Chapter 36: The Visitor (Part 4)
Chapter 36: The Visitor (Part 4)
Akai and his girlfriend Asami were not good at making decisions. In this situation, they did not have many ideas.
It was at this moment that Huma could not help but say, “I think we should go back first!”
Huma’s words made the others change their expressions. The strange and ominous scene in the cave reappeared in their minds: the dense shadows on the cave walls, the eerie atmosphere that made the cave feel like a foreign land.
Forbidden, mysterious, unwelcoming to the living—these words came to mind as soon as they thought about it.
“But, I couldn’t help feeling that the cave…”
Reiko hesitated, leaving her sentence unfinished. Everyone felt uneasy.
“I tried, but the phone doesn’t work. We can’t call for help.”
Huma took a deep breath. “I know the cave is strange too. So, we won’t go inside. We’ll just stay outside, all five of us together. I don’t think anything will go wrong.”
“We don’t need to stay too long. It’s almost 11 o’clock now. We just have to hold out until tomorrow morning, and then we can seek help…”
“Even if no one comes to help, we can find a way to go down the mountain slowly during the day. After all, it’s just too dangerous at night.”
To be honest, Huma’s thoughts and suggestions were quite reliable. It was the most correct choice in such a situation: to stay put and wait until daytime to act, instead of doing something reckless at night.
However, this was no ordinary place. It was located on Sagirimiyama—conventional thinking did not work in a supernatural area like this.
“Let’s go!”
Huma breathed a sigh of relief. He felt a little uneasy about his decision to come to Sagirimiyama and wondered if he had made a mistake.
Originally, he just wanted to choose a more interesting paranormal location. After seeing posts about paranormal exploration on social media, he noticed that Semma City had such an unusual mountain forest.
At first, their main goal was the haunted tunnel with its ghost stories. The trip to Sagirimiyama was just an afterthought.
Huma did not really believe in the paranormal. He simply planned to make money by recording videos, and topics like ghosts were very popular among many girls.
He wanted to create this kind of content, but he never expected to actually encounter something strange on this trip to Sagirimiyama.
Just as everyone heard his words and decided to return to the mountaintop together, Akai suddenly shouted.
“Wait… something’s wrong. Where’s Asami? Has anyone seen Asami?”
Akai suddenly realized that his girlfriend Asami was gone.
His face turned pale. Asami had been right beside him just moments ago. In the few seconds it took for him to turn around, his girlfriend had vanished into thin air right in front of him.
“Asami is gone? How is that possible?”
The others, including Huma, also looked disbelieving. They could not understand how Asami could disappear in such a short time.
They looked at each other, unsure of what to do next.
“Asami couldn’t have disappeared so quickly. Maybe she’s still near the cliff edge from earlier…”
However, there was a more terrifying possibility: that Asami had accidentally fallen off the cliff, but none of the four had noticed.
“Akai, weren’t you standing right next to Asami? How could you not have noticed her?”
“She was right behind me! But the moment I turned around…”
Akai looked completely confused. He grabbed his head in frustration. Naturally, Asami’s disappearance hit him the hardest. Reiko and Mai started blaming him repeatedly.
“Alright, let’s go back and check. At least we can confirm whether Asami fell or not.”
Huma noticed this and interrupted them. He believed the most important thing now was to go back and see what had happened, to find out if Asami had really fallen.
The four of them had no other choice but to obediently retrace their steps to the collapsed mountain path.
They took out their flashlights and began to examine the area below the cliff. The lights formed several beams shining downward.
“Nothing! It looks like there’s nothing down there!”
The four took turns scanning the area but found nothing unusual.
“Wait, look down there! There’s something white climbing up bit by bit?!”
Reiko had the best eyesight. Even in the pitch-black darkness, she could see a white figure rapidly climbing up the nearly vertical cliff face.
“It’s… it’s Asami! Look, it’s Asami!”
Akai shouted happily, but the next second, he and the others stared in shock at the white figure below.
“Oh my god, Asami’s face…!”
Mai covered her mouth. She could clearly see Asami’s features as she drew closer.
“Cackle cackle cackle cackle cackle!”
Her limbs moved as flexibly as a spider’s on the cliff. Her skull seemed crushed, sunken in, and half of her face was covered in blood.
“Cackle cackle cackle cackle cackle cackle cackle cackle cackle!”
Her jaw moved up and down violently as if about to break, and blood continuously flowed from her mouth.
“This… this isn’t right…”
Huma realized something and grabbed Mai, running back.
Reiko and Akai remained frozen in place.
“Don’t just stand there! Run! That thing isn’t Asami…”
Huma noticed they hadn’t moved and shouted urgently.
Reiko and Akai finally snapped out of their daze and turned to run, but Asami had already climbed up from the cliff at incredible speed.
Asami moved awkwardly and strangely, yet with unnatural lightness, like a jumping spider. Her arms stretched out with a cracking sound, elongating significantly, like a mantis’s forelimbs hooking onto Reiko.
“Save… me!”
In an instant, like a snapping rubber band, she hooked Reiko. Asami clung grotesquely to Reiko’s body, her limbs wrapping around her. Reiko screamed repeatedly as her bones were squeezed by a bizarre force, emitting cracking sounds.
Meanwhile, Akai ran desperately up the mountain without looking back.
“Save me! Save me!… Save me!”
He ran dozens of meters in one breath and suddenly realized Reiko was still crying for help behind him. Unable to resist, he turned around and shined his flashlight behind him.
In that one second of turning back, Akai was nearly scared out of his wits, almost losing control of his bladder.
Reiko was bent over, her body twisted and deformed. Her head was twisted ninety degrees, and Asami, clinging to her like a spider, seemed to merge with her. Their limbs grotesquely supported them on the ground, like an eight-legged monster crawling up the mountain path, starting slow but quickly gaining speed, moving faster and faster in a frantic rush.
“Save me! Save me! Save me! Save me! Save me! Save me! Save me! Save me—!”
As the “eight-legged” figure moved, Reiko repeated these words in a terrifying tone, like a broken tape recorder.