Chapter 105: S#18. Bleedy Witch (2)

Ishikawa Reiko left, saying she was going to the Tromaville forest.

We set out to track down Nancy, who had swapped bodies with Yeoreum and fallen into 2020s Korea.

Since Reiko was also part of ‘W’, if we caught and interrogated her, we might get some information.

But Ellen also said she wanted to come with us.

“Ellen, this is more dangerous than it looks. In that forest…”

“I know. But this is about saving my daughter. I’m going too.”

Even if the journey to the forest was more dangerous than putting your head in an alligator’s mouth, we couldn’t dissuade Ellen’s concern for her daughter.

We packed plenty of weapons.

Chainsaws, shotguns, gasoline, and even homemade bombs whipped up on the spot by the Hyper sisters.

Just before leaving, Hilda Hyper handed me a syringe.

‘It’s a hemostatic agent. Use it in emergencies.’

She said injecting it into a wound would stop bleeding. The liquid in the cylinder was sticky like glue.

It could come in handy.

If Yeoreum’s explanation was correct, Reiko was the final boss.

The mastermind who controlled and observed the creatures we’d encountered so far.

Moreover, the forest was home turf for the witch from horror movies. We were at an overwhelming disadvantage.

A fierce battle was expected.

Yeoreum, Ellen, and I got in the car.

We headed for the forest.

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Raei  Translations
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It was past dawn and should have been getting light, but the sky was still dark.

There was only a chillingly pale moon and gloomy storm clouds.

A thin, long drizzle of rain fell coldly.

We packed our bags with weapons to be used for witch hunting and stepped into the forest.

Just as we entered the forest path, we discovered something nailed to a tree with spikes.

It was three dolls made of woven tree branches.

They eerily resembled the Strode mother and daughter and me.

“She knew we were coming.”

“Ishikawa seems to be a similar type to your father.”

“What do you mean?”

“Your father tried to corner me and play with me.”

While shocked by Yeoreum’s statement, I understood that if he was like my father, it could be possible.

We entered the forest path without touching the dolls.

The forest, steeped in unpleasant memories. The green leaves and bizarre trees seemed to welcome me.

Ellen walked while looking at the map. Then she suddenly spoke to Yeoreum.

“Um… was it Yeoreum?”

“It’s Yeoreum.”

“Yeo-reum… Yeo-rum…”

She barely managed to pronounce it after rolling her tongue several times.

“I’d like to hear more details about what you said in the living room. So, your claim is that reality is nothing but a horror movie?”

“Not just this reality. The reality where Summer was, and all other realities that exist are all horror movies.”

“That’s…”

“Hard to believe, but it’s true.”

“To think that I existed just for a horror movie… I thought I was writing stories all this time, but it turns out I was the one trapped in a story.”

Ellen had lived as a novelist.

“I wonder how a character in a novel I wrote would feel if they realized they were nothing more than text written on a page.”

She raised her hand with a dejected expression.

“Even though I can touch, see, and feel like this… if the reason for my existence is just for the progression of a story…”

“…”

“My whole past life feels fake now.”

“That’s not true, Ellen. Nothing in your life was fake.”

I said confidently. Ellen tilted her head.

“How can you be so sure? Come to think of it, Summer knew from the start that this was inside a horror movie, right…?”

“At first, that’s what I thought. But it was a misunderstanding. The ones who showed me that every life existing here is the unvarnished truth were you and Nancy, Ellen.”

Neither 2020s Korea, nor 1980s America, nor any other reality is ever false. There are only groups that use them as falsehoods.

Ellen didn’t reply. Instead, she quietly took my hand. We walked without letting go, our fingers intertwined.

I asked Yeoreum.

“By the way, Yeoreum. What do you plan to do once we find Reiko?”

“I’ll have to ask her about how to switch positions with Nancy Strode again.”

“What if Reiko doesn’t know either?”

“Then we’ll have to beat her until she figures it out.”

It was an extremely simple plan.

As we advanced towards our destination marked on the map, we suddenly stopped in our tracks.

Something black was hanging from a tree branch. Its long shape made me think it was a snake at first.

Upon closer inspection, it wasn’t a snake.

It was rotting intestines.

Intestines, either from an animal or human, were strewn about the trees like Christmas ornaments.

It looked like traces of an evil ritual.

“Wait a minute, Ellen. Something’s not right.”

“What is it?”

“The ground… it’s soft and squishy.”

Suddenly, the ground sank.

Where we had stepped was a mud swamp. Distracted by the entrails hanging from the trees, we hadn’t noticed.

Our bodies sank in an instant. The sticky mud swallowed us up to our knees.

I moved my legs, trying to escape.

“Summer, don’t move!”

Ellen shouted.

“The more you struggle in a swamp, the faster you’ll be sucked in…!”

“Then what should we do…?!”

“Stay calm and lie back slowly.”

Yeoreum and I silently followed Ellen’s instructions.

We slowly lay down with our backs towards the bottom.

“This will distribute your weight and…glug…”

Ellen, who had lain down, was immediately buried in the mud.

“Ellen!!!”

I immediately raised my body.

