I’ve noticed that people had a lot of questions concerning the curse and Eri’s family. I’ve had my own questions about everything too, and I did get the opportunity to gain some knowledge into the situation. See, Eri invited me to spend Christmas with her family. There was a stipulation to the visit, there was to be no killing. Yeah…I didn’t buy that either at the time. Eri’s parents wanted to have one more Christmas with their daughters…at least the ones who would show up. I’ll cover the visit in detail in a future post, but just know an answer to a lot of questions is that they simply have no choice.
With the lights out, the chatter among the surrounding students changed from the guy randomly popping into existence to wondering why the power had gone out. There wasn’t much natural light on the second floor of the library, what little bit there was, coming in through tiny slotted windows lining the tops of the library walls. Some of them being placed behind bookshelves, leading them to not be very helpful. Looking around, I could barely make-out the surroundings. And judging from the cursing and stuff getting knocked over, I wasn’t the only one. Not even the emergency lights were working, which you’d think shouldn’t happen.
“Hey, Houdini, this part of the act?” A girl with these huge lens glasses asked, edging a bit too close into my personal space. “I got studying to do, and I ain’t gonna deal with some 2-bit magician wannabe wasting my time.”
“What? No, this has nothing to do with me.” I said, looking over at Eri. Sensing that I was curious if she did this, Eri shook her head.
“Hey, why the hell is my phone not working?” “Mine isn’t turning on either!” “I was just using it and it shut off.” I could hear a few of the students say. Curious, I checked my own phone and saw it was completely dead. Glasses next to me was the same case. The same thing happened with laptops, tablets, etc.
That’s when I noticed that I could still hear air flowing through the vents, it wasn’t that the power in the building had gone out, instead it was that anything that could produce light was shut off.
“This is your sister, right?” I asked Eri. It had to be. I mean, there was no way this was just some freak occurrence.
“No.” Eri answered.
“No? What do you mean, no?” I asked, obviously confused.
“It’s …it’s all part of the curse, I think. I’d only heard a little about it from my mother, she said he likes to be entertained. She’d tell me about vehicles suddenly not starting and light going dark.” Eri said.
“Him? You mean the demon? That motherfucker isn’t happy enough with siblings killing each other, he’s got to make a show out of it?!”
“So, you do have something to do with this!” Glasses stepped closer to me, this accusatory glint in her eyes.
“Back the fuck off!” I shouted, I could see she was about to say something, when we heard a scream coming from the stairs. They were screams emanating from the first floor of the building. At that moment, I could feel the blood running cold in my veins. The screams were horrible…tortured.
I felt Eri grasp my hand and heard her voice. “We need to hide. Now Kevin.”
We made our way towards the back of the library and hid behind some rows of bookshelves.
“You two need to tell me what the fuck is going on!” Seems that Glasses had followed us.
“Shut up!” Eri whispered angrily. A student bolted up the stairs, tripping and barely maintain their balance. While I couldn’t see their face, just going off their movements alone, I could tell they were terrified. As they tried to run away from the stairs, they knocked into a chair and tumbled onto the ground.
Behind them, I saw someone leisurely ascending the staircase. They were short in stature, with one hand pulsating a dim orange glow, and the other carrying a briefcase. Their eyes were illuminated by this pure green light.
“Lia…” I heard Eri say under her breath. Lia lifted her hand. An orange sphere of light formed over it, hovering just above her palm. When I initially thought of witch magic, before all this shit, I was thinking of stuff like flying on a broomstick. Maybe turning people into rats, a bit of levitation mixed in there. The shit you’d see witches do in movies or shows…I couldn’t have been more wrong. If only their magic was that “innocent.”
The orb darted inside of the person still on the ground in a blur. They hurried to their feet, but there was nothing they could do to stop it. They erupted into flames, brilliantly lighting up a good half of the floor. I could see now that without a doubt, the person who caused it was Lia. She watched this woman burn alive with a smile on her face. I’d found out now why all those people were screaming like they were. After several agonizing seconds, the woman collapsed into a mass of burnt flesh.
