FDD 4

Finding the source of the screaming wasn’t difficult. They simply had to follow the endless stream of curses, like Hansel and Gretel following the breadcrumbs.

It was quite vulgar, but it was proof that the person was alive. For that reason, it was more welcome than anything else to the three of them. Never in their lives had they been so happy to hear profanity. The three walked down the hallway in the direction from which the curses were growing louder. As they turned the corner, the swearing became clearer, and they could identify who was shouting the curses.

“Fuck!”

That person was Gerald Fox Jr. Gerald, a classmate of Luca, Chloe, and Noah, was a white boy from a wealthy family who had ended up in a public school after being expelled from every private school; he was the Student Council President of Haddonfield High School. He hadn’t been elected because of his reputation. It was simply because there was no one at Haddonfield High School who wanted to become Student Council President with as much enthusiasm as Gerald. That was the only thing Gerald, born with a silver spoon in his mouth, was good at.

Gerald aimed for Prom King every year. However, since the Student Council President and the Prom King were different positions, Gerald never once became Prom King. Time and time again, the title belonged to Noah. Gerald pretended to be unaffected each time, but his yearning for the title was always plain to see.

This year was Gerald’s last chance to become the Prom King of Haddonfield High School before graduating. So, without even trying to hide his desire, Gerald displayed his ambition.

As always, public opinion swayed in Noah’s favor, and Gerald was resentful of this. What angered him even more was that Noah, the person in question, had no interest in the position. But what could he do even if he were angry? Noah was overwhelmingly superior in looks, personality, and popularity, and that could not be resolved even with a barrage of resources.

Anyway, Gerald Fox Jr, the Student Council President of Haddonfield High School, was covered in blood and screaming profanities. Next to Gerald lay the corpse of a white boy. A wide puddle of the boy’s blood had pooled in the hallway like a pond. Papers were scattered and soaking into the pool of blood, as were thick books lying haphazardly. On top of that, household items of unknown use were scattered across the floor.

“Gerald Fox Jr. What are you doing there? Did you kill him?”

Chloe frowned as she questioned Gerald. The latter huffed with a look of disbelief and shouted.

“Ha! Can’t you see I’m soaked in blood because of this bastard? It was like this before I even arrived!”

It was not a pleasant sight to see a blood-soaked hulking man trembling and screaming. Also, it was too dangerous

If he wasn’t the murderer, then drawing attention by screaming was a stupid thing to do.

Noah put a finger to his mouth and gestured for him to be quiet, but far from reflecting on his mistake, Gerald tried to scream again. Fortunately, Chloe, an excellent track athlete, was faster. With his mouth covered by Chloe’s hand, Gerald could only make small, stifled gasps.

“Are you crazy? If you didn’t kill him, then the person who killed him is walking around! Do you want us to die together right now? But I don’t want to die with you! If you want to die, die alone!”

Chloe stood on tiptoe and whispered threateningly at Gerald. Only then did Gerald close his mouth. He made a dissatisfied expression and threw off his blood-soaked T-shirt. There was a little blood seeping into the cloth on Gerald’s bare upper body, but it was better than him wearing a blood-soaked T-shirt.

Gerald did have some muscle. However, Luca thought he looked like a white balloon that had just been inflated. Enough to want to prick it with a needle and pop it. In other words, it wasn’t exactly a pleasing sight. Luca took his eyes off Gerald’s body, which he didn’t want to see, and shifted them to the floor. He thought that since all sorts of traces were scattered on the floor, he might be able to figure out the situation from them.

This was the first time Luca had seen an actual corpse. He had seen the dead lying at funeral homes. However, it was difficult to call them corpses. They had been processed by experts, not in the raw state of death like this.

A corpse lying on the floor was a better situation than the messy deaths he had seen in all sorts of media (the corpses he saw in Game of Thrones continued to torment Luca in his dreams). Because the boy’s body felt even less real than those fake corpses, Luca approached the corpse without being as agitated as he had expected. He bent down and examined the dead body closely.

