Chapter 2 The Bloody Apartment (2)
After Shen Yu entered the West Building, he understood why the name of this apartment complex was “Pink Apartment.”
Although the layout of the east building and the west building of the apartment complex was exactly the same, the east building was dark and dilapidated, while the west building was clean and tidy, especially the newly painted walls with their delicate pink color, resembling a cozy fantasy home out of a fairytale.
The twelve people who entered the West Building were divided into six groups and lived in rooms on different floors.
In room No. 404, Shen Yu sat at the desk while the little boy was sitting on the bed, swinging his two small, short legs in a bored manner and staring at the back of Shen Yu, then curiously asked:” What are you doing?”
Even now, Shen Yu still hadn’t changed his blood-stained clothes. He was staring at the black book in front of him intently and replied without looking back:” I’m reading.”
At the beginning of the book, there were only a few sentences. The words had been silently read countless times by him over and over.
“The most important and fundamental thing when writing a story is the ability to read and collect information. It is necessary to analyze the meaning word by word, and to extract and summarize important information concisely.” He added to the little boy again.
Since entering the story, a series of things have happened. Now he needs to analyze and summarize all the information piece by piece, and then list them all out.
But at this time he only had a box of mints, and there was no pen to write with.
Shen Yu threw a candy into his mouth, feeling the refreshing sweetness of mint spreading on the tip of his tongue, gradually calming his anxious heart.
He shook the box and heard the candy bottle “clanging”, obviously there were not many candies left in it.
So he looked at the schoolbag beside the little boy again, and asked with great grief: “Have you brought a pen? I can exchange candy for your pencil.” The little guy seems to be in elementary school. There should be a pen and paper stationery in the schoolbag.
Seeing his reluctance to give away the mint candy, the little boy was weirdly silent for a while, then finally nodded, reached into his bag and drew out a pen.
“I don’t like candy.” He handed the pen to Shen Yu.
Shen Yu took the pen, paused for a while and then asked as if nothing had happened, “Are you six years old? First grade?” The little boy looked at him and nodded, his dark eyes flashing with curiosity. In the next moment, he asked: “What do you do outside of the story?”
Shen Yu replied casually: “Novelist, the uninfluential kind.”
He had just quit his high-paying job and plunged into writing based on personal hobbies. In the abyss of horror novels, the time since he’d entered the industry was still short and he had not yet managed to become famous.
After telling this, Shen Yu stopped speaking, just stared at the red text in the black book.
The ink of the boy’s pen was also red.
Why’d the first grade pupils write with pens instead of pencils? And do they really use red ink?
He rubbed his finger on the pen for a long time, and finally chose a blank page in the book and began to write:
- There is at least one monster in the apartment complex.
- Apartment residents are forbidden to go out after 11 o’clock and must lock doors and windows.
- It is reasonable to guess that these two prohibitions are related to monster/s. Perhaps at night, the monster/s will be more dangerous.
- But the monster that attacked me ended up disappearing under the bed. Its way to enter the residents’ rooms are not the doors and windows. Why do the residents need to lock the doors and windows?
- Maybe there is more than one monster wandering in the apartment? (For the time being: questionable)
- Will someone definitely die when he/she is alone? (For the time being: questionable)
After writing these six pieces of information in red handwriting, Shen Yu hadn’t put down the pen yet and the light in the room suddenly went out without warning.
The room fell into darkness and Shen Yu only heard the little boy’s voice from behind: “It’s eleven o’clock.” When the lights in the apartment complex were turned off, the lights in the rooms went out, but the lights in the corridor were still on for some reason.
There were wisps of light leaking into the room from the gaps around the front door of the apartment. With this dim light, Shen Yu could see the little boy’s expression clearly.
Still very calm, without a trace of panic or fear.
“Crack…”
At this moment, a strange sound rang out in the silent darkness.
In an instant, the two looked towards the window together.
“Crack…crack…” It was like the sound of a fingernail scratching the glass, and with the accompanying rustling of clothes brushing, it sounded like someone was standing outside the window, scratching the window with his fingers, trying to peek inside the house.
But their room was on the fourth floor.
In the darkness, the little boy silently came to Shen Yu and quietly his hand.
After finally seeming to be a little scared, the little guy’s body temperature was abnormally low at this time, his adolescent palms so cold that they made Shen Yu feel like he was holding a piece of ice.
The scratching outside the window continued, then intensified, as if a little impatient.
Something outside the window wanted to come in.
At this moment, the little boy suddenly yet gently pulled his hand away, quietly pointed it at the door and whispered: “Outside the door.”
Shen Yu temporarily shifted his attention from the window, turning his head to listen to the movements outside the door.
There was a dull, rubbing sound, like someone dragging a heavy wooden board, moving slowly and aimlessly in the corridor.
Moreover, the sound of footsteps was gradually approaching their room.
In the darkness, Shen Yu’s face changed slightly. He raised his hand to signal at the little boy to keep quiet, then walked slowly to the door, leaned down and looked out through the gap under the door.
His footsteps were as light as those of a cat, and there was no sound.
The little boy also followed, lowering and squatting beside him, his dark eyes round and delicate; with his small and thin body he resembled a squatting kitten.
