Project: Death for Classroom Zero

Chapter 32: Black Reaper

Seven Stopped.

With a pale face, he looked at his groupmates while still trying to feel the presence of the surrounding. Soon as the group saw Seven stopped, they looked at him with wonder and confusion.

“Can you hear it?” he asked. “There is… There is some unusual sound. I can hear it,” he said. His attention was on the surrounding, taking his best effort to listen to the place where their reflections were on the background.

“What? I couldn’t hear anything? Hey, handsome Steven, maybe you’re just panicking. You know what, let’s just continue moving on,” said Amara. She was folding her hands on her chest, sign that she was already feeling the bored by just walking and doing nothing.

“No, I can hear it!” Now Steven placed his index finger on his lips, signaling everyone to stop whatever noise that they were doing. “S—Someone, other than us… is walking.”

There was a thick chill of cold that had crept through Tristan after he heard what Seven said. The man’s eyes were frightened as he tell the sound that he can hear. Meaning, it was real.

“M—Maybe it was another group of students?”

“No, that’s highly unlikely. It was a lone steps. Only made by a single pair of feet. But… it was, somehow his steps are clanking through the ground.”

Seconds after, Seven would not need to describe the sound that he was hearing. Because it had erupted in their ears too. Tristan felt a chill on the series of successive steps they were hearing in the surrounding, because it was a step in every blank five seconds. A step with a metal clank, then silence, then another step, then silence. Somehow, they can hear the subtle hiss of a chain being dragged on the floor.

They started to become wary. Everyone was sure that it was not another group of students who was doing the peculiar sound. It would be impossible for them to waste time by doing it. Instead, they knew that the sound was a signal of danger.

“We need to keep moving,” Rain said. She went near at Tristan, and whispered her suggestion.

Looking at Rain, Tristan nodded. She was right that they need to start moving. Because whoever and whatever that creature taking its ear-itching steps in the room, it should not bother them to continue moving on. To find the exit of this terrifying place.

Tristan looked at the group. He nodded at them, then signaled that they will continue to move and walk.

Now as they started their walking back again, following the horizontal reflection as the clue, Tristan could not help himself still but be wary. He was sure then, however, that he had a mutual feeling from the other of the group.

He kept scanning through the place. He was trying to find the source of the sound. Sometimes, it was near through them, sometimes it was far. Could that be possible? Sometimes, they would hear the stepping sound just a few meters before them, then another second it would be too far and distanced.

Until Tristan caught a glimpse to a dark figure standing beside Rain. No, it was not exactly and physically beside Rain, but on her reflection.

On the mirror beside Tristan, he saw a black figure standing and noticeably looking at Rain with the use of its gleaming red eyes. He could not see his face because it was covered with a thick woolen hood. Only his red eyes. His hands were raised, up there is where he holds a scythe. Like a reaper; the killer of the souls.

“Rain, get out!”

Seeing that the black figure was about to swing his scythe towards Rain, Tristan quickly ran towards her. He jumped, and dragged Rain on his falling, making the two of them roll on the ground.

“Ahh!” Caspian screamed.

Hearing Caspian, Tristan quickly looked at him with wary. He was safe. Only that, there was an open wound on his left arm.

Tristan quickly looked back at the reflection where he saw the Black figure. On that, he saw that the tip of the scythe that was supposedly to kill Rain has scratched through Caspian.

“Wh—What’s happening?” Tammy asked.

“The reflection!” Tristan shouted. He pointed through the reflection where the black figure could be seen. This time, it was raising its scythe back again.

With a panic, Tristan quickly helped Rain to stand up. They could not evade if they remain on the floor, if they will be the one that the black figure would try to assault.

“Hey, did that black man just appeared at only a single of our reflections?” asked Seven.

“Worst, it doesn’t have a physical body. It was only inside this unexplained reflections,” Tristan said.

The black figure placed its scythe on its shoulders. Without any words or sound, or anything to warn, it started walking again. As it walked, they can hear the echo of his metal-clanking steps. Tristan concluded that perhaps, the black figure was wearing a metal-made sandals.

Every steps, it took him a long, breath-taking seconds before he would do another. Tristan and the group could not do anything but to stare. They observe how the black figure walk.

And how it disappeared.

“s**t, be careful!” Blaze shouted. “It may appear anywhere on our reflections!”

They started to panic. With a frantic eyes, they started scanning the whole place. They checked every reflections, aware that anywhere on this confusingly standing mirror, is where that black figure might appear.

Tristan noticed his lungs heaving up and down. He was incessantly breathing. He knew that somewhere on this fake mirror—standing from the floor, or pasted from the wall and ceiling—would that black grim reaper appear. So he made sure he checked the mirrors. It was swirling with their upside-down reflection.

Until he saw it appearing on his front. This time, it was smiling. A skull grinning and staring at him. Seeing the skeletal grin, Tristan’s knees had lose its strength.

“Th—There!” but still, he pulled out some courage to tell the group where the grim reaper was.

Now that they saw it, the problem that they were to face now is the question of ‘how would they be able to escape from its scythe?’

If it was appearing only through reflection, but could affect their real, physical body, how will they be able to escape away from the creature? Their insides started trembling as they saw that the upside-down reflection of the grim reaper was starting to raise its scythe once again.

“Let’s hide behind that mirror,” Blaze suggested. He was pointing at the fake mirror that was at the straight direction where the grim reaper was standing. “If he was inside the mirrors, then he would need to transfer from one mirror to another just to get our reflection. If we hide behind that mirror, he would not get a good grasp on our images.”

The grim reaper was slowly raising its hand. As they talk, he was about halfway raising it together with its deadly scythe.

“Let’s do that. Hurry!” Rain demanded.

All of them, they started scurrying behind the mirror directly at the front where the grim reaper had appeared. They slunk through that small window, and hid their bodies well, aware that they might get a deep wound just like what Caspian has acquired. Or worse, they might acquire death.

Long, painful seconds passed. Silence swirled through the surrounding. Tristan couldn’t hear anything but his and his groupmate’s heavy breaths.

“Caspian, can you pinpoint the horizontal reflections that we have?” Rain asked.

The big man nodded. “It’s easy to find.”

“Then you guide us,” said Rain.

“Huh?”

“Look, that black guy might be frightening and dangerous, but we have an advantage to him. Speed. He was walking and moving his body two times slower than how we usually move. If he was about to chase us, he couldn’t. That’s why we can freely run. We’re not fighting him, okay? We just need to escape from this place. From his domain. Then that would need fast identifying of the clue for the direction.”

“Okay, I think I can do it,” Caspian said. The other group members had also agreed to her.

Another painful sound of silence passed, yet the silence was still tearing their eardrums.

Until, the sound of the metal-made steps clanked on the floor again. The grim reaper had started to move again.

Hearing that, Rain prepared herself. She signaled her groupmates to prepare as well.

Sooner, she shouted: “NOW!”

Lead by Caspian and his capability to quickly look at the clues in the room, they started running—started to hope that they could escape the domain of the black reaper.