Unknown POV
A blinding light surrounded us as we headed through the portal along with the sound of a tape being rewound blasting through our ears, but it vanished shortly after to reveal that we were in a short hallway with stone walls with what looked to be a shopping carts on rails in front of us, blocking our only way forward. I looked to my right to discover that Yuri was thankfully still next to me, but she seems just as confused as I was. Not knowing what else to do, I pushed the cart forward to learn that we were, in fact, shrunken down in a giant, dimly lit convenience store that looked to be set up like a maze. Strangest of all, Naked mannequins were dashing around the store in circles without being influenced by anyone. they were all just sliding across the ground on their own.
"Wha-what is this?!" Yuri asked nervously. I didn't have any clue as to what to tell her, but something inside me gave me the impression of what we were expected to do.
Turning towards the purple haired maiden next to me, I said to her, "I think we need to push this cart to the end." She spun to face me in confusion.
"What? What makes you say that?" She questioned."
"I don't know" I replied, "But it's the only thing I can think of to do to get us out of here." She looked at me for a moment, then she simply took a deep breath and nodded her head.
"Okay, let's do it." She agreed, and we began to move the cart down the path, looking behind us to make sure nothing was following. The store was gigantic, with shelves that looked like regular bookshelves, although they were heavily disjointed, bent and some looked ready to come crashing down. They were also all different sizes and had faded colors, but were also tall enough that I couldn't even make out the top fo them with how dim the place was. Only a few things were on those shelves, most of which were getting snatched up by the mannequins and the ambiance noises were already sending shivers down my spine, but I knew the only way was forward, so I persisted through the cold, only to suddenly jump when Yuri grabbed my shoulder, yelping as she did so. Yuri jumped back in surprise.
"Ohmygosh! I'm sorry." She frantically apologized to me. It took me a second to regain my bearings, afterwards I turned to face her again.
"It's fine, it's okay." I quickly reassured her, and after a short moment to calm herself, she pointed over towards some of the shelves and I noticed some things bizarrely out of place, even for this situation. On those shelves were brightly glowing, floating gold orbs that had a tiny king's crown in them. I'm guessing that most of the light in this place was coming from, and I was also guessing we needed those to get out of here. I glanced at Yuri, who turned back to me, as if expecting me to say something about them. I wasn't sure about it at first, but it didn't take me long to make up my mind.
"Wait here." I said to Yuri as I started to make my way towards the orbs. The glow became much brighter as I got closer to the orb, but when I tried to grab it, it simply floated in my hand, and there was no weight to it, like I wasn't holding anything at all. The orb then started to shrink and moved towards the palm of my hand before vanishing into my hand. I was caught off guard for a moment, but it still felt like I had it despite the weightlessness of the orb in the first place. It was a strange feeling that I couldn't even begin to describe, but I knew I was doing something right. I saw a couple of these orbs around and quickly ran around to pick them up, but as I grabbed the last one I could find, I noticed a bright red light from behind me. I turned to discover one of the mannequins with the light emitting from where their face should be, seemingly frozen in place, but I could also tell they were simply just staring at me. Everything in me was telling me to run, but I couldn't bring myself to move at all. My feet just wouldn't move, regardless of how much effort I was struggling for them to do something, anything to get away from this thing. It was a straight up deer in the headlight scenario, and I got stuck being the deer. However, this moment was only that, a moment, as the mannequin out of nowhere, started to make a beeline toward me, and I was still just as frozen stiff as before. However, just before the mannequin could slam into me with the cart, I suddenly felt something grab my jacket, and yanked me out of the way, pulling me around the corner of the shelf. It was Yuri, who had been secretly following me this whole time. Without saying anything, we slowly peeked around the corner to see if the mannequin had seen where we went, but rather than keep chasing us, the red light from the face shut off and the mannequin sped off in the other direction, completely oblivious to what had just happened. We both breathed a sigh of relief, and turned towards each other.
"T-thank you" I told her softly, still recovering from that interaction.
