Chapter 26: 26
I stared at the old man, waiting for the punchline. When it didn’t come, I slowly shifted my gaze to Okada, fully expecting him to laugh or realize we were officially in a surreal comedy sketch.
But the old man’s face didn’t crack. He wasn’t smiling. If anything, the color had completely drained from his weathered skin, leaving him looking frail and deeply, genuinely terrified. He clutched the edges of his wooden kiosk so tightly his knuckles turned a chalky white.
"Ghosts," Okada repeated, rolling the word around in his mouth like a piece of cheap, stale gum. He let out a dry, humorless chuckle. "Right. And I suppose the ghosts also filed the property tax returns? Or are they just squatting there for the free rent?"
"It is not a joke!" the old man suddenly hissed, leaning forward. His voice dropped to a ragged, frantic whisper that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. "We don’t go near the town office anymore. Nobody does. Over the last three years, people have gone missing. Travelers, foolish teenagers, men looking for trouble... we’ve counted eight dead male bodies found in the woods right behind that building."
He paused, swallowing hard, his eyes darting frantically down the empty, overgrown road as if the trees themselves were listening.
"And every single one of them," he whispered, "was mutilated. Cleanly. Their genitals were completely gone."
A heavy, suffocating silence dropped over the street.
I froze. My brain stalled, trying to process the sudden, jarring leap from *shady real estate deal* to *gory true-crime documentary*. I blinked, staring at the old man in absolute horror, before the words finally burst out of my mouth in a panicked, high-pitched rush.
"So their penis is cut off?! What the fuck?!"
I threw my hands in the air, spinning around to look at the abandoned house, then back at the kiosk, my heart suddenly hammering against my ribs. "What the absolute fuck, Okada?! We are in a serial killer’s hunting ground! This isn’t a ’ghost story,’ this is a goddamn organ-harvesting cult or a psychopath with a collection! We are leaving! We are leaving *right now*!"
Okada, however, didn’t flinch. He stood perfectly still, his eyes narrowing slightly as he digested the information. He looked down at his fingers, still lightly coated in dust from the widow’s doorbell, then wiped them slowly on his trousers.
"Eight?" Okada asked calmly, completely ignoring my existential meltdown.
"Eight," the old man nodded fervently. "The police from the city came twice, found nothing, got scared, and never came back. They call it a curse. I call it a slaughterhouse. If you go to that town office, you won’t find records. You will just become number nine and ten."
"Okada, please," I pleaded, grabbing the sleeve of his jacket and pulling him back toward the truck. "I am begging you. I don’t care about the 100 dollars. I don’t care about the bet. I will buy you lunch for a year. I will pay for the fuel. I will literally write you a public apology. Let’s just get back in the truck, find a gas station, and go home before we end up in pieces in a ditch!"
Okada finally looked at me, and to my absolute horror, his lips twitched into that familiar, arrogant smirk.
"Kaito," he said, his voice entirely too relaxed for a conversation about severed body parts. "Think about it logically. If a serial killer or a cult is using the town office as a base, it means the building is completely off the grid. No government oversight. No legal tracking. If the widow left her records there, and everyone is too terrified to go inside, those documents are just sitting in a drawer waiting for us."
"Are you insane?!" I yelled, my voice cracking. "Did you miss the part about the missing genitals?! I like my body exactly how it is currently assembled, Okada!"
"We have a tire iron in the back of the truck," he replied smoothly, as if a rusted piece of metal was a foolproof shield against an organ-harvesting psychopath. He turned back to the old man, his posture shifting into something cold, sharp, and intensely commanding. "Where is the building?"
The old man groaned, shaking his head in pity. He realized there was no saving a fool who was actively sprinting toward his own demise. He pointed a trembling, lazy finger further down the cracked asphalt.
"Turn left at the next junction," the old man muttered, backing away into the shadows of his kiosk. "Go straight past the burnt-out bakery. It’s the two-story grey building with the boarded-up windows. If you go, don’t say I didn’t warn you when you start hearing the wailing. Just leave your wallets on the road so someone can at least bury you."
