WermitUngeheuernkmpft,magzusehn,dassernichtdabeizumUngeheuerwird.UndwenndulangeineinenAbgrundblickst,blicktderAbgrundauchindichhinein.

Those who fight dragons should be careful not to become dragons.

When you stare into the abyss from afar, the abyss also stares at you.

———— enseitsvon Gutund Bse The Other Side of Good and Evil - Aph.146

Calvin had a nightmare.

He dreamed of a bird, a black, huge bird.

Probably crows? Crows are not uncommon in this city.

The crow in the dream perched on the windowsill of his apartment, staring coldly at him through the dirty glass.

It's kind of funny, why would you think that dreaming of a black bird would be a nightmare? Calvin could even hear himself talking to himself.

But he could still feel the intense terror, as if every nerve was immersed in the cold water, and his body was trembling. He had no way to control his body at all, his eyes seemed to be frozen in his sockets, there was no way to move, he could only look at the crow, and the crow was also looking at him.

Its feathers were as black as shadows, without a hint of reflective black, yet its eyes and mouth were red, and the red writhed slowly.

Calvin felt as if he was in a hallucination, and time slowed down in this dream.

The feeling of nausea and nausea erupted in his body when he saw the crow's mouth and eyes, and it seemed like a long time, and it seemed like a short moment, Calvin suddenly realized the source of his fear—the crow did not have red eyes and a beak, and it was like that because its eyes had been ripped out, and its beak was ......

In a trance, Calvin found himself pressed against the glass window, and from this angle he could clearly see the front lawn of the apartment, where Georgie, the child whose body had been made into a meat cake, had died.

There was now a clear red mark in that place, and countless crows were surrounding his corpse, pecking at his already rotten sauce-colored entrails.

The red on the bird's beak is Georgie's stained blood.

"No ......"

Calvin grunted in pain, fear spreading through his chaotic brain.

He tried to stop the crows, and in the dream, his hand went straight through the glass, out—

"Don't do that, kid. ”

At that moment, a warm, rough hand reached out from behind him and took his wrist.

Calvin jerked his head back, and he saw a familiar face.

The man's hair had turned gray, and there were wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and mouth, and he looked a little haggard, but much better than he was in Calvin's memory.

The dark gray woolen suit he wore was bought by Calvin on his last day, and the funeral home staff put it on him and told him that Calvin fit it well.

“…… I'm dreaming. ”

Calvin said to himself with a shudder.

He began to feel dizzy, and a wet, hot liquid trickled down the corners of his eyes.

"Yes, you're dreaming. ”

Dr. Holden said gently, grabbing Calvin's hand and dragging him away from the ledge.

Calvin followed his adoptive father in a trance, and he unconsciously glanced back to find that it had become pitch black outside the window.

"Don't get too close to those things," Dr. Holden earnestly instructed.

"That Bird ......"

"Shhhh

Dr. Holden held out a finger and put it in front of his mouth.

"I don't know how to explain it to you, but it's not a bird, and I don't know who gave it form...... But that doesn't matter, you don't need to know what it really is. When you don't think about it, when you don't know it, it can't come into your world. ”

"I don't understand ......"

"It doesn't matter. Dr. Holden's gaze at Calvin flashed with the father's tolerance and concern for his child, and the worry was so deep that he looked even sad at this moment.

"I don't feel very good, father, something's going on, something bad. Calvin spoke incoherently, "That kid...... The child was dead, and another child was missing, right in my living room, one second I was talking to him but the next he was gone under my couch. He covered his face with his hands, and in this dream he seemed to have no way to control his vulnerability," ...... Maybe I'm crazy. ”

"No, you don't. ”

Dr. Holden said, his voice suddenly low and low, and the hand he held Calvin seemed to grow cold.

"Look, the kid is still there. ”

The older man raised his hand and aimed his index finger at the old couch.

Calvin looked along Dr. Holden's fingertips—and his body stiffened.

He saw a thin, dark brown mass of unidentified objects lying in his living room. It was a man, a man who had become a mummy from dehydration and dryness, and yet its body was not exactly human-like in a certain sense: its body was elongated, as if its crumpled skin and dry muscle** had at some point turned into plasticine, and a mischievous hand stretched it back and forth to twice the length of a normal person.

Because of this, the mummy looks unusually thin. Its lower body was still buried under the dark and cramped couch, but its upper body was in the middle of the living room, where it froze in a straight forward position, each finger taut.

Because the facial skin had completely lost moisture, the mummy's jaw opened nearly 180 degrees, and the sunken black eye sockets were stretched into an oblong shape.

The intense pain and despair seemed to remain in it until this moment, and it passed on to Calvin.

"No...... Not ......"

Calvin almost couldn't breathe. Was it his delusion? Suddenly, the air in the room became so cold, so heavy, and he began to shiver incessantly.

"You're not crazy. This is the child, he didn't disappear, he just grew hungry and desperate in a place you can't see, and finally his soul was drained by it. In fact, he is here and has always been here. ”

Dr. Holden showed a terrible cruelty at this moment, and he forcibly dragged the immobile Calvin towards the mummy.

"This is the darkness you are about to face, watch him well, my child, you have to be strong. The devil is approaching you, and the door is about to open. ”

Calvin had clearly seen Billy, the mummified face, the empty gaze and the skull beneath the dried skin, and its black cavitated throat.

Suddenly, a crow burst out of its mouth.

"Ahh

The bird flapped its black wings and let out a hoarse scream.

……

……

……

"No, no, no, no, no—"

Calvin awoke abruptly at the sound of his own screams.

He nearly rolled out of bed, and it wasn't until a few minutes later that his heartbeat, which was completely out of control, barely returned to normal.

His phone was pressed under his pillow, and perhaps for that reason, his ringtone sounded so strange and eerie — no wonder it was in his nightmares.

Calvin rubbed his aching temples and struggled to his feet, and the room was as cold as an ice cave. He glanced at the screen, and the caller ID number belonged to Isaac. The time in the upper right corner of the phone shows two o'clock in the afternoon.

Well, now his headache is also explained.

"Hey, Isaac—"

"God, your call is so 'easy' to get through. ”

……

Calvin answered the phone and shuddered as he walked over to the thermostat — the screen was 59 degrees F — dozens of degrees below the lowest temperature that an air conditioner could theoretically reach.

"What the hell?"

Calvin frowned and glared at the number, and he slapped it twice the controller, and after a few seconds, the number on the screen changed to 71 degrees. He heard the fan squeaking in the overhead vent, and after a few more moments, slightly warmer air erupted from the vent.

“…… Hey, Calvin, are you listening?"

Calvin wrapped himself in a blanket and paced to the kitchen to pour himself a cup of piping hot coffee, and it wasn't until then that Isaac's voice on the other end of the phone actually reached his ears.

"Sorry, the air conditioner is having trouble again - I couldn't concentrate at all. ”

Calvin said.

"Your voice doesn't sound good. ”

"Hmm...... Had a nightmare. ”

Calvin's words paused, for he suddenly realized that he seemed to have forgotten the specifics of the nightmare he had just had. The only thing that was certain was that it was indeed a very terrible dream, and that icy fear still lingered in the depths of his body until now.