Chapter 27
05. Please Be Quiet in the Cemetery
I couldn’t make Erika and Sally miss class too, so I sent them ahead first.
Then, I underwent a few tests at the hospital.
Of course, as expected, there was nothing wrong.
“Student, this is already your second visit right after school started. You shouldn’t skip class and come to the hospital when there’s nothing wrong. You need to attend your classes.”
The doctor advised with a face that genuinely seemed worried about my grades.
It seems I looked like a student who frequently feigned illness to skip school and come to the hospital.
My name was quite well-known at school, but the doctor didn’t seem to know I was a transfer student even after hearing my name.
‘Well, I guess not everyone remembers my name just because I’m famous.’
After the checkup, I went down to the hospital lobby.
That’s when Blackie, who had been quietly following me, spoke up.
[If I had said anything in that basement, it would have fled. Then it would have been difficult to escape.]
“Are you talking about Anna Belouille?”
Blackie nodded at my question.
[It seems only you can find the medium and eliminate them. I wonder why.]
“I wanted to ask earlier, but I couldn’t because Erika and Sally were there.”
I rolled up the sleeve of my hospital gown, extended my right forearm, and asked Blackie.
“Blackie, you definitely said it was eliminated when you saw the cross shape engraved on my forearm, right? Is that a sign that the evil spirit was eliminated?”
[According to the scriptures, yes. But eliminating evil spirits is something even Sister Gloria couldn’t do 100 years ago. She could only seal them on this island.]
“…What? How could I do something even the Sister couldn’t?”
[That’s what I’m saying. Just who are you?]
The fact that he’s asking me in return shows that even Blackie doesn’t know exactly what’s happening to me.
Instead of answering, I fell into deep thought.
Making a fuss now won’t lead to any answers. It would be better to change the subject and get what I originally aimed for.
‘I should first extract the information I can get from Blackie.’
Having concluded that, I said to him.
“Well, I don’t know either. Anyway, since I helped you, will you tell me what I was curious about?”
[You said you were curious about the relationship between the Dean and Raven. And about my identity too.]
I nodded vigorously.
[Then follow me. I’ll let you meet the student council president. It would be better to hear the detailed explanation from him rather than from a cat.]
If I follow Blackie, I can meet the student council president. This means the student council president knows something about this talking cat.
Blackie frowned at me as I hesitated for a while.
[What are you doing? If you don’t follow, you won’t know anything. If you don’t do anything, nothing will happen, Melody.]
Those words snapped me back to reality.
I finally remembered why I came back to the past and my purpose.
Right. I needed to meet the student council president.
In the end, just like in Chesswind Village, I followed this charismatic cat once again.
Blackie, who had been walking with a haughty gait for a while, stopped in front of the main entrance of the hospital lobby.
He sat down, wagging his tail gently, and looked up at me.
“You want me to go out?”
If I open this door and go out, won’t there be something strange again? Like how we suddenly moved from Chesswind Village to the school.
Thinking about that made it difficult for me to reach out my hand.
I tried to push away the memories of the past and act rationally.
‘Are you hesitating because you don’t know what’s out there, Melody? This cat is telling you there’s something strange at the school where Raven is, isn’t he?’
Above all, opening this door might be the clue to the strange things I’ve been experiencing.
As much as I wanted to save Raven, I also wanted to find out why these strange phenomena were happening to me.
I took a breath and turned the doorknob.
Click.
Blackie follows me out the door.
Creeeeak—
The place I came out to after opening the door was neither outside the hospital nor the school.
“Where… is this?”
A gloomy forest where sunlight barely penetrates due to densely packed tall trees. Thick undergrowth and uneven soil.
There were tombstones erected everywhere.
The door Blackie and I had opened was the front door of a rickety cabin built in front of a tombstone.
The simple one-story cabin, barely 16,5 m² in size, was empty.
I came out of the cabin again.
Meow.
Blackie meowed as he walked towards the direction full of tombstones.
As if telling me to follow.
“Hey, where are you going?”
I looked around anxiously.
There’s no sign of people at all. The cemetery looked like it hadn’t been maintained for a very long time.
Caw— Caw—
I could see crows flying across the sky full of dark clouds.
Ding.
The sound of a bell came from somewhere.
When I turned my head towards the sound, I saw a bell hanging on a tombstone swinging.
There wasn’t even a hint of wind.
So, it wasn’t the wind that made the bell ring.
The bell on the tombstone was connected by a string to the mound of earth below the tombstone.
The space under the tombstone was where the dead person was buried.
Meow.
Blackie, who had stopped in front of it, meowed looking at me.
Then Blackie…
[Take it out]
Blackie said to me.
At that moment, I began digging up the grave the cat had pointed to, as if entranced.
I don’t know what came over me to do such a strange thing. Digging up a grave.
But I had a strong premonition that I absolutely had to dig up this ground.
Ding-a-ling.