I was so terrified at that point my legs nearly gave out. What the hell do you even do against that? Against someone who just with a flick of their wrist can subject you to one of the most painful deaths imaginable.
The fight or flight instincts kicked in for the rest of the students on the floor, and chaos erupted. A few of them made a break for the elevator, not wanting to try and go past Lia. Maybe they realized the power was still on, or perhaps they just weren’t thinking straight and wanted to get away from Lia as fast as they could. One student picked up a chair and threw it at Lia. She caught it…like it didn’t weigh a thing. She grabbed it with one hand. The chair ignited in her hands, and she threw it back at the student. When the chair impacted him, it shattered into pieces and spreading the flame all over his body. Watching the fire travel across his body, it seemed like it was a living entity with how it consumed his entire body within moments.
The doors to the elevator finally opened, but the students that tried to use it found it to be occupied. From the angle I was at, I couldn’t make out the inside of the elevator. Whatever was in there caused the students to flee away from it in terror. Two of them were able to anyway, one of them had been grabbed by the thing emerging from the elevator. The light inside the elevator functioned, allowing me to make out the features of the abomination that stepped out.
The simplest way I could describe it was that it was a pigman. It was huge and hulking, one hand wrapped entirely around this poor guy’s head. Boils and cysts covered it’s fat, wrinkled body. A viscous black slime bubbling out from these pustules, falling to the floor in thick steaming chunks. The stench…like a wound that has been long infected, it was the stench decay and death. Mixed with the burning corpses, it took all I had not to vomit then and there. It was a wonder how the elevator could even carry his fat ass.
The pigman squealed with glee, revealing rows of jagged teeth as he tightened his grip on the man’s skull. The man’s head was crushed, bits of bone, blood, and brain matter oozing from between the pigman’s fingers. The man’s headless body fell to the ground, and the pigman proceeded to shove his gore-covered hand into his mouth, licking it clean. I realized it then, the monstrosity was Lia’s familiar, Gregory. To think that jock-looking asshole would turn into that fat beast. I’d have laughed at the irony had I not been about to shit myself.
The other two students stopped in their tracks when Lia confronted them, two glowing orbs orbiting her hand.
“Why don’t you two kneel down for me, huh?” Lia said. Hesitantly, the two students followed her command, dropping to their knees.
“Please…” One of the students sobbed. Lia looked over at her with a quizzical glance, setting the briefcase on a nearby table.
“Please what?” Lia asked.
“I-I don’t want t-t-to die.” The student stuttered out, her voice cracking. Lia let out and opened up the case.
“Don’t worry, people rarely do.” Lia said.
“Kevin, still with me?” I heard Eri whisper. I broke my gaze away and nodded to Eri. “If she finds us I…I won’t be able to fight her…” I noticed Eri was clutching the side of her stomach. I remembered the injuries she had suffered just the night before, the injuries that I caused. I had only looked at her arm, but of course, that wasn’t the only wound.
“Is there any other way off this floor besides the stairs and elevator?” I asked, hoping that maybe Eri knew of some other way. She shook her head.
“Short of trying to break a window and fit through it, no there isn’t.”
The staircase was all the way across the room from where we were, trying to make a run for that we’d be caught out in the open. Even if those balls of spontaneous combustion didn’t fuck us over, the pig fuck definitely would. My eyes trailed over to the still open elevator. That was the closest escape, we would again be moving into the open, but for much less time.
“We could try for the elevator…shit that would only take us to the first floor, wouldn’t it? They could easily catch up to us.” I said.
“No…I think that could work. We can use it to head to the basement. Usually, only maintenance staff head down there, it’s essentially a bunch of tunnels and storage areas connecting the to the rest of the buildings on the campus.” Eri replied.
“Thinking about it, I only need one of you alive, don’t I.” I turned my attention back to Lia. She was holding in her hand small statuette. It was hard to tell what it was supposed to be of at this distance, but that wouldn’t matter for long. The statuette burst in flames, and these flames coalesced themselves into an animal. A cat formed of fire with blackened eyes. The cat wandered up Lia’s arm and rubbed its head against Lia’s cheek.
