Chapter 10: Room 1303 (Part 10)
Wang Jinqiao was not someone who believed in superstitions. He didn’t believe in the afterlife, gods, or ghosts. To him, death was final—when a person died, they became nothing more than a mound of earth. Having worked in this field for years, he had seen nearly a thousand bodies—some who died from illness, others from accidents, suicides, or even murders. Initially, some scenes would stir his emotions, but over time, he became numb.
To Wang Jinqiao, a corpse was just lifeless flesh. Could a corpse move? He never doubted this question. Of course, the dead couldn’t move. Even if something appeared to twitch, he’d chalk it up to a simple physical explanation. So, that night, when he heard sounds coming from the cold storage unit, his first reaction was to assume some small creature had gotten in there.
Without overthinking it, Wang Jinqiao walked over to the freezer, opened one of the drawers holding a body, and looked carefully, expecting to find a small animal that had accidentally been trapped inside.
The body bag lay quietly in the drawer, concealing its contents from view. Wang Jinqiao noticed that the zipper on the bag was slightly open. Seeing this, he muttered a curse under his breath, guessing that it must have been the carelessness of one of their new employees who had left it like that.
He zipped the bag back up, pushed the drawer back in, and returned to his seat outside, resuming his night watch while playing on his phone.
The funeral home was deathly silent at night. People avoided the place, fearful of being near anything associated with death. Wang Jinqiao recalled the family that had been brought in earlier in the day. He couldn’t help but think how tragic it was—a family of five, with everyone except the wife perishing in a car crash. The scene was indescribable; it was one of the worst he had seen recently.
After the bodies had been brought in, the funeral home reached out to the family to discuss the burial arrangements.
He remembered the woman vividly—a young, beautiful lady who gave off an unsettling aura. When he discussed the burial details, she seemed detached, only showing interest when he asked about cremation.
“No rush,” she had said, her face pale but adorned with vibrant makeup that made her look almost like a corpse herself. “No rush for the cremation.”
“But keeping the bodies here isn’t ideal either,” he said carefully, not wanting to press her too hard in her grief. “It’s best for them to be buried sooner for peace.”
Unexpectedly, she let out a loud, mocking laugh. It wasn’t aimed at him but seemed more self-directed, as though she found the idea ridiculous. “Peace? Do you really think burial will bring peace?”
Her words left him stunned.
She coldly insisted that they keep the bodies stored, saying she hadn’t decided on cremation yet. Before he could ask why, she walked away, muttering something he could barely make out. He only caught fragments like “return” and “together.”
He had seen people behave oddly in the throes of grief, so he hadn’t thought much of it. That was until just now when he returned to his desk and suddenly remembered—the body that had just made a noise belonged to that woman’s deceased family.
The thought made his mouth go dry. He licked his lips and turned up the volume on his phone.
The silence in the office was overwhelming, broken only by the sounds from his phone echoing against the walls. Amid the exaggerated laughter from the video, a faint but piercing sound began to gnaw at his nerves.
It was a soft, sticky noise coming from deep within the room, like something crawling along the ground.
He grew agitated, trying to ignore it, but the sound was relentless, like a worm burrowing into his ears, pounding against his eardrums.
“Damn it!” He cursed, slamming his phone onto the desk. Standing up angrily, he marched toward the room with the cold storage units.
“Whatever it is, get out!” he shouted as he switched on the lights in the freezer room. The sudden brightness made his vision blur for a second. When his eyes adjusted, he froze.
One of the drawers was open, and the body that should have been there was gone. The empty drawer lay before him, stabbing at his vision. His first thought was that someone had broken in and stolen the body. But after examining the area closely, beads of sweat appeared on his forehead and nose.
The drawer had been pulled open, and the zipper on the body bag was unfastened. A dark, gruesome trail of blood smeared across the drawer, leading upward towards the ceiling.
Realizing what this might mean, Wang Jinqiao’s entire body began to tremble uncontrollably, a despairing moan escaping his lips. Slowly, he turned his head upward.
They found it—the shattered corpse was found, hanging from the ceiling. The single remaining eye blinked at him.
A drop of blood fell, landing precisely on Wang Jinqiao’s cheek. He felt a sudden sharp pain in his heart, and then his vision inverted, and everything went dark.
“Damn, damn!!!!” Liu Xi shrieked, nearly throwing his phone again.
