It was about 14 years ago now, when I was in the eighth grade.
On Sunday, three of my good friends and I decided to go see a movie.
Let’s call my friends A and B.
I live in a small town, so going to a movie in town was a big event for us, rural junior high school students.
On Saturday night, I was at home, excited, when I received a phone call from B. he said, “Sorry, I have a violin lesson tomorrow.”
.
Sorry, I had a violin lesson tomorrow.
”The lesson finishes just as the movie finishes, so let’s meet at the ticket gate of the train station in XX town.”
(the name of the town where the movie theater is located).
B was learning to play the violin.
I was a little disappointed because I thought the three of us would be able to enjoy watching a movie together in a big town.
I was a little disappointed, but I thought we could play together after the movie and went to bed that day.
So the next day, A and I went to see a movie together.
After watching the movie, we were talking about how much fun it was.
We were about to head for the station when A said, “Hey, if you go up to the third floor of this building, there’s a pedestrian bridge that leads to the station.
Since it was a large town, there were several pedestrian bridges leading to department stores, etc. from the front of the station.
The pedestrian bridges leading from the station to several department stores were spread out at a height of about three stories.
I thought that would be better than walking around the station, getting caught in traffic lights.
I entered the building next to the movie theater.
The building was a small building with many small grocery stores.
We found the stairs and went up from the first floor.
When we reached the third floor, there was no door to enter the store.
I thought that the floor must be a warehouse or something, and that the public was not allowed to enter from these stairs.
I said, “I guess we should go back to the first floor and walk normally.
I said, “Let’s go back to the first floor and walk normally,” to which A replied, “No, let’s go up.
Then we can go down to the third floor from another stairway.
However, there was no door on the fourth floor.
I went to the fifth floor. But there was no door.
We became more and more stubborn and kept going up the stairs.
I think we reached about the 10th floor.
I noticed something a little strange.
When I looked at the building from the outside, I thought there were no more than 10 floors.
However, A was determined to go further, and we went up and up the stairs.
When we reached about the 20th floor, I thought something was completely wrong. The staircase looked old and dank for some reason.
It looked like a mossy, disgusting staircase from the game “Resident Evil”.
I was getting pretty scared at this point, so I turned to A and said
“Hey, let’s turn back now. This is definitely weird.
A, who was going ahead of me, kept his back to me and said, “Hahaha, this’s weird.
I felt a little offended and said, “What are you laughing at?Let’s turn back!.”
Then A said again, “Hahahaha, that’s weird.
I was even more miffed at his words.
I noticed something a little strange about the way A was walking up the stairs.
The figure is, of course, A, but each movement is strange.
It is true that it was a movement to go up the stairs, but it was awkward, as if a human being was moving a doll by hand.
It was as if the right hand, left hand, right leg, and left leg were moving independently of each other.
It was just a strange movement.
I stopped dead in my tracks.
Then A stopped and turned around to face me.
I looked at his face and saw him laughing, “hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha, that’s weird, that’s weird, hahahahahahahahahahaha.
I screamed. Like the movements, the expression on A’s face was as awkward and laughing as his face.
I turned on my heel and ran down the stairs as fast as I could.
I almost fell down the stairs, but I still ran as fast as I could.
The next thing I knew, I was in a drugstore on the first floor of a small building. I don’t remember how I got out of the stairway.
I don’t remember how I got out from the stairs, but in a panic, I ran to the station without looking back.
I ran to the station without looking back.
When I got to the station ticket gate, B was waiting for me.
B said, “You are late. It’s been an hour since the movie ended.”
When he noticed that A was not there, he asked me, “What happened to A?”
I was terrified that if I stayed outside, A would come after me from behind with those strange movements.
so I urged B to go into a fast food restaurant inside the station.
I told B what had happened.
I couldn’t organize my story very well, so during the conversation, B repeatedly asked me to “tell him again in detail”.
At first, B seemed to think I was teasing him.
But gradually his face became more and more serious.
B is a guy who has a little bit of a psychic sense, and he knew that what happened to us was not unusual.
B said, “Let’s just go to the building.”
I said I didn’t want to, but when I heard him say, “We can’t leave A alone, can we?”
I thought, “Yes, A might be possessed by something,” and went to the building.
I went up the stairs as before and found a door leading to a CD store on the third floor.
I went up to the fourth floor, which was a video game arcade, which I could also enter normally.
The stairs ended there; it was a four-story building.
We twisted our heads to the side, but decided to go home for the day.
We thought that maybe A would come to school normally tomorrow.
The next day, when I arrived at school, A had not arrived.
B, who arrived about 10 minutes after me, turned pale and said she had a strange dream this morning.
The content of the dream was that A was walking barefoot in the forest, crying.
B said that it was not just a dream, but that he did not know what to do.
A few days later, A did not return, and a missing persons report was filed.
B and I also went to the police station, and they asked us about that day.
We didn’t tell them about that mysterious thing.
About a month later, A was found dead.
This is not something I’ve heard directly from A’s family.
For some reason, it was found dried up and dead next to the precincts of a shrine in the mountains of a neighboring prefecture, more than 100 km away from my town.
I was told that he had been dead for over a month.
At the time, it was an incredibly unpleasant experience to see A dead, but as the days went by
I met B for the first time in years the other day and we talked about “What was that all about?
That’s all. I haven’t been to that movie theater since then.
I will go there again next time.
