Chapter 307: An Unlucky Vacation (6)
Everly was awakened by a series of slap, slap sounds.
The noise came at irregular intervals—sometimes frequent, sometimes absent—but each impact was heavy, as though someone were repeatedly smacking the window with an open palm. After every slap came a loud splash, making the whole thing sound strangely unsettling.
Everly opened her eyes and glanced at the clock on her nightstand.
2:34 a.m.
It would be another half hour before her turn to keep watch.
Since she was already awake, she decided not to go back to sleep. She swung herself out of bed, walked to the window, and pulled the curtains aside.
The torrential rain was still pouring outside. Large raindrops hammered against the floor-to-ceiling windows, blurring the view beyond with a hazy veil.
Everly’s bedroom was on the second floor. By the light of the garden lamps, she saw that the drainage ditches surrounding the villa had completely overflowed. Countless streams of rainwater had merged together, cascading down the slope in front of the house like a waterfall before foaming their way onto the beach below.
Within those rushing currents, dark brown, tadpole-like shapes occasionally swam upstream against the flow.
Pressing closer to the glass and standing on tiptoe, Everly peered outside. At first she couldn’t make out what they were. It wasn’t until one of the shapes reached the front entrance of the villa that she finally recognized it—
It was one of the strange carnivorous fish, swimming upstream against the torrent.
As if they knew delicious prey was hidden inside the massive building before them, they would suddenly lash their tails once they got close enough. Their pectoral fins swept backward, and their bodies shot into the air like arrows, slamming their hard skulls into the glass with tremendous force.
The slap, slap sounds Everly had heard earlier were the fish hurling their heads and bodies against the windows.
Fortunately, every pane in the villa was made of bulletproof glass, and the creatures couldn’t break through. So each violent impact was usually followed by a loud splash as the rebounding fish fell back into the floodwater.
A quick glance told her that there were at least six of the bizarre fish “knocking” at the villa’s front entrance alone.
No wonder all the commotion had woken her up.
Everly put on a coat, grabbed her phone, and prepared to go downstairs to check whether the doors and windows on the first floor of the villa were still intact.
Unexpectedly, she wasn’t the only one who had been awakened by the noise.
When Everly reached the lower floor, she found that besides Misha, who was on night watch, Old John had also gotten up. The two of them were working together, carefully inspecting every door and window on the ground floor.
Seeing Everly come down, the two immediately gathered around and shared the experience they had summarized.
“These things don’t have much eyesight. Even if you stand right in front of them, they won’t be able to see you.”
“But their hearing is extremely sharp. Or maybe they can sense changes in the water flow. Either way, don’t make too much noise. If they hear you, they’ll gather together and start slamming into the glass.”
Everly nodded and joined the inspection.
The three of them spent more than ten minutes carefully checking every possible weak point. After confirming that they hadn’t missed anything, they finally felt completely at ease.
For the rest of the night, the strange fish continued crashing into the walls and windows nonstop. The constant slap-slap sounds became the strange background noise that accompanied everyone’s sleep.
The disturbance left everyone sleeping poorly.
When they woke up the next day, the rain was still pouring, and the strange fish outside were still relentlessly ramming against the doors and walls.
What made everyone’s skin crawl was that in just one night, the number of fish surrounding the villa had increased from the few scattered ones before to more than a dozen.
They seemed completely incapable of feeling pain. One after another, they charged forward, stubbornly smashing themselves against the villa in front of them. No matter how many times they failed, they showed no intention of giving up.
In fact, it wasn’t only Everly’s villa that was suffering from this problem.
Standing on the third-floor balcony and looking into the distance, they could see that several nearby villas had encountered the same trouble.
Unlike Everly’s villa, those houses used ordinary glass. After only a few impacts, the strange fish had shattered the windows. From afar, the lower floors of those villas looked like complete wrecks, as if they had been ransacked by burglars.
And there was another piece of bad news—
Water had started getting into the villa.
The water level was still very low at the moment, barely enough to cover the soles of a pair of slippers by two centimeters.