Fortunately, Lin Banxia reacted quickly enough to stop him.
“Ah—ah—how did he die? What exactly happened?” Liu Xi exclaimed. “What did he see?!”
Compared to the trembling Liu Xi, Lin Banxia was much calmer. From their perspective, they only saw Wang Jinqiao suddenly drop dead, without seeing what was on the ceiling. But whatever it was, it wasn’t something pleasant.
“This isn’t right,” Lin Banxia said gravely. “We should report this.”
“Yes, yes, let’s call the police.” Liu Xi grabbed the phone before Lin Banxia could stop him and started dialing 110.
“Wait!” Lin Banxia interjected, “Let me record this surveillance footage on my phone first.”
“Right, right, record it,” Liu Xi said, though his mind was a mess. But when he returned to the previous page on his phone, the surveillance video was gone.
Lin Banxia sighed when he saw this and thought to himself, this thing truly is strange.
“Where did it go?” Liu Xi frantically searched but couldn’t find the video anymore, starting to panic. “How could it just disappear?”
“Don’t worry,” Lin Banxia said. “It was only a video…”
Liu Xi forced a bitter smile. “Lin, I’m trying not to panic, but nobody’s ever encountered something like this before.”
Lin Banxia thought, well, my friend just had bad luck recently, and now it’s your turn. But he only thought this; he wasn’t about to say it. “I’ll go check the funeral home after my shift. You should go home and rest early. Think about it: if something happened, it’d be at the funeral home, not here. You’ll be fine.”
Liu Xi didn’t respond, but from his troubled expression, he’d probably replayed every horror movie he’d ever seen a hundred times in his head.
The rest of the night passed painfully slow. Liu Xi, who’d started dozing off, was now restless, unable to sit still.
Lin Banxia didn’t bother trying to calm him down; asking someone to relax after something like this was almost impossible. Ji Leshui was the perfect example of that.
When it was finally time for them to clock out, Liu Xi dashed out, advising Lin Banxia not to go to the funeral home. The mere thought of the opened freezer in the video sent shivers down his spine.
Lin Banxia waved him off, gesturing for him to hurry home. Liu Xi sighed and jogged away.
By now, dawn had broken, and people were gradually starting their daily routines. But while most people were heading to work, Lin Banxia was leisurely getting off his shift. He boarded a bus to the funeral home, sitting by the window and replaying last night’s video in his mind.
As he reviewed it, he realized he had overlooked a critical detail.
After getting off the bus, Lin Banxia headed straight for the funeral home. Since a murder and a body theft had taken place here, security had tightened significantly. Fortunately, Lin Banxia was a familiar face and quickly managed to get inside.
The crime scene was still sealed off, and Lin Banxia couldn’t get in, so he stood by the window, looking in. His gaze scanned the room, and soon he found what he was looking for—the location of the surveillance cameras.
As expected, the funeral home, being a special facility, had cameras positioned meticulously.
There was a camera in Wang Jinqiao’s office and one in the room with the corpse freezers. But neither one matched the angle they’d seen in the video.
The video had cleverly captured both rooms, leaving them unable to see what was happening in the freezer clearly, yet showing that Wang Jinqiao had indeed gone into the freezer room and was scared to death by something above him.
So, was the footage not from a surveillance camera? Was it recorded by someone there in person?
Lin Banxia took a step back. He couldn’t figure out exactly which angle could have filmed such a video, but he was certain that the overhead perspective wasn’t one a normal person could access. And if someone had been above him with a phone, how could Wang Jinqiao not have noticed?
While he was watching, someone tapped his shoulder. He turned around to see a young face in a police uniform, eyeing him with suspicion.
“Hello, Officer,” Lin Banxia greeted sincerely, straightening up.
“Skip the ‘Officer,’” the young policeman said, “I’m not much older than you. What are you doing here?”
Lin Banxia replied, “Just visiting an old friend.”
The policeman said, “Didn’t he pass away? You think you’ll see him here?”
Lin Banxia said, “Well, he’s still up on the ceiling, isn’t he?”
Policeman: “…”
Lin Banxia: “Haha, just kidding.”
The policeman pulled out a pair of handcuffs. “Friend, let’s take a little trip.”
Lin Banxia: “…” He really shouldn’t have tempted fate with his jokes.