Reborn as a Prophet in a Horror Movie
#157
#157
The Polaroid spat out its photo with a familiar mechanical whirr. Dennis caught it mid-air before it hit the ground. Everyone leaned in, watching as the blurry image slowly sharpened into focus. He gave it a quick shake. Pointless, sure, but some habits die hard.
“Whole lot of nothing out here,” McCullan muttered, kicking at a patch of loose gravel. The paper bag in his hand crinkled. “But inside?” He jerked his chin toward the factory entrance, where a wall of spray-painted warnings glared back at them. “That’s where the real fun starts.”
Dennis didn’t need to ask. McCullan’s crooked grin said it all. He was already half-lit, which meant Dennis was on driver duty. Again. He bit back his curse and slipped the photo into his jacket, adjusting the strap of his vintage camera.
“Luciel? You ready?”
Only with her did his voice soften like that—lower, careful, almost reverent. It would’ve been sweet if it didn’t feel so loaded, like watching a guard dog poised to either heel or attack.
“Yes.” Luciel tilted her head, gaze drifting somewhere far away. “Someone’s calling for help. Even if it’s just an echo of what once was, I cannot turn away.”
“Luciel…”
She ran her fingertips along the edge of the doors, her eyes locked on something beyond the abandoned factory—something none of them could see. That faraway look made Dennis lean in, breath caught in his throat, like he was witnessing something holy. Beside him, Brown shifted awkwardly, clearly unsettled by the scene. McCullan rolled his eyes and looked away, already bored.
Luciel gave Dennis the faintest nod, never sparing McCullan a glance. It was all the signal he needed.
Dennis moved fast, practically hurling himself at the doors. No alarms, no security system—just a corroded metal bar looped through the handles. Simple, but solid. It took real effort to budge.
“Here, let me give you a hand,” Brown said, stepping in with that easy, good-natured tone of his.
McCullan stayed exactly where he was, because of course he did. But Dennis shot Brown a look sharp enough to wilt a houseplant, then gritted his teeth and kept going. The bar groaned in protest, metal screeching against metal, making them all flinch.
Seojun’s fingers drifted to the small pack at his waist. He’d long since stopped believing in effort alone to save him. Experience had chewed through that illusion too many times. But hope? Hope was the stubborn stain etched into his soul, clinging on no matter how often reality tried to scrub it clean.
The doors creaked open with a groan that interrupted his spiraling thoughts. Metal scraped against concrete, sharp and grating, as dust billowed into the air, choking the group in a fit of coughing. It wasn’t just noise—it was a warning. Old. Final. Like a tomb yawning open when it never should have.
A rush of cold air surged out from the factory’s depths, striking Seojun with chills. It reeked of rust and abandonment, thick with the metallic tang of time long forgotten.
“Dark in there,” Brown muttered, already sliding through the gap.
Despite his size, Brown moved fast—eyes sharp, cutting through the gloom with practiced ease. Seojun stepped in after him, only to stop short when his foot landed on something… wrong. The floor was stained, dark and undefined, as if even the light refused to name what had soaked in.
For once, he didn’t turn away. He let his senses open wide, drinking in the details his instincts usually dulled for the sake of survival.
The red pipes overhead still gleamed with industrial brightness, untouched by time simply because they were out of reach—too high for scavengers, too distant for taggers. Every window had been smothered by steel plates, sealing the factory off like some underground bunker that had never known daylight. Massive vats crouched like forgotten sentinels amid broken carts and neatly stacked oil drums. The machinery—anything worth stealing—was long gone, picked clean by whoever got here first. No blood from its slaughterhouse past, no lingering stench of grease or rust. Just dead air, thick and cold, pressing against Seojun’s skin like a damp cloth left too long in the dark.
“Manufacturing floor’s deeper in,” Brown called back, voice echoing. “Got rails running all the way back. What do you think, Luciel?”
