Chapter 7: Strange Events

----------------------------------------

I stayed hidden in the closet for hours.

Truthfully, I could have concluded it was safe after the first few minutes. Since I didn’t hear a bloodbath happening outside, I knew the intruder wasn’t searching the dorms. There was no guarantee that person was even after me… Assuming it was a person.

What was I thinking? Of course it was a person. I wasn’t crazy enough to start believing in ghosts and zombies. Although, how much did I really know about this world? Could such things actually exist here? No, if I started thinking like that, I might really end up in an asylum.

I’d probably overreacted to something completely normal. The ‘intruder’ might have just been a student who forgot their ID. That didn’t explain why they were trying to break the door down instead of calling the student housing office, but it made way more sense than the alternative.

Even if I knew that logically, I couldn’t bring myself to leave the safety of my hiding place. My imagination kept jumping to conclusions that weren’t rational.

At some point, I fell asleep. Maintaining a hyper-focused state for a prolonged period eventually took its toll. My exhausted body and mind could only endure so much stress. When I awoke, I wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but streaks of light shone through the slats of the door. Morning had come.

I left my hiding place and stretched out the crook in my neck. Staying huddled in a closet wasn’t exactly the most restful night’s sleep I’d ever gotten. When I checked my reflection in the mirror, there were dark, sunken circles under my eyes. Both my hair and clothes were disheveled and there was even a tear in my shirt.

I spent a few minutes cleaning up my appearance. The clock on my nightstand told me it was 6:44am. At least I wouldn’t be late for class.

Was that really something I should be worrying about after what I’d seen last night? Come to think of it, what had I seen? My encounter with the intruder put me on edge. I never took the time to consider what I’d witnessed.

A dead body hung from a tree. A female student. Was it a suicide? It startled me so much, I ran before I got a proper look.

At the time, I thought I was being chased, but in retrospect, that’s ridiculous. My nerves got to me and I invented a danger that wasn’t really there. Then the intruder afterwards had to have been something separate. A total coincidence…

But what if it wasn’t? Now that I could think through everything clearly, a suicide didn’t make a lot of sense.

I’d heard of such things occasionally happening at my university. There were stories of people who couldn’t handle the pressure and broke. Either because they were failing their classes or had tons of debt, the stress built up until they decided to end it all. It was rare, but there was apparently one such case every couple of years.

Or people who did the same after going through a messy break-up for the first time. They felt like their whole world was over because their boyfriend or girlfriend left them. That wasn’t unheard of either.

Neither of those scenarios fit here. It’s the beginning of the year. There’s no one who’s failing yet. Most classes probably haven’t had a single graded assignment.

Also, this was a boarding academy for highschool students. I doubted any of these kids were paying for their tuition themselves. Besides, most of them came from rich and influential families. If they weren’t from such a background, then they were here on a scholarship.

The break-up explanation might work, but it’s still rather odd. If the victim just met a new boyfriend at school, there wouldn’t have been enough time for a strong bond to form. If it was someone she was dating before school started, it makes a little more sense, but not much.

For someone to kill themselves over something like that, it would need to come as a major shock. The girl presumably knew she was going away to school and they would be apart for an extended time. In that case, the break-up shouldn’t have come as a big surprise.

Plus, there’s the whole spectacle aspect of it. The body was hung up in the middle of campus like it was put on display. If the victim was just a depressed girl who killed herself, why would she choose to do it there?

The long walk from the dorms would stop most people from doing something rash. She would need to be convinced to go through with it rather than emotional. And I didn’t see a ladder nearby. She would have had to climb the tree. Why go through so much extra effort?

However, what if I assume that it wasn’t a suicide? What if she was murdered? I’ve heard of killers doing weird shit like arranging the victim’s body before.

If I follow that line of thinking, it’s possible I really was being chased last night. Maybe I interrupted the killer doing whatever they had planned. They heard me coming and hid somewhere nearby. I didn’t see anyone, but I wasn’t paying close attention to anything other than the corpse. Then the killer saw me run off and thought they had been exposed. So they chased me with the intent to silence me.

Holy shit! Is that really possible? It would explain the discrepancies with the scene and the incident with the intruder. If my theory is right, then my life could still be in danger. They could be staking out the building right now, just waiting for me to come out.

Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

No wait, actually that would be stupid. If they think I saw their face, they should have assumed I’d call the police immediately. They probably already left the school. If I was in their position, as soon as I lost my chance to silence the witness, I’d bolt and make a run for the border. Then again, murdering someone and stringing the corpse up in a tree wasn’t something a rational person would do anyway. They might simply be crazy and their actions impossible to predict.

Thinking up to this point, I shook my head. I needed to take a step back and remind myself that this was real life, not a Sherlock Holmes novel. Leave it for the professionals. I shouldn’t just go making assumptions about there being a murderer on the loose. I was only making wild speculations without evidence.

