Mortuus stood before the power plant and looked up at the tall building before him. It was a dull-looking gray brick building with three stories of equally dark gray windows. A chain-link fence surrounded the property on all sides. The only way in or out was through the gate, where a security guard was sitting in a booth with a bored expression.
Mortuus thought for a minute. He could just slip past. Hell, he could walk through the front door with no worries. It's not like the guard's gun or taser was going to do much to him. "Pray tell, Mortuus, what shall you do?" Death asked as he stood beside him, knowing that Mortuus was probably thinking of just strolling through the front entrance.
Mortuus sighed heavily, "I-I'm not sure." He stared up at the building before going to the booth and knocking on the window. For once, he decided against acting cocky.
"No entry for outsiders." The guard said disinterestedly, not even bothering to see why Mortuus was there. He was reading a newspaper and didn't even bother to look up from it. Mortuus nodded, "Very well. When are visiting hours?"
The guard seemed quite annoyed, even when talking with someone while reading his newspaper. "There are no visiting hours, sir. This isn't a playground. It's a place of work," he said in annoyance, as if the mere question was a nuisance to him.
Mortuus was starting to get annoyed, so he just walked away to collect his thoughts. He didn't like that this guard was giving him an attitude for a mere question. Investigating a ghost is hard as it is. "Maybe I should just keep walking." As he was thinking, Mortuus scratched at his bandages.
"God, these things are getting itchy." He complained, and that's when it hit him. He could probably use his disfigurement to his advantage since it tended to frighten other people and even himself whenever he looked at it in the mirror for too long. With a steady hand, Mortuus grabbed hold of the back flap of his bandages and pulled until he felt the knot unwound. Slowly, he began to unravel the bandages and reveal more blood-soaked bandages below.
While peeling the bandages away, some stuck to the blood and made them difficult to remove. The bottom layer was the most difficult to remove as it had begun to meld with Mortuus's decaying flesh and become woven into sticky, gooey red blood and clay-like flesh on his face.
Mortuus walked up to the booth window and tapped against the glass. "Can I have entry now?" Mortuus asked and flashed a smile. There was blood still dripping from wounds, and an uncomfortable amount of facial muscle was exposed, some of which barely covered the skull below. Some of his teeth were cracked, and one had a maggot wriggling towards the upper lip or what was left of it.
The guard finally looked up to shout, only to be met with this gruesome sight of Mortuus's appearance. "Sir! I already-" The guard's face went pale, and he looked as if he was going to throw up or perhaps shit himself. Mortuus nodded and walked through the gate; the guard didn't even bother to stop him.
"You are a real jackanape," Death said unamusedly. Mortuus brushed it off. "Well, what I don't understand has no effect on me."
Death sighed and rephrased himself. "I believe your modern term is 'asshole,'" Mortuus laughed and continued walking through the surrounding area. Death's funny way of speaking was entertaining sometimes.
He walked through the dull halls, the sound of his leather boots clicking against the hard, checker-patterned tiles as he read the room names. He had to stop a moment to re-buckle one of the straps on his boots before pushing on through the surprisingly empty halls.
Mortuus walked until he found what he wanted: the security room. Weirdly, it was just as empty as the rest of the building. Mortuus started to rifle through cabinets and the lockers up against the walls. He looked for a few minutes before finding a cardboard box of V.H.S. tapes labeled 'Recorded Encounters—Shadow Figure' in the bottom of a cabinet beneath the camera's control board.
"It seems like our security guard is equally infatuated with this mysterious entity," Mortuus mumbled to himself as he hoisted the box out of the area he'd found it in. He grabbed one of the tapes labeled 'Encounter 22: 3/4' and popped it in the player at the center of the board.
The T.V. above lit up, and on the screen was a parking lot with heavy utility vehicles. There were a few workers who were lifting massive cables, but everything seemed normal. The timestamp on the video was 10:32 AM and appeared indistinguishable from any other recording of that time.
Just as Mortuus started to think that this video was a dead end when a cable in the video came loose, and its bindings snapped, it quickly ricocheted toward a worker. Incredibly, the cable stopped dead center as a shadowy and blurry figure held onto it. The figure was hard to make out, as no light seemed to shine on it, and it almost looked two-dimensional.
As soon as the cable's momentum died down, the figure dissipated into thin air. This proof was exactly what Mortuus was looking for—an almost exact copy of the entity he encountered. He quickly pulled the tape out and grabbed another, excited to see if this was just a one-off thing.
Again, similar to the first tape, the figure appeared only to stop something terrible from happening and then vanished in thin air—like a strangely, less weird version of a Mothman.
He grabbed another labeled 'Encounter 13: 5/6 (anomaly??)' It didn't make sense. "Why put anomaly if this is the thirteenth encounter?" Mortuus questioned, and it was incredibly confusing since quite a few of the fifty-six V.H.S. tapes had this '(anomaly??)' marking. And yet, not one of these was even close to the first recording.
He popped the tape in and started watching it. It was an 'anomaly' as the label suggested. In the recording, a saw blade came loose while doing repairs and plunged directly into a woman's skull. The shadowy figure, however, was just standing by idly. It was disgusting and unusual, given the previous encounters with the figure. Although, Mortuus's encounter could also be considered uncommon.
Mortuus was unsure if the enigmatic figure was only being protective of men, as he had seen several recordings where the figure had safeguarded a woman from danger. It didn't make much sense to him, but Mortuus knew he had no time to ponder over it any longer. Someone was at the door of the security room, and they were not happy. 131Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ43NqZq6dkB
