The whistle kept on going.
Bouncing off the school walls, creating some kind of echo which only added to the eeriness.
The whistle was juxtaposed by another noise, one that sounded like scraping.
I turned around but saw nothing, yet I was sure the noise had been coming from there.
I decided to go towards the noise to see exactly what -
HELL NO!
Do you think I'm a horror protagonist!
I turned around and ran.
I ran as fast as my legs could carry me.
"Damn," I gritted my teeth turning over a corridor, almost slipping by how fast I was running. "What could it be now, why don't you damn monsters leave me the hell alone."
My heart was racing, pounding against my ribcage like it was trying to escape before the rest of me. This wasn't the first time I'd encountered something that shouldn't exist. Not by a long shot. But that didn't make it any less terrifying, at least for me.
The fluorescent lights above flickered rapidly as I sprinted past them, creating a strobing effect that made the hallway seem like it was stretching and contracting. Or maybe that was just my panic-addled brain playing tricks on me.
"Just one normal year," I panted as I ran. "Is that too much to ask for? One year without something weird happening?"
The whistling grew louder behind me, somehow keeping perfect pace with my frantic running. The scraping had changed rhythm too, faster, more excited. Like whatever was making it was enjoying the chase.
I finally made it to a door, I pushed my entire body into it but nothing, not a budge. I slammed my shoulder against it again and again, each impact sending sharp pain through my body, but the door remained firmly closed.
"Come on, come on!" I shouted, jiggling the handle desperately.
I saw a window close to me. I ran towards it, slamming my backpack into it, but nothing, not a crack. I pulled back and examined the glass, it looked normal enough, but something about it felt wrong. Like it wasn't really glass at all, but something pretending to be glass.
Why does this keep happening to me!
The whistling paused momentarily, then resumed with what I swear sounded like laughter woven into the tune. Great, now it was mocking me too.
I turned around and ran to the next exit I could think of, the emergency doors at the end of the science wing. As I ran, I noticed the school seemed different somehow. The posters on the walls were the same ones I'd seen earlier today, advertising clubs or sporting matches or whatever else was coming in the following months.
And the hallway was longer than it should be. I'd been running for what felt like minutes, but I hadn't reached any intersections or doorways. Just the same endless corridor.
"This isn't right," I muttered, slowing down slightly. "The science wing should be right here."
As if responding to my comment, the hallway suddenly shifted, walls bending at impossible angles before snapping back into place. Now I was indeed in the science wing, the chemical safety posters and periodic table displays confirming my location.
But every door, every window was sealed shut and no matter what I did they wouldn't budge. The whistle and scraping only grew closer and closer.
I tried the fire alarm, yanking down on the red handle with all my strength. It broke off in my hand, revealing not wiring or mechanical components, but something that looked disturbingly like stringy, gray flesh.
"Oh, that's disgusting," I said, dropping it immediately. It writhed on the floor for a moment before dissolving into the tiles.
The lights flickered again, and in that brief darkness, I felt something brush against the back of my neck. Not a hand, not anything solid, but something like a cold breeze carrying whispers I couldn't quite make out.
When the lights came back on, milliseconds later, nothing was there. But the whistling had changed location. Now it was coming from somewhere ahead of me.
It was herding me.
"You're a sick monster aren't you," I said, mostly to myself.
I'd ran from the sound, taking a sharp left into what should have been the math department.
Instead, I found myself in the gymnasium. Empty bleachers stretched up into shadows that seemed far too deep for the actual height of the room. The ropes hanging from the ceiling for climbing practice were swinging slowly, which kind of made me want to climb them to get as far from the whistling but before I could.
The whistling stopped.
The sudden silence was somehow worse than the sound had been.
I stood perfectly still, controlling my breathing, listening intently. For several long seconds, there was nothing. Then -
I turned and sprinted toward the gym doors. I hit the doors at full speed, and this time, mercifully, they opened. I stumbled through into the hallway beyond, the momentum carrying me forward until I crashed into the opposite wall.
The whistling started again, right behind me.
I turned a corridor but there, waiting for me, was the thing that had been whistling the creepily merry tune.
It seemed to be floating, its feet or stumps more like it, a few inches above ground, its lengthy stocky body was hunched forming a giant hunchback. Its arms on the other hand were thin, with no muscle whatsoever, just skin and bone, and at the end of these arms weren't stumps like its legs but long jagged claws, half the size of its enormous body.
Its head reached the ceiling and instead of a face, it had a mask, the mask seemed to be made of liquid white as it was constantly changing, never staying on one face too long, a snake, a wolf, a horse, a bat, yet one face came up more than any other.
A face of a disfigured woman wailing in agony, which only made the whistling all the creepier.
As for the scraping noise, it came from the claws of the monster, its claws sinking slightly into the wood and vinyl floors.
The mask, constantly ever shifting, however turned upside down and formed a broken grin.
The whistling continued through it all.
I backed away slowly, my mind racing through limited options. The exits were sealed. The windows wouldn't break. This thing, whatever it was, seemed to control the school itself, bending it around me like some kind of twisted labyrinth.
"You're gonna make me call someone I don't want to," I said, trying to keep my voice steady despite the fear coursing through me. "He's not as kind as me, so I suggest you make your way before he comes."
The creature tilted its head, the mask momentarily stabilizing into something almost human-like, with an expression of curiosity.
"That's right," I continued, still backing up slowly. "You don't wanna meet the other guy, he's a crazy fucker."
The creature's whistling changed key, becoming something almost like a question.
"Okay I get it, you whistle, I get it you eldritch whatever you are," I said exasperated.
The monster didn't seem to mind my comment too much, as it slowly, almost painfully began to float towards me, the screeching sounding out.
Before I could even blink the claws of the monster were no longer scraping on the floor, they wrapped themselves around my head, a few strands of my light brown hair falling to the floor. Its back hunched even more, its ever-changing mask now inches away from my own face.
I could feel the monster's breath on my face even through its mask, and now that it was closer to me I could tell how badly it smelt, like rotting flesh (not that I knew what rotting flesh smelled like mind you but I was pretty sure that if I did know, it would smell almost exactly like this thing).
The whistling never stopped throughout.
"You're really gonna regret this," I said, my voice barely a whisper. "I warned you a few times already, so don't start crying later."
The creature just stared, its mask now cycling through faces faster than before, a dizzying carousel of grotesque visages.
"Wait can you even cry? Do eldritch creatures cry?"
Finally it replied not with a whistle or a scrape against the walls, or a broken laugh or even with words rather its white mask began to sink into its skin, I couldn't even describe what its face even was.
Just its mouth.
It was wide, filled with rows of rotting teeth, molars, canines, and incisors. Its mouth was so wide that I could see deep past its throat and into whatever this thing's digestive system even was, its face slowly came closer and closer, its mouth opening wider and wider until my head was already inside it's mouth, then -
SNAP
A/N: Welp Julius is dead, you can all go now, maybe attend the funeral if you want to, we'll write into his headstone that he didn't even make it past the first 10 chapters lol.