Horror Game Developer: My games aren't that scary!

Chapter 751: Analysis [4]

“There’s nothing here.”

Kyle pushed another rotten desk aside, sending a cloud of dust across the classroom. Zoey immediately covered her mouth and stepped away, waving a hand in front of her face.

“You’ve said that about every room.”

“Because every room has nothing.”

“Then stop saying it.”

Kyle glanced towards her but didn’t bother replying.

They had been on Valmere Island for two days now, and his patience was starting to wear thin.

The island wasn’t particularly large.

Decades ago, it had apparently been home to a sizeable fishing and manufacturing community, with several small towns scattered along the coast and a port that had once handled most of the trade passing through the surrounding islands.

That didn’t last for long.

Businesses gradually moved elsewhere, younger residents followed, and large portions of northern Valmere slowly emptied out. What remained was an island with far more buildings than people to occupy them, particularly once they moved away from the southern port.

The school was located near the abandoned northern district.

Valmere Municipal School.

Or, at least, that had been its original name.

It had closed not long after the incident involving Class 3-C and the anomaly was found, before being repurposed several times over the following decades. For a period it had served as a municipal storage building, then an administrative annex, before eventually being abandoned altogether when the northern district lost most of its population.

The Guild hadn’t catalogued VILE-303 until much later.

That was what had led Kyle and Zoey here in the first place.

If the anomaly was recreating events from the school, then the original building was the only place they could think of that might contain something the Guild records didn’t.

Perhaps another key that would help them reach Seth.

…Or at least, something.

‘He’s still fine, but I don’t know how long we have left.’

Kyle looked around the room.

Sunlight entered through several cracked windows, illuminating faded green walls and rows of desks left behind from one of the building’s later renovations. Salt carried inland by the wind had eaten into most of the metal fixtures, while water damage had warped portions of the wooden floor until several boards curved upward at the edges.

There were no monsters waiting behind the doors or corridors stretching infinitely into the distance.

That much was good.

It was just an old school slowly rotting beside the sea.

And yet, Class 3-C felt different from the other rooms.

Kyle couldn’t explain exactly why.

Maybe it was because they already knew what had happened here, or perhaps it was the way the room seemed strangely quieter than the rest of the building. The wind could be heard slipping through broken windows in the corridor, rattling old frames and loose pieces of wood, but the moment they stepped inside 3-C, most of that noise seemed to fade behind the walls.

It left their footsteps sounding a little too clear.

Zoey stopped near the back.

“…Twenty-seven.”

Kyle turned.

Unlike most of the desks, this row belonged to the original classroom.

They’d found several of them stacked inside one of the storage rooms downstairs before returning them to their approximate positions using photographs from the municipal archive.

The numbers carved into the wood had almost completely faded with age.

But out of all the desks…

One was still clearly visible.

Desk 27.

There was no chair behind it.

More strangely, while dust covered most of the floor around the desks, a darker rectangular mark remained directly behind twenty-seven, as though something heavy had once been there long enough to permanently stain the wood.

Kyle stared at it for a moment.

“I’m still surprised they didn’t get rid of these. Considering how many times the building changed ownership, it’s strange they’re still here.”

“…Indeed.”

Zoey crouched and ran her fingers along the scratched wood.

Over the past two days, they’d managed to piece together quite a few things.

It turned out the incident involving Class 3-C had been far more complicated than they’d originally been led to believe. To the point where it almost felt baffling that something involving so many disappearances had faded into little more than several scattered reports.

“Is it because it’s contained?”

“Likely…”

Kyle replied, tracing his finger along the edge of the desk.

“Once the Guild decided VILE-303 wasn’t spreading, there probably wasn’t much reason to keep digging into what happened before.”

That still didn’t sit particularly well with him.

By the end of the incident, twenty-eight children had disappeared in total.

A young girl called Mara Balle had vanished first, followed days later by the rest of Class 3-C, and somewhere between those two events Mrs. Vale had died under some weird circumstance that nobody really cared to elaborate on.

The fact that there was no hospital report was strange in itself.

Yet once the anomaly was contained…

That had apparently been enough for everything to be buried.

