Strings and Buttons

Chapter 26: Clay Creation

He walks to the front of the house and down the stairs of the empty flat. Its door is painted green and there are more cobwebs in the corners and spiders scurrying around on the concrete floor. Katsuki stomps on some of them as he passes.

 "She would never help you. Do not let your guard down." 

A voice of one of the mirror ghost's whispers in his head. He mutters, 

"You don't think i fucking know that?!"

 As quietly as he can, he puts the key in the lock, and it clicks open. The door doesn't creak or whine when he opens it and steps inside. The walls were once a perfectly white color, but now it was muted because of the dust and insects. 

The wood of the floor was as rotted and broken as the wood that made up the stage. There is nothing in the room. There are signs that things used to be here, like the indents on the floor and the triangles and squares that are a lighter shade then the walls. 

Where furniture and pictures used to be, Katsuki guesses. He walks through the rooms of the flat, finding nothing but spiders, dust, and other insects. This place had been long abandoned and cleared out. 

Definitely not cleaned out because this place was fucking filthy and not just because of the dust and shit. He walks into the bedroom, or at least he thinks it would have been a bedroom and looks around like he had the rest of the rooms.

 He looks under the bed, in the connecting bathroom, and even under the sheets, but nothing. When he's about to go to the door again, he spots a small medal ring. He walks over to it, his footsteps not making a sound, and tries to pick it up. 

It's a lot heavier than a medal ring should be, but that's when he notices that it's attached to the floor. A trap door. He lifts the medal ring again and watches as the slab of wood begins to rise, putting dust in the air in its wake.

 He lifts it up with one final grunt, letting it slam onto the opposite side of the floor. The sound doesn't even echo around the room like he thought it would. He looks down at the opening, only to see darkness.

 He puts his hand hesitantly into the darkness and feels around the opening. He doesn't expect there to be anything, but his hand snags on a light switch. He flicks it on with a small click and a dim light bulb turns on below. 

The only thing he could see are steps heading down the opening, but not much else. He takes out the stone from his pocket and looks through it. All he sees is the darkness and nothing else, so he puts it back. 

The smell coming from below the trap door was something like damp clay, and something acidic that churned his stomach. Despite the gross ass smell, he goes down the trap door, making sure the door has no chance of falling.

 If he got stuck here, then he would just be wasting time, which was probably what that bitch was hoping would happen. Once he gets to the bottom of the steps, there is another light switch, a small rusting chain hanging from the ceiling. 

Katsuki gives it a rough tug and a light comes on, not bright enough to flood the whole space in light, but enough for him to kind of see. The walls down here were covered in red eyes, the red substance long since dried and muted. 

Katsuki could make out crude drawings of people but doesn't pay them much mind. There is a pile of rubbish in the corner, cardboard boxes, decaying papers, all of that bullshit. There are even a couple curtains, pooled next to the garbage, barely hanging up on the ceiling. 

Katsuki continues to walk, his boots crunching against something on the floor. He takes another glance at the curtains before full on stopping to stare. There is a fucking foot sticking out from under the fabric. 

The smell has gotten a lot worse, like molding bread and rotting meat. Katsuki slowly reaches over to the curtains, and with a quick pull, he rips the curtains from the hinges keeping them on the ceiling. 

They clatter and clink onto the floor and he pulls the curtains away, running back without looking away. It took him a couple of seconds to realize what this thing was. It was misshapen and lumpy, its limbs small nubs and its body veiny and bulging. 

Its skin is the texture of half raised dough, soft but bumpy. It was more or less the shape of a person, with black buttons in the place of where its eyes should be. Katsuki gags, clearly disgusted and repulsed by whatever the hell this thing was. 

It seems to hear him, because the thing turns in his direction, slowly and carefully, as if one wrong move would kill it. It slowly opens its mouth, black teeth with meat and hair in between them greeting Katsuki.

 In a voice that doesn't even sound like his old man, the other father whispers, 

"Katsuki..." 

"Ew." 

The other father says nothing, slowly lifting his hands to his face, sticking his fingers into the dough like flesh and molding it. He makes something that is supposed to look like a nose, though Katsuki thought it was a small misshapen potato at first. 

"I'm looking for my parents, or one of the souls for the mirror ghosts. I know your ass has seen them at least somewhere down here so you better fucking tell me."

 The other father doesn't say anything at first, just taking in labored breaths.

 "Nothing here... except for dust... damp... forgetting..."