1090 Again and Again 2 in 1

“It looks like my dead child. At least from the back, they look the same.

“My family saw it as well, it was not an illusion; it really exists. But why does it always face away from us? Which family does it come from, and why does it appear at the staircase every time at midnight?

“My husband said that he would go out to take a look, but he never returned after leaving the house. He has abandoned me and run away on his own.

“What should I do? It was getting closer and closer to me. It always leaned on the door and window, and eventually, it would come into the house.

“After I woke up, I saw it appear in our living room. It did not seem to notice me. It was standing in the middle of the living room, facing away from me.

“I finally saw its face. Why would a rag doll pace around my house? What is it looking for? Why does it come to my house? What is its purpose for coming here?

“It is too disgusting. I have never seen such a disgusting doll in my life. Its arms are filled with trash and bodies of small birds. Its stomach has a reeking heart, its face is sewn together from different skin, and its legs were bent, stuffed with bones that it picked from who knows where. It was radiating this horrible smell. The pitiable face makes it look that much scarier!

“I realized there is one thing that is very strange about this doll. Its shadow is not the shadow of a normal doll. When the light hits it, the shadow that is reflected is a boy that is much taller than the doll itself.

“Everyone hates it. Does the doll not know that? Why does it refuse to go? Why does it appear like it is trying to endear itself to me? This is crazy!

“It seemed to have treated this place as its own home, this blasted doll!

“I am not its mother, and I am not its family!

“I have to chase it away no matter what! I must!

“I have torn it into pieces, stuffed it inside the trash bags, and buried them in the ground. I thought that was the end of everything, but when I woke up, it had appeared in my room again!

“I already do not have a family life—why does this strange creature refuse to leave me be‽

“I have sent it away again and again. But he started to appear at various places at my house. Inside the closet, under the bed, inside the cover, underneath the desk—it could be hiding at any places inside my house!

“What do I need to do to chase it away!”

The blood handwriting at the end had become completely twisted and hard to red. The handwriting was mixed with blood vessels and fingernails. It showed that the mental condition of the writer was at the edge of insanity. In fact, Chen Ge could easily imagine a woman with disheveled hair, biting on her nails, tearing at the cover, writing these sentences with her bloody fingers. Chen Ge moved to the last bloody sheet, and the content caused his spine to tingle in discomfort.

“I’ve finally understood what it wants. I am not its mother, and it does not want me to be its mother; he merely wanted to crawl into my stomach. When I woke up in the middle of the night, dazed, I saw the smiling face in my stomach. It was then that I realize I probably will never be able to send it away anymore.”

The blood messages on the bedsheet ended there. Just by reading them, Wen Qing beside Chen Ge felt extremely uncomfortable. Probably because they were both women, she could empathize further with the desperation and pain of the owner of the house.

“Are these bloody messages trying to warn us that the monster inside this building is actually a rag doll?” Even though Xiao Sun always found himself with his foot in his mouth, the young man was not dumb. Especially when they were in danger, his brain was able to work exceptionally fast.

“I believe so.” Chen Ge looked at the bloody sentences, and his eyes stared at one of the many statements—’Its shadow is not the shadow of a normal doll. When the light hits it, the shadow that is reflected is a boy that is much taller than the doll itself.’

When he saw these few words, a speculation arose in Chen Ge’s heart.

The ghost that possessed the rag doll might be my own shadow. After he escaped from me, he became the shadow of this rag doll. But the rag doll itself had no consciousness. In fact, the rag doll might be the body that he had made for himself.

Inside Jin Hwa Apartments Block A, the rag doll’s broken arm was the source of all the stench that lingered in the building, but it was also possible that it was due to the presence of the broken arm that the building was safe from the infiltration of the black fog.

The rag doll should be a body that the ghost fetus had once used in the past. Based on the description on these bloody messages, he had gone through quite a bit of trouble for the sake of this ugly body that he had made for himself.

Behind Fang Yu’s door, Chen Ge was given a glimpse of a small part of the ghost fetus’ past. The ghost fetus then was completely different from the ghost fetus now. The shadow took one step after another to become a Demon God, but it had now completely lost itself, and the sign of its former self was no longer there. The bloody messages recorded quite clearly that the rag doll did not do anything to harm the tenants inside the building at the beginning. But its presence was in itself a type of ‘sin’. It was because the owner kept trying to throw him away that the rag doll took revenge. That seemed the inevitable outcome.

