Holding his breath, Nagisa listened.
Hecouldhear it.
Someone was playing the flute.
~ * ~
Nagisa returned to the hallway, trying to pinpoint where the sound came from. The echoes in the empty castle made it difficult to tell. Was he not alone, after all? Was the lord of the castle haunting this place?
No way.Ghosts didn’t exist. It was a prank. His friends tricked him into coming here so they could scare him.
Huffing, he stomped through the halls, flashlight brightening his path, looking for his friends who were probably having a good laugh at his expense. He opened his mouth, wanting to call out to them, but snapped it shut and slowed down. It was better to catch them red-handed.
The more he roamed through the castle, the dizzier he became. The walls appeared to close in and the floors shifted underneath him. He halted, placing a hand on the wall to balance himself. Feeling the sticky wood under his palm, he grimaced and quickly pulled it back, wiping it onto his jeans.
Nagisa turned, listening again. The notes from the flute had faded. He wanted to think he imagined it or it was just the wind whistling, but it sounded so real. Some strange part of him wanted to continue the search and find whoever played the flute. He ignored that insane idea, blaming it on the smell of rot penetrating through the T-shirt’s material and making him irrational. He tried breathing through his mouth, which only worsened the sensation as he could almost taste the rot.
“Fuck it,” he muttered, making his way back toward the entryway.
He walked. And walked some more. The hallways stretched on, splitting into other hallways, which continued before dividing into more. How long had it been since he arrived here? He checked the phone. There was no signal anymore and the time was 2 a.m. Not possible. He’d left at nine from the hotel, it took him half an hour to reach the temple and then fifteen minutes to get to the Castle of Bones.
With his head buzzing, Nagisa hurried along the hallways. He wasn’t lost. He couldn’t have been. It was easy. Make a right and there was the entryway.
Except there was no entryway.
Right and then right again. No entryway.
“Shit,” he breathed.
He needed to rest for a bit, but there was nothing to sit on except the disgusting wooden floor. But his feet hurt and his heart hammered in his chest. Trying not to think about all the stuff growing on the floor, he sat cross-legged and sniffed his jacket, gagging. Great. Now the rancid smell was stuck to his clothes.
The castle was quite large, sure, but it was also run down. There should’ve been another exit or broken windows, somewhere in the collapsed wings he had seen from the front yard. Yet, none of the rooms had windows. Nagisa cursed himself for following that damn flute. If he hadn’t, he’d have already been on his way back to the warm and pleasant-smelling hotel room.
No use stressing about it now. He just had to find an exit.
As he was about to stand, a low, throaty wheeze caught his attention. He halted in a crouch, holding his breath. The strange wheezing was getting closer. Now he was convinced his friends had planned all this to scare him. It was typical of them to pull these pranks. Turning off the flashlight, Nagisa hid behind a sliding door and peeked along the corridor, waiting to see which one of them would turn up first. Without light, it was difficult to make out shapes, but he listened for their footsteps.
The wheezing sound came from around the corner of the hallway heading his way. Accompanying it, though, weren’t footsteps, but something shuffling like it dragged across the floor. One slow shuffle after another, then a wheeze. But there was another sound, too—like an object bumping on the uneven floorboards.
Squinting in the darkness, he made out a hunched figure with ragged clothes. Definitely one of his friends pretending to be a ghost. Probably Asako since she was the only one who could do this without bursting into obnoxious laughter. He smiled. He’d follow quietly, and find them all crammed in a room, then scare them shitless.
Waiting until his friend shuffled past the next corner, Nagisa came out of his hiding spot and pursued in silence, stepping carefully over the creaking floor and using the walls to guide himself, ignoring how disgusting they felt under his palm. Walking without the flashlight was a struggle, and Nagisa found himself reaching for it a few times before gritting his teeth and pulling back. If he turned it on, he’d give away his spot and fail to pay back his friends.
Once every few steps he paused, paying attention to the shuffling and wheezing. Based on the sliding sound, the object Asako carried had bumped into a door. Was she entering a room? Nagisa grinned and tiptoed, glancing inside the rooms, knowing he would find his friends at any moment. What could he do to scare them? Yell? Groan? Make a wheezing sound like them? He wasn’t sure he could imitate that, though. He settled for a loud scream. That was bound to work.
A thud echoed, followed by a nasty snort, like a pig’s. More snorts, then grunts. A loud crack made Nagisa gasp. What happened?
Another crack. Like wood giving under pressure. Were they trapped too and breaking the walls to get out?
Crack. Snort.
Nagisa held his breath. Wood didn’t make such sounds. Nor did people. He crouched, approaching the room slowly, one step at a time, wincing whenever the floorboards squeaked under him.
A thin line of light stretched diagonally out into the hallway from within the room. There must’ve been a hole in one of the walls, letting the moon rays in. He was grateful for this small contact with the outside. He felt he’d been trapped here for days not hours.
As he looked inside, Nagisa’s blood turned to ice.
Moonlight illuminated his… friend? No… a creature.