Reborn as a Prophet in a Horror Movie

#186Reader Mode

#186

Seojun let out a heavy sigh as the weight of their predicament settled over him.

Now what do I do?

Admittedly, Samantha probably wasn’t in the best condition after going down to the basement. Though calling it “going down” was generous. She’d essentially plummeted straight down the elevator shaft. By any reasonable measure, she should have been nothing more than a human pancake on the floor. Nobody walks away from a fall like that.

But Nurse Samantha has a terrifying, cockroach-like ability to keep going. Even getting her head lopped off didn’t seem to slow her down much. For all they knew, she could be down there right now, pulling herself back together out of sheer spite. Worse, this mysterious abandoned hospital seemed to favor her, feeding her, pumping her full of seemingly inexhaustible strength. The thought sent a fresh jolt of anxiety through Seojun’s chest.

He shifted the bouquet in his grip, the wrapper crinkling as he absently traced his thumb along the severed scalpel-finger Samantha had left behind.

Johan’s gaze followed the movement.

“Careful with that edge, Jun. What if you hurt yourself?”

He said it with the same unsettling calm he always had, as if he hadn’t just revealed how much danger Kira was in. Seojun had seen that detached tone too many times to count, but it still got under his skin. No matter how familiar it was, he couldn’t get used to it.

Suppressing a groan, Seojun pinched the bridge of his nose. When he looked back up, Johan was still watching him with those bright eyes far too serene for someone standing in the middle of a haunted hospital corridor.

Why am I even surprised anymore?

It was pointless to expect Johan to be anything else. Seojun might have survived Wraithwood and went through hellish experiences since then, but he had to remind himself that not everyone came out of these things changed. Johan was always going to be… well, Johan.

“Kira went down to the basement? And you let her go alone?”

Levi shifted uneasily, staying close to McCullan’s side as she fidgeted with her baton. Her tousled hair bounced with every restless shift.

“We were planning to check it out together, but ended up splitting on the first floor,” Johan explained, his voice as smooth and unruffled as a still lake. “I had to make sure you were okay first, Jun. You’re my priority.”

“Uh… thanks.”

Levi opened her mouth like she wanted to protest, then shut it again. Even she knew there was no point arguing with that.

McCullan frowned. “Wait, so Kira’s still down there? That’s… bad.”

The hint of worry in his voice made Seojun glance at him. Since when did McCullan care about anyone else? But of course, he wasn’t exactly gearing up for a dramatic rescue. His follow-up made that perfectly clear.

“Well, someone should warn her. And by someone, I mean you two.” He jabbed a thumb at Seojun and Johan. “You’re the ones who sent Samantha down there. This is your fault.”

Typical McCullan. Quick to assign blame, quicker to assign the job to someone else. The guy wouldn’t lift a finger unless he was pointing it.

Seojun clicked his tongue, shooting a glare at the man who was looking down his nose at them.

Why am I even surprised? Bastard’s never been good for anything…

Not that Seojun was acting out of some selfless heroism. His concern was entirely practical. Luciel was still down there in that basement.

“McCullan, in case it slipped your mind, we need the pepper spray to handle the doctor without getting ourselves killed. That was the whole plan. And Luciel’s the one who has it. So maybe stop acting like none of this involves you? How do you even forget something that important? Did all that booze finally kill off your last brain cell?”

“Pepper spray? What the hell are you talking about? When did anyone tell me about this plan?”

“Ah.”

Wait. Had they not?

Seojun clenched his jaw. He was fully prepared to blame it on McCullan being his usual clueless self… but now he wasn’t so sure.

Levi spoke up, confirming that she had definitely been told. McCullan’s expression twisted, like he’d just been personally betrayed.

“What the hell? Since when do you two make secret plans without me?”

Everyone ignored his whiny compliant.

Johan’s eyes lingered on Seojun for a moment before he finally spoke up.

“So. There’s a plan?”

“There was. Right up until we sent Samantha on a freefall trip to the basement.”

Seojun had questions. Too many. Like when Johan had gotten his phone back. Where he’d wandered off to. What he’d been up to, and what was Kira’s story anyway? But now wasn’t the time for catch-up.

He shoved the questions down and focused.

“Look, that’s just how this goes. Nothing ever works out the way you expect. But even if the original plan’s shot, standing around arguing isn’t going to help. We need to get everyone out of that basement before Samantha pulls herself back together.”

