"Yasu, are you not listening? I told you we're hunting a cult down, and following their steps." Dairue's eyebrows were crinkled, annoyed at why none of them were trusting his lead. Arguably, he was leading them to their untimely demise without his awareness.
"That only answers what we're doing right no- Ughh! Yeah, you know let's just keep doing this, it is cool! Hahaha, look at me! Am so cool at being a badass!" Yasu was mocking his leadership, there was nothing admirable about being deceitful of your fellow allies, secrets were beginning to tell themselves to the few who wish to obtain its knowledge.
"Stop, this isn't helping you, or me, or him. I agree, we should turn back, I am not going to that temple no matter what you say about it." Yuari, himself, was adamant about backing out even in his braver stance. The green outlines of the brick were visible through the foliage, they brushed the leaves aside and saw the wall with a statue on the side.
"It's so detailed, this doesn't look man-made..." Dairue ran his finger on the gargoyle-like statues, hounds, and people, standing high and mighty on a brick-layered concrete platform. The little bumps were sometimes sharp, other times smooth and chalky.
"Some statues had dents on their thighs as the statue's finger, sat on it. This type of detail is possible with a careful hand. But they would've been well-known sculptors to be this good, I don't know, I don't wanna know..." Yuari was touched by its details, the human head was screaming to the sky, the hounds were barking at something, and the statues were near ancient condition.
The greenish stone made the word "overgrown" an understatement. Roots were growing from inside and the smell was potent of decaying flowers. Yasu saw another statue of a person, this time it was different, it smelled like meat left out for too long.
"Yuck... It smells terrible, this statue smells like it's been doused in something Dairue would cook..."
"Fuck off, but, it does smell bad... It's so- meaty?" Dairue clapped back, yet realized he was right, right about the smell.
"I am gonna walk back to the tunnel and wait there..." Yuari couldn't take the smell, he crawled back to the road and ran as quickly as he could. Soon, he was no longer visible, the two assumed that he stood at the tunnel.
"Let him go, we can't risk shouting, Yasu. Maybe we should crack this statue open, nobody is gonna know about it anyway. Not like anybody owns this right?" Dairue was not planning on calling him back, they turned towards the statue, looking closely into its eyes.
Yasu shines a flashlight on its eye, there were lines on its iris and vein-like protrusions on the sclera. The arms had stone hairs, the hair would snap and turn to powder when squished. His face was horrified, he wiped his hands on his pants and tried to move away from the statue. The smell on his fingertips was rotten, he washed his hands with alcohol repeatedly.
"Yasu, this is gonna sound incredibly stupid, bare with me, that thing is a human inside." Dairue was heaving at the smell, he marinated his hands in alcohol, and they both tried to cover the smell as much as possible.
"I don't feel great about being here.." he told Yasu as he was cleaning the rest of his clothes and dousing them in pure rubbing alcohol.
"Congrats, only now?! Only now did you realize this was not a good idea when were deep into whatever we are...." Yasu's sarcasm was still prevalent despite how close they are to risking their lives for absolutely nothing.
In the road, a shadow with a big tool was sneaking over the pavement. The dark silhouette went the branch nearby, Yuari came with an axe, wanting to split open one of the statues, cutting the whole stone parameter in half.
"Move out the way, move out the way! Move!" Yuari stopped dead in his tracks after Dairue raised his palms up.
"Hey! Hey! Wait, this might be a person, we don't know if it can feel pain..." he was panicking at how close he hit the rotting statue with his axe, yet he could only guess about what it feels to be petrified inside a blocky array of stone and granite.
"Pain, this thing feels pain? What?! It's rock, nah, nah, you have to be kidding right now, no?" Yasu couldn't believe their assumptions, it seemed too otherworldly, they were far from society and even farther away from normality. He accepted all things, except a statue that felt pain, knowing it was rock solid and dead.
"Anything is possible, we're somewhere that's night while outside its morning, how was that not clear to you?" Yuari was getting impatient with both of them, he aimed at the midsection of the statue, attempting to crack open the rock
"No, goofy, we're gonna hurt this innocent man or whatever the fuck this was beforehand." Dairue was still denying the violent swing of his axe, trying to hold his handle and keep him from taking control of his weapon.
"Who gives a shit anymore, there's no point!" Yuari took a swing on the abdomen, the sound of the rock was booming into their ears, almost like an entire building was falling apart. The wall that got hit was enough to splatter the brick wall behind the statue. The swing did not cut deep for his tool was not meant to break rock.
Max was staring down the balcony, night was still far yet he felt like he had to do something. The boy went up to Kenji and asked where the tunnel was, to which he replied "Are you feeling okay?". Kenji was unsure of whether it was safe for him to go down. Kenji gave detailed directions of where the entrance was, he kept honest and decided to stay behind to guard their things.
He took his bag anyway and ran out the door, straight to the stairs. His stomach was still punishing his innards, he clutched his hand yet he felt good enough to run. After reaching the tree line, he took a flashlight out and dug the tunnel, the damp concrete cylinder was torturous to see through, yet he grabbed his gun and placed it back.
