Hello Kitty Mask ♡

Chapter 17: Static in the Walls

"He who waits behind the walls.. Has already entered the room."

The first time it happened, we thought it was a glitch.

Liam was sketching. I was lying on my side, watching the dust drift through the sunset light filtering into the art room. Caitlin was curled up with her sketchbook, nodding off.

The clock said 5:12 p.m.

Then suddenly—

We were outside.

Dark sky.

Fog pressing against our coats.

And none of us remembered how we got there.

"No way," Caitlin breathed, checking her phone. "It's 7:31."

Liam blinked. "That's impossible."

But our stuff was packed.

The lights were off in the school.

And somewhere, in the back of my mind, something whispered:

"You were not alone."

After that, it got worse.

Flashes of images we didn't remember seeing.

Visions in the corners of our eyes: words shifting in notebooks, photos distorting, text messages glitching into symbols.

Something had infected the space around us.

Not a monster you could see.

Not yet.

But something that bent the rules of reality and walked through screens, mirrors, frequencies.

We didn't say it at first.

But we all felt it.

Like there was a fourth person following us everywhere.

Watching. Smiling. Waiting.

That weekend, Caitlin showed us her latest drawings.

We were in her garage, sitting around the space heater, the air sharp with gasoline and cold.

She flipped through her sketchbook like it had betrayed her.

"I didn't draw these," she said. "Not on purpose."

The pages were filled with... something wrong.

Not just imagery—corruption.

Symbols that glitched across the paper.

Faces scribbled out.

Eyes blacked over, bleeding ink. Characters she didn't know.

One of them had a jaw unhinged to the waist, filled with letters spilling out like rot.

Liam touched a corner of the page and whispered, "That's Zalgo."

I looked at him.

He stared back, jaw tight.

"Known as a 'Creepypasta'. An urban legend. Not like the others. Zalgo doesn't stalk people. He infects them."

"Infects how?" Caitlin asked.

"Stories. Screens. Thoughts. Once he gets in.. You change. You break."

My skin chilled.

I started noticing the signs too.

My notes in class? They'd twist when I blinked.

Words repeating in the margins:

he who waits he who waits he who waits he who waits—

My reflection? Wrong.

Slightly off. Slightly... smiling when I wasn't.

The static on the TV at night? Whispering my name.

And the mask—

It had started humming.

Not like a voice.

Like a frequency.

Low and vibrating and old.

One night, Liam tried recording it.

He brought over an old camcorder, the kind with tape reels and grainy filters.

"Let's see if it picks anything up," he said. "If we catch distortion.. Something we can't see with the eye.."

He set it on the windowsill. Hit record. We sat on my bed.

Quiet.

Then we played it back.

And on the tape—we were gone.

Just an empty room.

Flickering lights.

And at 00:02:34... a figure standing behind the bed.

Leaning forward.

Head crooked.

Text crawling across the screen like maggots:
HE WHO WAITS BEHIND THE WALLS

Then—

The tape melted.

We didn't sleep that night.

Caitlin sobbed. Liam sat still, shaking. I clutched the mask like a child with a blanket.

Something was here.

And it wanted more than fear.

It wanted us.

At school the next day, the lights flickered every few minutes.

Phones glitched.

The screens in the computer lab froze on black backgrounds with red symbols none of us recognized.

And someone had carved ZΛLGΦ into the bathroom mirror with what looked like their fingernails.

Blood under every letter.

We started mapping it—his spread.

Library computers? Fried.

Smartboards? Covered in looping static.

Alina's locker?

Caitlin checked it again.

Behind the photos... torn pages.

Scrawled in a shaking hand:
he comes through wires
he comes through words
he lives in the signal

I stared at the mask that night.

It hadn't spoken since the camcorder incident.

But I felt it.

Pulling me.

Wanting to be worn again.

I held it in my hands and whispered, "Did you bring him here?"

Silence.

Then:

"No. He brought me."

I dropped it.

Backed away.

But in the mirror, my reflection was still holding it.

Smiling.