"Of course. It was no problem at all." Yuri comforted me. "Now we should hurry and see how we can get out of here." I nodded my head in agreement, and we set off towards the cart, being careful not to alert any more mannequins, and grabbing the rest of the orbs we could find along the way. After using the cart to hide from whatever mannequin came too close to our cart, we soon made it to the end of the track, where we were greeted by a wooden checkout standing next to a long iron fence with a closed iron gate that to a pathway walled off by barbed wire fences, almost set up like a prison walkway. A Mannequin looked to be running the checkout stand, and beyond the gate was a large, wide dark purple cylinder sticking from a ground with dim lights lit around it and a giant safe door that covered the top of the cylinder, almost like the top of a submarine. Once we reached the gate, it suddenly slammed down in front of us, and another gate appeared behind us, trapping us in front of the checkout stand. I noticed that the floor underneath us felt strangely hollow compared to the rest of the store before this point. There was a vertical set of 5 lights in between the gate and the register, and one by one each of the lights turned red. Did we do something wrong? Even as I thought of the question, I could feel the floor shift slightly before it suddenly gave out underneath us! All of the air was instantly shot out of my body, and I could only gasp as I slowly felt myself subjecting to the pull of gravity. I also felt my eyes shut themselves, and braced for the inevitable landing, but then all of a sudden, something grabbed my arm, and I felt time snap back to normal, barely managing to avoid hitting the falling cart as I found myself slamming into the far wall of the pit with a painful groan, but it didn't come from me, but rather Yuri, who was holding me with her left hand, and struggling to hang on to the closed gate with her right. As I heard the crashing of the cart as it reached the end of the fall, I knew for sure I didn't want that to happen to me or Yuri. Planting my feet against the wall, I started trying to pull myself up, and Yuri, straining with all of her might, was able to bring me up to the gate, which I quickly grabbed before her grip could slip. We both quickly made our way up and over the gate, and from the corner of my eye, I noticed the same red light coming from the face of the cashier that I saw before with my other mannequin encounter. As we grew closer to the large cylinder, I suddenly felt something leave my body, and the door swung open. I'm guessing we needed to grab all of those orbs in order to open it, but suddenly without warning, the gate behind us rose up and we turned around to see the mannequin leaping over the stand to chase after us. So without any other options, we quickly leaped inside the open cylinder before the mannequin could reach us.
We were greeted by another bright light and tape rewind noise as it fell inside, but it didn't feel like we were falling, but rather once the light vanished, we found ourselves in another dimly lit room with what looked like two school lockers in front of us with a single light hanging above us. Beyond the lockers was a long corridor with school desks seemingly randomly stacked on top of each other, with other desks and lockers scattered across the hallway.
"First a marketplace and now a school? What exactly is happening here?" I heard Yuri ask.
"I have no idea." I told her. "But we're never gonna find out unless we find my neighbor."
"Right." Yuri replied. "I just hope that we can find him before that shadow does."
As we stepped past the locker, we both immediately froze as we heard a school bell blare out, and several smaller mannequins, which I guess were meant to represent students, sped their way around the hallway in different directions, before another bell stopped the mannequins and quickly sent them towards the nearest sets of desks, most of which sat down and other, bigger glowing white mannequins, were roaming around the area. I'm guessing these were the teachers. Soon the bell rang again, the teachers disappeared and the student mannequins started running around again.
"What do we do?" Yuri asked me. "We can't let them see us right?"
"I think so." I answered the best I could, then out of curiosity, I tried fiddling one of the lockers, and to my surprise, it slid open without much issue. I turned back to the literature club member. "I might have an idea..." and whispered it into her ear.
Once we heard the bell rang again, and the students returned to their seats, we slowly made our way around the outside of the hallway, being careful not to be spotted by any of the mannequins. We were making some solid progress, before the student started running around again after the next ring. We saw many of the students glow red and started moving in on us.
