Chapter 44: The Witch (2)

A student dying in public naturally alarmed the police.

By the time the Micano police arrived at the scene, the spiders had already vanished. All that remained on the ground was a pool of blood and Laura’s clothes, soaked through with it.

There had been far too many witnesses to the death. Although the music teacher reacted quickly and cleared the students from the scene almost at once, photos and videos related to the incident still spread rapidly throughout the entire school. Everywhere you walked, people were talking about it.

Laura’s manner of death was extremely bizarre. No one had ever heard of a person coughing up spiders and then having their body explode into a puddle of blood.

In this version of America, science and superstition went hand in hand—people believed all sorts of things. Some thought Laura had accidentally swallowed the eggs of some mutated spider, which then hatched inside her and ate her hollow from within. Others immediately criticized that view, arguing that this supposedly scientific explanation was not scientific at all.

“Hey, this is already the second death. One case might be nothing, but two people dying in such strange ways? How could science possibly explain that? This has to be a witch’s curse!” the boy insisted confidently.

“A witch? What witch?”

“You don’t know? The old school building used to be a chapel owned by a Catholic church. They say that in that chapel, a cursed witch was once imprisoned…” The boy lowered his voice, speaking in a mysterious tone.

Horror Movie Survival Rule One: pay attention to the clues.

This was the second time Everly had heard the word “witch.” If this were a horror film, then she felt that the witch once imprisoned in the chapel was almost certainly the mastermind behind all the strange events.

But why had the boy said it was the second death? Could it be that someone besides Laura had already died?

Full of questions, Everly stood in an inconspicuous corner and eavesdropped for a while. Unfortunately, the student clearly knew only fragments about the witch. He kept repeating the same few lines over and over, with no real substance. As for the so-called first death he mentioned, he didn’t elaborate on it at all.

Both pieces of information would have to be investigated by Everly herself.

That’s just how it is when you don’t have friends at school—news that has already spread like wildfire among classmates might take hundreds of years to accidentally reach Everly’s ears.

Heh.

Every afternoon, the school had two hours set aside for physical activities. Everly was a member of the tennis club. During a break in practice, she sought out one of the more gossip-prone club members and asked around. That was how she learned that Laura was not the first recent mysterious death. Before her, a boy from the class next door named Benjamin had also died.

Benjamin had likewise been part of Elrond’s small clique. He was a rising star on the school basketball team. At only seventh grade, he had already shot up to 1.8 meters tall, broad-shouldered and long-legged, athletic and reportedly an excellent shooter. In Everly’s impression, he was the textbook “American jock”—empty-headed and arrogantly self-confident—but he was quite popular among the girls.

Last Friday afternoon, after everyone had gone home from school, something happened at his house. For reasons unknown, Benjamin suddenly fell from the second-floor balcony.

A compression garbage truck had been parked below. At the time, it was collecting trash, with its loading hatch open. Benjamin fell from the balcony and landed directly inside the opening, where he was swept in together with the rest of the garbage and pulled into the compactor.

Strangely, for such a large person falling, not a single person present saw Benjamin fall or heard him scream inside the garbage truck. It wasn’t until the truck returned to the transfer station and workers began unloading the compacted blocks of trash that they made a horrifying discovery—Benjamin’s body, crushed into a block and fused with the garbage, twisted beyond recognition.

“Everyone’s saying they were retaliated against by Kelly,” the gossipy club member added.

“Kelly?”

“You know, that chubby girl who’s always bullied by Elrond and his gang—Kelly Davis.”

Who was that?

Since starting middle school, Everly had buried herself in her studies and ignored everything else. Even her own classmates took her over a month to memorize, let alone the students in the class next door. Apart from a few she had barely met for a group project, she truly didn’t know anyone else.

“…”

The gossip club member immediately saw from Everly’s expression that she knew nothing. But on second thought… well, this was the ever-aloof Everly, after all. If she were paying attention to petty school drama, that would have been surprising. And besides, the fact that Everly didn’t know—wasn’t that exactly the right moment for her to be enlightened?

So the club member didn’t mind at all. In fact, she excitedly grabbed Everly and thoroughly filled her in on the story between Elrond’s group of four and Kelly.

The whole situation boiled down to one thing: school b*llying.

Elrond’s four-man clique were the influential figures of the school. By chance, they had set their sights on a classmate named Kelly.

Kelly was introverted, short and chubby, had very little presence, and almost no friends—making her a perfect target.

Elrond’s group treated the obedient Kelly like a toy, barking orders at her and humiliating her in various ways. Kelly came from a poor family and relied on a scholarship for her living expenses. She dared not resist Elrond, because her father’s influence could determine whether she kept her scholarship. The clique clearly knew this, and as time went on, their b*llying of Kelly grew increasingly cruel.

