Before he could react, the sound of footsteps echoed in the distance—quick, deliberate, and drawing closer.
He was out of time.
"Who is this girl?" Mr. Edward screamed in his mind, fright an understatement for the feeling that overtook him.
In a panic, he stood up, forcefully moving the lifeless body away from him.
He was shocked, his mind trying to conjure or at least piece together what he could possibly do to get out of this situation.
Calming himself, he took a vacillant step forward, intent to find an escape but was driven to an abrupt state of panic as his body tumbled to the ground.
Reflexively, Mr. Edward could only force his arm forward in a percipitent attempt to prevent harm to himself and found his body landing with a loud thud on the mildewed cold and damp stone below him.
The footsteps drew nearer, unintelligible shouts heard, but Mr. Edward—for a moment found himself more curious of the strange phenomena that had occurred to him.
It was as though he had stepped one foot into a massive hole expecting to find support.
Stricken with wonder, fear, and a looming sense of apprehension, Mr. Edward theorized two different possibilities.
Either his body had been altered, scrambling his motor control, or the gravity of this eldritch place was so aberrantly bizarre that it pushed him to the ground.
He tried to look at things from a more grounded and analytical perspective, ultimately deciding to get on his feet since there was not much he could do in his horizontal position.
Getting up was easier said than done, as even in the most conscious of states Mr. Edward found himself on the ground.
He attempted to rise, but his feeble body collapsed again, as though the air itself resisted him
The second time, his feet wobbled, and he lost his balance, his ungainly problem reminiscent of a toddler learning to walk for the first time.
It could be described as comical that Mr. Edward, despite being a fully grown man, could barely walk on his own, with the only saving grace to this dreadful situation being the fact that he had been able to piece together his surroundings.
From his tenuous observations, despite his clumsy and almost comedic struggle for equilibrium, Edward, as before, perceived himself ensconced within a crude, unwholesome structure, a mud hovel, or perhaps a feeble imitation of such.
The ceiling, a dense weave of withered, ashen leaves, seemed to choke the air itself, and of their origins, Mr. Edward could not discern.
They bore a faint resemblance to palm leaves but had about them a sinister and snakish quality that chilled Mr. Edward to the bones.
The dimensions of the space were disturbingly small, reminiscent of some forsaken storage shed, containing little more than a slab-like stone table, a similarly austere stone chair, and a leather hammock.
This crude contraption, tethered to unseen supports beyond the hut's fragile walls, swung ever so slightly in the damp air.
Through the jagged seams that marred the mud walls, rivulets of water incessantly trickled down, meandering toward the cold, unyielding ground, which did not seem to belong to the miserable structure but to something far older and more elemental.
Whether this feature was intentional, designed perhaps to nourish the faintly phosphorescent fungi clinging to the earth like grotesque, living relics, or whether it was a mere accident of neglect, Edward could not discern.
Below him, slick rock gleaming unnaturally beneath the tireless flow of water formed the floor, its chill biting into his very bones and explaining the profound, gnawing cold that now gripped him.
The door was woven from the same sinister materials as that found in the ceiling, entwined so that even Mr. Edward yearned for or questioned yet again the details of his location.
"An island?"
Mr. Edward thought, taking into account the cold rock below him, he imagined a blighted island, home to a forlorn and primordial tribe wholly isolated from the rest of human civilization.
It was possible that the changes in his body had been caused by his lengthy time at sea.
Yet another arguable hypothesis.
But of course, he could not defend this hypothesis, and neither could he prove it until he stepped outside to see for himself, and even if he was preternaturally correct, his speculations could not explain why he had become so small.
Battling with himself and the unknown forces around him, Mr. Edward somehow managed to inch closer to the edge of the mud hovel, his intents clear.
He planned to use the cracked walls as some kind of tenuous support, an aid to prevent another humbling fall.
The noise outside was now impossible to ignore but for some reason no one seemed to attempt an entry.
But why was that?
The answer remained elusive.
As Mr. Edward firmly caressed this uneven surface, he noted the clammy feeling of dampness that faintly intensified along the cracks and crevices of the structure, from where slow streams of water were creeping.
