DOA

HEMATA

Lightning tore violently across the sky, answering the howling wind as it battered the walls of the house.

From their cramped hiding place, the children could clearly see the dark cloth wrapped around the creatures’ heads, fluttering wildly in the night wind pouring through the open door.

The intruders had human-like bodies, tall and solidly built, but their heads belonged to animals.

And their eyes reflected an unnatural light.

The last figure to pass through the living room suddenly stopped.

It turned its head sharply toward the three children hiding behind the mortar.

Its eyes glowed green beneath the folds of its pitch-black clothing.

Slowly, it raised a hand.

Its fingers were thin and twisted, resembling the brittle branches of a dead tree.

The creature lifted one finger to its lips.

Then the wooden door swung shut.

As though it were telling them to remain silent.

To say nothing.

To swallow the horror they had just witnessed and keep it buried inside.

Demon, Doa, and Hell trembled violently, their teeth chattering uncontrollably.

“R… run…”

Demon could barely get the word out.

He urged Hell, who was closest to the door, to get out first and save himself.

Their legs felt weak with exhaustion and terror, but the three children forced themselves upright and ran as fast as they could.

They didn’t dare look back.

The few steps between the kitchen and the side yard suddenly felt impossibly long, stretching endlessly through a corridor of terror.

Beyond the fence, Soma and Wolf had already found the other rabbit.

The two children waved excitedly, jumping up and down as they welcomed their friends out of Mr. Saota’s house.

“Run!” Demon shouted at them.

Soma and Wolf had barely begun celebrating their discovery when Demon yelled again.

“Run!”

Hell joined in, leaving no room for questions.

“Run!”

He urged Soma and Wolf to follow them away from the house and toward the field.

But something was strange.

The moment they burst through the misty rain outside the yard, the world suddenly felt completely different.

It wasn’t nearly as loud or terrifying as it had been inside Mr. Saota’s house.

There was no howling wind.

No deafening thunder.

No violent flashes of lightning.

Even the rain was falling at exactly the same gentle intensity as when they had first arrived that afternoon.

“Why do we have to run?”

Wolf asked Demon between ragged breaths, genuinely confused about why they were sprinting for their lives without any explanation.

“Don’t look back. Just run!”

This time it was Doa who shouted.

Her voice was hoarse, trembling with deep panic.

The five children kept running until they crossed the asphalt road.

They were still gasping for breath when they found their parents gathered anxiously in front of Wolf’s house, the one closest to the bend leading toward the soccer field.

That night, there was only one word Demon, Hell, and Doa wanted to remember.

Run.

They chose to remain silent.

They never told anyone—not even Wolf or Soma—about the horrifying figures they had seen inside Mr. Saota’s house.

Who would believe a story told by children?

A fable that had somehow spilled out into the human world would sound like nothing more than a childish fantasy.

Even they weren’t certain whether what they had witnessed with their own eyes had truly been real or merely a terrifying illusion born from panic.

“Ba… bye…”

Those were the last words Demon said to Soma and Hell before asking his mother if he could walk Doa home.

Doa was the only child that night whose parents hadn’t come to pick her up.

“Take this.”

Demon’s mother placed a black umbrella in his hand.

“Oh, sweetheart… you’re covered in cold sweat.”

She gently wiped the perspiration from Doa’s forehead.

Demon watched his mother silently, still struggling to steady his ragged breathing.

“Come on.”

He reached for Doa’s cold hand and held it tightly.

Hell, who was walking home with his own mother, glanced back one last time.

He watched his two friends walking side by side in the opposite direction from his house.

Part of him wanted to follow them.

But his heart was still too small to carry the remnants of that fear.

The three of them never spoke about that day again.

There were no formal promises.

No solemn oaths.

Only a silent understanding that whatever had happened that night had to disappear with the morning, as soon as they opened their eyes from sleep.

Demon’s warm hand slowly calmed the pounding in Doa’s chest.

With him holding her hand, she managed to keep walking without ever having to admit that she wasn’t okay.

They made it all the way home.

But the sight waiting for them at the front door made the blood drain from their faces.

The front door of Doa’s house stood wide open.

The basement door was half-open as well.

Huge statues stood inside as though arranged neatly in rows, even though every single one of them had still been wrapped in plastic before the children left.

The potted plants Mrs. Gading loved lay shattered across the terrace.

One of the container walls had been violently dented, almost breaking through into the master bedroom.

Doa and Demon stared at each other in stunned silence.

Their hands were still locked together as they slowly stepped across the threshold.

And there, on the silent living-room floor, they found Doa’s mother lying motionless in front of the basement door.

surrounded by a pool of thick, dark blood.