Chapter 285: Posthumous Work (4)
Shelly’s final painting was titled Self-Portrait.
Judging from the title, Everly had assumed it would simply be a portrait of Shelly himself.
It was nothing of the sort.
There wasn’t a person in the painting at all.
Instead, it depicted an old door.
Its material was impossible to identify. The grayish-white door was covered with countless tiny black specks.
Carved crudely into the center of the door were numerous twisted, bizarre runes. Everly recognized almost none of them.
Except for the largest symbol at the very center.
It was so familiar that, even now, it still appeared in her nightmares from time to time—
Two concentric circles, one large and one small. Inside the inner circle was an equilateral triangle. From each side of the triangle extended several winding, tentacle-like appendages. At the exact center of the triangle was another small circle resembling an eye.
It was the cult emblem she had seen aboard the Golden Anchor.
“Woof! Woof! Woof!”
A shrill bark erupted from beside her feet.
At the same instant, the danger warning bestowed upon her by her Lamia Mother was triggered, sending a sheet of cold sweat racing down Everly’s back.
This is bad. Bad, bad, bad, bad!
The warning had come far too late.
It hadn’t reacted until the moment she laid eyes on Self-Portrait.
She shot to her feet in a single motion.
What exactly does this painting mean? Why would Shelly paint this symbol? And what connection did he have to the Dagon Order’s Secret Decree?
Question after question flooded her mind—
Only for Everly to forcefully shove every one of them aside.
The truth behind all of this was secondary.
She could figure it out after escaping. And if she couldn’t, she could always dump the questions on the SAI. As long as it didn’t interfere with her inheritance, she wasn’t about to worry about the rest.
The priority right now was getting out of the viewing room.
Years of surviving horror scenarios had taught Everly one thing: if she stayed here any longer, something terrible was almost certainly going to happen.
Yet the moment the thought of fleeing crossed her mind, the painting on the wall underwent a horrifying change.
It moved.
Right before the eyes of every spectator, the tightly shut door in the painting slowly creaked open by a narrow crack.
An eerie crimson light seeped silently through the gap.
Emerging with the red glow were countless writhing black tentacles.
Each one was as thick as an adult’s thigh, their slick surfaces covered in wart-like protrusions. Their massive, slimy bodies forced the door wider, squeezing through the opening as they jostled one another, each struggling to emerge first.
They extended through the crack in the painted door—
And then beyond the picture frame itself.
“My God… what is that?!”
Someone in the waiting area gasped under their breath.
No one answered.
Everyone had been stunned speechless by the impossible sight unfolding before them.
The painting was… growing.
Soft, fleshy pink tissue was rapidly spreading outward from the edges of the canvas. It expanded with astonishing speed, like dye blooming through water, or mold racing across a damp wall. In the blink of an eye, it had engulfed the wooden frame and spread across a large section of the exhibition wall.
A closer look revealed that it resembled living human flesh.
It had fine skin textures, pores, bulging veins, and thick, twisted tendons beneath the surface.
Its blood vessels pulsed rhythmically.
The entire mass even expanded and contracted slowly, as though it were breathing.
Meanwhile, under the relentless pressure of the tentacles forcing their way through, the narrow crack in the door was being pried wider and wider.
An even more intense crimson radiance poured through the widening gap between the tentacles and the door, flooding the entire viewing room.
The light evoked images of rivers of blood flowing through the depths of hell, molten magma boiling beneath the earth’s crust, and the long, cataclysmic supernova of a dying red giant.
It was terrifying.
Dangerous.
Mysterious.
It inspired instinctive fear, yet at the same time possessed a strange allure, compelling anyone who looked upon it to keep staring… and staring…
The more they watched, the deeper they sank into its spell.
The deeper they sank, the more they watched.
Bizarre whispers and fragmented murmurs filled their minds, yet no one realized the danger approaching. Instead, they remained utterly entranced.
Charlie, the lawyer standing closest to Self-Portrait, was the first to be caught in its influence.
Like everyone else, his mind had been completely captivated by the crimson glow. He stood motionless.
The instant the red light bathed his body, the renowned attorney reacted as though he had been thrown into a blazing furnace.
His mouth flew open, releasing a bloodcurdling scream.
As he screamed, his body began to warp grotesquely.
His bones softened.
His spine collapsed inward.
His head sagged limply onto his shoulders like a deflated balloon.
Beneath his skin, countless long, slender shapes writhed frantically, burrowing through his flesh and pushing outward, raising dozens of tent-like bulges across his body.
Riiip!
When the swollen protrusions reached their limit, his skin split open with a sickening series of tears.
From the bloody openings, slick tentacles burst outward.
In the span of only a few seconds, a living human being had transformed into a hideous mass of writhing tentacles crawling across the floor.
“AAAAAAAHHHH!”
“No! No!”
“Run!”
The horrifying sight of the lawyer’s transformation briefly shocked the crowd out of their trance.
The small viewing room instantly erupted into screams.
People shoved and trampled one another in blind panic, desperately trying to escape.
But they had realized the danger too late.
Creeeak—!
The sound of the door swinging open echoed through the room.
In the next instant, crimson light erupted outward, flooding the entire viewing chamber in an ocean of scarlet.
Beneath that blood-red radiance, everyone’s bodies began to change.
People screamed as their flesh collapsed like wax melting beneath an open flame.
Their skin became nothing more than stretchy, empty sacs, while their flesh and bones dissolved into foul-smelling, viscous slurry.
