Reborn as a Prophet in a Horror Movie

#180Reader Mode

T/N: Thank you for the coffee XenoWeno! Thank you for the serotonin! I love you too. (´▽`ʃ♡ƪ)

#180

The sound hit like a jump scare. A sudden, jarring shift, like the drop in a horror movie score right before the gore starts. The ringing in his ears flared like a siren. Maybe it wasn’t technically a demon hunting them, but when the monster chasing you wore nurse’s scrubs, the semantics didn’t matter.

Seojun stumbled, slapping a hand against the wall to catch himself. A groan caught in his throat as he risked a glance back.

McCullan was still by the row of waiting chairs, stiff, his face drained to the same sickly gray Seojun was pretty sure he was wearing too. The guy’s hands wouldn’t stop shaking, twitching like his body was trying to run while his brain was still buffering.

McCullan’s wide eyes darted to Levi. She was chewing her bottom lip raw, teeth working fast. She’d heard it too, that unnatural scraping sound that had no business existing in a hospital or anywhere else. Her muscles coiled tight, ready. But no fear. Nothing like the way McCullan pressed his fist against his mouth, looking ready to vomit. Instead, Levi dropped into a crouch, scanning the area.

Of course she wasn’t afraid. Not yet. She hadn’t met Samantha. She hadn’t seen the way the nurse’s uniform stretched over angles that didn’t belong on a human body. Or the scalpels, fused where fingers should be. Or how she moved—how her limbs twisted and jerked in ways that made your brain scream no even as your eyes insisted it was real.

Levi killed the light on McCullan’s phone, plunging them into darkness. Seojun immediately shoved his own phone deep into his jacket. Not that it helped much; the afterimage of Samantha was still seared into his mind: eyelids crudely stitched shut, a patchwork face of rotting flesh. Light or no light, he wasn’t about to give her a beacon to follow.

He moved slowly, every step a careful test of weight and balance. One wrong move, one stray piece of rubble kicked across the floor, and it was over. But even worse? The thought of her finding him just because he was breathing too loud. That would be a aggravating kind of death.

Seojun slipped into the staff office. It looked like a war zone—shelves caved in, lockers ripped open, chairs overturned and scattered everywhere. He edged sideways through the chaos, skipping the desk—too cramped to hide under—and the noisy office chair. Instead, he wedged himself into the narrow space between a dusty whiteboard and a heavy filing cabinet. From the shadows, all he could see was the grime-smeared window high on the wall.

Logically, this spot should be safe. Samantha would have to stumble past the desk and wade through all the wreckage to get to him. And blind as she was, there was no reason for her to even try. If he just stayed still. If he just stayed quiet. She’d get bored eventually. Move on.

At least, that’s what he told himself.

Seojun bit down on the inside of his cheek until pain bloomed.

Scrape. Click. Scrape.

Metal grated against the floor just outside. A shadow blotted out the light from the high window. Seojun didn’t need to see her face to know. That dragging, uneven gait was enough.

The Nurse.

A cold, oily dread pooled in his gut.

Why is she up here? Unless… unless there’s no one left alive downstairs.

His brain betrayed him, filling in the silence with vivid, high-definition nightmares: Luciel, stiff with rigor mortis, all the color drained from her face. Brown bleeding out on the tile floor. Dennis with his skin flayed back, his face a ruined mess.

Seojun clenched his hands together, knuckles straining against the gloves, desperate to push the images away. But just imagining it was enough to spike his pulse into dangerous territory.

One of his knuckles popped. The painful jolt grounded him. He hadn’t even known the others that long. Just a few days. But if Samantha had already torn through three of them, what hope did he have alone?

Stay calm. There are three of them down there. Three against one. And Samantha has a weakness. Her weapons are literally part of her limbs. That means she can only kill one person at a time.

Seojun blinked sweat from his eye and crouched lower. Everything was quiet. Too quiet. If Samantha had attacked the others, there would’ve been chaos. Screams. Footsteps pounding up the stairs. Someone would’ve come running.

But no one had.

Which meant they were still down there. Hiding.

It was the only shred of good news he had. Samantha couldn’t see. She hunted by sound, not sight. If everyone stayed silent—the group downstairs, and the three of them trapped up here—maybe she’d lose interest. Maybe she’d move on. She had to.

Seojun just hoped Levi could hold it together. In a way, it was probably better she hadn’t seen the Nurse up close. That face—stitched shut, rotting, inhuman—could break a person. But then again, Levi had watched the doctor butcher someone and still made it out. She had guts. Way better off than McCullan, who looked like he was seconds from passing out.

Seojun stifled a curse and risked a glance through the smeared window. The sound hit him immediately—metal scraping against metal, blades on some unseen surface. It grated through his skull, made his skin crawl. But it wasn’t the sound of killing. That was something.

He mouth the words silently towards the others: Don’t move. Just stay hidden. She’ll leave. You’ll be okay.

