Red Deer opened his eyes, and after a brief moment of chaos, he realized that he was in a dream.

This is the interior of an old house...... It's not so much an old house as an old castle (especially by modern standards).

But it is precisely because of its appearance that Red Deer can be so sure that it is not in reality.

Because the old house that appeared in front of him had already been burned down in a fire, and the arsonist was himself.

Before it was burned to a pile of broken rubble and black ashes, the old house was very old - old, but still magnificent, hundreds of years have given it a unique ancient beauty, as if the ghosts and blood of those old aristocrats still stayed here, never left.

This is where Red Deer was born, and where he grew up.

He never imagined that one day he would return here, albeit in the form of a dream.

"It's funny. ”

Red Deer looked around him coldly, the dark but beautiful living room was as wide as he remembered, and there was still a faint trace of gilt on the thick oak wainscoting. The dark green wallpaper is a pattern of thorny vines that twist and turn over and over again.

Light steals from the wrought iron railings near the ceiling and the carved glass ventilation windows and falls on the brown-red parquet floor. After so many years, the oil in the thick oak seeps out, and after the waxing by the servants, it still looks oily and gentle, and even the fritillary inlaid with the edges is still shiny.

It may have been a hundred years since the last time it was lit – at a time when expensive candles were still used for lighting, but modern humans are more dependent on electricity.

The air was filled with the smell of dull dust, mixed with the subtle aroma of ambergris that had been applied to the walls hundreds of years ago.

A faint voice came from somewhere on the second floor.

Red Deer walked straight up the stairs without hesitation.

At the end of the stairs, he saw a boy.

The boy was only thirteen or fourteen years old, and his brown hair was meticulously combed back to reveal the boy's pale and expressionless face, his emerald green eyes like those of a cat, and the iris that reflected faintly in the dim light.

He wears an old-fashioned white shirt that is a little outdated for modern children, with knee-length suit shorts underneath and then white socks.

He should have had a pair of leather shoes on his feet, made of fine calfskin, without a brand – on a few fixed days a year, the shoe craftsmen who owned their own ancestral storefronts on London's oldest street would fly in with their suitcases to make leather shoes for the owner of the house and his children.

But at this moment, the expensive and elaborate leather shoes were taken off.

The boy hooked his shoe with two fingers and walked lightly down the ancient corridor without making a sound.

The moment he saw the boy, the pupils of the red deer suddenly contracted.

He followed the boy closely, step by step towards the room at the end of the hallway.

It was from that room that he had heard the sound he had heard before.

The slender corridors are as dark and narrow as ever, and the portraits on the walls look more like horror movie sets, and you can't help but feel that the dead are peering ill-intentioned at the people below.

But Red Deer knew very well that the cold sweat that was gradually oozing from the corners of the boy's forehead was not due to fear of the portraits.

"Hmm......"

The closer you got to that room, the closer you got to the hidden door, the louder it became.

It was a murmur of pain and pleasure, and some indescribable, creepy shrill laughter.

An ominous heat and turbidity gradually permeated the cold air of the old mansion, and the boy had already reached the door of the door, and he held his breath, unusually cautiously pressed his eyes to the crack of the door, and then looked inside.

The red deer's breathing became faster and faster.

[No-]

Almost subconsciously, he reached out to stop the boy, but his hand went straight through the boy's body.

The boy still saw everything in the room.

A woman was lying on a black bed, naked, her skin covered in bright red blood.

A huge oak cross hung upside down at the head of the bed nailed behind the woman, and beside her bed, several men were also unwielded like her, clothed in blood.

The severed fresh deer head, the indiscernible entrails, and a few other things were arranged in a white bone tray and rested beside the woman's bed.

The light of the candle illuminates everything in the room, and as the candle flame dances, the heavy shadows in the room twist and dance as if they have a life force of their own.

The room was filled with a strong smell of alcohol, blood, and body fluids.

And the woman was constantly rolling and twitching on the bed, she rolled her eyes, white foam overflowed from the corners of her mouth, and that strange laughter came from her body.

The men moved around her in a strange rhythm, their heads tilted and whispered as they stared at something hanging from the ceiling.

…… That's the corpse.

The headless deer carcass was opened and suspended in mid-air with iron cables.

It had apparently just been killed, and its dead muscles were still twitching slightly.

Blood was dripping down its throat, and every few moments someone would come up and sip the warm, bright red liquid.

The boy stood there calmly and observed everything in the room.

Suddenly, he turned back to the other end of the hallway.

Then he shrank like a dexterous kitten into the corner next to the door, and he grabbed the corner of a wainscoting, and then gently pulled it outward, and behind the wainscoting appeared a small space - there was always no shortage of such secret rooms or passages hidden in the corners of old castles and mansions.

Without hesitation, the boy slipped in, then closed the wainscoting.

But the red deer knew that through the small holes and gaps in the relief that looked like an ornament in the wainscoting, the boy could still see everything outside clearly.

Almost as the boy hid, the same child's cries and struggles could be heard on the other side of the hallway.