Punching through the mud as I advanced, I pulled Ellen out of the swamp.

Now I noticed that Nancy’s body next to me was also being buried.

I grabbed her thin arm and pulled.

“Are you okay, Nancy? Ah, no, are you alright, Yeoreum…?”

Realizing my slip of the tongue, I hastily corrected myself.

Yeoreum blushed slightly, seemingly embarrassed.

“It feels like I’m getting help from myself…”

Anyway, Ellen’s strategy didn’t work.

At this point, I had to trust my muscles.

I threw Yeoreum and Ellen over the mud swamp one by one. It was close, but both managed to escape safely.

Now it was my turn to get out. I churned my arms like a mixer, breaking through the mud.

My clothes were in tatters, but I succeeded in escaping.

We continued walking the forest path, covered in mud.

Ellen looked like she’d just had a mud pack. It suited her healthy beauty well.

The same went for Yeoreum. The mud stains created an odd contrast with Nancy’s snow-white skin.

Yeoreum, scanning the forest left and right, spoke up.

“I think it’s about time for a monster to appear.”

“You’re right.”

By now, a creature should have shown up to wreak havoc. But the forest was eerily quiet.

Reiko knew we were coming here.

Surely she must have prepared more than just wooden dolls and intestines.

As we walked, remaining vigilant, Yeoreum brought up the topic of horror movies.

He seemed to have quite some knowledge about horror films as well.

Discussing horror movies set in forests naturally led to talking about <The Evil Dead>.

“Of course, the original is the best. That film was a revolution in low-budget movies.”

“The remake was better.”

“Come on… You don’t know how to appreciate films.”

How could anyone rate the remake higher than the original? Yeoreum was clearly a newbie.

But I soon realized it wasn’t the time to debate whether the original or the remake was better.

At some point, our location on the map no longer matched the forest path.

We had lost our way.

“This feels familiar…”

The compass needle moved erratically, like a broken clock.

Ellen, feeling uneasy, gripped my hand tightly.

The lush forest, wet with rain. I had the strange thought that the eyes of the forest might be watching me.

“Summer, look over there.”

“That’s…”

“It’s a cabin.”

There was a single cabin among the large trees.

It was an old log cabin that looked like it could only exist in movies, embodying the word ‘No Trespassing’.

Yeoreum narrowed his eyes.

“Is that the place marked with an X on the map… I thought it was still far away.”

“Let’s check it out now.”

We approached cautiously.

We opened the cabin’s front door. A musty smell hit us.

I swept the floor with a wooden stick.

There might be booby traps set up, like wires that would trigger explosions or spikes if touched.

Fortunately, there were no such traps. We entered the cabin.

A bleak interior with only a small desk as furniture.

A document with the ‘W’ symbol was placed on the desk.

The document was densely filled with text in a language I had never seen before.

Just as Ellen, Yeoreum, and I were examining the inside of the cabin, the silence was broken.

Thud- Thud– Thud—-

A series of dull impact sounds were heard. They were quite loud.

“The sound came from underground.”

“It’s <The Evil Dead>… The basement of a cabin means death…”

Yeoreum broke out in a cold sweat.

In a normal situation, we would have immediately fled the cabin. But we couldn’t do that now.

What was in the basement might be Reiko.

Even if a trap was waiting for us, we had to take the risk.

We had to catch Reiko no matter what.

We opened the trapdoor leading to the basement.

Despite being an extremely old cabin, there wasn’t much dust inside.

Someone had clearly been here recently.

We went down the stairs.

When we turned on the light by pressing the wall switch, the space buried in darkness revealed itself.

A musty basement… One wall was red.

Instead of concrete or brick, it was made of living tissue.

It created a stark contrast with the other walls, ceiling, and floor, evoking a sense of discomfort.

“I’m tired of flesh walls by now.”

It was an undulating flesh wall.

A part of the flesh wall, like a sphincter, bulged out. That part spewed something out.

It looked like it was giving birth, but what came out wasn’t a baby.

It was a monster that looked too human to be called an insect, yet too insect-like to be called human.

A horrific appearance, like a half-mix of a butterfly and a man. Green blood flowed from its crushed lower body.

“Kill… me…”

The man who came out of the flesh wall groaned in pain.

I granted his wish. I chopped off his head with an axe. The head with antennae rolled on the floor.

Yeoreum spoke up.

“This is it.”

“What is?”

“Where creatures that have ‘backflowed’ from other realities come. That insect-man we just dealt with was a being from another reality.”

It wasn’t easy to understand Yeoreum’s claim.

I guess it means monsters that died in other dimensions come through that meat portal.

We examined the inner part of the basement. Equipment with indiscernible purposes was scattered everywhere.

Various tools and medical devices, unidentified chemical substances, and even machines used for cutting metal.

There were also many familiar items like hockey masks, taxidermied deer heads, and sawfish saws.

“Are they modifying the backflow entities to create new monsters here…”

Yeoreum muttered.

But we had clearly come down after hearing the thudding impact sounds.

Where was the being that made that noise hiding?

Just then, the flesh wall undulated again.

The living tissue split open wide, and from beyond the red darkness emerged a being we could never have imagined.

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