Without waiting for a response, he pulled a dirty, faded curtain across the kiosk entrance, completely cutting us off from the world.
The wind picked up, rustling the dry, overgrown weeds around our ankles. The silence of the abandoned neighborhood felt a lot heavier now. A lot darker.
"We are not going," I said, dropping my voice to a harsh whisper, my arms crossed tightly over my chest. "I refuse to be the opening credits of a horror movie. I’m staying in the truck."
"Fine," Okada said, already walking back to the driver’s side. "Lock the doors if it makes you feel safe. But I’m going. I didn’t drive through an empty fuel tank to leave empty-handed."
He climbed in and slammed the heavy door shut.
I stood in the dirt for a solid thirty seconds, weighing my options. Option A: Stay in an empty, stalled truck in the middle of a creepy neighborhood where a killer clearly operated, completely defenseless. Option B: Go with the heavily armed, completely reckless idiot into a dark building.
"I hate my life," I whispered to the empty air.
I marched over to the passenger side, yanked the door open, and climbed in, slamming it hard enough to rattle the dashboard. Okada didn’t even look at me; he just turned the key. The engine roared to life with a satisfying, mechanical rumble, the fuel light blinking a menacing amber on the dash.
"Glad you could join," Okada joked, shifting the truck into drive. "Keep your eyes peeled for a burnt-out bakery."
We drove in silence, the truck bouncing violently over the potholes and cracked pavement. The further we went, the more the environment deteriorated. The houses grew sparser, replaced by skeletal, half-collapsed structures covered in thick creeping vines. The trees on either side of the road leaned inward, their branches intertwining like a canopy of jagged claws, blocking out most of the afternoon sun.
"Look," Okada pointed.
To our right was the charred, blackened frame of an old commercial building. A faded, half-melted sign hung crookedly from a single chain: *The Golden Crust*. The bakery.
"Great," I muttered, sweating despite the air conditioning. "We’re on the right track to the murder house. Fantastic."
Okada turned left at the junction. A few hundred meters down the road, standing entirely isolated in a field of dead grass, was the town office.
It was a grim, blocky, two-story concrete structure. The grey paint was peeling off in giant, scab-like flakes. Every single window on the ground floor was covered in thick, heavily weathered wooden planks, nailed shut from the outside. The front double-doors were chained together with a massive, rusted padlock that looked like it had been forced open and then clumsily re-wrapped.
It looked entirely dead. But as Okada pulled the truck up onto the gravel driveway and cut the engine, a sudden, heavy dread settled into my stomach.
"We stay together," I said sharply, my hand hovering over the door handle. "If we hear *anything*—a creak, a whisper, a footstep—we run. No investigating. No ’hello, is anyone there?’ We just run. Deal?"
"Deal," Okada said easily, though the glint in his eye told me he wasn’t taking a single word seriously. He reached into the back footwell and pulled out a heavy, iron tire lever, weighing it in his hand with a grim nod. "Let’s go get our 10,000-dollar house."
We stepped out of the truck. The air outside felt strangely cold, smelling faintly of damp earth and rot. We walked up the concrete steps, our boots crunching loudly on the broken glass and gravel.
Okada didn’t hesitate. He grabbed the heavy iron chain on the front doors and yanked it. The rusted links groaned, but with a sharp pull of the tire iron, he wedged the tool into the padlock’s mechanism and threw his weight against it. With a loud, echoing *CRACK*, the lock snapped, the heavy chains sliding off the handles and clattering against the concrete like a death knell.
I flinched, gripping the back of Okada’s jacket. "Quietly! Have you ever heard of stealth?!"
"Stealth is for people who are afraid," Okada murmured, pushing one of the heavy wooden doors open. It resisted at first, scraping loudly against the warped linoleum floor inside, before giving way to reveal a pitch-black hallway.
The air that rolled out of the building was freezing, carrying a thick, choking stench of mold, old paper, and something deeper... something metallic and sickly sweet.