But the villa had a basement level.
The situation there was terrible. The water on the ground floor flowed toward the staircase leading down to the basement, instantly turning into a small waterfall. It poured down the steps and along the walls without stopping, continuously flooding the area below.
Old John had been responsible for the final night watch shift. He had cut off the power to the basement in advance and salvaged some of the electrical appliances. As for the rest—the built-in furniture and appliances that couldn’t be moved, the expensive solid wood flooring, the spotless walls, the luxurious crystal chandelier…
They were all left behind, destined to be ruined by the water sooner or later.
Once this disaster was over, almost everything in the basement would probably have to be replaced.
Fortunately, Everly had prepared ahead of time and purchased a high-value insurance policy. Otherwise, she would have been heartbroken over the losses.
However, despite all the troubles she was facing, Everly’s situation was still considered extremely fortunate compared with some other residents.
For example, in the center of Gilosha City, the drainage channels had become clogged, and the deepest floodwaters had already risen to people’s waists. Many residents living on the first floors had been forced to move higher up into buildings to seek shelter.
High-rise buildings were relatively fine. They had enough floors and wouldn’t become too crowded. But old apartment buildings that were only three or four stories tall were suffering badly.
Overnight, the stairwells became packed with people who had fled from the lower floors seeking refuge.
Some caught colds after being drenched by the rain. Some developed dysentery after eating dirty food soaked in floodwater. Some were injured by strange fish because they failed to evacuate in time. Others already suffered from chronic illnesses…
The streets outside were completely flooded, making it impossible for the injured and sick to reach hospitals. Large groups of people were crammed into damp, stuffy, filthy stairwells, rapidly producing garbage, waste, and vomit.
Even healthy people exposed to such an environment would quickly become weakened.
Just reading the descriptions of that nightmare-like situation was enough to make Everly’s skin crawl.
People living on higher floors weren’t completely safe either.
Just as Everly had worried, the strange fish could enter high-rise residences through drainage pipes and sewage pipes, hiding inside and waiting for opportunities to attack unsuspecting people.
Everly came across a post on the forum that made her physically cringe.
It was about the poster’s neighbor. The neighbor lived on the fifth floor and, while using the bathroom, was caught completely off guard when a strange fish suddenly sprang out of the toilet. Covered in filthy, indescribable muck, it attacked him and caused a serious injury. Since he couldn’t get medical treatment, he was currently lying in bed with a dangerously high fever.
By now, the local Gilosha forum was filled with posts of the same kind—some were complaints, some were requests for help, some shared people’s current situations, and others issued warnings…
Refreshing the page brought up almost nothing but bad news. After browsing for only a short while, Everly felt an overwhelming sense of gloom.
She closed the forum and switched to her contacts. Finding Remia’s phone number, she tapped to call and began asking about another matter she was concerned about.
“Hello, Everly?”
The call was answered after only one ring.
“It’s me. Sorry for calling so suddenly. I hope I’m not disturbing you?”
“Not at all. Even if you hadn’t called, I was planning to contact you after a while anyway. Your timing is actually perfect.”
Remia’s tone was very warm. She had already guessed why Everly was calling, and before Everly could ask, she shared the latest information she had gathered.
Remia said that the operation to capture Gary had not been going smoothly.
After an entire night, neither SAI nor the police had managed to capture him. Instead, they had lost several team members.
Furthermore, after several intense confrontations, Gary’s location had changed repeatedly. He had continued moving south, leaving Sunken City and arriving in Veska City, which was surrounded by oak forests.
At the same time, at the hospital in Yonah City, Dana, who had been unconscious, finally regained awareness after receiving treatment that morning.
After waking up, Dana forced herself to endure her weakened condition and told the branch investigators a shocking piece of information—
The Gary who had appeared in Yonah City was created by Claytor using his ability of “Fear Manifestation.”
Yes, that’s right.
Dana’s object of fear was Gary.
A year ago, she and her university classmates had gone camping at a place called Emerald Lake Campground. She had thought it would be nothing more than an ordinary trip, but unexpectedly, they encountered a serial killer named Gary.