“Yeah, I’m really not sold on that plan,” Levi cut in, not bothering to soften her words. “You realize there’s a murderous doctor and his accomplice down there with everyone else, right? And frankly, I don’t trust you guys much either.”

She jerked her chin toward Johan.

Not that he seemed to notice or care. He was too busy drinking in Seojun’s appearance, his gaze sweeping him from head to toe with a dreamy intensity.

“We can’t just leave them down there. If there’s anything in that basement that can help us take down the doctor, we need it. Otherwise, what’s the point? We fight him and he’ll keep getting back up just like Samantha.”

Even as the words left his mouth, Seojun could hardly believe he was the one saying them.

When did I become this person?

He was supposed to be Wraithwood’s official loner. The oddball. The guy everyone quietly agreed probably needed professional help.

So how had he ended up acting as the leader?

The answer was as depressing as it was obvious: just take one look at the team he was stuck with.

Levi, who flinched at every creak and groan of the building. McCullan, whose cognitive priorities seemed to boil down to “hot women” and “not dying.” And Johan…

“Mm? Why are you looking at me like that?”

Johan ducked his head slightly, his cheeks going pink with what looked like bashful pleasure. Watching him, Seojun felt this sudden, overwhelming longing for Brown. Yeah, Brown had ditched him in the basement to get flayed alive by Samantha, but at least the guy had been relatively normal.

Out of everyone here, why is it so hard to find just one person capable of holding a normal conversation?

The whole situation was ridiculous. He’d known the second they entered this abandoned hospital that the place was cursed beyond reason. But how was he supposed to know the survivors would be even more of a curse than the haunted building itself?

Seojun grimaced. The bloodstained lily petals were struck to his left palm, edges curling as he fidgeted with them absently when—

Footsteps. Soft at first. Then closer.

Every muscle in his body went taut.

His tongue scraped over dry lips. The color dropped out of his face, and he wasn’t alone in that. The entire group had gone still. Even Johan, so maddeningly relaxed a moment ago, had the monkey wrench in a death grip. Levi and McCullan just stood there, wide-eyed, staring into the dark.

The corridor went silent with them. And in that silence, the footsteps rang out like a heartbeat.

Someone was coming up the stairs.

The pace was calm. Unhurried. And slowly, some of the tension in Seojun’s shoulders began to ease. Ever since Samantha had come tearing up those stairs, his body had braced for her return at the first sign of noise.

But this… this wasn’t her. There was no clumsy, bone-cracking lurch of something that shouldn’t be moving.

This was just someone walking.

Could it be the group from the basement?

Samantha had been the only thing pinning them down there. With her gone…

Hope sparked in Seojun’s chest.

Maybe they’d realized it. Maybe they’d found a way up.

Seojun pushed Samantha’s finger deeper into the bouquet, then dug out McCullan’s phone. The battery was down to a sliver of yellow. Not dead yet, but close. He raised it, and the flashlight cast a shaky pool of light into the darkness ahead.

A figure lurched into the beam, head tilted to one side.

Not Samantha.

But not anyone from the basement group either.

Seojun’s stomach dropped.

Then again, how could you even tell with a face like that?

Every hair on the man’s head was gone. Not just shaved. Stripped. The scalp caught the light like polished bone, skin pulled drum-tight over the skull so every ridge and hollow pressed through. Where his eyebrows should have been, there was nothing—just flat, featureless skin. No eyelashes either, just the raw, pinkish rims.

His ears were gone, too. Two dark openings sat where they’d been, each one collared in a ring of knotted scar tissue.

But this man’s eyes weren’t stitched shut like Samantha’s. Not quite.

Black surgical thread wove through his eyelids instead, cinching them into narrow crescents that wouldn’t close the rest of the way. The needlework had that same careful precision Seojun had seen on Samantha—every loop uniform and evenly spaced, like someone had taken their time and enjoyed every second of it.

His jaw sat wrong, clicking against his upper teeth with every shuffling step. Click-clack. Click-clack. Like dice rattling in a fist. Between parted lips, his teeth caught the light, impossibly white and sharpened to fine points.

