deformed bone

Wermit Ungeheuernkmpft, magzusehn, dassernichtdabeizum Ungeheuerwird. Undwenndulangeineinen Abgrundblickst, blicktder Abgrundauchindichhinein.

Those who fight dragons should be careful not to become dragons.

When you gaze into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.

———enseitsvonGutundBse Beyond Good and Evil-Aph.146

Calvin had a nightmare.

He dreamed of a bird, a black, huge bird.

Probably a crow?Crows are not uncommon in this city.

The crow in the dream perched on the window sill of his apartment, staring at him coldly through the dirty glass.

It's kind of funny, why do you think dreaming about a black bird is a nightmare?In the dream Calvin could even hear himself talking to himself.

But he could still feel the intense terror, as if every nerve was immersed in icy water, and his body was shaking.He couldn't control his body at all, his eyes seemed to be frozen in their sockets, unable to turn, he could only look at the crow, and the crow was also looking at him.

Its feathers are as black as shadows, black without a trace of reflection, but its eyeballs and mouth are indeed red, and the red is slowly twisting.

Calvin felt that he seemed to be in a hallucination, and time became extremely slow in this dream.

The feeling of nausea and nausea exploded in his body when he saw the mouth and eyes of the crow. It seemed like a long time passed, and it seemed that in a short moment, Calvin suddenly realized the source of his fear ——That crow does not have red eyeballs and beak, the reason why it has that is because its eyeballs have been picked off, and its beak...

In a trance, Calvin found that he had been stuck tightly in front of the glass window. From this angle, he could clearly see the front floor of the apartment, where Georgie, the child whose body was made into a meat cake, died.

Now there was a clear red mark on that place, and countless crows were surrounding his corpse, pecking at his rotten, caramel-colored internal organs.

The red on the beak is Georgie's tainted blood.

"Do not……"

Calvin grunted in pain, panic creeping through his chaotic brain.

He tried to stop the crows, but in the dream, his hand went straight through the glass and stretched out——

"Don't do that, kid."

At this moment, a warm, rough hand stretched out from behind him and grabbed his wrist.

Calvin turned his head abruptly, and he saw a familiar face.

The roots of that man's hair had turned gray, and there were traces of wrinkles around the corners of his eyes and mouth. He looked a little haggard, but he was much better than Calvin remembered him at the last time.

The dark gray woolen suit he was wearing was bought by Calvin on the last day, and the funeral home worker told Calvin that it fit him well after putting it on.

"...I'm dreaming."

Calvin said to himself tremblingly.

He began to feel dizzy, and the wet, hot liquid trickled down the corners of his eyes.

"Yes, you are dreaming."

Doctor Holden said gently, he grabbed Calvin's hand and dragged him away from the window sill.

Calvin followed behind his adoptive father in a trance, he glanced back unconsciously, and found that it had become pitch black outside the window.

"Don't get too close to those things," Dr. Holden instructed earnestly.

"That bird..."

"Shh-"

Dr. Holden put a finger in front of his mouth.

"I don't know how to explain it to you, but it's not a bird, and I don't know who gave it shape...but that doesn't matter, you don't need to know what it is. When you don't think about it, no When you know it, it cannot enter your world."

"I don't know……"

"It doesn't matter." Doctor Holden looked at Calvin with his father's tolerance and worry for the child. The worry was so deep that he even looked sad at this moment.

"I don't feel very good, Father, something is wrong, something bad is happening." Calvin said incoherently, "That child...that child is dead, and another child is missing, right in my living room Here, one second I was talking to him and the next second he disappeared under my sofa." He covered his face with his hands, and in this dream he seemed completely unable to control his vulnerability , "...Maybe I'm already crazy or maybe."

"No, you didn't."

Doctor Holden said that his voice suddenly became very low, and the hand he was holding Calvin seemed to become cold.

"Look, the kid is still there."

The elderly man raised his hand and pointed his index finger at the old sofa.

Calvin looked there along Dr. Holden's fingertips—and then his body stiffened suddenly.

He saw a gaunt, dun-brown mass lying in his living room.It was a person, a person who had been mummified due to dehydration and drying, but its body was not quite human in a way: its body was elongated, as if its wrinkled The flesh made of skin and dry muscle turned into plasticine at some point, and a naughty hand stretched it back and forth to twice the length of an ordinary person.

It is precisely because of this that the mummy looks unusually thin.Its lower body was still buried under the dark and narrow sofa, but its upper body had reached the middle of the living room—it remained frozen there with its hands stretched straight forward, and each finger was tense.

Because the facial skin had completely lost moisture, the mummy's lower jaw opened almost 180 degrees, and the sunken black eye sockets were stretched into an oblong shape.

Severe pain and despair seemed to remain in it up to this moment, and passed through it to Calvin.

"no no……"

Calvin was almost out of breath.Is it his illusion?Suddenly, the air in the entire room became so cold and so heavy that he began to shiver non-stop.

"You're not crazy. This is the kid. He hasn't disappeared. He's just starving and desperate in a place you can't see until he's drained of his soul. In fact, he's here, always here."

At this moment, Doctor Holden showed a kind of terrible cruelty. He forcibly dragged the immobile Calvin towards the mummy step by step.

"This is the darkness you're about to face. Watch him, my boy. You've got to be strong. The devil is approaching you, and the door is about to open."

Calvin had seen Billy clearly, the mummy's face, the blank eyes and the skull beneath the dried skin, and its black holed throat.

Suddenly, a crow rushed out of its mouth.

"Ah-ah-ah-"

The bird flapped its black wings and let out a hoarse scream.

……

……

……

"No no no no—"

Calvin woke up suddenly to his own screams.

He almost rolled out of bed, and it was only a few minutes later that his heartbeat, which had been completely out of control, barely returned to normal.

His mobile phone was pressed under the pillow, perhaps because of this reason, his ringtone sounded extraordinarily strange and eerie—it's no wonder that this sound also appeared in his nightmares.

Calvin rubbed his painful temple and struggled to get up, the whole room was as cold as an ice cave.He glanced at the screen, and the number on the caller ID belonged to Isaac.The time on the top right of the phone shows two o'clock in the afternoon.

Well, now his headaches have an explanation too.

"Hi, Isaac—"

"My God, your phone is really 'easy' to get through."

……

Calvin answered the phone, and at the same time tremblingly walked to the temperature controller—59℉ was displayed on the screen—dozens of degrees lower than the minimum temperature that the air conditioner could theoretically achieve.

"what the hell?"

Calvin frowned and stared at the number. He tapped twice on the controller, and after a few seconds, the number on the screen changed to 71 degrees.He heard the creaking sound of the fan in the vent above his head, and after waiting for a while, slightly warmer air sprayed out from the vent.

"...Hey, Calvin, are you listening?"

Calvin wrapped himself in a blanket, walked to the kitchen and poured himself a cup of boiling coffee. It wasn't until this time that Isaac's voice on the other end of the phone really entered his ears.

"Sorry, the air conditioner is having trouble again - I couldn't concentrate at all just now."

Calvin said.

"Your voice doesn't sound very good."

"Hmm... I had a nightmare."

Calvin's words paused, because he suddenly realized that he seemed to have forgotten the specific content of the nightmare just now.The only thing that was certain was that it was indeed a terrible dream, and that kind of cold fear still remained deep in his body until now.