“Jin Hwa Apartments recorded Xiang Nuan’s life, and the ghost fetus’ past might be buried among Jiu Hong Apartments.” Chen Ge’s shadow first made its appearance at Western Jiujiang’s haunted house. Some clues as to what happened next to the shadow might be found in these few buildings. Chen Ge did not move to close the closet door; instead, he took out all the clothes from inside the closet. He did not see the monster. It seemed to have left the room.

“There are children’s clothes inside the closet, and there are three pair of shoes on the shoe rack, two large pairs and one small pair. All of these signs point toward a boy once lived inside this apartment.” Chen Ge placed the bloody bedsheet on the ground. “The tenants at Room 204 once had a child. That was quite clear from the messages that were left on the sheet. After their child died, this strange doll started to appear. The rag doll did not appear to wish to harm them initially. If anything, it seemed to hope that it could live together with them.”

“Do you think that was possible? Based on the description, the rag doll was a scary monster—who would want to stay with that kind of thing?” Xiao Sun could not wrap his head around what Chen Ge was saying.

“Both you and the owner of the house thought the rag doll was a monster, but have you tried to consider this from the rag doll’s perspective? Do you think it will see itself as a monster?” Chen Ge pointed at the bloody words on the sheets. “Bones in its legs, heart in its stomach, and it even has a face albeit one that is sewn together. This proves that the doll has been trying its best to mimic a human with the only resources made available to him.”

“How come it just sounds scarier when you put it that way?”

“The rag doll wants to be a person; it desires to have a life like a normal being. It desires after family and love, but he has greatly underestimated the difficulty of becoming a human.” Chen Ge was being very rational. “It had no idea what a human being was, and it had even less of an idea what it represented to those around him. Actually, you could see it as a child, but due to the seduction by the demon, it had become a very scary child.”

“No matter what, it is the truth that he eventually killed the owner of this house. I do not care what his intention was. If anything, I feel like he has had horrible intentions from the very beginning. I even suspect that the child of the owner’s family was killed by this doll.” Wen Qing’s face had some color returned to it, but she still did not wish to look at the bloody messages any longer.

“I admit that is one of the possibilities as well.” Chen Ge folded the bedsheet and carried it in his hands. “We have searched most of this house already. It is time to move on to the other houses.”

“Are you planning to take those tattered bedsheet pieces with you?” Wen Qing and Xiao Sun asked at the same time. “The thing is such a taboo. Why don’t we put it back where we found it?”

“Okay.” Chen Ge had limited space in his backpack. He unwillingly placed the bedsheet pieces back into the closet.

I cannot use the comic now. When the employees wake up, I’ll have time to come back.

The ghost inside Room 204 did not show itself. The room appeared like it had been abandoned for a very long time. After walking out from Room 204, Wen Qing who was the first to step out from the door halted at the door.

“What’s wrong?”

“There is blood on the ground…”

The few looked at the spot that was lit up by Wen Qing’s flashlight on her phone. A pool of fresh blood was left at the front door of Room 204. When they were conducting their search inside the house, it appeared like there was something standing at the door observing them, and the thing had stood there for quite a long time.

“There are blood traces on the wall as well, look! There are so many handprints!” Wen Qing pointed at the wall next to the door. There were many handprints that looked like they were left behind by a baby. It looked like a baby had rapidly crawled along the wall earlier.

“There sure are a lot of strange things inside this building.” Chen Ge used Yin Yang Vision to follow the trail of bloody handprints until he reached the mouth of the staircase. “It has gone up to the third floor?”

“Should we continue up? How about we return to Jin Hwa Apartments’ Block A, lock the front door so that the people from the outside cannot come in, and wait for the sun to rise?”

“What if the sun will never come up?” Chen Ge ignored Xiao Sun. He moved faster and entered the staircase directly. A faded scent of mildew and some stench started to permeate the air. The building was still immensely quiet, but this quiet was different from the normal quiet. It felt like the spirit of the building had been hollowed out by some unknown object, and the souls of the previous tenants that had stayed at this place had all been sucked away.

With his sharp five senses, Chen Ge felt this the most intensely. It felt as if the moment he stepped into this building, his soul would involuntarily be trapped forever. It did not take that long to move from the second floor to the third floor, but the temperature around them had suddenly dropped tremendously. Banknotes littered the ground, and every single room had the inverted ‘joy’ calligraphically written on white paper pasted on their front door. The old doors did not have the traditional picture of Chinese door guardians but were pasted with two white pieces of paper.

