Reborn as a Prophet in a Horror Movie

#162Reader Mode

#162

“Aaaaah! Gyaaaa! Holy—!” 

Three voices twisted together—shriek, choke, gasp—into a single ragged wail. 

In the trembling cone of their flashlights, the pig-masked figure doubled over. Not in pain. In laughter. A wet, wheezing sound that bubbled up like he was drowning in his own lungs. The cleaver dangled from a meaty fist, each hacking laugh flicking fresh, warm drops across the concrete. 

Seojun scrambled sideways as something hot splattered near his ear. The metallic stench hit him all at once, and an icy dread curled down his spine. 

“What… what the hell is that?” Brown’s voice shot up into a thin, strangled register. His throat bobbed uselessly as he kept staring, frozen. 

They all stared, moths pinned to the moment by something too absurd to be real. 

It was the factory mascot. Or rather, some hellish version of it. The cartoon pig from the faded murals had been warped into something monstrous: its once-cheerful smile was yanked into a deranged grin, stretched so far the plastic must have been splintering at the seams. Where eyes should have been, only hollow black wells drank up every sweep of flashlight and returned nothing. 

The body beneath it was almost mundane, which somehow made it worse. Grease-stained gray coveralls stretched taut over a solid beer gut. Sleeves pushed past the elbows revealed forearms thick as hams, dusted with coarse black hair. He could have been any one of the workers who clocked in here decades ago.   

Except for the cleaver. 

Except for the blood. 

And except for the slow tilt of that disturbing head, as if a butcher were appraising the best place to make the first cut. 

The chill in Seojun’s veins wasn’t just fear. It was something colder, heavier. 

Recognition. 

It didn’t hit him all at once. It crept up his spine, one vertebra at a time. A memory trying to drag its way out of the pit where he’d buried it. He’d seen this before. Not the pig mask, not this factory, but the sheer performance of it all. The cocky stance. The weapon held just so, to catch the light. The mask worn not to hide behind, but to transform into. 

The Frank brothers… 

Gas masks instead of pig faces, but the same sickness underneath. Those serial killers had moved exactly like this. They’d put on a show. Men becoming monsters, using rubber and plastic to shed their humanity like dead skin. Behind those masks, they could do things no bare face would dare. 

The details were different, but the script was the same. A staged hunt. A choreographed slaughter. Seojun was trapped in the rerun of his darkest nightmare—the eternal dance of predator and prey, performed with fresh props and a new, hideous grin. 

“Ugh—” 

A phantom spike of pain speared through the empty socket where his left eye had been, dropping him to one knee. The ghost of the old pain flared so bright it was almost real. His hand flew to the scarred hollow, pressing hard enough to make the darkness behind his good eye burst with stars. Stupid. So stupid, closing your eye with death standing over you, but the pain drilling through his skull left him no choice. 

The concrete floor turned clammy beneath him, reeking of lake water and rot. For an instant he wasn’t in a factory at all; he was back on that fog-soaked shore where everything began. He felt a killer’s hot breath on his neck, smelled the gore Monster X had strewn across the land. 

Past and present collapsed. 

His stomach heaved. Vomit scorched his throat. 

Pig-man, Frank brothers, Monster X—every nightmare fused into the figure before him. 

Seojun realized it then. He’d never crawled out of that pit. It just keeps changing shape, trading masks. The truth of it drove him the rest of the way down, knees cracking against concrete. 

Then— 

“COME NOW, O EYE OF UTMOST DARKNESS!” 

Luciel’s voice wasn’t just a sound—it was a full-throated boom that yanked Seojun back to the present. Luciel’s fingers, surprisingly strong, were clamped around his wrist. 

“JOIN US AND HELP OPEN THE DOOR WITH ALL YOUR MIGHT!” 

Brown kept hammering his shoulder against the steel, each hit rattling the hinges but achieving nothing. Luciel, meanwhile, decided physics needed a divine miracle. 

“OPEN! I COMMAND THEE, OPEN!” she boomed, voice ringing with the fervor of a street preacher. “FOR I HAVE BORNE WITNESS! HEAVEN’S REVELATION DECREES THAT IRON SHALL YIELD TO THE GREAT ONE’S WILL!” 