Sifting through the school records had answered a few questions. It had also created several more.

But there was one thing in particular that bothered them.

October seventeenth.

There wasn’t a single record regarding that date.

Every archive they’d checked contained documents from the days surrounding it, yet anything directly connected to the seventeenth was either missing or had been removed. At first, Kyle had assumed decades of poor storage and careless management were responsible.

After going through three separate collections on Valmere, that explanation was becoming harder to believe.

“Look at this.”

Zoey’s voice pulled him out of his thoughts.

She was crouched beneath Desk 27.

Kyle moved beside her and followed her gaze towards several scratches running along the underside of the wood. Most looked meaningless, overlapping one another in shallow lines, but beneath them were letters carved deeply enough that they had survived the years.

They were positioned strangely low.

A child would’ve had to lean beneath the desk to write them.

Zoey brushed away some of the dust.

…don’t let her…

Kyle’s expression slowly changed.

“Her?”

“I don’t know.”

Zoey leaned closer, angling the light from her phone along the wood in an attempt to reveal whatever had once followed the words.

Nothing.

The rest had been scratched away so violently that several splinters had broken from the desk.

“Desk 27 belonged to Mara. It might be talking about her.”

Kyle continued staring at the message.

“…It’s possible.”

But something about that didn’t feel right.

Mara had been the one frightened of someone else occupying her seat. That much they were able to find out.

Why would someone warn against her?

Neither of them said anything after that.

There wasn’t enough information.

Eventually, Kyle straightened and looked towards the front of the classroom, imagining twenty-eight children sitting where the rotten desks now stood.

It was strange.

Reading about them disappearing was one thing.

Standing inside the actual room made it considerably harder to treat what happened as nothing more than a simple accident.

Mara had sat here.

A young boy called Elon sat beside her.

Mrs. Vale would’ve stood at the front, facing all of them.

And for several days before everything ended, something had apparently been sitting in Seat 27 that only Mara could see.

Kyle stared at the empty space behind the desk for a second longer than necessary before turning away.

Zoey was already heading towards the doorway.

Kyle complained immediately.

“We’ve searched this floor twice. There’s nothing here that’ll get us into VILE-303.”

“At least, not yet. We might just get lucky~”

Zoey replied immediately after.

Kyle rolled his eyes.

“You’ve been saying that since yesterday.”

“And you’re still following me.”

She shot him another look.

Kyle sighed as his shoulders slumped.

“Alright, alright.”

Things were starting to feel redundant. Time was running out, and every hour they spent searching through an abandoned school was another hour Seth remained trapped.

Still, Kyle had investigated enough things alongside Zoey to know how she operated.

If something didn’t fit, she kept digging until it did.

“Which way?”

“Let’s try this side.”

Zoey led him towards another section of the building, the dim glow of her phone reflecting across her face as she followed a photograph she’d taken of the oldest floor plan.

The municipal archive had given them several different layouts of the school.

Each renovation had changed something, sealing corridors, dividing old classrooms, or removing entire sections of the building.

The oldest map was the one they’d decided to follow.

It showed a narrow maintenance passage running behind the classrooms on the eastern side of the school.

Most of it had been sealed during later renovations.

But not all of it.

Kyle slowed as they approached the main staircase, something along the wall catching his attention.

“…Zoey.”

She stopped.

“What?”

Kyle pointed.

At first, the discoloration looked like nothing more than damp bleeding through the newer layers of paint.

Zoey almost walked straight past it.

Then she looked again.

The stain didn’t spread the way water damaged walls usually did. In fact, it seemed to be covering something.

“What in the…”

Walking forward, she reached for the old paint and tore it down.

Immediately, her attention fell on the dark streaks that crawled upward beside the staircase, disappearing beneath newer paint in places before emerging farther up. Once they moved closer, the uneven edges became clearer, along with patches where the wall underneath had cracked and blistered.

“Burn marks.”

Zoey muttered subconsciously as Kyle licked his lips beside her.

“Someone has painted over them.”

Zoey’s eyes followed the blackened trail towards the upper floor.