"Quick, get inside!" I yelled, and I swung open the nearest locker, gesturing Yuri to jump in, hurrying in myself after she did so, slamming the locket shut after we made it in. It was a tight fit, not helping my head position between her... anyways we made it work, but noticed that our locker was surrounded by the mannequins. I realized now that I probably should've thought this plan through more, but soon after, the students seemingly lost interest, along with their red glow, and went back to running around like nothing happened. The bell rang once more, and the students went back to their seats. Furthermore, and strangely enough, I was able to get the door open from my side and we jumped out, taking a second to recover our breath, but both of us were aware we couldn't stay out in the open for long. So we continued down the hallway, moving whenever the students were sitting, and jumping inside the nearest locker anytime the students were running around, while at the same time grabbing any of the gold orbs we could find. It took some time, but we were eventually able to make out a single white door with a single light pointing towards it at the very end of the corridor. The moment we got the chance, we sped off towards the door, but before we could reach the door, I heard a sudden gasp, followed by a loud "thump". I turned back to find that Yuri had tripped, and that the students at the end of the hall also heard the noise. Their red glows didn't lie, they saw us now. I tried to run back to her, but before I could, I was suddenly grabbed from behind by something, it's fingers wrapping tightly around my chest and arms, before slowly lifting me off the ground. It was another mannequin, and this one was huge compared to the rest of the ones we saw before. It was hard to breathe, and even though I tried to break out of its grasp, I couldn't shake it's hands off me at all. In fact, I think I made it's grip around me worse, and I felt like my ribs were going to break at any moment. Just as I felt like my lungs were about to give out, the mannequin suddenly dropped me and as I fell to the ground, I heard a loud thud behind me. Pain shot through my chest as I landed on the ground, groaning in pain. Despite the overwhelming shock shooting at my ribcage, I forced myself to bring myself up, instinctively wrapping my arms around my chest in some vain effort to deal with the pain. I looked behind me to see the large mannequin was knocked over and Yuri was to my right, rubbing her shoulder... she just saved me again didn't she? Seeing me up, she quickly rushed over to me, clearly in a panic over what just happened.
"Are you all right?" She hastefully asked me.
"I'm fine." I told her, putting my hand on her shoulder to try and calm her down, but my eyes went wide when I looked back down the hall to see a number of glowing red Mannequins growing closer by the second, "But we're not gonna be for long!" I yelled, grabbing her arm and rushing through the open door, slamming it shut as we did so. As we held the door shut, since there were no locks on it, we frantically looked around the dark room in front of us for any means of escape, the same feeling of something being ripped out of me washed over me again as the noise of something swinging open filled the empty space. We wasted no time leaping inside, mere seconds before we were grabbed by the angry mob of mannequins that smashed through the door.
Another bright light and tape reversal sound later, and this time we found ourselves at the bottom of what seemed to be a giant closet filled with a bunch of random objects, most were much bigger than we were at now. One of which was the blue and yellow rugs we were standing on, and a large, old green camera with a lightbulb coming from the top of it that illuminated the ground decently well. We took a moment to sit down after barely making it out of the schoolroom, leaning back against the giant objects that covered the ground, but still able to face each other. Save for our heavy breathing, there was dead silence between us for a long while. I normally wasn't the one to start any sort of conversation, mainly as I always thought of myself as awful at small talk, but I also knew that we weren't going to get anywhere without somebody speaking up, so I made the difficult decision to break this awkward silence.
"So, if I were to take a random guess..." I started to tell Yuri. "I think we need to make it to the top."
Yuri thought to herself for a moment, then looked back at me. "With everything we just went through, I suppose that would make sense. I just hope we don't have to deal with anymore of those mannequins after this. How many more of these places do we have to go through? I wonder what these places have to do with your neighbor, and that shadow person that brought him through that portal." She pondered.
"Speaking of which, I've... been meaning to ask." I started hesitantly, sitting myself up to match her height. "Since... you already were in his basement before I got there, why did you decide to go down there?" I could tell Yuri was caught off guard by the question, as she perked up slightly upon me asking. Crossing her arms, she took a moment to think to herself before speaking up again.