Men in black robes grabbed a boy and walked towards the room.

The unusually wicked and strange ritual in the room was interrupted as a result.

The woman on the big bed slowly got up from the bed, her body was unusually soft, and her movements were more like animals.

And when she opened her eyes, the emerald green eyes seemed to come from a beast or a devil.

["Did you catch them?"]

The woman spoke—her voice unusually sweet, hoarse, and unusually viscous.

It's as if each word can squirm in the air individually.

["Madam, there is only one, your eldest son is gone, and he ran away beforehand-"]

The black-robed man replied in fear.

"Woooooooooo......oo Let me go, let me go!"

And in their hands, the boy who was caught let out a scream.

Red Deer's gaze lingered on him, then froze for a moment.

The boy had a face identical to the one before him.

The same black curls, the same green eyes, the same pale complexion.

The only difference was that the boy's face was contorted with intense fear.

["Hmm, what a pity......]

The woman rose from the bed, whispered, and walked in front of the boy with her seductive waist in one step.

"Mom's ......"

The boy trembled even more at the woman's gaze.

"This is not the best sacrifice, we should have offered my firstborn son today. ”】

The woman held out her fingers with bright red nail polish and stroked the boy's face, and she murmured.

["But we can add an extra liver and a heart as a ...... to make up for it"]

Red Deer slowly closed his eyes.

He felt a shudder, and a faint smell of rust ran on the tip of his tongue.

He didn't need to watch to know what was going on, because it was all in the past and not the present for him.

He could even remember how the boy who looked exactly like him had been dragged to the black bed, and how their mother, the woman, had cut off his brother's head with a silver knife and ......

After a long time, the room filled with the strong smell of blood fell silent.

The light became darker.

There was silence all around.

The wainscoting moved slightly, and the boy who had been hiding before crept out of the secret room.

He looked at the room silently for a moment, then turned to the other end of the hallway.

Red Deer followed.

Then, more shocked than the boy, he looked at the door at the end of the hallway—

Red, sophisticated, but unusually old doors, smooth brass handles.

And he didn't even have any impression of the door.

"What the is this......"

Red Deer remembers very well that there was only a long corridor opposite the sinful room, and at the end was a narrow window, and the white curtains fluttered like ancient ghosts or ghosts.

But there is absolutely no such door there.

At least Red Deer never remembered seeing the "door" when he was so young.

But no matter how complicated Red Deer's mood is now, the boy who belonged to the past still approached the red door step by step. He appeared very cautious, suspicious, full of confusion.

He tentatively touched the handle of the door.

"Crunch—"

In the silence of the mansion, the grinding of the door shaft was unusually loud.

The red door opened smoothly in front of the boy.

The inside of the door was pitch black.

The young red deer stepped back almost instinctively, but it was too late.

Something—you could say it was hair, or mist, or tentacles, poured out of the door and dragged the boy into the door—

"No—"

The boy who had been unusually silent all along, the red deer from the past, finally let out a scream.

Half of his body had been pulled into the doorframe, and he was clutching the railing of the hallway with all his might, but his fingers were slipping.

And at that moment when he gradually couldn't hold it anymore.

From a very distant place, there was a cry.

Red Deer's eyes widened, and he clearly saw a light piercing the world behind the door.

He saw himself crawl out of the strange door, and then staggered a few steps on the ground, and finally fainted unsupportably.

And that door held on to it for about a few seconds. It was as if it were an invisible time accelerator. The doors became obsolete, decaying, and finally crumbling into ashes at a rate visible to the naked eye.

The only thing that could prove the existence of the door was the black substance wrapped around the boy's arm.

They rolled and twitched, and little by little seeped into the boy's skin, before disappearing.

At the same time, in the real world, the room where the tragedy had happened was silently pushed open.

"They ate me. ”

A ghostly voice rang out behind the red deer.

Red Deer turned his head slowly, and a familiar shadow stood in the interior of the room, drenched in blood from the ankle down.

Red Deer saw in the blood the floating bodies of his mother and the men, each of which had been burned to a charred black mummified shape.

"And you're just watching. ”

The man looked up with the same face as the red deer and whispered softly in the red deer's voice.

"So mom was angry...... As she said, the original sacrifice should have been you, brother, it should have been you. ”

……

Red Deer opened his eyes.

He woke up so suddenly that the man who was wiping his body for him was startled.

"Oh, God—Reed?"

Calvin's voice quickly aligned Red Deer's soul with him, and he adjusted his breathing to find that he was indeed fully awake.

Then he sat up slowly, and Calvin sat on the edge of his bed with a wet towel in his hand.

Red Deer's skin vaguely remembered the tactile sensation of the towel before he was fully conscious—rough, dry, from very cheap fabrics.

He looked around and found himself lying in a modest guest room.

The windows are small and the curtains are polyester. Simmons of the bed has been used for a long time, and the springs have begun to deteriorate, so much so that there will be a noticeable recess in the very center of the bed. The blanket that covered him was rather airtight and smelled of an unpleasant chemical cleaner.