She took a dramatic breath, her entire body trembling with conviction. 

“AND LO,” she roared, “THE DOOR OPENED!” 

It didn’t. 

The doors remained stubbornly closed. 

But the sheer, ballsy insanity of it all—trying to exorcise locked doors while a psycho in a pig mask watched—was so ridiculous it bordered on genius. It was enough to crack the icy despair in Seojun’s veins. His frantic heartbeat settled. 

He watched them—one desperate, one divine—beating against the steel. Their frantic, hopeless assault was real. It was now. 

Seojun dug his palm harder into the throbbing socket, chasing the ghost of pain with a real one. He ground his teeth until he tasted blood, then swallowed it down. 

When he opened his eye, the ghosts were gone. All that was left was bloodshot, razor-sharp focus. 

Ahead, his companions hammered at the door. Above, the pig-man lounged against the railing, cleaver swinging loose as he savored their fear like a chef letting meat rest before carving. 

But this wasn’t the Gas Mask serial killer who’d slaughtered countless young men and women. It wasn’t the Frank brother who took his eye. This wasn’t the man who shot a bolt through Johan’s hand. This was just some other asshole in a costume. 

And these two at the door weren’t Christina and her battle-hardened friends from that day. They were strangers from an occult forum, ordinary people who had stumbled into real darkness—people he’d never have met if Wraithwood hadn’t torn his life open. 

He’d crawled out of hell once before. He was living proof that hell could be survived. 

So when did I get so fucking weak? 

The thought shamed him. He’d been cowering here, lost in his own head, while two people who’d never seen real slaughter were fighting for their lives. He’d let his guard down. Gotten comfortable. A few moments of peace and he’d forgotten the only rule that mattered: the horror never ends. 

Seriously? Strolling down memory lane with death standing over me? Am I out of my mind? 

Based on his past brushes with death, that was exactly how you ended up with your guts on the floor. 

Just as Seojun clicked his tongue at his own stupidity— 

Thud.  

A single, purposeful footstep rang out from the catwalk. 

Brown and Luciel froze mid-swing; three heads snapped upward. 

The man in the pig mask was walking toward the stairs, but with the casual, unhurried pace of someone strolling to get his morning coffee. The bloody cleaver swung gently at his side. His free hand trailed along the railing, fingers drumming a silent, jaunty tune against the metal. 

It was wrong in every way. 

They had braced for a screaming charge, for a whirlwind of steel. Their bodies were tense, ready for violence. But this… this bored approach made Seojun’s skin crawl far worse than any berserk rush ever could. 

Seojun’s breath caught in his throat. His jaw went slack, and he had to force it shut with a click of his teeth. He snagged Brown and Luciel by the wrists. Their skin felt fever-hot, as if terror itself were cooking them from the inside. 

“We run. Now!” 

“Run? But the— right, run!” Brown’s brain finally caught up. A moment ago he’d been trying to rip the door off its hinges; now he looked like a panicked kid, legs scrambling for traction. 

He must have realized the same thing Seojun had. Luciel flinched at Seojun’s grip, then paled as her gaze tracked the pig-masked figure’s lazy approach.

The factory doors won’t open. That bastard must’ve rigged them somehow. Jammed a bar across the outside or something. 

Staying here was suicide. Pounding on a door that wouldn’t budge was just asking for the cleaver-wielding psycho to catch up with them. And McCullan, in all his earlier bravado, had already destroyed the lock on the interior doors. So much for that buying them any time. 

Worse, this entire section of the factory, unlike the inner manufacturing zone, offered nowhere to hide. If they got cornered here… the outcome was painfully obvious. 

No. Better to risk getting closer to the pig-masked freak if it meant reaching the manufacturing area or the stairs to the second floor. At least that gave them a chance. 

It’s a shit plan, but it’s the only one we have. It’s either that or die here getting stabbed. 

A tear slipped down Seojun’s cheek; the sting felt absurdly petty beside the dread crushing his chest. 

“Would it be too much to ask this thing to smite whoever’s gone astray?” Luciel murmured, cradling the pepper spray like a relic. 

Seojun could only manage a gloomy nod. He’d already cried once tonight, and a fresh wave of despair threatened to pull him under all over again. 

