Chapter 27 The Recording

The VCR was a Panasonic that Uncle Three’s assistant had bought from a flea market in the Chuanying district. When I went to Uncle Three’s room, the guy was busy setting up. I saw two identical spares sitting on the sofa, probably to save time so we wouldn’t have to look for a replacement if this one happened to stop working. Fortunately, the quality of imported goods from that era wasn’t bad, and all three worked fine after some testing. I weighed one of the spare ones and found that it was ridiculously heavy. The things of that era were very solid, unlike the DVDs of today, which could be used as frisbees to play with your dog.

Other than telling me to take a seat, Uncle Three never said a word the whole time the assistant was setting up the VCR. He just smoked one cigarette after another, seemingly lost in thought.

As my hangover headache gradually improved, I started to feel a little nervous. From time to time, random thoughts of what might be recorded on these tapes popped into my head. I thought about their trip to Xisha, but it was impossible for them to bring video recording equipment with them (at that time, this kind of equipment was very rare, and manual film cameras were still widely used in the country), so the contents of the videos definitely couldn’t be of Xisha at that time. Similarly, they couldn’t be recordings of what was behind the bronze door. Excluding these two places, what could possibly be on these videos? No matter how hard I thought about, I couldn’t come up with any ideas.

When the VCR was finally hooked up to the TV and powered on, I picked up one of the tapes and got ready to put it in. But before I could slide it into the opening, I suddenly found myself panicking for some reason. As I stood there hesitating, I glanced back at Uncle Three.

He waved his hand at me and said, “What are you looking at me for? Why aren’t you putting it in? Are you fucking afraid something will crawl out of the TV?”

I pushed the tape into the VCR, listened for the click that signaled that it was working, and then moved back to sit on the bed. Soon, white static flashed across the screen. Uncle Three stopped smoking and threw his cigarette butt into the ashtray as all three of us—me, Uncle Three, and his assistant—sat up a little nervously.

Static flashed across the screen for more than ten seconds before an image finally began to appear. We were using a color TV, but the image was in black and white, indicating that there a problem with the tape itself. The image was blurry at first, but then gradually became clearer.

It was an old-fashioned wooden room with a wooden floor. The camera kept shaking constantly, making it obvious that the person or object holding the camera wasn’t very stable. An open window could be seen on the wall across from the camera, but the outside was too blurry to make out. Judging by the dim light streaming in through the window, it seemed to be daytime.

Uncle Three and I exchanged a confused look. This seemed to be a recording of a residential building, which was something I wasn’t expecting. Was this a self-recording? If we waited a bit, would Poker-Face appear on the screen, eating instant noodles and saying into the camera, “Long time no see. How are you guys doing?”

Under the window, there was a rather old-fashioned writing desk, which looked a bit like the old furniture you’d see in those revolutionary films. It was covered in various things, such as documents, a desk lamp, and a telephone.

The style of the phone was outdated, but not old enough to be falling apart. This video must have been made some time after the 1990s. Of course, many families still used this kind of old-style phone even now, so it was hard to tell when this recording took place. But it definitely wasn’t earlier than the ‘90s.

The camera continued to record the scene in the room, just like a still life photo. After waiting for a while, we realized that the camera was set at a fixed position and wouldn’t move, much like a fixed lens movie camera.

In this case, we didn’t know how long this still shot would last, but we didn’t want to just sit there and stare stupidly at the screen, so Uncle Three pressed the fast-forward button. When he had forwarded to around the twenty minute mark, a black shadow suddenly flashed across the screen.

Uncle Three and I both jumped in fright.

He quickly rewound the tape and played it in slow motion. As it turned out, a person had walked into the camera’s field of view. There was also the sound of a door closing, as if the person had returned to the room after being outside. I took a closer look and found that the person who came in was actually a woman with her hair pulled back in a ponytail. It was hard to tell how old she was, but even with the poor quality of the video, she looked rather pretty.

Uncle Three suddenly tensed up and stepped forward until his face was almost touching the TV screen.