The boy was running, nearly slipping on the moss and water that flooded the inner entryways. Max kept front, pointing the light's forward as he ran with his flashlight in his mouth and gun in hand.
Yuari takes another slash, kicking the midsection of the statue, he started building up another slash, he hacked over and over, blood began to splash from within. They all took a step back and pinched their nose. The smell took the form of pungent decomposed human flesh, uncleaned for days, unattended inside.
The three did not know what to do, they looked at each other, almost wanting to retreat. The stone cut was leaking more blood, it's intestines spilled out. The small intestine looked brown and mangled, the statue changed from a scream to a painful groan, mouth wide open. The blood was dried, almost coagulated, and pooled on the grass underneath.
Yuari started stepping back, further away from the statue, getting ready to hack one last time. Yasu held the axe handle, they knew it was enough. Yuari thought otherwise, he wanted to kill what was inside, he didn't trust their decision and wanted to make his own.
"I told you this thing felt pain, I told you this thing felt pain! Now stop, Yuari, stop!" Dairue couldn't hold the silence, he let go of their caution and gave their location away by screaming. He pinned Yuari's arm from the back, Yasu took the axe for himself and held it with a firm grip.
"Yeah.. huff... Yeah, let's- huff... Leave..." Yuari noticed the facial expression change, tingles began to rise from his back, he didn't wanna be there if that thing began to move. Nobody was willing to take the risk of taking its "Life", nobody was willing to take that one last swing.
Its arm begins to rise, the stone cracks, and it reaches out to Yuari...
"Hey, woah! Okay, let's go!" Yuari dropped the stare and ran back to the road, he took the axe and swung the axe into its leg, immobilizing the bleeding statue slowly. The axe was jammed, and soon the statue was crying for help, a muffled sound from inside the hard shell of the creature was audible.
"Heeeeeelppp... Me... I-... Cannot control..." The rock kept taking a step, a person inside was whaling. screams of pain, the blood continuously rushing down the statue's leg.
It was crawling.
No, it was walking.
It ran.
The stone was loose, crumbling underneath was decayed flesh, the flesh stuck to the stone as it fell on the floor. Tendons and muscles were coming loose as the person inside was set free, the skin on the face, the bone, it was visible. An emaciated body emerged from the rock, fat no longer present on its body.
Max came from the bush, like a ghost in the purplish fog. One, two, three, the magazine was empty. The boy threw the gun at the mass, taking pieces of skull out, it whaled in pain, telling them to stop.
"Yasu! Throw alcohol at it" Dairue took his lighter out of his pocket and waited patiently for Yasu to do his order.
"What?! That thing will shrivel in pain! No that's just cruel..." Yasu looked at it dead in its hollowed eye socket, the cracked bits of skull, the gunshot wounds it sustained on its head.
Max went up behind Yasu and stole the alcohol, he opened the bottle whole and doused its open wounds in alcohol. The mass fell to the ground, squealing as it tried to crawl toward Yasu. The mass had a firm grasp on his foot. One kick to the skull and its head caved in, the fowl remains stopped moving, and soon the tendons on its wrist, let go.
Dairue took his lighter and dragged the corpse to the road, he lit the flesh on fire. The fumes made them cough, the odor was unbearably tough yet Yuari pinched his nose and grabbed the axe stuck to its leg.
"Max... Thank you, adults should handle this, we're too stupid to do these kinds of things. They have way less hesitation, I don't even know what this was..." Yasu was out of breath, he was afraid yet courageous enough to look at the dead body.
"Should we take one final swing for good measure?" Yuari asked, and nobody wanted to answer.
"Overkill..." Dairue found it gruesome, his logic was flawed but his heart was pure.
"Go, we can't risk this thing being open to the public, people should do something about this..." Max made it just in time earlier, the pure horror of a walking pile of human remains felt unnerving, he did not think twice and shot it. The boy wondered why the bullets were not able to kill it, he shot through the heart, the liver, and the brain.
"Max, there are more statues surrounding the whole thing, I don't plan to risk it, let's get out of here." Dairue had no plans of prolonging their stay, for to him, they have already overstayed their welcome.
Yuari took one final swing, severing its spinal cord and head. The four of them walked back to the tunnel, marking the edge with an "X". Dairue insisted on how it would confuse whoever was behind the markings over the windows. They wondered what a night at Window Town would feel like, yet after the encounter, they wanted to leave as quickly as possible.
"After tomorrow, we're going back, we know what we're dealing with now. I will write the details down later." Max was not wasting time trying to piece together what they found out.
They ran and kept silent the rest of the way through, one was on the lookout to see whether they went the right way and another kept watch on whether something was behind them. Max was at the tail end of the group, keeping his eyes on the abyssal darkness behind them. The tunnel felt less claustrophobic after going over it twice.
After digging out the leaves that filled the end, Yasu could not help but wonder what if they dug the tunnel out, everybody wanted to know what would happen, nobody wanted to find out for themselves.
The night was over their sky, the moon truly was ever so darker tonight...