"I'm... honestly not sure why I did it." She told me. "There was just... this feeling that came over me whenever I would glance at that house. Something mysterious. Something... ominous. I couldn't begin to describe it if I wanted to. At first, I simply wanted to ignore it and move on, but over time, well... I guess you could say that my curiosity got the better of me after all. I knew that my sense of dread wasn't going to leave until I understood for sure what it truly was, and when I saw him for the first time, there was something about him that seemed... familiar. I didn't understand it at first, but I couldn't help but keep thinking about it, and when I did, I realized that he was trying to keep something about himself locked away. Something personal, and that look in his eyes... he was suffering, struggling to keep himself emotionally together, but hiding it from everyone else and holding all of his problems with him, just like how Monika and I were back when... that happened. Perhaps I related to him a bit too much..." She said while staring at her arm. "But I knew he needed someone to help him through whatever he was going through, even if that meant having to find out what was hurting him so much. I tried to speak with him earlier, but my efforts ended with a door being slammed in my face, so I guess I decided to take matters into my own hands, and in hindsight, perhaps this wasn't the smartest way of going about, but that doesn't matter anymore. What's important is helping him through whatever is causing him so much pain, and figuring out how to get us out of this mess."
Wow... she really put a lot of thought into this didn't she. However, that still doesn't explain one thing...
"In that case, how did you even get into his basement in the first place?"
"O-Oh, right..." Yuri stated in surprise. "It was actually much simpler than you might think. While I wasn't happy that I had to knock him unconscious, he just happened to be carrying the crowbar I needed to bring down the wooden planks covering the door, and now that I think about it... I'm even more worried about his current wellbeing if he believes leaving the card needed to unlock the door inside of his freezer was a smart decision." She let out a small sigh before continuing, and turned her gaze towards the top of the giant closet. "I just hope he's alright..."
"We'll find him." I told her with a pinch of confidence, giving her a reassuring grin. "I know we will. We have to."
Yuri turned back to me, then returned with her own calming smile. "You're right." She said softly as she started to get back on her feet. "Now let's-" She was suddenly cut off by something creaking behind one of the giant objects. We both froze instantly upon hearing the noise, save for spinning around towards where the noise came from. Silence, then it happened again. A creaking noise, accompanied by the sounds of something shifting along the ground. Both me and Yuri were completely still, to the point where I could hear my own breathing, but then, I started to noise a very similar red light slowly rising up from behind the giant lamp I was leaning against.
"Is that-" I didn't get a chance to finish that thought.
"Player!" I heard Yuri shout, but it was too late. I couldn't make out what it was before it suddenly leaped over the lamp and tackled me to the ground. I winced and groaned in pain as it slammed me onto my back, before it started pressing its hands into my neck. Another Mannequin, but how did this one manage to get here? Did it somehow follow us into the purple pipe? Whatever the case, this thing had me pinned to the ground, it's grip was locked around my throat, and even though I tried desperately to shake it off, it didn't budge at all. I wasn't able to break this thing's grip at all! I know I would have been done for if it wasn't for Yuri once again, who came around the back of the Mannequin, wrapped her arms around it's chest, and together, we were able to shove it aside, where it landed with a hard thud. It didn't take long however, before it started to pull itself back up, ready for another round. It was then that we began to hear more noises coming from seemingly every direction... and way more lights.
Oh shit, they're here.
"RUN!" I shouted, and grabbed Yuri's arm as we hurried over towards the wall behind us, to the wooden plank leaning against the wall past the camera. As we made our way up the plank, I risked a quick peek down behind us, and to my utter horror, about several dozen Mannequins were now after us. Some were upright on their wheels, others were crawling along the ground, but all of them had their red lights on and facing us, regardless of where they were. I forced myself to pick up the pace, racing all the way to the top of the plank, which was leaning against the opposite wall. To the right was a single shelf with a large red radio on it. Wasting no time, both of us quickly leaped over to the shelf and kept on running, sliding down another plank that led to another darker shelf right above where the camera was, complete with more hard to make out objects. It was at this point as well where we made the horrifying discovery that these goddamn Mannequins were not only chasing us along the planks and shelves, but also, some of them were STRAIGHT UP CLIMBING THE WALL! How, I couldn't even begin to figure out, but regardless, we had to keep going.