The bell hanging on the tombstone continued to ring.
It was probably a bell installed 100 years ago, during the time of the epidemic.
At that time, a major epidemic was prevalent, and many people died because of it.
As a result, there were cases where people in a comatose state were mistakenly buried.
This bell was a device to allow those mistakenly buried to signal their survival.
It was designed so that a revived person could pull a string inside the coffin to ring the bell hung outside.
In other words, this bell would only ring if pulled by someone alive inside the coffin.
Without a shovel, digging with my hands was not only difficult, but it also took longer than expected.
Sweat trickled down my temples to my chin. I wiped it off roughly with the back of my hand as I continued digging.
Plop. Pitter-patter.
Noticing raindrops falling on the back of my hand, I looked up.
This is bad. No wonder dark clouds were gathering, it started to rain.
As the rain began, the mound of earth started to collapse, making it harder to dig.
Rumble. Boom—!
The thunder shook the ground.
The sound was so loud and frightening that I stopped what I was doing and looked up at the sky.
The surroundings were still quiet. No sign of people. As the rain started, it became completely dark. Like night.
Feeling the raindrops getting heavier, I hurried a bit more.
Finally, I dug all the way to the bottom.
Thud.
The dull sound was definitely from a wooden coffin.
As I cleared away the wet soil, I saw a hard wooden board.
After digging a little more to clear the soil underneath, I placed my hand on the lid to open the coffin, but hesitated.
Suddenly, the realization struck me.
‘What am I expecting to find inside that I’m trying to open this?’
But by the time I realized this, it was already too late. The coffin lid opened before I could even touch it.
I froze for a moment in surprise. Because a person came out from inside.
Black hair like the dark night sky, eyes blue like a clear sky, the stark contrast captivated my vision.
It was a familiar face.
A male student with strikingly beautiful features.
The young man with a pure aura was trapped in the coffin, tightly bound with ropes. He even had a gag in his mouth.
He looked up at me pitifully, his eyebrows furrowed, still bound.
Noah Eugene Eglinton.
I looked down at the student council president with a somewhat perplexed expression.
I had no idea how this man ended up in such a state.
“…President, are you okay?”
I wondered what could have happened for him to be buried alive in a place like this.
While thinking this, I diligently removed the gag from the student council president’s mouth.
“Can you untie this too?”
He showed me his hands. He wanted me to undo his bindings.
I looked at him with half-open eyes and asked in a voice filled with wariness.
“What if you try to harm me? Why were you buried here?”
“Looks like you’ve forgotten that I’m the one who took you to the hospital. Your evaluation of your benefactor is harsh. I haven’t even received a thank you yet.”
The student council president spoke in a somewhat sarcastic tone. He must have been quite irritated.
Hearing that made me feel a bit sorry.
“Thank you for taking me to the hospital.”
I bowed slightly in gratitude.
“But why are you here after taking me to the hospital?”
“I realized the Chesswind Village ghost story wasn’t over yet.”
“…What? What do you mean by that?”
However, the student council president didn’t answer this time either.
As I was about to ask again, Blackie, who had been watching us from beside the tombstone, suddenly meowed.
Meow!
At the same time, the sound of a bell was heard.
Ding-a-ling.
I quickly untied the student council president’s bindings and climbed up to the ground.
The bell attached to a nearby tombstone was ringing.
Ding-ding-ding-ding—
This time, bells from the adjacent row and the row in front also started ringing.
“What on earth is…?”
As I was about to examine those tombstones in surprise,
Ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding
All the bells on the tombstones started shaking furiously at the same time.
And something began to emerge one by one from the mounds of earth in front of the tombstones.
I could see white bones. What popped out of the soil mounds were clearly human joint bones.
“What is that… Aah!”
Something grabbed my arm, causing me to fall backward immediately.
A skeletal hand that had sprung out from the adjacent grave had grabbed my arm.
The grip was so strong that I was scared my arm might be severed.
Skeletons began to rise, digging through the mounds of earth here and there.
They were approaching us.
Crack.
The student council president smashed the skeletal hand grabbing my arm with the coffin lid.
Then he pulled my hand and helped me up.
“Don’t get separated from me.”
He pulled me close with one arm around my shoulder as he stepped back.
The skeletons that had emerged from the graves were gathering around us.
“Melody, slowly back away.”
I tightly gripped the student council president’s sleeve.
As we slowly backed away together, something touched my back.
I turned around in surprise. There was a skeleton standing behind me.
Before we could do anything, the skeleton pushed me and the student council president backward.
Huh? We’re falling backward.
We clearly fell onto the dirt ground, but suddenly the ground behind us caved in.
We fell endlessly downward.
As we fell, the student council president held me close to protect me.
Thud—
We crashed hard somewhere and fell.
When I came to my senses, I found myself trapped in a narrow coffin alone with the student council president.
🐈⬛
Thank you for reading! ♡