Grotesque tentacles writhed wildly inside those human skins, bulging them outward into horrifying lumps. Within moments, the fragile skin could no longer contain the monsters growing within.
It split apart.
Amid flying blood and shredded flesh, countless tentacles burst free like grotesque fireworks, unfurling themselves in every direction.
The entire viewing room became a sea of flesh and tentacled monstrosities.
By then, Everly had already escaped from the small viewing room and sprinted into the adjoining corridor where the earlier paintings were displayed.
The crimson light couldn’t turn corners, so in theory, this hallway should have been relatively safe.
Yet she had barely entered it when a sharp tearing sound sliced through the air behind her.
She glanced back.
More than a dozen enormous black tentacles were surging after her like giant serpents.
They moved with terrifying speed.
In the blink of an eye, the writhing mass had already reached her.
Everly threw out one protective item after another.
Each defensive tool she possessed was shattered before the tentacles as easily as an eggshell crushed beneath a boot.
Should I use the Weather Balloon… even if it means taking everything down with me?
She hesitated for only an instant.
By then, thick tentacles had already wrapped tightly around her arms, legs, and waist.
The slime coating their surfaces seemed to possess a numbing effect.
Everly felt the icy mucus soaking through her clothes and touching her skin.
The strength drained from her body almost instantly.
She lost all sensation in her limbs, becoming as limp as a dead fish.
Helpless, she could only lie slack within the coils of the tentacles as they lifted her effortlessly and carried her back toward the viewing room engulfed in crimson light.
The viewing room had become a vision of hell.
The masses of flesh and tentacles that the audience had transformed into writhed like enormous lumps of living putty. At some point, they had fused together into a single gigantic mass of flesh.
Countless tentacles lashed and writhed wildly within the crimson light, as though celebrating at some grotesque carnival.
Amid that sea of blood-red flesh, one patch of bright color stood out conspicuously.
It was a little boy with terror written all over his face.
He had the same golden hair as Everly and a pair of clear, ocean-blue eyes.
It was her half-brother, Thomas.
While everyone else had grotesquely mutated beneath the crimson light, only he and Everly had remained completely human, untouched by the transformation.
Like Everly, the boy had also been captured by the tentacles.
These were not the fleshy tentacles born from the audience’s mutations.
They were the black tentacles extending directly from Self-Portrait on the wall.
Having seized both Everly and Thomas, they dragged the two utterly helpless humans straight toward the source of the crimson light—
The painted door hanging on the wall.
Bzzz…
The instant they were pulled through the doorway, it felt as though they had passed through an invisible membrane.
Every sound from the outside world vanished.
In its place came a piercing drone accompanied by endless streams of meaningless whispers flooding Everly’s ears.
It was as if someone had overturned a painter’s box.
Thick layers of color poured across her vision like liquid paint, completely obscuring everything before her.
Red.
Black.
Green.
Blue.
Purple.
Yellow…
The stench of rotting flesh mingled with the overpowering odor of turpentine, wrapping itself tightly around her.
A violent wave of nausea surged through her stomach.
Everly screamed in agony as she continued to fall—
Down…
Down…
Down into the endless abyss of swirling colors.
…
When she opened her eyes again, she found herself standing on a desolate, ruined street.
This appeared to be part of a once-thriving metropolis.
Looking around, Everly saw nothing but modern skyscrapers stretching in every direction. Through the gaps between the buildings, she could even make out the LED billboard on a distant high-rise, which was playing a familiar advertisement for a brand of liquid foundation.
…Where is this?
Wasn’t I just pulled through the doorway by those tentacles during the exhibition? Why have I suddenly ended up here?
Frowning, Everly quickly found a corner bordered by walls on three sides and ducked into cover to inspect herself from head to toe.
When the tentacles had seized her, she’d been certain they were about to kill her.
Instead, they had dragged her through the door and deposited her in this bizarre place.
She wasn’t injured in the slightest.
The Eye of Horus amulet, the Weather Balloon, the Sacred Tree Bracelet, and all of her other protective items were still with her.
Her phone was still in her pocket as well.
Unfortunately, it had no signal whatsoever.
She couldn’t make an emergency call, leaving it nothing more than a useless slab of glass and metal.
All things considered…
This was a scenario Everly knew all too well.
A classic “isolated island” opening.
She pushed the other questions to the back of her mind.
The first priority was figuring out exactly where she’d been sent.
Everly adjusted the positions of the protective items she still carried, making sure she could draw them instantly if danger appeared.
Taking a deep breath, she stepped out from behind cover and cautiously entered the street.
It was eerily quiet.
Not a single person was in sight.
Some terrible disaster seemed to have struck this place.
Cars were scattered haphazardly across the road, many overturned or smashed together. Every few steps, she came across blood splattered across the pavement and walls, along with severed human limbs and mangled chunks of flesh.
Mixed among the bloodstains were occasional patches of transparent, gelatinous material.
The moment Everly saw those translucent masses, she was instantly reminded of Shelly’s painting—
Scars.
Horror Movie Survival Rule #1: Pay attention to the hints.
The more Everly looked, the more convinced she became.
Whether it was the architecture lining the streets or the traces left behind on the ground, everything closely resembled the scene depicted in Scars.
And the last thing she remembered before losing consciousness was being dragged into Shelly’s Self-Portrait by those tentacles.
Could it be…
Had she somehow fallen into the world inside Shelly’s paintings?