“We saw this upstairs.”

Kyle nodded slowly.

Near the stairwell landing outside the corridor leading to Class 3-C.

The same place where Mrs. Vale’s body had supposedly been found.

It had bothered them when they first read the report.

Her body had been discovered there before anyone attempted to enter the classroom, while witnesses claimed they could still hear her voice giving instructions from inside.

“Was there a fire here?”

Zoey asked.

“Not according to anything we’ve found.”

That was what bothered Kyle.

None of the surviving reports mentioned one.

There was no known evacuation or emergency call.

Not even repairs for smoke damage.

Yet the walls indicated something else. Maybe from before the incident? Kyle took out his flashlight and followed the blackened pattern downward.

For a moment, neither of them moved.

The marks weren’t confined to the upper landing.

They continued down the staircase.

Towards the basement.

“…That’s odd.”

“What?”

Kyle kept the beam against the wall.

“If the fire started upstairs, why does the damage continue down?”

Zoey didn’t answer.

The two exchanged a glance before following it.

The lower floor was considerably darker, with only thin strips of daylight reaching through narrow windows near the ceiling. Old pipes ran above as the smell of damp concrete and rust replaced the salty air from upstairs.

Their footsteps carried much farther down here.

Kyle could hear each one return faintly from the corridor ahead.

The burn marks continued along the wall.

They weren’t everywhere.

Only along one side.

Almost like a trail.

They eventually stopped beside what appeared to be an ordinary section of brickwork.

Zoey frowned.

“…Was this always here?”

Kyle pulled out the oldest floor plan.

“No.”

He traced the basement corridor with his finger before stopping at the exact place where they stood.

Behind the wall was supposed to be a narrow maintenance passage.

It ran beneath the eastern wing before connecting to an old service building outside the school grounds.

A second entrance.

At least…

There used to be.

Zoey moved closer to the bricks.

“You think this could lead into VILE-303?”

“I have no idea.”

It wasn’t much of an answer, but neither of them had anything better.

The key was missing.

The door in Seth’s office couldn’t be opened because of that.

If there was even the slightest chance that VILE – 303 wasn’t the only anomaly that had formed back then…

Kyle stepped closer.

The flashlight moved across the bricks.

That was when Zoey suddenly caught his wrist.

“Wait.”

Kyle stopped.

She crouched near the bottom of the wall and brushed away a thick layer of dust. Something caught her attention as she took a step forward.

Brushing away the layer of dust, a few words appeared before their eyes.

17 OCT.

“…”

Kyle slowly lowered the light.

For several seconds, the only sound came from water dripping somewhere deeper inside the basement.

Drip.

Once.

Drip…!

Then again.

Of all the dates they could’ve found…

Zoey stared at the carving before slowly looking up at him.

“We’re opening it.”

Kyle’s attention remained fixed on the date.

“…Obviously.”

For the first time since arriving on Valmere Island, they’d finally found something that felt like more than another dead end.

Whether the passage would actually lead them to Seth, they weren’t sure.

But it was clear that someone had sealed it. Someone had carved October seventeenth into the wall before they did.

And right now, that was their greatest lead since arriving.

***

Secretary Kim placed the folder on the Section Chief’s desk.

“There has still been no direct contact from Seth.”

Johansberg continued reading.

“And the other two?”

“Kyle and Zoey have been absent from Guild headquarters for most of the last few days. They requested several historical documents concerning VILE-303 before leaving, including municipal records relating to the original property.”

Johansberg’s finger stopped against the page.

“They went there themselves?”

“That appears to be the case.”

A small silence followed.

Secretary Kim adjusted her glasses.

“There have also been questions regarding Seth’s situation. His lack of reports from Malovia is becoming increasingly difficult to explain.”

Johansberg leaned back.

Things were progressing in a very interesting way.

His gaze shifted towards the window as the faintest smile appeared across his face.

“…Interesting.”

Secretary Kim remained expressionless.

“Do you think something has happened to Seth?”

“Mhm.”

The smile remained.

“I think something rather interesting is happening.”

He closed the folder.

“And I’d very much like to see where it leads.”