Ignoring this feeling and the sordid fact that he was stained, Mr. Edward attempted once again to get on his feet, an action which had now become repetitive and even sad.
He was somewhat successful, finally standing tall for the first time and though his feet wobbled, he was able to keep his balance.
Mr. Edward, for the first time in the enclosed space, finally felt like a homo sapient and, in his upright position, was able to perceive his surroundings in grander details.
There was not much save for a single book that had previously escaped his rather weak scrutiny.
Placed atop the stone slab, its exterior seemed to be made of brown leather, dark brown and threaded with a simple geometric pattern for aesthetic appeal.
Unfortunately, Mr. Edward, even in his upright state could do no more than observe from a distance courtesy of his limited mobile capacity.
Just then, when Mr. Edward began to adapt to his situation he was afflicted with a striking headache that simultaneously sent both mind and body tumbling down.
Mr. Edward landed on the hard floors with a thud, and yet he barely reacted to it. Instead, both his hands clutched his hair with such a force that it would appear to an outside observer that he wanted to pull them out, not because of the fall but because of something more internally oriented.
Scenarios, conversations, and experiences flooded his feeble mind in an excruciatingly forceful manner.
Mr. Edward, spasming because of both physical pain and mental shock, was reduced to nothing more than a dispossessed observer in his own mind, pushed aside whilst what remained of his active consciousness or sense of self struggled to remain afloat.
This continued for what Mr. Edward would describe as years, and yet only a few agonizing seconds had gone by in the forsaken world.
Powerless and in a state of profound confusion, Mr. Edward lost consciousness.
Time passed.
Darkness, confusion, and cold were the only words that Mr. Edward could think of as he regained consciousness, but as he steadied his bearings, he remembered with chilling accuracy all that had happened and was frightened of all that had yet to happen.
For how long was he out?
He knew not, but the passage of his time did not seem to make a difference in the scale of things.
A saving grace, solace, or an object of optimism were things Mr. Edward sought with futile attempts in the confusion of his own mind if it could still be called his own.
Separated but within reach, Mr. Edward found mixed amid his beautiful sea of existence, memories of unfamiliar origins.
There were memories of a boy no more than ten years of age featuring conversations that Mr. Edward could simply not understand.
His confusion mostly stemmed from the now reduced but still present language barrier that plagued him.
it was akin to holding a device storing a lifetime's worth of films, with said films spoken in a completely alien language featuring some strange, outlandish sights and practices wholly unfamiliar to the wielder.
In fact it was worse than that as one could say these memories were practically mute.
Fortunately these memories managed to provide some insight to his predicament.
Mr. Edward stood up slowly, encountering none of the earlier resistance that had so persistently inconvenienced him.
He stood still, shocked, confused, and skeptical of his own locomotion whilst he tried to comprehend what had just occurred.
"Reincarnation? No. Transmigration?"
He muttered to himself in wonder whilst ransacking his mind for topics, facts, and research material on said subject.
The only leads he could find were occultic, tinged with superstitious practices and beliefs that he had happened to come across on his journey for answers about the end of human life. In other words, they were worthless.
Mr. Edward was quick to dismiss those fragments of information as an instinctive reaction more than anything else, as he found such beliefs without the presence of tangible evidence nothing more than folklore.
But at this very moment, in the confines of a mud hovel, walls glowing with different colors and his mind with the memories of another entity, Mr. Edward was forced to reconsider grimly.
He remembered the practices of Hinduism, Jainism, and certain traditions within Taoism that believed in the presence and existence of an eternal soul passing through a circle of birth, death, and rebirth.
Then there was the practice of Buddhism, which did not believe in a soul but rather a continuous stream of consciousness that moved from one life to another, its fate governed by karma.
Pertaining to Buddhism Mr. Edward could recall things, words with profound meanings he had picked up during his travels like Anatta, Skandhas, and others of such which he dared not think least he died from the sheer absurdity of it all.
At this point, Mr. Edward was aware that it would be considered foolish not to seriously consider a likely solution or answer to the problem before him.
He was just unwilling, averse to the fact that he had been the hypocrite by discarding religion altogether, and yet amid his overwhelming emotions, he found excitement.
