Chapter 24:

Grave relaxation

I Won't Kill Myself for the Second Time


This was going to be my new personal record. Aura, Rora, Silvie, Adam - four bridges burned at the same time. Not that they were worth much in the first place if they were so easily destroyed.

Let’s just hope they will leave me alone from now on.

I sat down on a small bench in front of some random person's grave.

No phone.

No money.

No friends.

Well, there’s still Vio, right? I can count on her, right? I really want to talk with her.

The cold weather was not a problem and I was kind of getting used to perceiving the grim and ghastly atmosphere of this place as solemn. It wasn’t even that dark due to all those grave candles lighting the area and an occasional lamp post. Going back to my flat felt like too much of a chore - over two hours of walking. Instead, sitting here provided a strange sense of tranquility and allowed to take a second, calmer look at the whole situation.

Rora and Votr sides of the story are not clicking together in few places. Even if that demon didn’t lie, it’s way too easy for him to create a misunderstanding simply by omitting a key information or two.

Looking for that doll is also a pain in the ass. I just managed to get myself out of one sticky situation and willingly looking for another is dead last on my list of things to do-

And then the possibility of a future encounter with Adam or Viktoria sounded the alarm in my head. One probably wasn’t too happy with what had happened to Rora, the other wanted to add Victor’s body to her possessions.

‘You will need it to defend yourself.’

This is a trap. Heavens help me, this is a trap and it’s of the kind that I have to fall in even when I know about it! What’s worse, If I don’t move now, someone else may trigger it.

Like it or not, but I have to go and grab this doll.

Earlier, while I was walking together with Aura, I didn’t tell her a very simple, yet important detail. The doll had been buried recently and cemeteries usually didn’t remove random old graves to make space for new ones. There should be a new section somewhere and going there would considerably raise the chances of finding that cursed treasure.

All I had to do was to go back to the entrance and take a look at the information board placed on the side.

Once there, I found a piece of paper outlining the division of the Third Communal Cemetery into individual sections.

Let’s see… the latest one is… section K in the top leftmost corn-

“Move!”

Heart nearly jumped out my chest when someone had yelled nearby. For a second I wanted to hide in that dark corner situated in between two big graves, but a quick assessment of the situation made me realize that I had no real reason to do that.

Two people had entered the graveyard through the main gate.

Don’t scare me like that! Yelling at this time, in this place, should be forbidden by law!

Walking briskly in the front was a tall guy in a brown fleece jacket and a black cap. Behind him was a much smaller figure wearing a white beanie hat and girlish red jacket which lower part resembled ruffle skirt.

The petite girl was desperately trying to catch up, but she had trouble walking, limping on the left leg.

I was pretending to read something on the board and waited for them to pass. The guy only spared me a fleeting glance and soon they had disappeared in one of the numerous side paths.

Every few minutes I see either a suspicious person or a normally looking suspicious person. The traffic in this place is surprisingly high.

Without further delay, I went to look for the grave of Dorothy D. Olly.




A cursed doll that leads astray, just what kind of a doll can it be?

Votr said it’s hard to handle, those two guys back then also seemed to have some kind of trouble with it.

I once read an article about cursed dolls. There was one that could cause nightmares simply by looking at it or even its pictures, just like my old math teacher.

There was no one named Dorothy in the first row of graves of the K section.

Other were told to move a lot while everyone was asleep, break fragile objects, leave strange marks on the furniture and come back home every time someone tried to get rid of them. They were like plastic cats with a tendency to laugh in a creepy manner.

D. Olly wasn’t found in the second row on the graves.

Still, there were some that seemed really dangerous. Strangled their owners, strangled their owner's friends, strangled their owner's pets, strangled their owner's kids. Few rare cases were seen running with a kitchen knife in hand or riding a small bicycle.

In other words, would it be enough to convince the doll that our relationship is a one between equals, keep it away from the tableware and sleep with an iron ring around my neck? No idea what’s so scary about riding the bicycle though.

No luck in the third and fourth rows, only a lot of snow had to be removed.

