I grabbed the backpacks of Ryuuga and Kana, who were leading the group.
"What is it?" Ryuuga asked as he turned to look at me.
"There's a dead body hanging above us."
"What? Save your jokes for next time. It's giving me goosebumps." Ryuuga replied as if I was an absurd joke.
I remained silent and instead moved my hands in a slow arc, pointing my fingers toward the treetops in the distance. They followed my gesture and caught sight of it too.
A man suspended on a noose from a branch on a very tall tree. It was slightly obscured by the patches of leaves from the other branches of the tree.
From a distance, I tried to examine the state of his body, and I couldn't understand why he had chosen the tallest tree in the forest when there were smaller ones nearby that could have provided the same result. Was it a sign of defiance? Reckless abandon? Or a simple, twisted way of saying goodbye?
Ryuuga and Kana were completely petrified, their eyes wide with fear. I felt the same rising panic, but I was the only one who had to stay in control.
My blood ran cold as I noticed something else. The rope that hung from the tree seemed old as if it had been there for eons, but the corpse suspended from it seemed freshly deceased. No traces of insect or maggot activity could be seen. The air was still and quiet, with no foul smell of death emanating from it. It was almost too quiet.
"I'm going to retrieve the body. I need to confirm something." I said. "You two stay here and make sure nothing else happens."
No one in the group replied.
My hands and feet tightened around the trunk of the tree as I climbed higher and higher, each step more precarious than the last. The sap dripping from the bark felt like a thousand pinpricks on my skin, even as I held on for dear life, with no branches in sight to support me until I finally reached the middle of the tree. With a trembling hand, I grabbed for a sturdy branch, hauling myself up and steadying my breath so that I might discern my next step.
I scrambled up the tree, grasping at the branches as I went. With one of my arms holding nearby branches of the tree, I slowly made my way toward the body. I took the flashlight, which was held by my mouth, and aimed it at the body.
I peered closely at the body, my suspicions confirmed. It was as I feared - not a single sign of insect or animal activity around the corpse. Its pallid skin and stiff flesh suggested that rigor and livor mortis had already set in, meaning this man had committed suicide a day or two ago. But certainly strange that it isn't emitting any sort of foul odor.
I inched closer, my heart pounding wildly in my chest as I tried to reach out and touch the body. But then I heard Baal's voice like a thunderclap, reverberating through the chamber and shaking me to the core.
[George. Step away from the corpse. Slowly.]
"What?"
[I said, step away.]
I hesitated for a second before I started to move away from the body. As I began to move, I heard a rustling in the dense leaves. I stopped and looked around but saw nothing. When I spun around and glanced back, the body was gone. As if it had been swallowed up by the darkness of the night, its chilling presence left no trace. I shivered, my skin crawling with dread.
"What the hell was that!? Where did the body go?"
[Jump down. Now!]
Startled by the sudden command, I quickly complied, jumping down from the tree and landing with a thud on the ground.
Before I could even process what had happened, I noticed the occult club members were gone.
"Fuck, where did everybody go?"
[Forget about them and prepare for combat, it's coming.]
My heart started to race as I heard Baal's warning. I quickly got into a defensive stance and glanced around with my flashlight, trying to determine where the danger was coming from.
As I moved my flashlight towards the treetops, I spotted a dark figure squatting from a branch of a tree, looking at me with a sinister gaze. I could see its red eyes glowing in the night, and my pulse quickened. It was the dead body from earlier. The dead body from earlier was alive!
"The hell is that, Baal? Another demon?"
[Yes. That's a ghoul. The flesh-eating cousins of vampires. They're quite known for graverobbing dead bodies for consumption. And unlike the more intelligent vampires, ghouls are more barbaric, lacking any intelligence, and are completely feral in nature, making them more dangerous than vampires.]
"That thing must be behind the desecration of dead bodies, then."
[Precisely. I suggest you take care of it before it gets out of hand.]