“The door guardians are used to protect the house from evil spirits, so what’s the purpose of these two pieces of white paper?”

More questions awaited Chen Ge. The lock of Room 301 was completely broken; the door could not be closed at all. The door was hanging open slightly. Outside the door was a bowl of white rice with a pair of chopsticks in it, and other than that, there was a copper basin that was filled with gray dust. To enter the house, one had to walk over the copper basin. That in itself was nothing, but Chen Ge managed to see quite clearly with Yin Yang Vision that the following was written at the edge of the copper basin.

‘Those who walk over this basin will receive the torment of the mountain of blades and the torture of the sea of fire. They will have their eyes gouged out and their heart punctured.’

Chen Ge himself did not believe in these things, but now that he was inside the world behind another person’s door, that did not matter much. The key was whether the door pusher believed in such things.

“Is this some kind of curse?”

The door was left open, but Chen Ge did not dare enter it brashly. He merely pushed open the door and peered inside to look. The interior of the room had signs of being burnt. Banknotes that were half burnt covered the ground. There were four small incense burners placed in the four corners of the room. The pots holding the burners had a very strange appearance; they had the shape of a kneeling man, like they were supplicating themselves for their sin.

“Do any of you understand what this is supposed to represent?” Wen Qing asked Xiao Sun and Chen Ge. She stood at the door with a nervous expression on her face.

“It is perhaps some kind of exorcism ritual.” Xiao Sun looked at the strange décor of the room and had no intention of entering the place at all.

“No matter what it was for, they failed in the end.” Chen Ge pointed at the lock of the door that had fallen completely off. “Look at the spot where the lock is connected to the frame. It was obviously cracked by brute force. Not only did the people inside the house fail to chase away the ghost, they completely angered the ghost.”

He moved the copper basin to the corner of the wall.

“This way, we won’t need to step over the basin to get into the room. If this thing is any use, we can consider taking it with us. Whether it’s placed in the middle of the corridor or at the entrance of any room, it will serve the same purpose.”

Neither Xiao Sun nor Wen Qing knew how to reply. Both of them thought that did not sound that appropriate, but after they gave it more thought, they realized that what Chen Ge said was quite logical. After they entered Room 301, for safety’s sake, Chen Ge did not have them split up. They moved as a group into all the rooms.

“There is a lot of copper money hidden under the sofa, vermillion dust inside the closet, the incense burner pots in the corners, and a trail of salt by the edge of the wall. These are all used to chase away evil spirits.” Chen Ge was very familiar with these things. When he first obtained the black phone, he had scrolled through many different kinds of supernatural forums. In the end, he concluded that ninety percent of these things were not useful; the remaining ten percent might be useful, but the set up was so complicated that he had not tested them himself.

The three walked through the living room, but they all stopped when they reached the door to the bedroom. The wooden door before them was filled with the handprint of a small child. It felt like a child was standing outside the bedroom door, slamming his palms on the door again and again at midnight. Chen Ge slowly pushed the door open. There was a king-sized bed in the room. The bed was covered in black pills that appeared like some kind of medicine, but they were arranged in a way where the shape of a human was hollowed out in the middle of the bed.

A few pieces of yellowed paper were left around the bed. Some words were written unevenly on them.

“The first time I saw it, it was outside the window. It was leaning on the edge of the window, but I soon remembered that I live on the third floor.

“The second time I saw it, it was behind my front door. I did not notice it when I opened the door, but when I closed the door, it followed me into the room and just stood there behind the door.

“The third time I saw it, it was lying in a pile of my baby’s toys. It was mimicking the actions of my child. It was also at that moment that I threw the dirty doll away.

“The fourth time I saw it was the night I threw it away. I heard the sound coming from the living room. When I opened the bedroom door, I saw it sitting in the living room, playing with our child’s toy. My husband and I were so afraid. We switched on the light and tried to burn it with fire. We then threw the remains of this cursed doll at the heap of trash.”

“The fifth time I saw it, it was on the staircase. It pushed me from behind me. Then came the sixth time… the seventh time… The monster had decided to haunt me. I did not know what to do to make it go away.”

The words appeared to be the house owner’s call for help, but unfortunately, from the result, she had clearly failed in the end. Chen Ge picked up the yellowed paper and glanced at the cluster of bloody handprints on the bedroom door. The image of the scary rag doll slowly surfaced in his mind.