Dragon Clan: Avoid the College Entrance Examination to Slay the Dragon

Chapter 41 Call the Police
Raindrops trailed silver tear marks on the car window. Emma Harper pressed her forehead against the cool glass. As the school bus rolled through a puddle, the boy in the back seat suddenly let out a strange cry, imitating the roar of a zombie and lunging at the back of her seat. She didn't turn around, but simply turned up the volume on her headphones by two notches.

"This weather is weird," McGrady said from the front row, his fingers drawing wet streaks on the glass. "I was sunburned during gym class this morning, and now it feels like a tropical storm."

Indeed, Chicago rarely experiences rainstorms of this magnitude in the summer. Emma hugged her schoolbag tighter. Through the continuous rain outside the car window, she saw her light blue Victorian building swaying on the hilltop, its ivy swirling into dark green waves in the strong wind.

Kate's red raincoat soaked into a dark red pool under the bus stop. When Emma jumped out of the bus, she stepped into a puddle and her mother's hand immediately grabbed the strap of her schoolbag.

"This damn weather is terrible!" Kate tilted the umbrella towards her daughter, her left shoulder shining from the rain.

"Dad has to debug a new system today, so he won't be home late." Kate put a cup of hot cocoa in Emma's hands after they got home. The sensor light in the hallway reflected the fine lines at the corners of her eyes. "Guess what he did this afternoon? He suddenly said he wanted to replace the mousetrap in the attic with an infrared alarm."

Emma bit the rim of her mug and laughed. Her father, Michael, had always been obsessed with smart homes. He had installed a facial recognition lock on their door last week, but it wasn't working very well.

"Mom, what are we eating today?" Emma looked at Kate walking towards the kitchen.

"It will be ready soon, go turn on the TV first!"

During dinner, the TV news flashed a glaring blue light. "This is the second serious crime in Illinois this month," the female anchor's voice seemed punctuated by static. "The victim's body showed unusual lacerations. The FBI has been called in."

Kate suddenly snatched the remote control, "Children don't need to watch this!" The moment the screen went dark, Emma caught a glimpse of the fragmented outline under the mosaic, and her stomach twitched with a sour feeling.

Emma poked the broccoli on her plate with her fork. "The school gave us a safety notice today, telling us to be careful." She stared at the greasy mess on the surface of the beef broth. "The boys in my class said that the serial killer preys on families with only one child."

Kate's steak knife scraped sharply across the porcelain plate. "Don't listen to those boys' bluffs," she said, pushing the cuts of meat toward her daughter. "Besides, our neighborhood is very safe, don't worry."

The ivy outside the French window danced wildly in the rain, and suddenly a branch slapped against the glass. Emma's hand trembled, and the silver spoon fell into the thick soup, splashing the soup and leaving brown spots on the tablecloth.

"But Maddie said..."

"Maddie's brother is just a handyman in the police station. His inside information is all lies." Kate wiped her daughter's fingers with a tissue.

"I'm done." Emma pushed aside the steak that was still a third of the way through. "Mom, I'm suddenly sleepy. I want to go upstairs and take a nap."

"So early? Go ahead, baby."

The sound of rain in the second-floor bedroom was like countless nails scratching at the tiles. At 1:17 AM, Emma was suddenly awakened by a noise. The digital clock by her bedside table glowed blood-red. From downstairs came the intermittent murmur of the television, mixed with a sound like a wet towel dragging across the floor.

"Mom?" Her cotton socks were soaked with the chill from the stair carpet. The smell of blood suddenly became strong as she stepped onto the steps, like rust mixed with rotten steak. "Emma," her mother's voice came from the dining room, each syllable wrapped in a sticky bubble.

As her right foot sank into some warm liquid, the moonlight pierced through the clouds. A dark red stream ran across the living room carpet, its source the body of Michael, standing upright beside the sofa. Her father, Michael, had been perfectly bisected, hanging symmetrically on either side of the sofa like anatomy specimens, the left half clutching half a maple biscuit.

Kate's body lay sprawled on the dining table. Emma saw the back of her mother's head collapse like a melted wax figure, her cervical vertebra twisted to the right at an impossible angle, her ribcage, pierced by steel, gushing blood with every cry. "Baby, come here!" Her vocal cords were clearly broken, but the sound continued to vibrate.

When the creature in the shadows fully emerged, Emma's scream caught in her throat and froze into ice. A pale body supported by spider-like limbs. The most terrifying thing was its face. Its eyes shone golden, the whites completely devoured by the pitch-black darkness. A grin stretched from ear to ear revealed shark-like triangular teeth.

"Good children should listen to their mothers." As the monster spoke, Kate's body twitched and stood up, its broken neck cracking like a dead branch. Emma turned and ran, hearing the sound of flesh tearing behind her. Her mother's remains were climbing the ceiling at spider-like speed, her broken ribs scraping against the chandelier crystals like a sickle.

Adrenaline raced through her veins, and Emma slammed into the room with such force that wood chips flew from the doorframe. Her hands shook like reeds in a storm as she locked the door, unsteadily unlocking her phone.

"My name is Emma! Number 13 Red Maple Lane! Something's killing people!" The girl pressed her back against the violently shaking closet door. The stench of rotting flesh and rust seeped out from the crack. "It killed Mom and Dad, but Mom's still moving! And she's still chasing me!"

"Remain calm, the police car has already left." The female operator's voice was suddenly mixed with the noise of snowflakes. "If you can hide in..."

The cracking sound of the wooden door was like the collapse of a glacier. Emma looked at the pale knuckles protruding from the cracks in the door—they were definitely not human. The thirty-centimeter-long phalanges shone with the cold luster of corpse wax, and the nails were extremely sharp.

"Ah——!" The girl's scream broke through her throat.

Operator Maggie's headset was suddenly filled with harsh noise. She clutched the silver cross on her chest, "Emma? Emma, ​​can you hear me?" Her voice echoed in the empty night office.

First came the sound of ripping fabric, then a muffled thud like meat being squeezed by a hydraulic press. Maggie could clearly distinguish the crackling of cartilage breaking, the sticky sound of tendon peeling, and a chewing rhythm with a liquid echo—like someone slowly grinding a bone-in steak through a rusty meat grinder.

"Oh God!" Maggie's prayer was cut short by a sudden silence. For twenty-seven seconds, all she could hear was a faint dripping sound, as if a sticky liquid were dripping onto the microphone of her phone. The old air conditioner in the office hummed, and she realized she was leaning forward on her tiptoes, her spine aching from the tension.

"Emma, ​​are you still there?"

"Clang!"

Amid the roar of shattering glass, Maggie keenly caught the rustling sound of some creature moving rapidly.

(End of this chapter)