Cryptotrappers!

Cryptotrappers- The Famished Dead Part 1

Thursday 19. Still. Sleep came fairly fast to me and my weary party, but sleep did not come for long.
"Exo, wake up."
I awoke to Lucy shaking me awake to the clear sound of heavy footsteps. Through the tent walls, I saw the vague shape of a colossal humanoid, lit up by pale, unshrouded moonlight. I rubbed my eyes and turned to her questioningly.
"The tents aren't safe. We have to get inside a building. It's attacking the tents." she quickly explained. My mind finally snapped into gear, and I grabbed Seth cage and the few supplies I had unpacked. Darting through the unzipped tent door, I hazarded a look into the dark horizon. Thirty feet tall and incredibly close, the Gashadokuro was a threatening force. Ribs, femurs, spines, everything was piled on top of each other, clicking with every movement it made. It's huge femur was at least five times the size of a regular one, and it looked like it contained at least a hundred.
"How many people's bodies were held here?" I asked quietly, my voice quivering ever so slightly. "How many of the dead were held for the view of the public unknowingly."

The bony giant turned its gaze towards me, a hideous green glow in each socket. It began its slow encroach, the earth shaking beneath its skeletal feet. I looked on in horror as it approached, begging my legs to move through the paralysis of fear. But all I could do was stand frozen, a statuesque monument to human terror. As it approached, with silent fetid breath filling the air, Lucy grabbed the back of my shirt and dragged me from the warpath of the skeletal giant, and suddenly I could move again.
"What the hell was that? Why were you just standing there?" Lucy shouted as we ran.
"It was it's eyes. I looked into the eyes of that thing and it froze me in fear."
I almost laughed right there and then in the irony that a Yokai so similar to the Mekurabe would have such an opposite problem. Sid and Randy were waiting in the doorway of the ticket office for the rollercoaster, as Lucy and I steadily approached. I ran faster than before, adrenaline pumping my blood as I passed through the door, the now running skeleton not particularly far behind. Lucy darted in a few seconds after me and Sid slammed the door shut.

"Looks like we're safe." Randy confirmed. His look of placidity turned to panic as a giant, grasping fist smashed through the ticket window and hoisted him into the air. He struggled to escape, until he was caught in the piercing chartreuse gaze of the Gashadokuro. I threw a rifle over my shoulder and ran straight to the shattered window and jumped out, not having a plan but purely running on instinct. Seth flew up, pulling at Randy to try and loosen him but to no avail, as his body was pulled effortlessly closer to the composite jaw of the monster. Aiming carefully, I raised the rifle to meet the green flaming socket of the monster and with a click and a release, I fired. The dart penetrated the bony socket and Randy fell ground-ward, stopped from the agonising crash by Seth's efforts. The beast took the opportunity to retreat, as did we. Despite our attack, we were fine.

As we ran further away from the skeletal giant, I began quickly recapping my thoughts about the Gashadokuro.
"Okay, it's big, it's malicious and it's trying to kill us. It can freeze you with terror if you make eye contact, and it's unstoppable. Any ideas?"
I took the dead silence I received as my answer to the question. Honestly we didn't know enough to go after it. Our best place to hide would be the Ghost Train but there was no chance of me going back into that deathtrap. Instead I made what I thought was the best decision in the moment.
"Okay, everyone divert course towards the rollercoaster. By the looks of it, it's one of those ones with an indoor queueing area, so we can hide from it in there. We can further strategise there, but I'm almost a hundred percent certain we aren't capturing this thing."
Everyone nodded and pulling Seth onto my shoulder, we made our way there quickly but separately over to the rollercoaster. When we all met up again, the Gashadokuro was close to us, and closing in. As we all hopped the queue, making our way to the inside area, my heart was pounding, until we finally arrived back at safety.