Chapter 46 The Alley (6) Meanwhile, the mystery of Echo Alley...
Meanwhile, inside the labyrinth of Echo Alley.
"Fatty! Skinny! Where are you?! I can't see you!" The girl with glasses' voice, trembling with tears, echoed through the maze. She didn't know where she was.
In the sky, the crimson sun hung heavily, but it wasn't as dazzling as the usual sun. It exuded a false sense of lifelessness, like a poorly rendered image that had been pasted on.
At the very center of the sun were two murky white masses, with dark brown mosaics inside, resembling human eyes. Below them was a crooked black slit, like a mouth dug out with fingernails, which could be identified as a human face.
The sun, grinning like a maniac, swayed and wobbled in the sky.
The maze was dark, and the light from a flashlight was useless here; although the flashlight could be used, it couldn't shine on the surrounding walls.
The walls are not made of bricks and stones, but of flowing images. The walls are constantly changing; sometimes they are the static screen of an old television, sometimes long videotapes, and sometimes children's doodles with various colored lines on paper.
"I, I'm here!" The fat man's voice came from not far away: "Damn, where am I? The cameras... the cameras are completely malfunctioning!"
Hearing the other person's voice, the girl with glasses felt like she had grasped a lifeline. She grabbed her flashlight and rushed forward, shouting, "Where are you?! I'm heading in the direction of your voice!"
Her voice grew hoarse from shouting, and she kept looking around for the other person.
"Where are you? I can't find you!" The girl with glasses had been walking for a long time but couldn't find the fat man, and her fear grew stronger and stronger.
"I'm here!" The fat man's voice came again, neither too close nor too far.
Hearing the sound, the girl with glasses went to look for the source again, but still couldn't find him. The fat man made a noise and called out again. Hearing the sound, the girl with glasses was a little exasperated: "Why did you run so far away again?"
"I didn't move! I'm trapped here!" The fat man was also a bit panicked; who knew where he was now?
This time, the girl with glasses didn't respond to the fat man, and the fat man started to panic.
The three of them entered this awful place after stepping into the alley. When the fat man came to his senses, he found himself standing in an endless corridor covered with an old green carpet.
The corridor was lined with countless identical dark red doors.
"Is anyone there? Let me out!" he shouted, his voice echoing in the empty corridor.
Suddenly, a door behind him creaked open by itself.
Dim light shone through the crack in the door.
The fat man subconsciously turned around and carefully walked towards the door, trying to see what was through the crack in the door.
Through the crack in the door, he saw a little girl in a white dress sitting in front of an old-fashioned television set with her back to him. The television was playing a strange and choppy cartoon, and the background music sounded out of tune, unpleasant and jarring.
"Little...little kid?" the fat man asked tentatively.
The little girl didn't move. After about two seconds, she slowly turned her head. Her movements were like those of a puppet with slightly damaged joints. Her shoulders twisted first, and her neck waited for a beat before turning.
The fat man's pupils contracted slightly upon seeing this.
The scariest thing is that the little girl has no facial features.
Where there should be eyes, nose, and lips, there is only an excessively smooth patch of skin, without a single wrinkle, as if it had been scraped with a knife and then covered with a layer of solidified plaster.
"Damn it—" Half of the fat man's soul flew away, his legs went weak and he almost knelt down. He practically rolled and crawled as he turned to run away.
But as soon as he lifted his foot, the doors on both sides of the wall suddenly creaked open one after another.
Behind each door stood a child.
Some were wearing faded school uniforms, some were wrapped in tattered cotton-padded coats, and some were barefoot on the ground, but without exception, none of them had a face!
The children turned their heads and all looked at the fat man.
Although it has no eyes, one can clearly feel the countless cold gazes upon it.
Hehehe.
Come play!
"Stay with us...stay with us forever..."
The overlapping children's voices came from all directions, making it impossible to tell which door they were coming from.
The fat man's terrified scream pierced his throat. He didn't care about anything else. His obese body burst out with unprecedented speed. He ran wildly forward along the corridor. The sound of his running on the ground could not drown out the footsteps that were getting closer and closer to him behind him.
Scattered and dense, like countless tiny shoes chasing after him.
The corridor seemed to have no end.
The fat man had no idea how long he had been running. When he looked back, his scalp tingled with fear.
Those faceless children were following him in a dense crowd! Some of them tripped and fell while running, and were trampled on by the children behind them. The other children, as if nothing had happened, used their hands to push themselves up and got up, their limbs twisted at bizarre angles, yet they persisted in chasing him.
