Agreeing with Lucifer"s words that he would not want to be in here after sunset, Juin quickly took a few steps deeper into the house, ending in the living room. He could see footprints of various sizes on the floor, but these footprints were somewhat faded, and some were only left with half a print, as if it had been a long time since someone came into the house. The brown couch was badly damaged, with its springs popping up everywhere, making it impossible to find a place to sit on, and the TV in the room had an ax in it… for whatever reasons.
"Yikes!" Juin jumped up slightly when he saw a huge rat running across the living room. And when he jumped backward, his right hand touched a huge spider web, completely destroying a poor spider"s hard work. "Urgh," he groaned as he quickly wiped the webbings off his hand.
Once he calmed himself down, he then walked to the kitchen. Everything was a mess there, with broken pieces of plates and cups on the floor, and some of the cabinet doors were on their hinges, about to fall at any time.
Seeing that there was nothing special there, Juin then slowly walked to the staircase. His eyes quickly scanned through his surroundings as he walked. He might be wrong, but from the moment he stepped into the house, he felt as if something… or someone was watching him.
He wanted to ask Lucifer, but he was afraid that the demon king might make fun of him. And if there really was someone watching him, then talking to Lucifer too often might give him out. Besides, Lucifer would know if someone was watching him or not.
Hence, Juin decided to keep it to himself for now.
Standing at the bottom of the staircase, he looked up at the second floor. The staircase was in a dilapidated state, with some of it too broken to even step on.
Creak…
Creak…
Creak...
Juin winced as the stairs creaked with each of his steps, taking care not to step on the broken steps or those that seemed like they were about to break.
"Argh!" Juin yelled when his left foot went through a seemingly fine step. Thank G.o.d he was holding onto the railing, not that it was much of a help because of how shaky the railing was. Pulling his foot out, he groaned when he saw the large and somewhat deep scratch that ran from his knee down to the middle of his calf.
Blood was trickling out of the scratch. It wasn"t painful or anything, but Juin felt as if it were an omen.
Glancing at Lucifer, who was floating next to the staircase, Juin sighed with a pleading gaze, as if to say "Mayday… please?"
However, to his disappointment, Lucifer merely pointed at the top of the stairs with his chin and said, "If you aren"t dead yet, keep going up then. It"s just a little scratch."
Juin pouted with a sigh. "Having a coldhearted "boss" is one of a man"s worst dream…" he thought with a heavy heart as he walked up the stairs even more slowly. When he got to the top of the stairs, the feeling that he was being watched was even stronger than earlier.
"Your Majesty…" Juin mumbled under his breath as he looked down at a room down the hall that had a red cross graffitied right on the left and right walls outside the room. He could feel something bad coming from the room, and he was pretty sure that the horrible stench was coming from it.
"I know…" Lucifer replied with a nod. "Stay alert…"
He felt the foreign presence in the room… No… He felt the foreign presence everywhere on the second floor, watching them, biding its time while trying to determine who the human who just walked in was.
Knowing that he could not escape from this, Juin merely dragged his feet across the hall with a heavy heart. Along the way, he picked up a broken piece of wood that had a sharp end from the floor and held it close to his chest.
"He has a demon king as his protector, yet he still thinks that a broken piece of wood is good?" Lucifer mumbled to himself as he floated a short distance behind Juin.
If Juin had heard that, he would have scolded himself for being such a weakling, but since he did not, he merely continued walking to the door.
When he placed his hand on the doork.n.o.b, a memory flashed past his mind.
"I… have been in this room before," he mumbled as he glanced down at his hand on the doork.n.o.b. "I remember it… I came here three years ago…"
Lucifer remained silent as he watched Juin"s demeanor. His vessel"s hand was trembling slightly, as if he was going through some turmoil in his mind.
And he was. Juin remembered a piece of memory. He remembered hearing the chant and seeing the person outside the window beckoning him to leave the Smithsons" house. The chant reverberated with his very soul, and he remembered walking into this house in the middle of the night.
Almost as if he were back to that time, he could feel the cold breeze of the night as he walked barefooted out of the Smithsons" house and into Jim Mack"s.
Juin gulped nervously and shook his head, trying to clear his mind. He then turned the doork.n.o.b before pus.h.i.+ng the door open slowly. When the door was opened, the first thing he saw was a wall full of newspaper clippings, under some intelligible words written in graffiti… and a picture of a d*ck.
Juin raised an eyebrow at the picture of the d*ck as he took a step into the room, and from the moment he stepped in, he felt a strong aura around the room, giving him the chills and causing him to be even more alert than earlier.
"It"s a lingering aura…" Lucifer mumbled. The foreign presence probably left the room not long ago. "Keep going."
Juin walked to the center of the room while looking around his surroundings. One of the walls had flakes of black paint hanging off it, looking almost as if one scratch was all it took for the flakes to fall off.
Juin looked down at the floor that was covered in dust, more d*ck graffiti, and rubbish that were strewn around. A table with two broken legs, dried dark brown marks, and with what seemed like dried black wax on it lay on the floor in the corner of the room.
He then walked to the wall with the newspaper clippings and read some of the clippings.
Half the clippings were on the unknown ma.s.sacre 16 years ago, where the majority of a Satanist group was wiped out in one night. And the other half was news on children… and based on the years stated, Jim Mack had been diligently looking for children with specific traits.
Almost all the clippings were about abandoned children with scars on their abdomens.
"He"s been looking for me…" Juin mumbled. Unconsciously, his right hand crossed over his chest and ended up resting above his scar. "For 16 years…"
Juin turned and looked at Lucifer, who was staring at the d*ck graffiti with amus.e.m.e.nt. "How did he know it was me?"
Lucifer glanced at Juin and said, "He didn"t… At least, I don"t think he knew you were the right boy until the very end."
Looking at the clippings on the abandoned children, Lucifer finally figured out what was the dreadful feeling in the room.