The dead boy was wearing a loose, boxy T-shirt, cinched tightly with a belt and tucked into his pants. The clothes were soaked in blood, and the T-shirt in particular had been pierced by a sharp object, leaving holes all over it. The holes were still spewing blood, as if there was still more to vomit out.

Luca looked past the literally blood-red clothes and up to the face. The lips were a bloodless blue. (This was not a metaphorical expression, but a description of the situation. It was true that the boy had vomited almost all of his blood.) His cheeks and the bridge of his nose were covered in freckles, but there were also so many blackheads that it was impossible to distinguish between the blackheads and the freckles. Then, Luca looked up and, upon meeting the eyeballs that were wide open, recoiled in shock, and a hard body pressed against his back. He turned around, and saw it was Noah. Before he knew it, Noah had approached and was examining the body with him. Noah grabbed Luca’s shoulder and helped him stand. As Noah’s large, warm hand warmed the skin of Luca’s shoulder, his face grew hot as well.

Noah knelt on one knee on the blood-free floor and placed a piece of paper lying around on the corpse’s face to cover it.

Then, the grayish-white eyes that had frightened Luca disappeared from his sight, obscured by the blood-stained paper. Noah observed the body slowly, just as Luca had done, but the information he obtained was not much different from what Luca had.

Judging that there was no more information to be gained from the body, Luca picked up the book lying face down beside it. He wiped the blood with his sleeve and looked at the book. The cover bore a picture that Luca, raised in the faith from birth (though he had long since abandoned it; Luca could not believe in God as his parents wanted), found disturbing.

“An inverted pentagram…”

Luca muttered. The five-pointed pentagram, the inverted pentagram, was the very symbol of Satan.

And recently in the United States, Satanism, the religion that worships Satan, had been trending. The fact that this symbol was found right next to a corpse was by no means a positive sign.

Luca opened the page where the bookmark was inserted. Fortunately, it was written in English, but Luca could not tell at a glance that it was English. The content was scribbled in cursive handwriting that was full of style but had zero readability.

Luca stumbled through the book. Although it was so hard to read that he had to reread the same sentences many times, he was finally able to understand the contents of the page clearly. No, it was not clear. Because the content made no sense.

Luca examined the objects scattered beside the corpse. They matched exactly the items required for a ritual listed in the book. Seeing that the content following that page was different, Luca closed the book, calmed his trembling hands, and picked up the papers scattered beside the body. They were printouts of materials collected by the boy who was now a corpse. Some were obscured by blood, but it was not so bad that it was difficult to recognize.

The papers contained information related to a serial killer. The story of Michael Voorhees, the serial killer who terrorized Haddonfield over thirty years ago. He had murdered his parents at the age of 11 and received treatment, but escaped from the hospital at 22. Then, wearing a mask made of a stuffed goat, he returned to Haddonfield after 11 years and indiscriminately killed people using his bare hands and bladed weapons.

Because of this, Michael Voorhees was nicknamed Baphomet. The famous demon with a goat’s head. Voorhees truly murdered like a demon. Five hours after Voorhees began going around killing people, a large-scale police deployment took place.

(They had been deployed before, but were wiped out by Michael Voorhees.)

The 666 shots fired by the police (actually only 5 shots, and the 666 shots were a bluff to turn the murderer into a legend)

The paper stated that Michael Voorhees had died after being shot (there was talk that…, but the materials collected by the dead boy said otherwise.) but his body had never been found.

“Luca, what is wrong?”

Chloe approached Luca, who was trembling silently while clutching the paper, and asked with an anxious expression. As Luca silently held out the paper he was holding to Chloe, she read through the contents at a rapid pace. Then, frowning, she picked up other papers to read and opened the book with the inverted pentagram drawn on it. Unable to hold back, Chloe suddenly cursed.

“Fuck! Is this bastard a lunatic?”

“What’s going on?”

Chloe almost yelled at Gerald but managed to hold back. However, she was not in a state to answer. Luca, who had learned the facts first and calmed down a bit, tried his best to speak in the calmest voice possible as he explained.