Using some boxes at the end of the wooden shelf, we jumped up to another one, barely avoiding a Mannequin's hand swipe, and dashed around another giant box, where another shelf was seen tilted it the opposite way this one we were on was, making it easy to climb up towards. We hurried across this yellow, empty shelf and leaped to the brown one fastened to the wall on our left, avoiding the large pair of binoculars, and making a left halfway towards another wooden plank, connecting shelves at opposite ends of the room. At this point, the Mannequin had completely covered the bottom of the room, and were making their way up the walls fast. At this point, if we didn't get out of here now, we were never going to make it. Another green plank was balanced on the one we were on at a higher angle against the top of the door, but just enough of an angle where we could still run up it. We quickly reached the plank, almost losing my balance trying to reach the bottom of the leaning plank, but was able to thankfully recover before grabbing both sides of the plank and racing up the plank to the door frame, Yuri close behind, but with Mannequins on our still, who also reached the plank this one was leaning against. The planks began to shift as the Mannequins began attempting to drop them to the ground, I nearly slid down as they did this, but I tightened my grip and was able to make it to the top. I spun around to make sure Yuri was still behind me, but to my horror, the Mannequin pushed the Green plank off the shelf, sending it, and the plank Yuri was climbing, dropping to the ground.
"Yuri! I called for her, as she froze up and gasped as the plank began to give up, staring behind her to see the fruits of the mannequin's effort. Yuri spun her head back to face as I screamed her name, her face in pure shock as gravity began to set her and the planks down to the ground. I dropped to my knees and reached out with my open hand, and Yuri, realizing this, quickly leaped off the falling wooden board and was just barely able to grab my hand, the planks crashing into the horde of mannequins below as she did so. The sudden force of her weight nearly yanked me off the door frame with her, but I wasn't about to let her go now. Straining with everything I had, I was able to pull her up to the frame, Yuri gasping for air as she made it up. The Mannequins on the shelf simply stared at us while I helped Yuri recover from her near death experience, but even though we barely made it alive from that, I saw the Mannequins on the ground start climbing their way up the door towards us.
"Come on!" I said Yuri, extending my hand to hers. Despite still freaking out over what just happened, she took my hand and we raced over towards the end of the door frame, only to find... nothing. No planks, no shelves, nothing we could use to keep going up, save for a giant yellow toaster leaning towards the right wall. The Mannequins climbed the door and were just seconds away from getting us now, and both of us were frantically searching the area, trying desperately to find anything we could use. With no time, or options left, I quickly turned to Yuri and blurted out.
"Quick, this way!" I pointed over to the giant yellow box.
"Wait, hold on! What are you-!" Yuri shouted confused.
"Come on!" I yelled, stepping back and without hesitating, ran forward and leaped over towards the toaster, landing inside the open slot closest to us. I landed hard on my shoulders, which stung badly as I cried out in anguish. Yuri quickly followed, her landing no better than my own, only she hit her left shin and ankle hard upon hitting the metal. Unfortunately, we had no time to focus on our soreness, as our combined weight dropped the slot down, before suddenly launching us out high towards the opposite wall. We both screamed as we flew through the air, before coming to a dead halt as we hit the wall and fell over onto another shelf. We both groaned and grunted in pain as we struggled to pull ourselves up after that. My shoulder was definitely bruised and stinging badly, and Yuri was clenching her leg in pain, trying to see if it was twisted at all, which luckily it wasn't. While attempting to recuperate from that last stunt, I risked another look down at the swarm of Mannequins who were still relentless in their climbing, although still far away enough that we could buy ourselves another few seconds. I hurried back over to Yuri and helped pull her back onto her feet, although she was absolutely struggling to keep herself up given her aching legs. Throwing her arm over my bruised shoulder, we worked together to climb up the stacks of food cans ahead of us and jumped up to another shelf on the same wall past a giant dartboard, where a single paper airplane was resting on the shelf. One of the glowing orbs was inside, which I quickly picked up, and to my disbelief, the only way to continue up was on the opposite wall.
"Oh, you have got to be kidding me!" I thought out loud. Fuck it, time for another crazy idea.
"Quick!" I called Yuri, gesturing to the airplane. "Hop on." Yuri quickly followed my lead and sat down inside the plane.
"Okay? What are you going t-"
Without a second thought, I used whatever strength I had left at this point to shove the airplane off the shelf, before jumping in myself behind her. Yuri screaming filled the rooms for a moment as I saw her cover her eyes, but soon stopped after she realized that we weren't falling, but rather slowly drifting our way over towards the other side of the room. While still clearly nervous at the whole ordeal, she spun her head around to face me and asked, "How did you know to do that?"