“He’s cute, isn’t he? Why don’t you give him a home.” Lia said. The cat jumped off of her shoulder and approached one of the students, he tried to back away from it, but the cat pounced on him and began digging into his chest. It burrowed its way into the guy, disappearing inside of his body. The man’s fingers coiled, his skin cracked, and orange glow shining out from inside the crevices. The orange light blazed out from inside his mouth, and fire burst from his eyes.
The man’s body started to crackle and convulse before it awkwardly dragged itself up off of the ground. I thought he’d have to be dead after that, but he was standing. His body had been commandeered by that psycho bitch’s pet cat. At this point, the absurdity of the situation had worn it’s welcome.
“Huh? Where are you trying to scurry off to?” Lia asked. The other student had started to try and crawl away towards the stairs. Gregory walked over to her, dragging her back and lifting her off the ground.
“No! Stop! Just let me go!” She cried out, I could hear the sound of her nails dragging across the carpet as she desperately tried to get away from Gregory. He lifted her up until she was at eye level with him. She screamed in terror as Gregory sniffed her face, letting out a squeal as he did.
“I still haven’t asked you my question yet, trying to leave is a little rude, don’t you think?” Lia strolled over to the girl. “I’m looking for my sister, Eri Revenholdt. She should be around here, hiding, of course. To be honest, I’m a little surprised she hasn’t come out. I thought she’d have some compassion for her fellow students.” Lia shrugged. “Guess she’s more cowardly than I expected.”
“Goddammit!” Eri clutched her arm and gritted her teeth. Eri isn’t a coward, she was far from one. I could tell she wanted to help. I could see the weight of the guilt she must have felt knowing that her sister was there for her and all of these other people were just collateral damage. But there was nothing she could do to stop her, if she tried she’d only succeed in getting herself killed.
At that moment, I felt this immense worthlessness. I tried to play it off in my head. I didn’t ask for any of this to happen. Even if I had injured Eri, it wasn’t my fault! She was the one who turned me into that monster, I had no choice in the matter! Why was it then, as I watched that girl struggling, that I felt it was my fault. Like I was just letting this happen.
I dropped down to my knees and felt something wet touching my knee. Looking down, I saw a trail of liquid. I followed the trail to Glasses. She was clutching her knees to her chest, back pressed against the bookshelf, in a puddle of her own making. She was talking to herself, her eyes staring at nothing.
“I just wanna go home. I just wanna go home. I just wanna go home.”
How long had she been chanting that to herself I wonder? Then the thought dug its way into my brain, seizing my attention. I was going to die here, die a horrible death at the hands of something I didn’t even understand. There was no stopping it. The hairs on the back of my neck began to stand up, and I felt a rising scratching sensation in my stomach.
“Where’s she hiding at, huh? Tell me quick now.” Lia asked.
“I-I don’t know!” The girl yelled.
“That’s not what I like to hear.” Lia nodded to Gregory. His mouth opened, and spit ran from his maw, dripping down into puddles on the floor.
“Over there!” The girl yelled, pointing the bookshelf we were hiding behind. My heart stopped as Lia glanced over in our direction. Then she laughed.
“I can tell you’re guessing. I hate people that guess, you can have her.” Lia said.
Gregory began bringing the girl closer and closer to his open mouth. The girl cried out and pleaded as she tried to push herself away from him. Her hands suddenly slipped past his face and went inside his mouth. Gregory bit down, severing her arm up to her elbows. Those screams…those fucking screams…they pierced through my body.
Eri darted past me, and I watched her place her hand over Glasses’ mouth, just in time to muffle her screams of horror. Eri held onto Glasses tight and covered her eyes.
“You need to stay calm. She cannot find us.” Eri said.
Muscle sinew hung loosely around the exposed broken bone of the girl’s arms. Blood oozed out from between Gregory’s lips as he chewed. He then opened his mouth wide, so wide that he fit half of girl’s head into his mouth.
“Please stop! I don’t want-” Before the girl could finish her plea, Gregory bit down and consuming the entire front half of her head. Her screams had stopped, but watching him eat her body, it started to break me. This thing could have never been human in the past. I refused to believe it. How could someone this fucked actually exist, they were monsters. Both of them were.