“This dead kid must be a Satan follower. He used this book and various other collected materials to resurrect Baphomet.”

“What nonsense? Baphomet? The goat-headed demon?”

Gerald snorted and laughed at Luca. Then, he crossed his arms over his shirtless chest and spoke in an arrogant manner.

“You have to say something that makes sense. Aren’t you too absorbed in religion?”

“Baphomet is Baphomet, but not that Baphomet! Baphomet, the serial killer who set up here 30 years ago! He was walking around wearing a goat mask! Michael Voorhees!”

Chloe, who was next to Gerald, raised her voice in frustration at Gerald’s sarcasm. Nevertheless, Gerald looked at Chloe as if she were crazy too.

“That crazy guy, Michael? When was the last time that bastard got shot and kicked the bucket? You’re talking like a sequel to a ruined third-rate horror movie.”

“Gerald, listen seriously. Right now, there is no cell phone signal here, and the doors won’t open. We are completely cut off from the outside world right now. It may sound absurd, but in this situation, it is convincing. Doesn’t the very fact that we are in this situation make no sense?

Even though Noah spoke calmly in a low voice, Gerald scoffed at him. He took out his phone and manipulated it with his thick fingers. Only then did he realize that the call wasn’t working. Gerald let out a loud stream of curses and suddenly grabbed Noah by the collar.

“Hey! Solano! You’re just messing around! Fuck, so childish. Is this Halloween? This isn’t fun at all. Stop it!”

Noah easily freed himself from Gerald’s hand and smoothed out his crumpled sweater with his hands. Upon realizing that he couldn’t have a conversation with Gerald, he walked past him and approached Luca and Chloe.

“Luca, then what are we supposed to do? So, is Baphomet a human or a demon right now?”

Noah’s words sounded unreal. But in this situation, it was reality. Luca opened the book with the inverted pentagram again. After skimming through the pages and flipping through irrelevant content, he discovered a note written on the very last page. Luca read the note aloud, carefully, as it appeared to have been written by the dead boy.

“‘Baphomet, a dead body, or not a dead body. Does it have intelligence? Reason…?’ It seems even the one who did this doesn’t really know.”

As Luca pointed at the dead boy, Chloe couldn’t hold back and suddenly burst out in anger.

“Ah, why would you do something you don’t even understand?!”

Luca agreed. The dead boy seemed to think he was Dr. Frankenstein. His intellectual ability was far inferior to Dr. Frankenstein’s, but he was similar in that he was arrogant and dim-witted. “What does ‘dead body or not dead body’ mean?”

“I guess it means he’s dead but walking around, like the undead?”

Gerald, who had approached out of nowhere, interrupted Noah’s muttering. If they had been interested in games or genre movies, they would have known the details, but neither Luca nor Noah had any interest in such things.

“Then how do you kill the undead?”

Luca asked Gerald, who was acting like he knew everything. However, Gerald was completely useless.

“I don’t have any undead friends, so I don’t know either.”

“Just shut up.”

When annoyed Luca retorted coldly to Gerald, the latter, oblivious to the gravity of the situation, snickered at him. It was such a bizarre laugh that it even flustered Luca.

“Hey, wait a minute. Did he just move? I think his hand moved.”

Chloe let out a flustered remark amidst Gerald’s bizarre laughter. She was pointing at the dead boy.

Gerald moved his lips to spout more nonsense, and Luca, growing increasingly annoyed, pushed him aside. The faint breeze created by Gerald’s movement reached the dead boy’s face, and the paper sheet covering his face flew away and fell into a pool of blood. Luca could not care that it was soaked in blood and completely melted away. Because he saw the boy blink.

“Why is he moving…?”

Everyone stepped back and moved away from the boy. Gerald was already the furthest away from him, and while Chloe was closer than Gerald, she remained at a safe distance. Noah was the closest to the boy, and he, too, was trying to distance himself sufficiently. That is, until the boy grabbed his ankle.

The boy, who had just moments ago bled to death, moved his muscles as if he had never been dead. He moved at an incredibly fast speed that he certainly could not have achieved while alive.