Chapter 34: Mrs. Kathy
The first thing he noticed as he woke up was a deep, biting hunger in his stomach. The second was the darkness, and the third was the cold.
He flailed a bit, struggling to understand where he was, before finally latching onto the scream that had woken him.
It curdled, then choked, before devolving into wet, bloody coughs. A few moments later, it fell completely silent.
With the screaming gone, the muffled sounds of the storm beyond dominated the room. The rattling of the dying heater he’d grown used to was entirely absent.
He glanced around frantically, noticing figures moving in the darkness, his gaze slipping past them as he searched for the source of the scream.
He paused at the locker rooms.
Light spilled through the bottom slit of the boys’ locker room.
’Emergency power?’
He’d barely finished the thought when he turned to face the girls’ locker room. Light spilled from it as well, but its door was wide open, dimly illuminating the portion of the gym beyond.
Lying in that dim light, right before the open door, was a body.
Miles couldn’t make much of it, besides the long hair and the fact that it was a girl.
’Very likely dead.’
If the principal’s enforcements so far were anything to go by, and if she’d been the one to scream, there was little chance of any other possibility.
Miles pushed himself off his mat to join the growing crowd gathering around her. By now, Morgan, Chloe, and a few others had their flashlights on, providing a bit more light to the room.
With the improved lighting and his closer distance, he could finally make out her features.
Long brown hair splayed over pale skin, darkened by blood leaking out of every orifice on her face. Her still-open eyes were twisted in a look of shock, desperation, and pain.
It was Alice.
Sarah’s friend. The girl who had joined her in sharing food just last night. The one who had barely escaped dying the first time thanks to Morgan’s warning.
She had died anyway.
Miles looked around to find Sarah staring at the corpse, stunned, even as her other friends hurried to Alice, vainly trying to wake her up as they devolved into tears.
She just stood there with a mix of shock and disbelief on her face, watching.
He turned to find Morgan looking around, as though the man were searching for someone. Giving the crowd a scan of his own, he soon realized the issue as well.
Kathy was missing.
There was only one other place she could be.
Looking beyond Alice’s corpse into the dimly lit locker room, he saw glass shards littering the ground. The mirror mounted on the wall was completely shattered. Yet he paid no attention to that.
A pool of dark red liquid, glistening in the low light, slowly crept towards the door.
Blood.
His eyes followed the trail to the far end of the room, where three bodies lay crumpled over one another.
Even in the low light, he could identify the largest among them.
Kathy.
She lay motionless next to the wall, slash wounds covering her face and body. The blood leaking from them mixed with the blood of the other two, forming the pool that inched its way closer to the open doorway.
Miles stared at their bodies. At the woman who had fought tooth and nail to bring him to this school, despite knowing who he was, despite knowing what he did.
And he tried his best, searched his soul for even an iota of grief or sadness.
There was nothing.
Nothing besides a sense of resignation. Anything else felt so distant, washed away by a sea of numbness; it might as well not have existed.
He gritted his teeth before focusing on the bodies again. There was little point in pondering his abnormality.
Bloodstains marked the wall above Kathy, becoming more legible the longer he focused on them. Sketchy, irregular, but still readable.
MIRR-
It devolved into gibberish bloodstains that ended where her hand lay.
’Mirror?’
Morgan stepped forward at that moment, glancing between the corpse on the ground and those inside the locker room.
He stopped at Kathy, an indescribable emotion in his eyes as he stared at her. His clenched fists betrayed whatever stability he sought to portray.
In the end, he closed his eyes, gritting his teeth before forcefully turning his head away from her. His tears were barely visible in the low light.
The man rubbed his face, remaining silent for a few seconds. Then he opened them.
"Alright..."
"Everyone, get away from the door."
Chloe interrupted him, whispering in the most urgent tone possible. The girl was already backing away from the door, throwing down a piece of the broken mirror she’d been holding.
A mix of confusion and terror shrouded the crowd, yet they obeyed without questioning.
The crowd’s attention, including Miles’s, was focused on Chloe now.
The girl looked shaken, her gaze still fixed on the open doorway. She wasn’t looking at the corpses.
Sensing the silence around her, she turned to the crowd, hesitating a bit before taking out her phone and looking at Ryan.
The boy took out his own phone, granting her permission to speak in the group chat.
[Chloe: I inspected one of the mirror pieces that flew out the door. It was infected by another anomaly, but I was able to get more details on this one.]
[Chloe: Its name is Bloody Mary, and it kills anyone who stares at mirrors.]
’What?’
Miles’s mind froze in shock.
He wasn’t unaware of the Bloody Mary tale. It was a popular urban legend about a woman appearing in the mirror to kill anyone who called her name thrice.
’Why is she appearing here?’
More so, she was an anomaly. One that didn’t even follow her own rules; she killed anyone who did so much as stare into a mirror.
Morgan pulled out his phone to type as well. Yet, before he could even begin, the speakers on the wall crackled to life.
"Time after time, you continue proving that leniency is ill-fitted for you lot."