Chapter 3: Monitoring
At that moment, Yang Xiao slammed the door shut and then turned and ran, dashing through the rain all the way to the security room of the apartment complex where he violently pounded on the glass, startling the three guards inside who were playing a game of Dou Dizhu.
After listening to Yang Xiao’s account, one guard stayed behind while the other two took rubber clubs and accompanied him back.
Using the keys given by Yang Xiao to open the door, the older guard yelled into the room a few times to embolden himself. There was silence inside, but as the switch was pressed, the lights came on, and the long-missed sense of security returned – it was the guards who fumbled to turn on the light.
Yang Xiao was the last to enter the room, but the next second, he was stunned. The script box on the table had disappeared along with the envelope, the invitations, and even the scattered cards, "Wait, where’s my script?"
A moment later, the younger guard put away his rubber club and walked out of the bathroom, giving Yang Xiao a strange look, "Brother, never mind the rest for now, why don’t you come in and have a look?"
After he spoke, the guard stepped aside. The bathroom wasn’t large and one could see everything at a glance, but the scene in the bathroom left Yang Xiao dumbfounded – the floor was dry, and the shower stall was spotlessly clean.
The older guard, who had been inspecting the rest of the room, came over, "There’s no water in the bathroom. I just checked, the showerhead is dry, and there are no wet footprints on the floor either."
"How is this possible?"
A complex sense of horror slowly crept up Yang Xiao’s back. He was certain he had heard the sound of water and had seen that strange black shadow, and the lights in the room had dimmed progressively. There was absolutely no mistake!
"Young man, are you under too much stress? Relax, there’s no obstacle you can’t overcome," said the middle-aged guard in an attempt to console him. He had initially thought about asking Yang Xiao to check for any valuables in the room, but now it seemed unnecessary – this owner’s living conditions didn’t appear to be those of someone who would possess valuable items.
Having said this, the two guards were ready to leave. A few minutes earlier, their colleague who had been left behind had called, saying that the nearby surveillance cameras had not captured anyone running out of the building recently, only Yang Xiao.
"Wait! I’ll leave with you guys, I want to see the surveillance footage!"
Yang Xiao grabbed a few clothes and stuffed them into his bag, along with his old laptop. He certainly wasn’t going to come back to stay before figuring out what had happened. According to the standard development of a horror movie, those who don’t believe in curses are always the first to die.
Ten minutes later, Yang Xiao sat in the security room’s inner office, looking at the screen, reviewing the surveillance footage from a short while ago. In the footage, his figure hurriedly ascended the stairs and then ran out at a very fast pace. Before leading the guards back, no one else had entered or exited through the lobby.
Slowly dragging the progress bar, Yang Xiao wanted to check the footage from even earlier. Although he was reluctant to admit it, it seemed he really had encountered a supernatural event, and he suspected that everything was related to that mysterious script box. Otherwise, there was no reason for only the box to vanish.
The script box could not have been an illusion, as he still had those three thousand yuan tucked in his pocket at the moment.
"Nothing..."
Yang Xiao reviewed the earlier surveillance and his complexion grew paler. He saw himself standing at the entrance of the corridor, seeing off Zhao, and after that, no one else had come in or out of the corridor. The next person on the footage was himself, heading out with an umbrella to eat.
There was no courier at all.
There was no landlord.
There’s nothing...
So who sent this script to me? And what on earth was knocking on the door outside?
Cold sweat trickled down his forehead, and he couldn’t help but feel a sense of relief, thankful that he hadn’t opened the door at that time.
It was impossible to go back to his place tonight. Yang Xiao quickly reviewed all the similar supernatural scripts he had written and the horror movies he had watched in his head. He decided to stay in a hotel, one located in a busy area with a lot of people. He also considered his safety on the road, believing that taking a taxi alone would be dangerous. He made up his mind to offer a high salary to hire two familiar security guards to escort him.
One hundred yuan per person—that money had to be spent.
The journey went very smoothly. Yang Xiao pulled open the car door, and right outside was a chain hotel. He had already booked a room on the way. The hotel was well-located, and the area around it was quite lively. Seeing the hustle and bustle, Yang Xiao also breathed a sigh of relief.
The security guards who received the money couldn’t help but courteously say a few words, "Brother, we’re not doing this just for the money, we’re responsible for the safety of our residents."
"Exactly, exactly," Yang Xiao said, leaving his phone number with the two men, reminding them to notify him if something happened at his home, and that he would reward them—not for nothing, of course, and also, not to go wandering around aimlessly.
The two readily agreed and then took the same taxi back. Before leaving, the taxi driver took a few extra glances at Yang Xiao. After all, when they arrived, three big men were squeezed in the back seat, with Yang Xiao in the middle, flanked by two security guards in their uniforms, and with Yang Xiao’s slightly pale, delicate face. The driver naturally mistook Yang Xiao for some minor celebrity.
After completing the check-in process, Yang Xiao got to his room. After making sure the showerhead wasn’t leaking, he relaxed and threw himself onto the soft bed. All the way to the hotel, the image of the vague black shadow emerging from the bathroom haunted him—it seemed to be a woman.
After resting for a while, Yang Xiao sat up, turned on the TV, and casually flipped through the channels.
In fact, in addition to the hotel, he also thought of other places, such as a bustling bar or an internet café, which could serve as temporary places to stay.
But as a supernatural author, it was his unfortunatefortune that he had written scripts set in the Yake Bar and the internet café with the Ghost that Steals Faces, which had left him with a deep psychological shadow.
In the scripts, almost everyone in the bar and internet café, apart from a few main characters, turned out to be ghosts. If you made the wrong choice early on and went through the door, there was almost no way out. Yang Xiao put himself in the story and finally decided that staying in a hotel was the best idea.
Of course, he was not planning to call his few friends to keep him company, not just because he didn’t want to burden them, but more importantly, he was afraid that the person who might come wouldn’t be his friend.
For now, the script box was the only clue. Yang Xiao sat at the desk, opened his laptop, and connected to the hotel’s Wi-Fi to search Baidu for the four characters "Fengmen Ghost Play", but aside from a bunch of random ads, he found nothing.
Thinking about it, Yang Xiao suddenly remembered the address on the package. After tentatively typing in the three characters for "Fengmen Town", he finally got some feedback. The address was real, within Fengnan Province where Yang Xiao was located, about 100 kilometers away from Rongcheng. It seemed to be a small town primarily focused on tourism.
Number 144 in Fengmen Town was also real, belonging to a flour processing factory called Jinfeng Flour Factory No. 2. However, according to records, the flour factory had closed down many years ago.
There wasn’t much official information on the flour factory, and what was available was vague. As usual, Yang Xiao switched to browsing forums and unexpectedly came across some posts about Jinfeng Flour Factory No. 2 in Fengmen Town. The title of the top post immediately caught Yang Xiao’s attention:
[Taboo! Jinfeng Flour Factory No. 2’s Supernatural Incident (Pictures & True Stories)]