‘What could it be?’ Something tugged at my mind as two figures in the distance made their way over a wall of the field, and ran towards the botany house after crossing the fields flat grass surface.

I quickly walked back towards the corner I was hidden in before, only to find nothing arranged as I once had it. My bracelet twirled as my body whirled around the room, hiding in the same place again after moving the pots there.

‘What is this? Why is this?’ No answer came to mind, even as the same figures approached and threw the door open before stepping inside.

The same words were spoken, and the same spot was taken up as moaning sounds rang out as the sound of rain never ceased to be.

‘Do I let it happen? How will I know what truly happened unless I see it for myself?’

Many questions ran by my head, but without a doubt I had to repeat the events I had chosen to see the truth. Minutes later, the same figures danced by the window while crouching and silently entered the glass house under the sound of rain.

Bullets flew into their skulls starting with the person in the last position, and with a small frog in tow their bodies soon disappeared without a trace.

‘I think…I love you’ ‘I think…I love you too’

I waited for them to leave, and stood up abruptly while my eyes stayed fixated on the door.

Closing my eyes I pulled the handle, only to feel rain at my back again before the door was even ajar.

“Everything happened in the exact same way” I studied the footprints of both the lovers and the vagrants and they were in the exact same positions and depth. Other then the input before of dirt flying across the room from my own hasty movement this was a direct copy not an alternate timeline occurrence.

“What happened…I’ve been looking at this from the standpoint of the old man and the village I arrived in…but this…this is different…these people are already gone or dead…there is no changing that…just changing what happens after…and who got away. Though it wants me to change the future from the ‘present’ as it directly described it. These may be clues instead.”

I solemnly walked towards the back of the glass house and arranged the pots again without rush. My brows were furrowed harder than I could ever do so. Still, I moved around the pots and sat down as my cape slowly buckled out and bent to obscure my body in darkness.

“Come on…” A young male voice rushed in with joy in his voice.

*pat* *pat* *pat* *pat*

I had to stop myself from unconsciously lighting up a cigarette.

5 figures moved around the glass building, with each hunched step they took my blood boiled in anger. Hopeful that ‘something else’ would occur, but their same actions played out as they entered the building and moved past the place each of their dead bodies would’ve ended up as I silently shot each of them in my mind.

*thud*

A dull sound rang out as a skull was cracked with a lead bar.

“Ahhh!” The girl below the teen who now slumped unconscious on top of her cried out as her eyes widened to the 5 teens surrounding the table they were under.

“I was wondering who kept sneaking around heh” A male who seemed the strongest of the bunch, as well as the one who struck the unknowing teen was the first to speak.

The other 4 cackled as if his words were the funniest thing in the world.

“So…what are you gonna do to repay us huh? Ill just kill your boyfriend here, you see debts have to be payed if you don’t repay us…hell, if I kill him I might get so angry I might just bash his head in anway. I’ll just kill him then I guess…” The teen let out an exaggerated sigh as he lifted the bar up.

“N-no…no! Please don’t” The girl stammered out before clutching the teen on top of her in her arms.

“Oh? Alright boys, move the kid away” The 4 around him nodded, and pulled the teen away before the male lead of their group pushed her away from clutching his unconscious body.

“i…what…do you want me to do…” She looked away from him and covered up her body as best she could.

The male lead sighed before grabbing her by her hair and throwing her at one of the tables with an assortment of plants on top of it. Her body buckled as she coughed hard with the wind knocked out of her. The male lead grabbed her by her hair again and lifted her up, while he handed the bar in his other hand to one of the other teens.

He punched her until she was half dazed and bruised all over.

“What I want you to do is pay debts” He snickered as the girls eyes raised wide, “ill give you a day to come up with say 500 Dorse bills, Kari and Jeremy didn’t cough it up so we had to beat them up”

“You…you are the one who beat her up! She has never been the same since! Fuck you!” The girl began to scream in anger and swat at him with renewed vigor.

He threw her off the table into some flowers, “Pay the debts, or have your boyfriend pay them, or we will come find you and beat you up again.”

“No…” She murmured out as best she could.

He spit on the ground in front of her and laughed. He didn’t hear the sound behind him.

*thud* *thud* *thud*

“Hey don’t beat the kid up too bad, don’t want that kinda task and I’m too lazy to dig” The leader spoke while laughing. The kiss ass laughter he was so used to receiving in reply didn’t fly by his ears, and he gave a strange look as the room seemed too silent.

“Huh?” He turned around only to meet his gaze with a lead bar flying horizontally into his face.