Several of Dana’s classmates were killed by the murderer. Only she and another companion were fortunate enough to be rescued by a mysterious, powerful, and beautiful girl.
From that moment onward, the thing Dana feared the most became Gary.
On the other end of the phone, Everly was equally shocked when she heard this.
So SAI had possessed the ocarina for so long, yet they still hadn’t discovered this?
For various reasons, Everly, as an outsider, couldn’t conveniently tell SAI about the information regarding “Fear Manifestation.” But she had thought that with SAI’s capabilities, finding out something like this shouldn’t have been difficult…
Who would have expected this outcome?
Back to the main issue.
Dana’s information was correct.
The Gary who fought Claytor was not the real Gary. He was merely a “fake” created after Dana’s fear had been manifested into reality.
The real Gary was still at the bottom of Emerald Lake, cosplaying as an “endless bubble machine.” No one had moved him, so there was no way he could suddenly appear thousands of kilometers away in Yonah City.
As for why the fake Gary was able to defeat the very Claytor who created him, and why he was able to maintain a physical form even after Claytor returned to his dormant state inside the ceramic flute…
That was something Everly would have to ask the director and screenwriter of the terrible horror movie. She genuinely had no idea.
Regardless, judging by the outcome, the fake Gary had successfully defeated Claytor, toyed with the police officers and investigators who were tracking him, and smoothly returned to the “place where the dream began” — Veska City.
“During the pursuit, we unexpectedly recovered the phone left behind by the fake Gary. We discovered that not only did he quickly learn how to use phones and the internet, but he also figured out how to make posts on online forums without anyone teaching him, using them to search for someone.”
The person he was looking for was naturally Everly.
However, since he was a complete newcomer with almost no experience using the internet, the fake Gary’s post was incredibly straightforward.
The title bluntly read:
[Offering Reward to Find Everly in Veska City. Anyone with Information Is Welcome to Provide It.]
And right below it, he openly listed the reward amount:
500 USD.
Everly was not a common name in America—at least not before a certain celebrity couple named their daughter Everly in 2X13. Before that, it was an extremely rare and unusual name.
For example, throughout the more than twenty years of Everly’s life, she had never met anyone else who shared her name.
That was probably why the fake Gary dared to offer a reward online.
If Everly had a name as common as “Mary” or “Emily,” his ridiculous post would have been completely meaningless.
Five hundred dollars was not a small amount. Therefore, although Gary’s post was deleted by the moderators shortly after it was published for violating forum rules, his account still received several private messages.
Some of them might have been scams, while others might have contained genuine exclusive information. In any case, the addresses and phone numbers they provided had no similarities at all.
However, three people gave information that completely matched each other, making it highly likely to be accurate.
The fake Gary clearly possessed some intelligence. He accepted the information provided by those three people—though he didn’t pay them, because he had no idea how to make payments—and used a navigation app to search for the route to that “Everly’s” home.
He was currently on his way to the innocent girl’s house.
After discovering this situation, the investigators from the Dwight branch immediately sent requests for assistance to the SAI branches in several neighboring states.
The newly arrived investigators would directly set up an ambush around the girl’s house, waiting for the fake Gary to appear so they could capture him and bring him to justice.
After hearing this, Everly vaguely felt that something was wrong.
After thinking for a moment, she suddenly interrupted Remia’s explanation.
“May I ask something? Did the fake Gary inherit the original Gary’s ability to gain strength from killing?”
Remia froze for a moment, then answered with certainty.
“Yes. He does. At the airport restroom, he killed an investigator. After that, the fake Gary’s strength suddenly increased dramatically. The difference before and after was obvious. He definitely possesses the same ability as the original. Why?”
“Since that’s the case, I think you should pay attention to Emerald Lake Campground,” Everly said seriously. “I suspect the fake Gary is deliberately misleading you. His true purpose in going to Veska City isn’t me—it’s his original body, which is trapped at the bottom of Emerald Lake.”