McCullan had already wandered off, lured by the skeleton of the building itself. “Office should be upstairs somewhere. Where’s the damn staircase?” His fingers twitched with anticipation. “That’s where they keep the good stuff.”
Seojun stayed rooted in place, suddenly aware of how heavy his legs felt. Dennis and McCullan moved like they owned the place—confident, careless, untouched by the weight of consequence. When McCullan raised an arm and pointed upward, Seojun’s reluctant gaze followed.
There was no second floor above them. Just a cavernous void where he’d expected an office, the ceiling looming like a distant cathedral dome. Whatever workspace existed had to be suspended deeper in, cantilevered over the factory’s belly.
He rubbed the back of his neck, gaze still locked on the strange geometry overhead—aware, all at once, of something he couldn’t quite name. Not danger exactly, but the feeling of being seen.
Makes sense, in a practical way. Why spend money on a second floor when you could just leave it open?
Still, it was the emptiness above, not the shadows ahead, that rattled Seojun more. All that open space, the exposed ribs of the slate roof arching overhead like a threat suspended mid-air. The upper level wasn’t completely detached, though. A narrow walkway clung to the far wall, barely wide enough for a single person to edge across. Calling it a “walkway” was generous. It looked more like an afterthought, slapped on in rusted metal and brittle railings that promised failure more than passage.
Brown had been murmuring something to Luciel when he suddenly stopped mid-sentence. “Oh,” he said quietly, pointing to the floor beneath Seojun. “Right. That’s the spot.”
“What spot?” Seojun asked warily.
“Where the son landed. You know, when he fell.”
“…Sorry, what?”
“Fell to his death,” Brown replied, eyes fixed on the concrete under Seojun’s feet. “Had to be from that walkway up there.” He motioned upward without looking. “And since it happened right near the entrance, well… You’re standing just about where he hit the ground.”
Seojun leapt back like the floor had just turned to liquid beneath him. So that stain really was—
The thought alone sent him scrambling sideways in an uncoordinated crab-walk, limbs flailing in four different directions like they were all trying to escape separately.
“You couldn’t have told me before I stood on it?”
Seojun had backed away like a dog hit with a flying ember. His long legs trembled beneath him, barely holding steady. Luciel let out a sharp tsk, unimpressed.
“A truly enlightened soul would face such things with dignity…”
“Now, now, Luciel,” Brown said quickly, nervous laughter slipping into his voice. “That’s not entirely fair.”
Seojun could feel the sunlight spilling through the open doorway behind him, its warmth promising safety. Every instinct whispered to retreat to that bright rectangle, but instead, he made himself step further in, deeper into the factory’s cold, breathless hollow.
Brown must’ve caught the color draining from his face, because his tone softened, suddenly careful and kind.
“The cops barely gave it a look. They called it an accident, stamped the file, and walked away. But people like us?” His eyes lit up, sharp with conspiratorial energy. “We know better.”
He nodded toward the walkway above, then traced a slow arc to the floor.
“Right by the entrance? From that height? It’s barely the second floor. Doesn’t add up. So people talked. Murder. Suicide. Cover-up…”
He let each theory hang in the air like a lure cast just out of reach. “Take your pick.”
None of Brown’s theories sat right with Seojun. He rubbed at the goosebumps crawling up his arms, eye flicking—again and again—back to that damned stain. It tugged at him with every heartbeat, like a gravitational pull he couldn’t shake. And with each reluctant step deeper into the factory’s belly, the sunlit doorway shrank behind him, that crisp rectangle of light might as well have been calling his name. Too bad he was the only one hearing it.
“You guys setting up camp by the door or what?” McCullan’s voice echoed from somewhere in the darkness ahead, bouncing off the concrete with a familiar mix of impatience and disdain. “There’s nothing in this empty shithole but dust and more dust. Let’s get to the manufacturing floor already.”
The sharp crack-hiss of a beer can followed. The universal sound of bad decisions in progress.
“Ah!”
