He Is Watching Me

The room was fairly ordinary: a single bed, a desk and chair, and all the basic necessities.

Yet the person sat on the rug slumped against the bed, unmoving, staring wide-eyed as though already dead.

Waiting a moment and seeing no static flash across his vision, Lynch finally let out a sigh of relief. He drew his revolver, remaining on high alert as he took a few cautious steps forward.

The man looked somewhat familiar.

Searching his memory for a moment, Lynch’s eyes went wide.

He remembered now—he had just seen him this morning.

This was the poor wretch who had tried to activate the mystery relic on Crown Square, only to be knocked out cold by Lynch’s club.

He still wore the formal suit from this morning, but his dark, robust frame made him look completely out of place in it, resembling a manual laborer instead.

At this moment, the man’s eyes were wide and staring, his face deathly pale and drained of blood.

Lynch had already raised his revolver, aiming straight at him. But a rattling gurgle came from the man’s throat as he raised a trembling arm and pointed at Lynch.

“It’s you... Don’t come over. Stay away from me.”

Lynch, who had been about to step closer, froze upon hearing this. Sizing him up, he said, “Something is wrong with you. What happened?”

“I was fooled... We were all fooled.” The man’s voice was hoarse and his breathing labored. He was wracked by a violent fit of coughing, spitting out several mouthfuls of black blood. His gaze was vacant and unfocused, his pupils noticeably dilating. “They never planned on helping me. They just used me... and now that I’ve served my purpose, they’re silencing me.”

“Who are you? Who are ‘they’? Why are you here?” Lynch pressed urgently, noticing the man growing paler by the second and sensing disaster. “Tell me everything you know.”

“I’m a steam train driver... The company organized our protest this morning, so we went together,” the man said in ragged gasps. “Someone told us that only by creating a bigger, more sensational incident would anything work. They told us to open that box during the protest. But before I could open it, you snatched it away... I had no choice but to flee back here alone.”

“Who are they?” Lynch asked as quickly as possible.

With great difficulty, the man raised his arm and pointed toward the door. “Them... It’s them. They gave me that box and arranged this lodging for me. We thought we’d met people who genuinely wanted to help us. Little did we know... little did we know those monsters...”

“You know there are monsters among them too? What on earth are they, and what’s the deal with that box?”

“Don’t seek to know... Don’t try to know anything. Don’t try to figure it out. Don’t be like me, or it will target you. Once it targets you, you’ll become a part of them. You won’t escape even in death... forever... forever...”

“What did you do?”

“I was curious... I went down.” The man pointed toward the corner of the wall. “I saw it. It’s watching me... Hehehe, it’s always watching me. Anyone who tries to figure it out will see it, and will end up like me... Hehehe.”

Hearing this made the hairs on Lynch’s neck stand on end, his throat parched.

It was difficult to make sense of the man’s delirious rambling, but given Madam Bessie’s earlier reaction, Lynch had no choice but to believe it. He could only press anxiously, “What do you mean, end up like you? What happened to you?”

“Hehehe...”

The man chuckled blankly. Suddenly, he tore open the front of his shirt, exposing his chest.

Lynch inhaled sharply, his lips trembling slightly, unable to utter a single word.

He saw that the man’s chest and back were covered in purple fleshy tumors.

Densely clustered, each tumor bulged larger than a thumb. Their surfaces were smooth, taut, and translucent, beneath which massive dark shadows writhed frantically, causing every tumor to contort, swell, and shrink like beating hearts.

It was utterly bizarre and profoundly sickening.

Lynch’s mind went completely blank. He felt as though he were gazing upon the most incomprehensible thing in the world. Grotesque, kaleidoscopic hallucinations danced before his eyes, accompanied by countless rasping whispers in his ears. Yet whether it was from having witnessed countless bizarre imagery in the information age or the crimson moonlight that always lingered within his consciousness, Lynch snapped back to his senses rapidly, his entire body feeling faintly weak.

“Hehehe... It is watching me. It is here.” The man’s eyes lost their focus, his speech turning incoherent. “He is here... Save me...”

Lynch noticed that with the man’s muttered deliriums, the fleshy tumors across his body were swelling at a visible speed, making his frame look increasingly bloated.

An ominous premonition surged in Lynch’s heart. He backed up all the way to the door to put as much distance between them as possible, his hand resting on the doorknob, ready to flee at a moment’s notice.

Yet before he could turn the knob, a wet pop sounded.

All the tumors across the man’s body ruptured simultaneously, sending purplish-black pus spraying everywhere.

Erupting alongside the pus were huge, squirming clusters of dark shadows from within the tumors.

Only then could Lynch clearly see what they were: thousands of bluish-purple spiderlings, each about the size of a pinky joint.

The moment they sprayed out, they immediately swarmed over the train driver’s body. The driver was already dead, unmoving.

Lynch vomited on the spot. It was so revolting that he could not suppress the urge to retch.

After only a few seconds of vomiting, the swarm of spiders crawled off the corpse. The body had already been reduced to a pile of white bones. Exposed to the air, the spiders visibly swelled, their bodies now longer than a thumb.

Now Lynch could clearly discern their appearance: bluish-purple bodies covered in thick carapaces, eight spear-like legs bristling with stiff hairs, hideous and menacing heads flanked by splayed mouthparts, and eight eyes aligned atop their heads, glowing with an ominous blood-red light.

They were miniature replicas of the monstrous phantoms he had seen outside.

Could those massive monsters have grown from these spiderlings? What on earth were they?

Before he had time to ponder, the swarm of spiderlings scurried away from the bones. Lynch’s heart sank, his fingers already touching his ring. But before putting it on, he realized the spiders weren’t lunging at him; instead, they hurled themselves at their nearest kin, tearing into one another in a frenzied slaughter. Countless died, yet not a single corpse remained on the floor—every last one was cleanly devoured by the survivors.

Lynch’s mind was numb. He could only stare blankly at the savage carnage. As their numbers dwindled, the surviving spiders fought as they moved, soon scurrying into the ventilation ducts and vanishing without a trace.

Thud.

The harrowing, grotesque scene left Lynch collapsing limply to the floor. He could only stare blankly, regaining the capacity to think only after a long while.

This man was one of the culprits, yet he had been killed by spiders. And those spiders likely represented whoever had provided the mystery relic—one of the masterminds behind the Square Massacre.

The deceased man’s fate validated Madam Bessie’s terror; this thing truly was extraordinarily dangerous. Officer Natalie’s ultimate objective in coming here was clearly this very entity, and she might have already tracked it down.

The mere thought of spiders sent chills down Lynch’s spine, filling him with intense revulsion. Yet upon careful reflection, he couldn’t leave Officer Natalie without aid—the more dangerous it was, the more reason he had to pursue her.

Left with no other choice, Lynch gritted his teeth and resolved to risk it all. He tiptoed over to the spot where the dead man had pointed when saying he “went down.”

Going down surely meant descending into a basement, but why had he pointed right here?