"Oh God," I choked, pulling my shirt over my nose. "That smell. Okada, that smells like..."
"Old documents," he interrupted firmly, though his jaw tightened. He pulled his phone out, switching on the flashlight. The beam of light sliced through the darkness, illuminating a chaotic lobby. Papers were strewn everywhere, filing cabinets were tipped over, and chunks of plaster had fallen from the ceiling.
We stepped inside, the door slowly swinging shut behind us with a soft, heavy *thud*, cutting off the sunlight completely.
"Where would the property records be?" I whispered, my eyes darting frantically to the dark corners of the ceiling, half-expecting something to drop down on us.
"Usually the basement or a back archive room," Okada said, tracing the flashlight beam along the walls until it landed on a faded directory sign. *Archives - Room 104 (Sub-level).* "Perfect. Downstairs."
"Of course it’s downstairs," I groaned, my knees trembling. "Why would it ever be on the bright, sunny first floor?"
We walked down a narrow, claustrophobic hallway, our footsteps echoing hollowly. Every shadow seemed to stretch and move just at the edge of my vision. We reached a heavy, fireproof door with a chipped plastic sign that read *Basement Access*.
Okada pushed it. It creaked loudly, revealing a steep flight of concrete stairs leading down into a pitch-black abyss. The metallic, foul odor was significantly stronger here, rising from the depths like a physical wave.
"Okada..." I whispered, my instinct screaming at me to bolt. "Seriously. Look at this. This is wrong. Let’s just go."
He didn’t answer. He just shone his light down the stairs and began a slow, deliberate descent. Left with no choice, I scrambled down behind him, practically glued to his back.
At the bottom of the stairs, the flashlight beam swept across a massive, cavernous room filled with rows of rusting metal shelves. Thousands of moldy folders and documents were scattered across the floor like dead leaves.
"Spread out and look for anything labeled ’Property Deeds’ or ’Residential Zones,’" Okada commanded, moving toward the first row of shelves.
"Spread out?! Are you insane?!" I hissed, sticking to him like glue. "I am not leaving your side! If a ghost or a nutcase comes out of the dark, I am using you as a human shield!"
"Suit yourself," he muttered, sweeping his light across a row of water-damaged binders.
We searched for a tense, agonizing ten minutes. The silence in the basement was absolute, broken only by the sound of our breathing and the rustle of paper. I was just starting to think that maybe, just maybe, the old man was exaggerating, when a sudden, distinct sound echoed from the far back of the basement.
*Drip.*
*Drip.*
We both froze. Okada held the flashlight perfectly still.
*Drip.*
"Is... is that a leaky pipe?" I whispered, my voice shaking so violently I could barely form the words.
Okada didn’t answer. He slowly turned the flashlight beam away from the shelves and aimed it toward the deep, shadowed recess at the very back of the room, behind the last row of archives.
The light traveled over the concrete floor, cutting through the shadows, until it hit something dark and glossy. A large, dark pool of liquid was spreading across the floor, reflecting the white light of the phone.
It wasn’t water. It was thick, dark red, and fresh.
The flashlight beam slowly traveled up, following the trail of liquid, until it illuminated a heavy metal beam hanging from the ceiling structure.
And there, hanging upside down by thick nylon ropes tied around his ankles, was a man.
His eyes were wide, glassy, and staring directly at us, his face pale and distorted from the rush of blood. His shirt was torn open, and his trousers were completely shredded, soaked in a horrific, blooming crimson ruin between his thighs.
Right beneath him on the concrete floor, neatly arranged in a sickening, symmetrical circle around the pool of blood, were several small, glass jars filled with formaldehyde. And inside those jars...
My lungs seized. The air froze in my throat. The old man’s words echoed in my skull like a thunderstorm. *We’ve counted eight dead male bodies... with missing genitals.*
"Oh my God," I choked out, a wave of intense nausea hitting me so hard I stumbled backward, knocking over a stack of old binders. "Oh my God, Okada. His penis is gone. I think I’m going to throw up. Let’s just leave.".