Disturbing makeup had been caked on to give him the look of a clown. Thick rouge in perfect circles on both cheeks. Cherry red lipstick smeared well past his natural lip line, stretched into this wide, grotesque grin. Purple eyeshadow slashed up to his temples in bold streaks. And the thing was, underneath all of that, you could still see it. He’d been a good-looking guy before whatever this was happened to him.

He was wearing a nurse’s uniform so skimpy it could’ve come out of a bad porno. Barely there, cut to show everything. The flat chest and jutting Adam’s apple made it obvious he was male, uniform or not.

Seojun’s gaze dropped lower, and his breath stopped.

“Those aren’t…”

Calling them feet would be wrong.

Where his feet should have been, there were hands.

Someone had cut off his real feet and sewn hands to his ankles instead, forcing them to bear his full weight. And his actual hands? Gone. Replaced with feet crammed into bright red stilettos.

The fingers at his ankles scrabbled against the floor, clawing for traction, nails clicking and scraping with every step. The joints buckled backwards each time, bending in directions fingers were never meant to go.

Seojun’s vision blurred as it all came together… those extra ears on Samantha had come from this man.

A fresh wave of nausea rolled through him.

He made himself speak, desperate for someone to prove him wrong.

“Johan. I’ve only got the one eye, so just… tell me I’m not seeing what I think I’m seeing.”

Reality wasn’t that kind.

Johan’s voice had lost all its usual steadiness.

“No, Jun… you’re seeing it. We both are.”

“Shit!”

The curse ripped out of Seojun before he could hold it back. No one batted an eye. Apart from Johan, who seemed to exist on some other plane from normal people, the rest of them stood locked in the same horrified realization.

Right. Of course.

The abandoned hospital had more than one nurse on duty.

Samantha has a coworker.

Seojun clenched his jaw until his teeth ached. If he could get his hands on that doctor right now, he’d tear the bastard’s throat out with his teeth. That mutilating piece of shit was beyond sick. You didn’t cut people up like this unless you got off on it in the worst possible way.

How many nurses has he done this to?

They’d barely survived Samantha, and now—before they could even catch their breath—here was another one. Except this one’s eyes worked.

The new nurse’s eyes swung loose in their sockets before locking onto Seojun, Johan, McCullan, Levi. One by one. Reading them. Taking stock.

There was no ID badge around his neck like Samantha’s. Just a little plastic nameplate clipped to his chest pocket:

PETE.

Pete dragged himself another step closer on those grafted hands. The finger-joints folded backwards under his weight. His palms had already torn open against the floor, painting slick red trails behind him. As it turned out, hands made terrible feet. Samantha hadn’t been quick either, and one look at Pete made it obvious why.

Cold sweat slid down Seojun’s back, but his brain was working fast now.

Those hands…

He forced himself to study the thing standing in front of them, pushing past the revulsion. Pete’s arrival had felt like a death sentence at first. But the longer Seojun watched him struggle, the more the details started to register. Those fingers at his ankles were working overtime just to keep him standing… they couldn’t grab anyone even if they wanted to. No blades grafted to them, either. Nothing like Samantha. He was completely defenseless. Just a ruined body fighting to stay upright on parts that were never meant to be there.

The dread clamped around Seojun’s chest loosened a fraction. Fragile hope took its place.

The corridor yawned between them. Pete shuffled forward another step. Nobody moved. They just watched him labor through every inch of it, running the math on how much distance they still had—

“Ah!”

McCullan yelped as Pete buckled and went down hard, cracking face-first against the floor. He just lay there for a moment, blinking up at them, almost pitiable. Those grafted finger-feet jerking uselessly behind him—

Then his jaw unhinged.

The bottom half of his mouth dropped impossibly wide, baring rows of teeth filed into neat little triangles. Where his tongue should have been, there was nothing but scar tissue. Someone had cut it out at the root and left black stitches to close the wound.

Clack!

The red stilettos hit the floor.

Pete’s back arched upward. Those finger-feet found their grip, knuckles locking in, tendons snapping taut. He hadn’t tripped at all. He’d been getting into position.

Like a spider settling onto its legs.

Like a hunter done pretending to be prey.

On all fours, Pete finally moved the way he was built to. Ten fingers gripped and released, gripped and released, pulling him forward in a smooth, stomach-turning crawl that made his clumsy upright shuffle look like an act.

He came at them fast now, covering in seconds what should’ve taken minutes.