*Bash*

His nose broke inwards, leaving his face flat and irregular.

*Bash*

The sockets of his eyes sunk in and broke, as blood poured from his lacerated face. He toppled to the floor in a heap while clutching his face.

“Wait…come on! I wasn’t going to kill anybody! Fuck this hurts! Just wait till they get…”

His words were caught off, as the once unconscious boyfriend stomped on the throat of one of the leads friends. He choked out a reply, but was only met with a cold gaze as another of his friends who was about to wake up had his skull bashed in repeatedly.

Neverending thudding sounds rang out, as the sound of skulls being crushed could be heard. The girl slowly opened her eyes and could see dazedly her boyfriend smashing the skulls inwards of the hoodlums layed around him at strange angles.

The male lead began to crawl away, his silent hissing hidden by the rain.

The boyfriend slowly turned around and met her gaze, before his head swiveled to the guy crying and sobbing on the floor.

“Kill…him…please…” She muttered out.

He walked over and bashed the foot of the leader, cracking and breaking the ankle before he repeated the process with the other foot.

“Ahhh!” Then he was out like a bulb.

 The boyfriend ran over to a bucket that was used to water the flowers and doused the leaders face with it. He woke up with a gasp, before his knees were broken inwards and his groin was hit so many times that the lower half of his body couldn’t be felt anymore, all I could tell from the lack of twitches apparent in his lower appendages now. 

Some savage glee within me spurned him on.

“Fuck you sick bastard!” An angry voice rang out from the hoarse throat of the boyfriend. Slick blood still leaked down from the wound on his head he had received from the leader.

“Sotp…pealese…” Jambled words rang out as the leader layed powerless on the ground.

“Would you have? Fuck you” With swing after swing the skull of the leader was dented in, until half his face was inverted.

The bar dropped to the floor with a patter as the boyfriend finally ran over the girl and held her in his arms.

“Thank you…” She said as her voice was cut off by her throat beginning to ache as her last words fell, I could hear the anguish from her. She poured out wails as her eyes let loose waterfalls of tears. The two stood there for a long time before pulling themselves back up to the scene around them.

I, the bystander to all of this looked on with a smile on my face ‘Well…I’ll be damned, I never had to do anything in the first place…fuck me.’

‘That is a sadistic thought, but to sick fucks like this…I never had enough chances to stop it in the city. If this is world has their version of the afterlife then that’s karma incarnate.’

*shhhrt* *shhhrt*

I watched as they dragged the bodies out of the glass house one by one after the girl got up with a wobble. She kicked the leader in the groin until mush sounds rang out. The door silently closed, as all evidence they could see in the dim light was swept away, as their last act. I continued to watch them go by the glass wall with intent, as they dragged the bodies to an unknown place behind the glass house beyond what the obscuring rain would allow me to see.

‘Hmm?’

With a creeping gait I moved towards the door and opened its handle hesitantly, before letting out a sigh of relief as the rain stayed put falling onto my chest from the direction I faced. I stepped out and cast my gaze left and right before following the glass wall silently until I could peek around the corner. The leg of one of the dead teens was just pulled around the corner further down the way at that moment. I moved towards that direction, and even more slowly peered around the following edge.

A large stone block disk was moved off into the sludge and grass from a round curved small wall next to two shadow covered figures. Into that cobble stone cylinder, the two love birds dropped each hoodlum down the hole before with a clatter of clink sounds the lead bar that killed them followed.

‘A Well? Why didn’t the old man say anything about that before? Guess we hadn’t the chance when I mentioned the strange feeling’

It was an absolute bitch amongst the rain, but not impossible to hear them.

“Will it be okay? You know the story of this…well…we should bury them outside…” The girl muttered, while the male teen shook his head, “If we pull them through the front gate…we might be seen by the teachers…nobody even cares about these assholes…that’s why they were kicked out of the school…nobody will find them…I know the story…they said they layed that spirit to rest before they built the school…”

“So there is a story before this school was even built…” I rubbed my chin as my eyes squinted.

‘What part does this have to play in it all…?’

“Come on…we have to go…” The boy rubbed her dripping wet hair and pushed the stone back into place, hidden like a puzzle piece of earth.

They slowly walked away, and vanished before my-fucking-very eyes into thin air like fading illusions. 

“So it WAS a tale of the past…but why show me…”

*crrrt*

‘Huh?’

The stone piece that was moved back and concealed by the grass on top and around it was slowly moving as if something was trying to force its way out.

It didn’t seem to have the strength yet to move out from the earth. 