Seojun clung to that hope with white-knuckled desperation. He tried to convince himself that his fried brain hadn’t miscalculated—that this was a plan, not just a delay toward inevitable death. There’d be time for guilt later. Time to hate himself for missing the warning signs or clues. But not now. Not here. Logic didn’t belong in this haunted place. All he needed was silence, and to be right, just this once.

Brrrr-ing! Brrrr-ing!

The cheerful, mechanical trill crushed all hopes and plans instantly.

Seojun’s throat spasmed. It felt like someone had poured ice water into his veins. For half a second, he tried to dismiss it—maybe it was a memory, a stress hallucination—but then it rang again. Louder. Closer. Real. And in an abandoned rotting hospital, it was impossible.

But the phone rang anyway.

The landline phone sat on a cluttered desk just a few steps from his hiding spot. The sound alone was bad enough. But the reaction it triggered was worse.

Nurse Samantha’s head jerked toward the sound. Her “ears”—those fluttering, gill-like slits on the sides of her neck—flared wide, twitching as they locked onto the frequency. A wet, garbled sound rose from her throat—something between a sob and a moan, her sick approximation of joy without a mouth to express it.

The Nurse lurched toward the desk, drawn to the ringing like a parasite sensing a heartbeat. She moved slowly, unhurried, her body thudding against overturned furniture.

Watching her draw closer, Seojun felt a distinct kind of madness clawing at his insides. He wanted to scream. He wanted to curl up, shut his eyes, and wait for it all to end. Every instinct in him was howling one thing: Run.

Instead, he dropped lower to the floor.

Seojun crawled through the filth, gaze locked on the phone. His heart pounded so violently it felt like it might shake the walls, like it had to be loud enough for her to hear. When Samantha cracked her shin against a heavy crate and paused, letting out a guttural exhale, Seojun lunged. He held his breath, hand outstretched, reaching for the only thing that might stop the sound before she got too close.

His fingers closed around the phone’s receiver. The shrill ringing cut off, replaced by a soft, hiss of static.

“He—”

Just one syllable.

Seojun didn’t wait for more. He put the receiver back into the cradle, severing the voice mid-breath. Could’ve been a man. Could’ve been help. Or it could’ve been that psychotic doctor on the other end. Didn’t matter. You couldn’t trust a voice from a haunted phone. Not on one word.

But regret still burned through Seojun’s chest as he stared at the phone. That call might’ve been it—the break they needed, the clue that saved them all. But no clue was worth getting gutted for. Not even if it was a miracle. You couldn’t solve a mystery if you were dead.

Seojun pressed a hand to his chest, as if he could physically hold his heartbeat still.

Across the room, Samantha had stopped. Her head tilted slowly from side to side, like a machine recalibrating—confused by the sudden silence, searching for the sound that had vanished.

Please. Don’t let her hear my heartbeat with those creepy goddamn ears.

Seojun went still, locking every muscle in place. Even blinking felt too loud. A bead of sweat slid into his eye, burning as it clung to his lashes. He didn’t dare move to wipe it away.

He couldn’t look at her. Just the thought of seeing her—really seeing her—made his sanity teeter. So Seojun fixed his eye on the darkness where Levi and McCullan were hiding, willing himself to focus. Endure. Just a few more seconds. Just hold on.

Seojun rationed his breaths, shallow and silent, terrified even a sigh might be enough to end him. The phone was quiet now, but Samantha hadn’t gone. She lingered near reception, robbed of her audio bait, circling like a starved predator.

And she was in no rush.

The sound of her claws scraping across the floor was unbearable—metal dragging against tile in long, deliberate strokes. It echoed off the walls, each screech a slow countdown, each step closer than the last.

If she found him, it was over. What was Seojun supposed to do? Throw a rock at a ghost with scalpels for fingers and toes? One wrong move, one scuff of his shoe, and those gill-like slits on her neck would flare. She’d carve him open before he even got to his feet.

Tears stung his eye. Stupid. That’s what this was. He should’ve grabbed a weapon. A pipe. A broken chair leg. Even Levi’s baton. Anything would’ve been better than crouching here with shaking, empty hands.

Then—movement. A flicker in the corner of his vision.

McCullan.

He must’ve spotted the Nurse drifting Seojun’s way and decided it was the perfect time to save himself. Even in the dim light, Seojun could see the sick combination of guilt and cowardly relief all over his face. McCullan raised his phone like he was thinking about using the flashlight—then, miraculously, seemed to remember how incredibly stupid that would be. He lowered it and started crab-walking blindly along the row of waiting chairs.

And because he wasn’t looking down, he didn’t see it.

His foot came down hard on something soft.

The doll. That stupid, cursed doll from earlier.

“Hello? I’m Sally! Nice to meet you! Hello? I’m Sally! Nice to meet you!”

The cheerful, robotic voice shrieked through the silence, loud enough to wake the dead.