It was probably just an unusual suicide and there’s no killer. Still, just in case, I don’t want to take any risks with my life. I’ll head straight for the first cop I see and explain what I know. They’re probably swarming all over campus. I never called them last night, but plenty of people must have seen the body and reported it by now.

With my course of action decided, I left my dorm and took the stairs down. Even though my theory was unlikely, I wanted to remain cautious. Once I made it to the ground floor, I hung around the entrance waiting until I saw other people leave.

Surprisingly, the front door had already been fixed. The hinges weren’t shiny and new, so it seemed they reused the same ones. Also, the frame showed no signs of damage where the screws ripped out. It must have been painted over. The maintenance staff sure works fast.

I didn’t need to wait long before a trio of students came down the elevator on their way to class. Two boys and a girl. The boys were laughing and joking with each other while the girl rolled her eyes annoyed. They didn’t pay me any attention as they passed. I followed them outside as if part of their group. If there really was a killer on the loose, having witnesses nearby might dissuade them from trying anything.

Once outside, I made sure to stick to well-populated areas. The walk to the center of campus was tense. I kept my eyes peeled, searching for anyone who looked suspicious. No one stuck out, but there was something else I noticed.

Where were the cops? Not a single patrolling officer or police cruiser. I expected to see detectives investigating the scene, the whole area cordoned off with yellow tape, a crowd watching on curiously. But there was nothing.

Everyone went about their morning as normal. I paid attention to what the passersby were saying, but I didn’t hear anyone gossiping about a girl being found dead. Instead, it was just the usual highschool drama you’d expect from teenagers. Who was dating who, which teacher gave easy assignments, et cetera.

Something wasn’t right. If this had happened at my old school, it would be the only thing people talked about for weeks. There’s no way an incident like this would be ignored unless the students didn’t know.

My suspicions were quickly confirmed. When I reached the center of campus, nothing stopped me from entering the quad. The body was missing from the tree with no signs it had ever been there. As if the entire thing had been a dream.

I couldn’t make sense of it. Was the school keeping things under wraps to avoid bad publicity? Or were they unaware too? No one but me saw anything?

Maybe the police already left. They came early in the morning and took the body away before anyone had seen. But wasn’t that way too fast? Conducting an investigation, especially one involving a suspicious death, would take days at least. To be done with it when barely a few hours had passed? No way.

Could it be a cover up? The killer doubled back and removed the evidence while I was hiding in the closet. If so, what was the point of hanging it somewhere public in the first place?

I racked my brain to come up with a suitable explanation, but I was left at a loss. Had I imagined everything last night? Not just being chased, but the hanged girl and the intruder too. Was any of it real? Or had it all been in my head? Perhaps I needed to rethink what I said about not being crazy.

Unsure what else to do, I continued on to class with the rest of the crowd. It wouldn’t do any good to report what I’d seen now. There was no evidence. They would assume I was just making it up. Honestly, I wasn’t completely sure if anything happened either. It felt like someone was messing with me, making me question reality. And it was working.

I entered the academy equal parts nervous and despondent. Either there was a conspiracy happening on campus, a murderer on the loose, or I was slowly losing my mind. Which of those options was I supposed to hope for?

On my way to homeroom, I stopped by my locker. I was so distracted that it took me four tries to correctly enter my combination. Once I finally had the thing open, I’d forgotten what I wanted to grab in the first place. I sighed and slapped both my cheeks trying to shake off this scatterbrained state.

Students seemed to move past me this way and that while I was stuck in slow motion. My mind was like a rope fraying at the ends. The same high strung tension I felt last night had returned to me now. Would it be like this all day? How long could I hold out before I cracked?

I needed to get a hold over myself. Something I could focus on and recenter. If there was really a dead body, then there should be a missing person. That’s something impossible to hide. I could ask around and see if any girls with black hair failed to show up for class today.

[Story Quest: Strange Events - Difficulty: Easy]

[Objective: Discover the identity of the hanged girl.]

[Reward: Gain a random trait.]

When I heard the system chime and read those words, I let out a breath that I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. So I wasn’t crazy after all. There really had been a dead girl. The magic voice in my head says so, so it must be true.

I smiled to myself sardonically. Regardless of whether the system was proof of my sanity or further evidence of a lack thereof, at least now I wasn’t so lost. I had a way to proceed other than just waiting around for a phantom killer who might or might not exist to track me down.

Standing a little straighter, I went to close my locker. However, I stopped midway when someone else reached over my shoulder and slammed it right in my face. Turning slowly to come face-to-face with my aggressor, I found I needed to lower my eyes because she only came up to my chin.

“‘Sup, loser.”

Alicia propped herself against the lockers while she leaned over me. Her eyes narrowed like a cat that just found a mouse to play with. We were left in a classic ‘kabedon’ situation… Except, wasn’t this normally supposed to go the other way around?