Shen Yu knew that his actions at this time were very risky, but there were not many opportunities to observe and collect information up close, so he didn’t want to be passive all the time.
The dull footsteps outside the door were getting closer and closer, then came to a stop close to their room; his heart couldn’t help beating wildly, yet his ink-stained eyes became brighter in the darkness.
From the narrow gap at the bottom of the door, there was only a limited number of things that could be seen. The first thing that caught his eye were a pair of feet without shoes.
The soles of these bare feet did not have the warm complexion of a normal human. This pair of bare feet was standing on the floor, black and white from the cold, covered in blood-red cracks, clogged up blood scabs and dirty dust.
Behind these feet, they were dragging a rectangular wooden box. The wood had been painted with red paint and some patterns had been added along the bottom side.
Seeing these lines, Shen Yu narrowed his eyes as he recognized that they were lines that could only be drawn on a coffin.
A bare-footed weird person, dragging a coffin in an empty corridor, passing by the doors of every room in the silent night.
The barefooted stranger outside the door walked very stiffly, as if being pulled step by step by a wire. When he’d walked to the door of Room 404, he’d suddenly halted.
Shen Yu’s heart sank. He instinctively got up and stood in front of the little boy, staring at the door with his pair of eyes; even the “thing” outside the window that had been scratching the glass with perseverance had been temporarily forgotten by him.
“Tuk tuk!” A knock on the door suddenly sounded in the dark and silent room.
The person outside, standing in front of door nr. 404, was knocking on the door again and again, and wanted to come in as well.
Shen Yu felt the little boy grabbing his hand, squeezing it harder and harder.
The person outside kept knocking on the door for three minutes before quieting down.
Shen Yu leaned down and looked through the crack under the door again, and found that those feet were still standing outside the door and had not left at all, as if waiting for the person inside the apartment to lose their vigilance and open the door by themselves.
The two waited for a while, holding their breaths, and then he finally seemed to have given up. He continued to move with heavy steps, dragging the coffin to his next goal.
Only then did Shen Yu slightly breathe a sigh of relief.
At this moment, the little boy suddenly pulled on his sleeves gently, pointed to the window and whispered: “There is no sound outside the window.” Only then did Shen Yu realize that at the moment when the knocking on the door had sounded, the sound of scratching on the window glass had suddenly disappeared.
In other words, the “thing” outside the window was afraid of the weird man dragging the coffin outside the door?
In the darkness, he opened his eyes slightly and pondered for a long while, then said: “That weird guy outside…went to the east building?”
…
Pink apartment complex, east building, room 101.
Boss Qian, who’d been made to move in on his own, was lying on the bed all alone, shaking his head under the quilt.
The red key can open all the rooms in the East Building, but Boss Qian was timid and didn’t dare to live too far inside by himself, so he’d found a room closest to the hall on the first floor and checked in.
“Fuck his mother’s horror novel! Fuck his mother! Fuck his son…” For courage and to vent his anger, Boss Qian was scolding all those who had abandoned him in his heart.
At this moment, the sound of a “creaking” scratching on the glass came from outside the window.
Boss Qian didn’t dare to look, instead burying his head deeper in the quilt and muttering silently: “Isn’t it just a broken apartment? What’s the big deal? How many big winds and waves I have experienced, and what is there to fear…” The sound of scratching on the window glass became louder and louder, slowly turning into someone smashing on the glass panes. At the same time, he heard the driver Da Zhuang shouting outside the window: “Boss, I am here!”
“We studied for half a night and finally found a way out, so we rushed to rescue you.”
The original Qian boss was overjoyed and crawled out of his bed: “Da Zhuang, is it you?”
The voice outside the window replied, “It’s me, hurry up and leave this ghost place with me!” Da Zhuang’s voice, the simple and honest tone was indeed a familiar voice.
“Da Zhuang, you little bastard! I thought you really didn’t care about Lao Tzu, you little…” Boss Qian ran to the window crying and cursing before he had time to think about it, and opened the window.
Outside the window was pitch black, there was no shadow of Da Zhuang; only half of a body was hanging in front of the window, and a pair of woman’s toes were dangling in front of Boss Qian’s eyes.
Boss Qian was immediately stunned, and raised his head in a daze and looked up along her toes.
A hanged woman, with a rope around her neck, was swaying to and fro in the night’s breeze; her pale and swollen face drooped softly, her scarlet lips were being licked by her long tongue and a pair of blood red eyes were staring at him maliciously.
The woman took off the rope loop from around her neck and, through the open window, she jerked it towards Boss Qian’s neck … An unknown time later, the same dull footsteps could be heard in the east building.
The weird man dragging the coffin stopped in front of door 101, knocking on the door again and again.
This time too, after waiting for a long time, no one had opened the door for it, and the barefooted man dragged his heavy steps and left again.
In the silent room number 101, the window in the room was wide open, and a fat figure was hanging outside the window, his toes in leather shoes swaying in the wind.
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
T/N: Thank you for reading (~˘▾˘)~
Let me know if you find any mistakes and I’ll correct it. You can also ‘buy me a coffee’ if you like it…..
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