"Honestly, I wasn't sure what else to do." I answered. "It was just the first thing that came to my mind." Not making matters any easier for us was the fact the Mannequins were able to take the time this thing needed to make it over to catch up with us, completely losing our lead we got with our toaster stunt.
"The second we land, run." I told Yuri. She nodded without saying a word, although her expression of nervousness was enough to make me dread what might happen if we don't end up making it after all. Before our airplane even reached the ground, both of us leaped out and were back to dashing across the shelf as we continued to make our way up, passing by another giant red radio as we did so. If we didn't have a massive swarm of mannequins seemingly ready to murder us, I might have stopped to wonder just how high this closet really was, but I tossed that thought aside and we kept up our pace, making our way up a large, black old school telephone and an giant VHS tape, which we used to leap across to another shelf with a huge candle resting on we before coming to a halt upon nearing running into a large crate too big for us to reach and run around. We turned towards each other, hoping the other would have any idea about what to do, and our attention snapped to behind us when we heard the Mannequins working to climb up the telephone we were just at. However, I saw in the corner of my eyes that Yuri suddenly perked up, like she had an idea, and grabbed my arm to get my attention, spinning me around to face the box while she was standing right next to it.
"Here, climb on." She said, squatting down and cupping her hands together to make a footstand. Instantly realizing what she wanted me to do, I stepped on her hands and she helped boost me up to the top of the box, which I was just barely able to reach, but still able to grab the top. I struggled to pull myself up, the sore shoulder not helping things in the slightest, but through my straining and effort, I pulled myself up, and quickly spun around to extend my hand out to Yuri, who jumped up to grab it. As I started to pull her up with me, I watched in horror as the Mannequin threw themselves over to the shelf we were on and climbed up to where the candle was, and a second later was making a beeline towards Yuri. Gasping just how close they were now, I strained with everything I had left in me and was just barely able to bring Yuri up before the Mannequins could grab her, and saw them dashing and slamming themselves into the box, which nearly caused me to lose Yuri's grip on my arm, while others were trying to grab Yuri from me, some were almost able to do so. We wasted no time getting back on our feet and rushing away from the box before the Mannequin could make it up themselves and quickly made our way up the last plank that extended from our shelf to another one on the other side of the room until we at last could make out the Cylinder and made a mad dash to it. One final time I felt the same feeling again and the door swung open, as we wasted no time hopping, just then the Mannequins made their way up the box and rushed towards us, taking one last swipe at us as we fell inside.
Another light, another sound, but then strangely enough, apart from our exhausted breathing, everything fell silent. No sounds of wheels or creaking of wood. No bright red lights or bizarre scenery. We simply found ourselves in what looked like a long hallway, some TV monitor hanging overhead. We leaned against the wall for a moment, regaining our breath, until Yuri finally spoke up again.
"Is... is it over?" We asked nervously.
"I... I hope so." was my only reply. Whatever the case, after returning our breathing back to a somewhat normal state, we started our trek down the hall, with nothing outside of a single blocked off room to our right, which had a window and showed someone getting into their car and drive off, but after cautiously making our way to the end of the hall, we suddenly heard the noise of squealing tires, and something crashing through the wall in front us, making us both gasp out loud and jump back in surprise. We quickly hurried towards the shattered window to find the same car we saw earlier now on its side, and the Neighbor jumping out of his own vehicle to investigate the wreckage. We watched as the neighbor searched through the windshield, only to soon after fall down and break down into tears, the shadowy figure materializing by his side as he did so.
"Oh my god." I heard Yuri whisper under her breath as she covered her mouth and backed away from the window with her eyes widened. Only upon seeing her like this did it hit me what just happened. I could feel my hands stiffen, my chest tighten and my eyebrows rise up to accommodate for my eyes as they shot open as the realization struck me like a sledgehammer to the face. I... had no words. There was nothing I could do but watch as the shadow slowly brought his hand to the neighbor's shoulder and the two vanished into another portal that quickly closed behind them. It was only then that I saw in the corner of my eyes a single, yellow high heel shoe that had flown from the wreckage and landed near the window. What would be wearing a-. Wait a second. Holy shit.
