A lost best friend.
Amy and Lily were inseparable best friends who loved exploring the unknown. One evening, they drove to a remote village near the border, planning to rest before venturing into the wilderness. However, as night fell, they found themselves stranded without accommodation.
A kindly-looking villager offered them shelter. The houses in the village were dilapidated and scattered, and the two were placed in a long-abandoned old room. Grateful despite the简陋 conditions, they didn’t think too much of it.
In the dead of night, Lily ventured out alone to relieve herself due to stomach pain. Amy slept soundly, unaware. Much later, Lily returned quietly to bed, careful not to wake her friend.
The next morning, Amy woke to find the face beside her扭曲 into the villager’s grinning visage! She fled in terror, searching desperately for Lily, only finding her jacket discarded in an outdoor latrine.
When Amy confronted the villager, he coldly claimed Lily had left overnight. Desperate, Amy probed the village, but the inhabitants evaded her questions, the entire settlement shrouded in a suffocating, eerie atmosphere.
She rushed into the dense forest beyond the village, discovering ancient symbols carved into the trees. Following the markings, she found a hidden cave filled with grim ritual objects and blood-stained totems. As Amy trembled on the verge of retreat, a faint call echoed from the depths—it was Lily, covered in filth and weakly explaining she’d been abducted the previous night.
The truth tore through the night: the hospitality was a sacrificial conspiracy. They escaped stealthily and sped away by car.
Once away from the village, Amy turned to the passenger seat and froze: the villager sat there grinning grotesquely. “Where’s Lily?” Amy screamed. The villager whispered eerily, “She belongs to the village forever.”
Amy forced the villager out and raced to the police. However, authorities verified that no such village existed in the area. When officers followed Amy back to the location, the scenery from the previous day had vanished as if evaporated.
Refusing to accept it, Amy returned alone and was horrified to find the village still standing. The villager stood at the entrance smiling and waving, behind him stood Lily with hollow eyes. “Stay, Amy,” Lily’s voice mechanized and cold. Amy slammed the accelerator and fled, the rearview mirror reflecting Lily’s gradually splitting grotesque smile.
Three decades passed, the nightmare forever gnawing at Amy’s soul. Until one rainy night, as the aged Amy hobbled home, a crazed woman suddenly gripped her wrist from a dark alley. Beneath tattered clothes revealed a half-rotten face, weeping blood: “Why... didn’t you save me...”