“Do you know the Laura who died today? She always carried around a glass jar with a few spiders inside. Those spiders were specifically for Kelly—because Kelly is terrified of spiders. She gets so scared that her whole body shakes and she sweats uncontrollably. Once Laura realized this, she often used the spiders to scare Kelly, dumping them on her head—there are even rumors that she forced Kelly to swallow spider eggs, or poured little spiders into her ears. Who knows if that’s true…”

“…” Everly frowned deeply. “And the school just let that happen?”

“How could they stop it? Elrond’s dad is good friends with the principal, and the other three boys all come from rich or powerful families. As long as Kelly doesn’t report it, the teachers are more than happy to pretend they don’t know anything,” the gossipy club member shrugged.

Well… that sounded about right. Most teachers in America were apparently just like that.

Their conversation ended as extracurricular time finished. Today it was the gossipy club member’s turn to collect the tennis balls. Carrying a basket full of balls, she stood up from the ground. To thank her for sharing the information, Everly also stood and helped return the balls to the equipment room.

The two of them walked side by side toward the equipment room door. Just as they were about to enter, the gossipy club member suddenly lifted her arm and nudged Everly with her elbow.

“Look over there, that’s Kelly!” she whispered excitedly.

Everly followed her gaze and saw, just around the corner of the nearby court, a short girl being cornered by two boys—one on each side.

Everly didn’t necessarily know everyone, but she remembered the school’s popular figures. With just one glance, she recognized the two tall boys as Elrond and Eric—the same ones the gossipy club member had mentioned earlier.

What were they doing? Were they confronting Kelly, maybe suspecting that she had something to do with the deaths of their friends…?

Everly thought for a moment, set down the basket of balls, and used the cover of the bushes to get closer, pressing her ear to listen.

Her guess had been correct. Two classmates had died in succession, and with Laura dying in such a peculiar way, it was only natural that Elrond and Eric would suspect Kelly.

What surprised Everly, however, was that even after realizing the truth, the two boys, knowing full well that Kelly might now possess some kind of special power, showed no fear or remorse. They didn’t beg or apologize on their knees. Instead, they grew even more vicious in threatening her.

“…Don’t pretend. We know it was you. That day, you failed to send away that evil spirit because the patrol security interrupted you. Since then, it’s been clinging to you, hasn’t it? The witch’s curse works well, but don’t forget, Kelly—you still need your dad to survive with his job at Dongling Electric.

If you dare do anything to the two of us, I swear I’ll ruin your dad, leave him a cripple, and he’ll never find a job anywhere in Micano again!” Elrond grabbed Kelly by the cheek, pressing the small girl against the netted fence of the court as he growled his threats.

Standing beside him, Eric’s face was also dark. He brandished his phone. “And these photos too—I’ve backed them all up in my private space. The moment I die, they’ll be sent to everyone’s email at school. By then, I guarantee your body will become famous all over Micano…”

The two boys’ powerful bodies blocked Kelly from view. From Everly’s angle, she couldn’t see Kelly’s face, but even just seeing the outline of the girl’s body sent chills down her spine. Cold sweat ran down her back, and her heart pounded violently in her chest, each beat sounding like a drum.

Danger. Danger. Danger. Danger… Every cell in Everly’s body screamed the same warning: that girl named Kelly was extremely dangerous.

To think they would actually use threats like that against Kelly—did those two boys really understand what kind of terrifying existence they were facing?

At this point, Everly felt there was no need to intervene. She didn’t want to bring trouble on herself, but at the same time, she couldn’t tolerate two boys bullying a girl—even if that girl now possessed inhuman powers, bullying was still something Everly despised. So she pretended to pass by casually and called out into the empty air, “Mr. Miller, what are you doing here?”

Mr. Miller was the school’s disciplinarian, a stern and rigid old man who did things his own way and wouldn’t bend even for the principal. Anyone caught breaking rules—even Elrond—would be scolded severely. He was one of the few upright figures in the school.

As expected, upon hearing Everly’s voice, the two boys looked guilty and simultaneously released their grip on Kelly.

“Remember what I just said.”

“We’ll continue this later.”

They muttered threats at Kelly in low voices and hurriedly left the fence area.

Everly didn’t want to get further involved, so she quietly lowered her steps and ran with the club member into the equipment room, hiding before the boys could see her.

Kelly, still leaning against the metal fence, stood facing the sky alone for a moment. Then she straightened up, her eyes locking directly on Everly, and the corners of her mouth curved into a sinister smile.

Everly, hiding behind the window and watching, felt her heart nearly stop.

Even though she knew she hadn’t done anything wrong, who could say for sure? Sometimes good deeds aren’t rewarded. Just like in The Fisherman and the Devil, where the fisherman released a devil trapped in a bottle for hundreds of years—the devil wasn’t grateful, but instead tried to kill the fisherman…

Everly silently swore she would never be too kind again.

Clutching the banshee eyeball she wore against her chest and filled with unease, Everly said goodbye to the club member and left the equipment room.