left my whole body soaked in sweat, and a sour smell reached the tip of my nose. I wiped the sweat off my forehead with my wrist and caught my breath. It had been real labor.
"Once I hear the knock, that's the end of it."
A cold tension circled through me. My hands and feet wouldn't stop shaking, and even my vision swam. I felt like I might lose my mind on the spot. I took one of the glass shards I'd found earlier and waited by the door, set so I could knock back through the gaps in the stacked desks, swallowing nothing but dry spit.
Knock, knock.
The sound came. That dreadful noise was what finally snapped me back to myself, and without even managing a deep breath I knocked in answer, the same way.
...Knock, knock.
What happened now? They'd said a doppelganger would appear. A doppelganger — the kind I knew, right? What if just meeting its eyes killed me on the spot? The pointless fear made me drop my head so I wouldn't see its face.
Rattle.
At last, the door opened. Through the gap, some shape seemed to be standing there, dressed, somehow, a lot like me. I almost lifted my eyes for a better look.
CRASH!
That was the moment. A violent boom, and the desks and chairs nearly came down as the shape lunged straight for me. Thankfully it jammed in the gaps between the desks and couldn't move properly. On reflex I swung the shard in my hand, and it sank clean into the thing's gut.
BANG!
Another boom rolled out as it heaved, as if in pain, and the desks started popping loose one by one. Strangely, it never screamed. Maybe it couldn't make a sound. Not that any of that was mine to worry about.
I spun and ran for the window. The stacked desks were already collapsing, the noise swelling by the second. Luckily the thing was weaker than I'd expected; the wall I'd built was still holding.
My legs kept shaking, oddly, as if a cramp were about to seize them. I slapped my thigh, trying to force the tremor to stop.
BOOM!!
That was when a huge crash tore through the room, as if everything around me were coming down. The desks and chairs that had been my wall were gone. The thing charged like a furious beast, fast as a bullet.
I set my stance, snatched up another shard, and dropped low. In that span it was already in my face.
No room to get careless. I braced my thighs and watched it close in, then twisted and rolled across the floor. I'd prepared for the fall ahead of time, and I dodged by a hair.
The anomaly, sprinting at a terrifying speed, couldn't kill its own momentum and slammed into the space behind me instead of into me. What it hit was the window, already shattered clean through. Its center of gravity tipped out into the empty air, and I judged fast.
This was a chance. I'd already made up my mind.
I scrambled up and threw myself at it in return. The moment our bodies touched, the sensation was wrong. It looked human, but under my hands it was almost like jelly. An abnormal thing, just as I'd thought. I drove the glass shard in hard and shoved it away, with every feeling of get the hell out.
Thud!
At last the unbalanced anomaly tipped through the dizzying drop beyond the window, vanished from in front of my eyes, and fell.
Thump!
I heard it hit the ground. Only then could I breathe.
"D-did it work?"
There weren't more of them, were there? I glanced around one last time, just in case, and fortunately nothing that could threaten me remained. My guess had been right after all. I hadn't understood why the glass had broken in such a regular pattern — maybe it had been a hint to drop that anomaly out the window.
I have to get out.
I didn't know when the next threat would come. Put bluntly, the thing that fell could climb right back up. I hurried out into the hallway.
Unlike the classroom, the hallway lights were off, and it was dark. An ominously strange wind was blowing. Standing still felt far too unsafe, so I broke into a near-mad run.
I kept moving, and as I went I opened the gallery.
I need to see how that thing reacts.
The anomaly that had locked me in and posted about my reaction. By now it would be panicking, trying to catch me — it couldn't just let me go like this. I needed to read whatever new post it put up, and fast. I had to squeeze out every bit of information I could. Just as I'd expected, it posted.
Fuck. This thing actually ran???
Luckily, it seemed to have decided to just let me go.
"F-for real?"
It was really just letting me go? I couldn't believe it, but there was no reason to post a lie. Which meant it was true. A little of the tension eased. I stopped running and slipped into another classroom.
So... I survived, for now?
I still couldn't call myself safe. I might run into that anomaly while I was moving, so I had to travel as carefully as I could.
"...First, I should actually read the gallery properly."
Maybe it was that small measure of relief. My head cleared, and rational thoughts came quickly.
"What kind of gallery even is this?"
Honestly, I hadn't been able to look at it properly before. I'd been too desperate for information. Reading it for long gave me a headache, but I had to get through it now, so I started with the notice and read it properly this time.
.
.
.
Skimming the notice, a few things became clear.
"So it's a gallery only intelligent anomalies can use."
Humans went without saying. Even an anomaly couldn't use the community without a proper mind.
"Which means there are no humans here."
This community was a system that only appeared for anomalies. At least, if what the notice said was true, that was how it had to be. And yet it had shown up right in front of me, a human. Why had it appeared? And how was I able to use it?
"...Because I'm a transmigrator?"
That was plausible enough. If I'd crossed over from another world, and that meant I was classified as a ghost story in practice, it carried a certain logic. It would at least explain why I could use the gallery.
"Still, a lot of it doesn't sit right."
I also didn't understand why I'd been attacked as a human. If I were a ghost story too, why would ghost stories go after their own? No — even granting the attack, why had it mistaken me for a human? Pure coincidence? Or maybe my first guess had simply been wrong. Either way, that part probably wasn't what mattered. Better to think it through later, on its own.
"What matters is what comes next."
Having read the notice in detail, I had a rough sense of how the gallery ran, and that let me decide what I needed to do.
"I'll write posts like I'm an anomaly."
I'd probably be using this gallery a lot from here on, if only to gather information.
"And for that, I have to become a named regular."
If I kept posting without a plan, someone might start to suspect I was human — especially since I'd be digging for information. There was only one way out of that suspicion. Cliquing.
Of course, actual cliquing isn't allowed.
But every community, even while pretending otherwise, can't help being conscious of its named users. Keep a decent amount of goodwill, and they'd hand over information without a second thought. It would be dangerous. Still, I'd put in my time on communities before. Earning that goodwill ought to be well within reach.
"...Which means I'll have to stay active for a while."
The sheer annoyance of it was already setting in.