The child's scream was still clear even if it was filtered through a glass window, which made the red deer who had just woken up a little restless.

"You're finally awake......"

Before the red deer could finish his analysis, Calvin had already leaned over and hugged the red deer tightly.

Red Deer noticed that Calvin's face was very haggard, and that he had cut his hair short.

"Where is this...... What's going on......"

The red deer's eyes darkened.

He was pretty sure he had smelled the ointment on Calvin's body, and then he had it on his own - he lifted his own quilt, and sure enough, his legs were wrapped in a thick layer of gauze.

"It was Fugg who did it. ”

Calvin followed the red deer's gaze to his legs.

"Don't worry, the most important part didn't get hurt – you and I were very lucky that all the burns were cutaneous. Just apply some ointment and avoid strenuous exercise. ”

Calvin explained briskly.

Red Deer could easily tell, and Calvin seemed very pleased with his sobriety. He soon knew the reason, and it had been nearly half a month since the day he lost consciousness and control of his body without warning.

And before he knew it, Calvin experienced an extremely horrific explosion with him.

The Blue Diamond Crown Hotel was completely razed to the ground, and countless people were killed, and as for Calvin and him, they were all dead.

As they fled the chaotic area, both of them had burns of varying severity. To make matters worse, he remained unconscious for the next week or so - no personality appeared to take over the body.

Luckily, they still have those cute cash from Grien with them.

Calvin managed to steal a car and drove the red deer for a long and sleepless journey, eventually finding a motel in a remote town already some distance from the seashore.

"I told them you were rehabilitating"

Calvin explained.

“…… You've broken your leg in a car accident, you've lost your job and your girlfriend, and you're so sad that you're almost about to end your life. And as a good friend, I choose to take you out of that damn big city and go to a small remote place for a vacation, and then change your mood. ”

"It sounds like this 'me' is miserable. ”

Reed couldn't help but laugh.

Calvin glanced at him, and then both of them laughed inexplicably.

"Thank you, Calvin. "I must have caused you a lot of trouble." ”

Calvin crossed his hands over his chest and raised his eyebrows, "Probably as troublesome as when I was unconscious, you took me to escape from the police and the Adventists—"

Under Reed's gradually calm, focused gaze, Calvin's pretended relaxed smile finally turned into a faint smile.

"I'm really glad you woke up. ”

Calvin said.

Otherwise, he really doesn't know what to do.

He didn't say this to Reed—

In fact, it was a very difficult time.

The bombing of the Blue Diamond Crown Hotel sent shockwaves throughout the United States, or rather, the world.

The near-four-figure casualty tragedy led to a massive scrutiny, and Calvin did not dare to contact Isaac again because almost all of his phone calls would be intercepted.

Immediately afterward, he had to make constant detours on various country roads to avoid police barricades and checks, and for this Calvin had to abandon public transport altogether. To make matters worse was Reed's burns, and Calvin did not dare to go to the underground doctor, let alone to find medicine so as not to attract unwanted attention.

Of course, the most lethal was Reed's unconscious.

Calvin never found the reason why Reed was unconscious, maybe it was because he was hit by the masonry while fleeing from the blue diamond, or maybe the high fever caused by the burns caused Reed's brain damage?

During those nights, Calvin had to confront his fears, and he found himself unable to bear the consequences of Reed's eternal unconsciousness.

Thankfully, a week later, Fugg came to his senses.

By that time, Calvin had found a temporary home for himself and Reed at an outdoor campground.

There was free water and a few homeless people who were indifferent to everything around them (of course, some would yell at Calvin, "Dead □□ get out"), and Calvin got some fever reducers and burn ointment from several girls who claimed to be gypsies.

Reed's fever finally subsided.

After Fugg woke up, medication became no problem. But given his physical problems, the only people who were able to do his activities outside were Calvin, whose slender and graceful build, which was a bit too slender for an adult man, and his suspected homosexuality (after all, he and his "disabled boyfriend" were always sticky together) caused minor troubles again.

Fugg dealt with those people, but they also had to get out of there.

After some tossing and turning, Calvin and Fugg finally chose the town of Pietto as their temporary residence.

The religious atmosphere here is conservative and closed, which means that the Adventists are very weak here. Locals focused more on a baseball game against a neighboring town than on a rich resort, where a luxury hotel suffered a serious terrorist attack.

"And it used to be a popular summer getaway, but now it's not very attractive to young people just for fishing and camping in the woods. But there are still some regular guests who come here every summer to stay for a summer and then return to town before the dull winter arrives. Calvin shrugged, "There are not many people here, and the attitude towards outsiders is not too warm, but not too defensive. Fugg thinks we should at least stay here until the injury is completely healed. ”

Calvin said a lot, but it was clear that the other person in the room was not interested in what Fugg said or what choices he made, but something else......

"Let me see your injuries. ”

Reed stared at Calvin's increasingly emaciated face and spoke suddenly. 166 Reading Network