So much for being prepared. All that money on quality self-defense spray, and for what? Who the hell could’ve planned for some psycho in a pig mask? Forget the teddy bear. At this point, just making it out alive would be a goddamn miracle. 

He bit back the urge to ask Luciel if the eerie voice she’d heard calling for help… if it had belonged to that guy. 

“That cleaver…” Brown gasped, already struggling to keep up. “It’s real, isn’t it?” The question was a desperate plea, begging for a different answer. 

Seojun pushed them through the set of interior double doors and risked a glance back. The pig-man was still on the second-floor walkway, his stroll infuriatingly casual. It was a clear message: there was no escape. This factory was his cage, and he had all the time in the world. 

“I don’t know about the cleaver,” Seojun bit out, “but the blood was real.” He shot one last, hate-filled glare at the mask before they plunged deeper into the manufacturing area. The dim light died at once; darkness wrapped around them like wet tar, stealing the air from their lungs until only their ragged breathing proved they were—so far—still alive. 

“Do you think… was that Dennis’s blood?” Brown whispered, shoes scuffing nervously in the dark. 

Seojun nodded, then realized no one could see him. 

Suddenly, fingers wrapped around his hand. A jolt of pure adrenaline shot through him and he nearly ripped his arm away, but the touch wasn’t skin. It was the cool, slick slide of latex. A small hand. 

Luciel. 

“Obsidian Eye,” she whispered, her voice tight but close. “Which staircase?” 

Seojun hesitated. They stood before two options: two staircases, two black mouths gaping into the unknown. Using their phone lights was out of the question; it would be like lighting a beacon for the guy hunting them. 

Soo left or right? 

The killer had gone down the left walkway, which made the left staircase the obvious path he’d take. But if Brown was right—that the second floor was just one big loop—then Pig Mask could just as easily circle around and be waiting at the top of either staircase. It was a coin flip. A fifty-fifty chance of running straight into him. 

A simple choice, heavy as a death sentence. 

Ironically, it was Brown, the one least built for a chase, who tried to keep hope alive. 

“We should keep moving. Better than hiding. Better than cramming ourselves into some oil drum.” He swallowed hard. “Think of it like tag, not hide-and-seek. Stay sharp, listen for him, keep moving. We can do this. We’ll be okay.” 

Brown probably didn’t believe a word of what he was saying. Seojun could hear the tremor under the forced optimism, the desperate attempt of the slowest guy in the group to keep them from giving up. 

Seojun’s gaze flicked from Brown to a rusty, broken-wheeled cart they’d passed. Then down to Luciel’s gloved hand still clutching his. An idea sparked, and his expression shifted, the fear giving way to a strange, sharp focus. He looked back at Brown. 

“The guy in the pig mask… he wasn’t carrying a flashlight, was he?” 

Brown blinked. “Huh? No. No, he wasn’t.” 

That was it. Their opening. The psycho’s leisurely pace had bought them a few precious seconds to think. Seojun licked his dry lips, and the tang of blood from where he’d bit them was a welcome, grounding sting. The taste of being alive. 

He gave Luciel’s hand a firm squeeze. 

“Let’s make a gamble.” 

*** 

Thump. Thump. Thump. 

The sound came first, a slow, heavy beat from the top of the stairs. Then the man himself appeared, a dark silhouette crowned by the absurd shape of a pig’s head. The blood on his cleaver had dried to a dull, brownish crust. A dry, wheezing laugh, like air escaping a punctured lung, leaked from beneath the mask’s seal. 

Oh, he was loving this. 

His foot swung forward, expecting solid floor. 

Instead, it met the steel lip of the transport cart. 

The cart shrieked on its wheels, lurching forward. A pained grunt ripped from the killer’s throat as his legs were swept out from under him. He crashed down hard, his heavy bulk landing square in the rolling metal cart. The momentum threw him backward, and the pig head smacked Seojun right in the face as he shoved the cart from behind with all his might. 

For one heart-stopping second, they were face-to-face. Seojun found himself staring directly into the mask’s black, vacant eyeholes as the cart picked up speed. 

Its destination: the wide-open door of the industrial freezer.