"Damn it! Damn it! I'm going to die! I'm really going to die!" The fat man's tears mixed with cold sweat streamed down his face, and his snot was also stuck with his tears. He felt like his lungs were about to explode. He didn't exercise regularly, and every breath he took smelled of blood, but he dared not stop.
Because he heard those children's voices getting closer and closer to him, calling out softly from behind.
"You can't escape."
"Mom—" The fat man's tears streamed down his face, and his last cry broke his voice.
On the other side...
The skinny man found himself trapped in a room that looked like an abandoned kindergarten; the room was so spacious that he couldn't see the end of it.
Scattered around were building blocks, all of which were strangely shaped, none of them being regular squares or circles, as if they were melted and then solidified wax. The walls were painted with brightly colored but bizarrely composed pictures.
A red sun with a human face weeping on it; the sky, which should be blue, is painted gray; several crooked little birds with open mouths, which are not beaks but densely packed sharp teeth, ferocious and terrifying.
"Creak...creak..."
A sudden sound drifted from the center of the room, startling the skinny man. He looked in the direction of the sound and saw a wooden rocking horse with peeling paint. The reddish-brown paint had crumbled away, revealing only the white underneath. Only a single glass bead remained as an eye on the horse's head, staring at him with its cloudy eyes.
The rocking horse swayed on its own, and the screeching sound of its base rubbing against the ground was enough to make your teeth ache.
The skinny man swallowed hard, tiptoed around the blocks on the ground, and tried to find out where the room's exit was.
He took each step carefully, afraid of bumping into something, a premonition telling him that something bad would happen if he touched those things.
Just then, he seemed to kick something. He looked down and saw a dirty teddy bear doll missing an eye.
The skinny man felt that the teddy bear was strangely familiar. He frowned, but didn't think much of it.
So as he stepped over it, he caught a glimpse out of the corner of his eye that the teddy bear's remaining eye had moved slightly.
It's not an illusion.
The eyes slowly and somewhat haltingly turned halfway around, staring straight at him, and then the doll spoke in a hoarse, childlike voice, as if its vocal cords were broken.
"Why...why did you abandon me?"
The skinny man suddenly felt drowsy and his hair stood on end. Some images flashed through his mind, and he remembered! He remembered this doll! It was his favorite doll when he was a child, but it was secretly thrown away by his parents because it was old.
"No...it wasn't me..." the skinny man stammered as he backed away.
After the skinny man finished speaking, it seemed he had angered them.
The other toys on the ground—the doll with the missing arm, the wind-up frog, the toy car with its colors peeling off—seemed to come alive, standing up in all sorts of contorted poses. The toys with eyes stared at the skinny man with their empty eyes, making rustling sounds.
"fraud……"
"You jerk..."
“Throw us all away…”
The toys began to approach the skinny man step by step. The skinny man retreated in a cold sweat, realizing that the toys were gradually surrounding him and moving faster and faster. He turned around in terror and ran away, but tripped over the scattered building blocks on the ground.
"fraud!"
"fraud!"
"You big liar!"
The toys that came to life instantly overwhelmed the skinny man, pounced on him one by one.
"Ahhhhhh—" The skinny guy struggled, trying to shake off the toys, but found that he couldn't shake them off at all.
...
The girl with glasses was in a relatively quiet environment; she was standing in an endless maze filled with countless giant mirrors.
The girl with glasses walked timidly, but the reflection in the mirror was not of her current appearance, but of images from various periods of her childhood.
Crying, scared, isolated by peers, scolded by parents...
"Don't look...don't look!" The girl with glasses covered her eyes, but the images and accompanying sounds kept echoing in her mind.
"Nobody likes you!"
"What a crybaby!"
"Hehehe, four eyes!"
"Why are you always so sensitive?!"
She collapsed to her knees, tears streaming down her face as the unpleasant memories replayed in her mind. Just then, she felt a small, cold hand grasp her wrist.
She timidly raised her head and saw a little girl with an indistinct face, wearing her elementary school uniform, standing in front of her.
The little girl didn't speak. The girl with glasses realized that although she couldn't see the girl's face clearly, she could see her eyes. The girl was looking at her with those empty eyes, and then she pulled her towards a mirror.
The mirror reflected the image of her as a child, locked in a dark storage room. The feeling of being forgotten by the world and swallowed by fear instantly overwhelmed her.
"No...! Let me go!" The girl with glasses struggled, but the strength of her small hand was astonishing.
Then more blurry-faced children emerged from other mirrors. They silently surrounded her, reaching out their cold hands to push, pull, and tug at her, as if trying to drag her into the mirror images of those painful memories.
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