The scariest part of that whole article was the pictures, there’s something really disturbing in a cracked, eyeless, bloodied doll face. Oh?

There was one Dorothy in the fifth row, unfortunately not the one I was looking for.

All of them had one thing in common. Inside every of those doll shaped containers was a bound soul.

Still nothing after searching through the sixth row.

The chances were low, but there was also a whole other category of dolls and I was keeping my fingers crossed that this one belonged to it - anime dolls.

It’s hard to decide between a one like Shinku and other rozen representatives or a machine doll like Yaya. Both are cute, but the latter was troublesome and the former had to be tamed first. All in all, I’m leaning towards Yaya, I would love to hear her brainwashing line for myself.

The seventh row checked, only two left.

A doll that leads astray, like in getting my way lost? Or will it try to misguide me with lies? Or, however strange it sounds, teach immoral behavior? There’s also a chance that it’s a metaphor for something totally different. I just hope that it won’t lead me towards the path of BL. Fuck, now that’s truly scary.

“Finally, should have started checking from the end.”

On a child-sized grave, placed in the eight out of nine rows, I found a simple plaque reading:

In loving memory of our dead Dorothy D. Olly.
Rest in this place,
under the watchful eyes
of the ones who died before.​

A typo?

“Now what?’

A problem had appeared. Even though the grave was small, it was still made out of marble and it wasn’t as if all I had to do was to remove the heavy slab covering it. I would still have to dig the coffin out. Somehow this fact had fled from my head when I was busy searching. Moreover, I was starting to get nervous standing so close to it.

First, I checked the surroundings to see if there was no one nearby.

Second, I carefully examined the entire grave.

Third, the problem was resolved.

There was a small metal hatch on the backside of the grave, it was locked with a simple combination padlock.

There were only nine thousands nine hundred ninety nine and one combinations to check. But first, I had to examine the most popular ones like 0000, 1234, 9999. When it was done I started checking years of birth, starting from 1900.

It took me about five minutes to get it open with 1989. After that, a moment was spend on praying.

No creepy dolls. No ugly dolls. No bloody dolls. No broken dolls. No voodoo dolls. Please let there be a polite, obedient, pretty anime doll inside.

I opened the small hatch.

It was lying inside a plastic container, additionally wrapped in a plastic bag. No bigger than fifteen centimeters, rectangular, black with a touchless screen and its battery was dead - a new, shiny smartphone.

I held it in my hand and went to double check the name on the grave. There was no mistake. In some way, I felt cheated as if after long preparations to watch a really scary horror movie there were ponies in it happily playing together. Nevertheless, I would take a pony over a cursed doll every single time someone asked me to choose.

Since there was no further point in staying here, I put the phone in my pocket and set out on my way back home.

Roughly ten minutes later, I heard vague yelling coming from the direction of the previous mana spot. There was no hesitation in my steps. I had enough adventurers for the day and left the graveyard in a hurry.




By the time I got home, it was already getting bright.

Carefully, I checked if there was no risk of the worst case scenario - Rora’s gang waiting for me in an ambush. I threw a snowball inside the flat, straining ears for any sounds of movement.

Looks clear.

Only then I dared to set my foot behind the doorstep, but that wasn’t the end of my worries.

Second worst case scenario, I worried about, was finding my flat in a deplorable condition. The chance that Rora had demolished it in anger was high.

Corridor - ok. Bedroom - ok. Bathroom - ok. Living room - ok. Kitchen - ok.

No signs of Rora’s activity, but I still couldn’t allow myself to relax. There was one last thing to check, a possibility of my laptop being infected…

... changed my mind, there was no possibility of the laptop being infected. After all, there was no laptop left in the flat.

Really now, they took it and I can’t even blame them for that. The damn front door is gone, everyone could just come and go as they please. At least the wallet’s still here.

I was dead tired and yawned every three minutes, and yet couldn’t let myself to fall asleep with such a huge hole in the security, at least not until the package had arrived. Till that time I decided to take care of some less important matters, like eating for example.

This Novel Contains Mature Content

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