Odd, baffling excitement not in his situation but at the existence of potential research materials that he could use to further perfect his life's work.
"It seems that there is more to it all than I have been able to grasp."
Mr. Edward muttered whilst making his way to the stone slab before him, his unfaltering gaze set on the tomb-like book lying atop it, but he did not pick it up, instead he turned his attention to the elephant in the room.
At this point Mr. Edward could very well have been ignoring the hostile sound of unintelligible chatter coming from the outside world.
With a dead body in the same room with him, he was in no hurry to go outside.
"This has to be the most elaborate frame in existence," Mr. Edward muttered in discust partly at his situation but largely at what he was about to do next.
Walking to the corpse, he heaved it up with a great deal of effort, placing it on his hammock in such a way that it was not immediately visible to any observer.
As for the blood on the floor and his clothes, there was little he could do about that as he lacked recourses.
Turning his attention to the book, Mr. Edward unclasped the leather straps with his unfamiliarly tiny hands.
Soon, he found himself caressing a thick brownish page possibly handmade with the materials derived from cotton rags or something akin to it, like a form of linen perhaps.
His hands trembled.
The pages were sewn to the book with diaphanous thin threads of linen-like material bounding them tightly to the leather cover of the book.
Mr. Edward noticed the cryptic nature of the writing on these arcane pages, cryptic indeed to him and only him, as he was sure that the intelligent lifeforms native to this place would think otherwise.
Roughly skimming through the book, his attention was then drawn to the last page which he would have missed if he had given up a second sooner.
Written on it were words in English, if it could even be called such as the penmanship seemed like something out of the hands of a child, but the wording was clear.
It read: "It's watching, always watching, I don't know where it sent you, what horrors it's twisted around you this time—but it doesn't matter. It wants you to break. To drown in the madness, it will speak to you, never answer, you have to end it yourself. Please, do it now, it will try to stop you, but find a way, because if you don't, the next ten years will peel you apart, piece by piece. You'll rot in suffering before it finally takes you. And most importantly, in this world there is a kind of death that you must never experience, to avoid it, you must never whistle, if you d-"
The writing was cut short abruptly, a long smear in its place making it seem as though the writer was stopped by a sudden shock.
"The fuck is this," Mr. Edward cursed, quickly dropping the book as he took a step back, his face contorting into a frown, even he who had taken his own life could never write something as suicidal as this.
If the contents of this book was right then it meant that this was not the first time something like this had happened and it was never the same scenario.
For some reason, his mind flashed back to a line in the book saying he had to end it himself and if he did "it" will try to stop him.
With that Mr. Edward looked around and he was sure of it, something strange was amis.
"Where is the weapon?" He muttered to himself? The girls throat had been slit from ear to ear and yet there was no murder weapon in sight there was no way a deed like this could have been done by hand.
"Was it taken away to prevent me from killing myself?" Mr. Edward though while scanning the original owner's memories in them the last thing the boy remembered was going to sleep on his hammock.
There was no memory of the girl, or even a memory of harming someone, when putting all the pieces together, there was only one conclusion.
He had been framed.
Before he could speak, he was disturbed.
A new set of footsteps were approaching his hut, but unlike the previous ones which seemed soft to the ears, these were different.
They seemed like a series of sharp blows to the earth itself, the clanging of metal echoing it their wake.
Silently, Mr. Edward hoped that these new arrivals would stop at his door, halted by whatever forces that protected him till now.
Unfortunately his hopes were betrayed.
The plant-based door, which had seemed so impenetrable till this point, was suddenly assaulted by an onslaught of emerald flames, leaving behind it a stifling yet corrosive puff that hindered Mr. Edward's vision slightly.
Quickly, he stepped back using his arms to shield himself from the heat, his eyes squinted not to miss anything that might jump out at him.
The gate had been breached and from it came an overwhelming gloom in the form of blinding smoke.
"Ba-dump!"
He felt it, and he knew what they were even before glimpsing at the abhorrent entities beyond the smokescreen.
How he knew was a mystery for beyond the smoke screen lay the unmistakable presence of an otherworldly gaze.