Ultimately, Richard chose not to tell Dustin the truth. It might be too cruel for the little curly-haired boy, and he was afraid of hurting his young heart.
Of course, the main reason was the fear that the curly-haired boy and his friends would go looking for trouble, and he might not be able to save them in time.
After school, Richard returned to those woods. Without the thick fog, the forest looked much brighter.
Richard pulled a machete from his backpack and began searching the woods for any suspicious clues.
Nowadays, as a student, Richard's backpack contained almost no books at all, only weapons and equipment. Going to school seemed to be just a step on his path to a fight.
After walking for a while, Richard finally found the graveyard Dustin had mentioned. Sure enough, it was filled with small mounds of earth and cross-shaped tombstones.
The graveyard was located in a secluded spot surrounded by vegetation. Lush plants covered the sky, making it almost impossible to see the sun. Sunlight could only steal through a few inches of swaying gaps to cast God's fading light. However, the warmth brought by this bit of sunlight was just a drop in the bucket. This lonely place where death was buried remained an abyss for souls and an ice cellar for corpses.
The cemetery wasn't large. Behind it was a thicket of thorns and dead wood. Sharp thorns, coiled vines, and layers of rotting wood formed a natural line of defense.
However, right in the middle of this wall of thorns and dead wood, a relatively new crack appeared, opening up a small path with steps made of unevenly sized stones.
Richard searched among the dense tombstones for the name of Dustin's cat, "MewMew," but found nothing. He couldn't help but look beyond the steps. Perhaps Mrs. Henderson wanted to find a spacious, quiet spot for her orange cat.
He stepped onto the stairs, carefully avoiding the thorns and dry branches on both sides, wary of the naughty thorns scratching his clothes and body.
Climbing the steps, Richard found himself in a place where no one seemed to have ever been, as if he had entered another world. It turned out to be a high plateau, but because it was surrounded and wrapped by vegetation, it was impossible to see from the outside.
Few people seemed to have set foot here, but there was a winding path where no grass grew, as if guiding him forward.
Strange cries echoed through the claustrophobic forest, sounding like a mixture of the shrill screams of various wild beasts, making one's face pale upon hearing them.
Richard felt a throb in his heart. A chill pulsed within him. It seemed the power of the Phantom Haunting Spirit, which had merged with him, was warning him that the road ahead was full of unknown dangers.
Exhaling, Richard gripped the machete in his hand and stepped onto the narrow, winding path.
Walking through the uneven and rugged forest and crossing a river where bones lay silent, Richard felt as if he had reached the end.
Strange! Eerie!
Under a sunny sky, light enveloped the land and valley before him, yet Richard couldn't feel a hint of warmth. The breath he exhaled was a cloud of forest-white frost.
The peculiar environment wasn't the strangest thing to Richard. The most bizarre part was the circular platform in front of him; it seemed to be a magic circle.
White stones were laid out in concentric rings. There were four circles of varying sizes, each exceptionally full and rounded. Piles of white stones were placed at intervals along the rings. Several horizontal, vertical, and triangular symbols formed a strange character interspersed among the circles. The overall magic circle was very symmetrical.
Here, Richard saw several dug-up pits within the magic circle. Those were exhumed graves. Near one of the pits, he found a wooden tombstone with the name "MewMew" written on it.
All signs indicated that the super-strong zombie orange cat he saw last night had been resurrected from this very spot.
Seeing several open pits within the magic circle, it wasn't hard for Richard to guess that besides MewMew, other corpses had been resurrected here. Fortunately, unlike the one MewMew had crawled out of last night, the soil suggested the other opened graves were years old and not as fresh as MewMew's.
Judging by MewMew's state after resurrection, it was just a conscious corpse. Such resurrected beings must be subject to the natural rules of decay. They would rot away on their own before long, so the other things that crawled out of the graves were likely already gone.
"This scene, this imagery... it's really familiar." Richard climbed to a high point and looked down at the magic circle possessing incredible power. A fatal sense of déjà vu grew stronger and stronger.
"I remember now!" Richard suddenly struck his palm, looking enlightened. "The anomaly overlapping into this world this time must be the evil magic circle that appeared in 'pet sematary'."
"pet sematary," like "1408 Phantom Room," came from a Stephen King horror novel. It told the story of a family that moved to a small town in Maine and suffered from evil forces. After the husband learned from an elderly neighbor that there was a pet cemetery near their new home—and behind the high ground hidden by the cemetery was a mysterious magic circle that could bring any creature back to life—the husband, who had tragically lost his beloved son in an accident, decided to let his dead son be resurrected through that mysterious zone.
But with our God's-eye view, we all know there's no such thing as a free lunch. The "son" who returned from the grave was no longer the angel he knew, but an evil ghost that seemed to have crawled out of hell. After the "son" murdered the neighbor and the wife in succession, the husband, learning the truth, was grief-stricken and killed the "son" with tears in his eyes.
Looking at the bitter fruit he had sown, the husband—who had unknowingly been influenced by the mysterious power of the cemetery—made a decision he would regret for the rest of his life. He buried his dead wife in that same cemetery, hoping against hope that his resurrected wife wouldn't become like his "son." In the end, he was killed by his own "wife," and the family was almost entirely destroyed.
According to the description in the story, the magic circle in front of Richard was a burial ground once used by local Native Americans. The circle seemed to have the effect of a spirit-summoning ritual. But for well-known reasons, this burial ground was destined to have extremely heavy resentment. Furthermore, since this mysterious zone seemed very closely linked to the dimension of death, the magic circle's mysterious power was bound to become evil.
[You have decrypted a type of occult phenomenon—Wraith Resurrection.]
[Wraith Resurrection (002) - There is always a hurdle that can never be crossed, such as life and death. Greedy life only attracts greedy evil spirits, bringing the dead back to life in an evil form. This act is the greatest desecration of those you love.]
"I guessed right." Richard was glad his movie-watching experience and memory were both good; otherwise, heaven knows how long he would have had to investigate.
"I have to destroy this magic circle quickly. If this power is discovered and utilized by Henry from The Upside Down, the 'dungeon difficulty' of this strange world will go straight through the roof." Richard broke into a cold sweat, thinking it was lucky he found it in time, or the consequences would be unimaginable.
"It should be enough just to destroy the pattern of the magic circle, right?" Richard thought. So he quickly set to work moving the stones, soon completely destroying the pattern of the magic circle.
However, after destroying the stones arranged in the magic circle's pattern, the haunting spirit power inside Richard's body remained on high alert. In fact, it didn't decrease but increased. The chill in his heart became even stronger. The various strange shrieks he had heard before now seemed to be right by his ear. He felt as if he were surrounded by invisible souls of the dead.
Although the ritual of the summoning circle was broken, the restless wraiths no longer had a place to reside. They all simultaneously latched onto Richard, the one who had destroyed their "home."