Luciel’s sudden cry snapped all heads in her direction. She’d drifted over to an overturned oil drum and now stood frozen, both palms pressed flat against its rust-eaten surface. Her eyes were wide, almost glowing, with the unmistakable look of someone who’d just struck paranormal gold.
“I feel it,” she whispered, voice trembling with awe. “The spiritual energy is overwhelming… Something wicked is trapped inside this vessel!”
Luciel’s proclamation sent Dennis tripping over scattered debris, scrambling toward her quickly. He was already fumbling with his camera, wheezing with excitement, hands trembling as he tried to frame the shot.
“This one? This is it? The cursed drum harboring the evil spirit?”
Seojun stared at the thing. Rubbed his eye. Looked again. Still just a beat-up oil drum with its lid missing. Inside: crumpled trash, maybe some vagrant’s forgotten lunch. Nothing ominous, just aggressively ordinary. And yet Dennis was already orbiting it like a manic satellite, firing off shots like the thing might disappear if he blinked.
“Should I get this angle? Or over here? What about—”
“All of them!” Luciel barked, abandoning her usual cryptic elegance in favor of pure adrenaline. “Document every possible angle, Dennis!”
She dropped to her knees, palms gliding reverently over the rusted surface like she was decoding ancient prophecies in braille. The two of them swarmed the grimy old drum with the fervor of archaeologists who’d just unearthed the Ark of the Covenant—never mind that it looked more like a dumpster with aspirations.
Their dead-serious passion made Seojun hesitate. Could Luciel actually be onto something? He’d always pegged her as a walking flyer for their Occult Night group, but now… Now he wasn’t so sure. Just in case, he edged around to the back of the drum and quietly peeled off one glove. If this thing had any lingering dark history, his ability would pick it up.
Time to find out if Luciel was a prophet, or just deeply committed to the bit.
No hesitation. His bare palm met the cold, rusted metal.
The vision slammed into him immediately: a filthy, matted stray dog, fur caked with mud, trotting up and lifting its leg to enthusiastically mark the drum as its own.
Seojun froze. The image of a dog peeing seared into his brain.
“Yes! The impure energy… it’s overwhelming!” Luciel gasped, still caressing the drum with reverence.
“Got it! I’m getting everything!” Dennis shouted, circling like a man possessed, his camera snapping at full speed.
“……”
Seojun wiped his hand on his pants like he was trying to erase the memory from his skin. So much for Prophet Luciel. She was reading divine significance into dog piss.
He watched the two of them spiral deeper into their shared frenzy and made a decision. New plan: stay positive. Luciel wasn’t dangerous—just deeply, enthusiastically delusional. Let her wear herself out here, then steer the group toward the hospital. Easy.
The knot between his shoulders eased slightly. Honestly, this was preferable. Whatever spooky stories people whispered about this place, they weren’t ghosts. Probably just some vagrant trying to stay dry. Seojun had been drowning in actual, legitimate weirdness lately, and somewhere along the line, his skepticism had started to slip. Time to course-correct. He slammed the metaphorical door shut in his mind, bolted it, and shoved a chair under the handle for good measure. No more supernatural nonsense today, thank you.
With his internal firewall reactivated, Seojun watched Luciel and Dennis with the resigned patience of a babysitter overseeing a sugar high. He’d never bought into those grainy ghost photos people passed around online anyway.
Half of them are so obviously fake. ‘Oh no, a smudge on a window! Must be a ghost!’ Please. People will believe anything.
Seojun glanced around at the sealed interior of the factory. At least this place doesn’t even have windows for fake ghosts to show up in.
Satisfied with his own logic, he brushed the dust from his knees and stood. He was tugging his glove back on when a thought stopped him cold.
Wait.
The windows were sealed… every single one covered with steel plates. No way to see in. No way to see out.
His hand froze mid-motion.
So if no light gets in…
How the hell did those kids see shadows moving inside?