‘Fuck…’

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I didn’t know what was trying to make its way out—but regardless, I wasn’t going to sit around and find out.

flick flick

My beloved lighter refused to spark in the rain. Funny, for someone so used to smoking in weather like this, I’d forgotten to cover the flame first. My mind was elsewhere. It couldn’t be helped.

That line of thinking broke the moment a flicker of light appeared on the second floor of the school’s left wing.

I counted three windows from the front corner, top floor. Then I rounded the corner, stepping toward the main entrance of the school. A few practiced turns of a thin pick and L-bar later, the door swung open on silent hinges. Surprisingly, it didn’t creak. A blessing—my nerves were already tight enough.

What greeted me was a long, simple hallway stretching left and right. Three-fourths of the way down each direction were staircases that led upward. With the light having come from the left, I moved in that direction, making my way up the stairs as quietly as my wet shoes allowed.

At the top, the staircase met the middle of the upper floor’s corridor. Glancing right, I saw a wall about halfway down, and on it, the label: Female Bathrooms.

There were no male bathrooms on this side.

That’s when it hit me—the wings were separated by sex. If I checked the right wing, I’d find the male facilities. It also explained why the two lovebirds met at a hidden spot in the compound. Sneaking between wings must’ve been a hassle.

Andrew hadn’t mentioned it, but it was clear now that dorms were located at the ends of both wings. And this wasn’t a small building either—walking the full perimeter would probably net close to 250,000 square feet. A whole ecosystem of its own.

“Dorms… There must have been students who didn’t live nearby. No choice but to stay here overnight.” Some might have come from towns I hadn’t even heard of yet.

The third door down on the left was the one I’d seen the light in. Across the hallway, classrooms lined the right side. Some of them had windows that faced into the courtyard and across to the opposite wing. I didn’t linger or try to peer down into the courtyard; no point in being careless.

The third door was cracked open. I paused, then peered through the gap—feeling like a creep for doing it, but I had to know.

Inside, I saw the girl from the botany house. She was speaking to what I assumed was her dorm mate.

“Becca… I know, okay? I know I shouldn’t have been there…” she murmured.

The other girl—Becca—stood across from her. Brighter in complexion, she shook her head with brows furrowed.

“I know what they did to me was wrong, but I… Serenity…”

So that was her name. Serenity. And Becca—the girl who had been assaulted earlier—had been the target of those thugs. They’d called her Kari. I wondered if Becca was a middle name, maybe I could find some records in the school about the event.

Serenity gave her a firm look. “They deserved it. From both me and you.”

Becca nodded, pain and anger etched across her face. “Still… you may say I’m superstitious, but haven’t you thought about the story?”

Serenity tilted her head. “I’ve only heard bits and pieces. Most people don’t want to talk about it.” Serenity had a vacant look. Let alone however that boy felt at the moment, I knew that look. Someone who had seen the death of others. She had taken an impact by it.

It was a world of real ghosts, real afterlives. How could superstition not be embedded in everything?

Becca continued, “A long time ago… before this school was even built—back when times were simpler—there was another school here. The head teacher was accused of being a witch. The others too, when students started sharing new beliefs about the afterlife. Not to fear or revere it—but to see it as just another state of being. Like science.”

She paused.

“But in those days, any talk about the afterlife outside the church’s dogma was considered heresy. And from a woman, no less? They put her in jail. Wouldn’t even let her defend herself. The rumors took root, and next thing you know, people were calling it a cult.”

Serenity leaned in. “What happened to her?”

“They hung her,” Becca replied, her voice low. “Her and the rest of the staff. Dumped their bodies down the well. They say she cursed those who persecuted her. That the staff claimed the lives of their accusers after death.”

‘Fuck me.’

“Supposedly they later blessed the spirits tied to the well… but the curse they left behind never went away.”

“That sounds like some old ghost tale,” Serenity muttered, unconvinced.

Becca shrugged. “Maybe. But that’s the story. And there were deaths in every generation after—deaths that felt… connected.”

“Connected? Like… a repeat of history?” Serenity flinched.

“Yeah. Think about it. What’s the best place to dump a body? Somewhere no one would ever want to look. That’s my theory, anyway. I’m just glad those assholes died the way they did. I wish I could’ve been there.”

She gritted her teeth and tensed as if fighting the urge to scream, but she held it in.

Serenity sighed. “We can only wait and see, right? What’s the worst that could happen?”

The two girls faded into the darkness of their room, like a candle snuffed out. The energy left behind was cold.

I sighed too, stepping away from the door.

“Why do people always say that?”