"That was his wife..." I spoke out loud without thinking. Another shocked gasp came from the lady behind me.
"Ar- are you sure." She asked uneasily.
"Yeah." I replied. "That shadow must have shown him this for a reason, but why?" Suddenly, we both gasped as we heard the noise of another pipe open, as if it answered for me. Knowing what I had to do, I slowly worked my way over towards it and was about to start climbing my way inside, but was stopped by Yuri.
"What if we have to see something like that again?" She questioned anxiously. I took a deep breath before extending my hand out to her.
"Only one way to find out." Hesitantly, She took my hand, and we both climbed up and over into the pipe.
Once more the light and tape sounds enveloped us, but we were used to it by this point. The light cleared to find ourselves in what looked like an empty wooden box, with only a single window that gave us the view of some planks of wood being held up by more wooden bars attached to someone's rooftop. I wasn't sure why they were there, but I did know there was a young girl, who couldn't have been any older than 10, was running across the planks towards something near the edge of the last one. She had light orange pigtail and was wearing a dark blue and white striped shirt and light blue overalls. Just by seeing her do this, I could already tell something terrible was about to happen. I tried desperately calling out to her, doing whatever I could to stop her from running over to the edge, but nothing I said reached her ears, as she continued to hurry over until she picked up a small doll at the edge and hugged it, most likely what she came up here for. She looked down towards the ground and was taken aback by just how high up she was, but as she turned around, she stumbled back slightly when she saw someone else on the planks with her, a young boy this time. The boy had darker hair, and was wearing a pink shirt with a white collar and light blue shorts. The boy was clearly upset and frustrated by something, as he started to leave, but then suddenly turned back around and knocked the doll out of the girl's hand, sending it spiraling towards the ground. The girl gasped as he did this, and the boy was obviously trying desperately to keep control of his frustrations, before angrily shoving the girl backwards, not realizing until it was too late what he just did. Time seemed to slow to a crawl, and the only sounds we could hear were the ones of mine and Yuri horrified gasps as we watched, powerless to stop what we were forced to witness. My heart skipped a beat, and my body and breathing completely froze, unable to do anything but watch as I saw the girl slowly fall towards the earth, before the scene in front of us suddenly vanish into dust, and in the white void that replaced it, we saw the neighbor once again on his knees sobbing as the shadow loomed over him, unmoving. I could see Yuri shaking in fear from the corner of my eyes, completely taken aback by what we just saw. I simply didn't know what to say at this point. Over everything we saw, my heart was crushed. This shadow was showing us all of these tragedies for a reason, and I think I only now started to realize why. It was just like Yuri said before, she could tell the Neighbor was struggling to deal with something, something that made him angry and spiteful towards everyone, and this was it. He was suffering from the loss of his wife and daughter, and that bedroom we saw in his basement must have been for his son, so that he wouldn't lose him to, and this shadow was insisting on replaying these memories in his head forever, never allowing him to deal with his grief and move on the best he could. This shadow was no doubt the form his pain took, and that hourglass had given it the ability to force the neighbor to constantly relive these painful moments.
Refusing to let this go on, I leaped through the open hole in the box, much to Yuri surprise, and ran as fast as I could towards the shadow, who instantly snapped around to look at me before quickly vanishing, the white void around us suddenly changed into a large empty room with the voids white light shining through the multitude of windows, and a single light dimly lighting up the carpet the neighbor was now weeping on. The box Yuri and I were in had been replaced by a dark wall and the sounds of creaking and wind filled the room before the room suddenly shook, catching all of us by surprise. The Neighbor, wiping his tears away, got up and ran up the flight of stairs behind him, the two of us following close behind. The Neighbor headed into another empty room and raced over to one of the windows on his left. He looked out through the glass, trying to see where the noise came from, before suddenly the white void outside began to become taken over by Dark gray clouds, and the swarm of crows began to fill the sky as the wall and windows were suddenly smashed through, throwing all of us back onto the floor. We landed hard on our back, and the only thing I could see on the other side was the distorted, warping face of the now ginormous shadow man.