I fell backward, my vision starting to blur as I felt that scratching sensation turn into a painful one. I gripped my stomach, feeling nausea beginning to overtake me.
“Kevin, I need you! It’s time to go.” Eri placed her hands on my cheeks and forced me to look at her. “We can get through this.” I nodded. I wasn’t going to die here. Not like this. The nausea started to subside, and I got back up to my feet. I looked over to the elevator. I noticed that the flaming student was now wandering to the opposite corner of the library, checking behind the bookshelves.
I heard screams come from where it was looking and watched as a couple of student ran out of their hiding place, only to be met by Lia. She had two more of those statuettes in her hand, they exploded to life, giving birth to a pair of cats. The cats leapt forward, diving into the two students. Turning both their bodies into burning possessed husks. After they finished turning, she motioned for the molten students to check another side of the room.
Eri was right, it was only a matter of time before we were found
“Can you run?” I asked, turning to Eri.
“I…I don’t think so.” She replied.
“Alright, I’ll carry you on my back.” I said. Eri nodded and knelt down next to Glasses.
“We’re getting out of here. You need to come with us.” Eri placed her hand on Glasses’ shoulder.
“No! I can’t! I can’t!” Glasses began to shake her head frantically, tears and snot streaming down her face.
“If you stay here, they will find you. You need to trust me, okay?” Glasses sniffled and nodded her head. Eri helped her to her feet. “You need to follow us as close as you can, okay?”
There were more screams from across the room. I quickly lifted Eri onto my back, and we got as close as we could towards the elevator before coming out of our cover. The molten students were dragging people towards the center of the room, to be either burned or possessed as Lia saw fit.
The elevator doors were wide open, light shining forth from it like a beacon.
“We are going to make a break for it on three.” I said to Glasses, who was huddled close behind me.
“One…Two…Three!”
I bolted out from behind the bookshelf and ran as fast as my feet would allow me. With all the adrenaline pumping through my veins, I hardly felt Eri’s weight. The only thing on my mind was getting to that damn elevator.
“Sister!” Lia noticed us, and I saw numerous of those orange orbs hurtling towards us. I thought for sure we were fucked, but then Eri raised up her hand towards the approaching balls of burning death. A dim purple aura surrounded Eri’s right hand, and as the orbs were almost on top of us, I felt a force of some kind push me off-balance, almost causing me to fall over. The spheres all scattered, careening into the floor, ceiling, and a few shelves, causing flames to spread where they went.
“Gregory!” Lia yelled. We were right in front of the elevator when something flew by me and slammed into the back of the elevator. It was the half-eaten corpse of the girl that Gregory had killed. I rushed into the elevator and saw that Glasses had stopped just outside. Her eyes fixated on the body. Seeing Gregory charging towards us, I grabbed Glasses by the arm and yanked her into the elevator, then slammed my fist on the button for the basement level.
It was a stupid thing now that I think about to try for the elevator, the doors would take far too long to close. And that monstrosity was sprinting at us with a speed that should have been impossible for his size. I prayed for the doors to close faster, seeing Gregory getting closer and closer, but he was going to be here before they did.
Eri raised her hand up again, and the purple glow that surrounded it brightened. She let out a scream of pain as I felt myself being pushed backward by some unseen force. Gregory suddenly stopped in his tracks and began sliding back. Once he regained control of his movement, he tried again to charge the elevator, but the doors closed before he could get close enough.
As the elevator descended, a slight sense of relief came over me. I took a look over at Eri and saw her arm hanging down, limp. Blood was dripping down from her fingertips. Whatever it was that she did had saved us, but took a heavy toll on her body.
“Are you going to be okay?” I asked.
“Don’t…worry about me…” Eri said through labored breaths. That was an easy thing to say, but I could tell she was barely even able to maintain consciousness. It was apparent she wouldn’t be able to keep doing something like that, hell she couldn’t do it again. Behind me, I heard Glasses vomit in the corner of the elevator, trying her best to not look at the body.
As the doors opened up to the basement, I wondered just how in the hell we were going to get through this.
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Credits
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