But the woman was walking very fast—she moved across the screen in an instant, quickly disappearing from the camera’s field of view.

Seeing how Uncle Three’s expression suddenly changed, I started to ask him what was going on, but he just waved me off and told me not to speak.

The video kept playing, and five minutes later, the woman appeared on the screen again, now wearing pajamas. She went straight up to the screen, which started to shake as she apparently adjusted the angle of the camera.

This was basically the equivalent of a close-up. With the woman’s face now directly in front of the TV screen, I could see that she was quite young and looked very cute, with big eyes and a sweet disposition.

Uncle Three was so close to the TV that his eyes seemed to bore into the woman on the screen. I watched in surprise as his frozen body suddenly started trembling all over. Then, he gave a loud shout and staggered back, almost kicking the TV off the cabinet.

His assistant quickly grabbed the TV while I went over to help him up. But as I reached for him, he suddenly pointed a trembling finger at the face on the TV and shouted, “It’s her! Huo Ling! It’s Huo Ling!”

We were both startled by his sudden reaction. His assistant immediately abandoned the TV to help him up, while I pushed it further back on the cabinet so that it wouldn’t fall and break.

But Uncle Three wouldn’t cooperate—he backed away with a shout, hitting the sofa so hard that he almost overturned it before he tripped and fell to the ground. The impact was obviously very painful, because he immediately grabbed his lower back and all the color drained from his face. But even so, his bulging eyes remained glued to the TV screen.

I was also surprised. Was this woman really Huo Ling?

According to Poker-Face, Huo Ling was the child of party officials and had been one of the people who entered the undersea tomb when the archaeological team went to Xisha. There was very little information about her, and I didn’t know which of the girls in the group photo was her, so it was only natural that I didn’t recognize her. For such a person to appear in a video sent by Poker-Face… it was truly bizarre…

But what I really wanted to know was the purpose of this video. Based on how she adjusted the angle, it was obvious that she knew that this camera existed. But people normally didn’t record themselves like this. So, it must be some kind of surveillance video, which meant that this was undoubtedly a security camera. But why would she make such a video? How did this tape end up in Poker-Face’s hands? Why did he send it to me?

Something’s going on here, I said to myself. Uncle Three was right—this whole thing is far from over.

At this time, the woman on the screen finished adjusting the camera, and the screen stopped shaking. She then moved away from the camera, sat down at the desk, set up a mirror, and started combing her hair. Since the video was in black-and-white and the camera had been shaking just now, the image was now a little fuzzy.

Uncle Three gradually calmed down, but his face was still pale and his expression was completely different compared to before. He clung tightly to the armrest of the sofa, his slightly trembling body revealing just how anxious he was.

To be sure, I asked him, “Is this woman the same Huo Ling who went to the undersea tomb with you?”

Uncle Three didn’t respond at all. I exchanged a look with his assistant, but the other man didn’t seem to know what to do either.

In the video, Huo Ling kept combing her hair. After it was released from her ponytail, I realized that it was actually quite long, which left me wondering how long she was going to comb it. It took about twenty minutes before she finally stopped and put it back in a ponytail.

After combing her hair, she stood up, glanced out of the window with a confused look on her face, and then ran out of the camera’s frame. When she ran back in, I saw that she had changed clothes again.

In other words, she went back to that room to change clothes.

Then, something strange happened in the video.

After she came back out, she ran to the camera again and started messing with it, as if she was dissatisfied with the angle. The screen began to shake, and her pale face filled the whole screen again.

Uncle Three let out a strange moan, as if her face frightened him.

I picked up the remote and prepared to fast-forward, thinking that she had changed clothes to go out, cook dinner, or do something else that would leave the room empty for a long time. But before I could push the button, I saw her sit down at the desk, pick up the comb, remove her hair tie, and begin combing her hair again!

“This woman is crazy!” Uncle Three’s assistant shouted.

Uncle Three motioned for him to be quiet and frowned.

The Huo Ling in the video was combing her hair with her back to us, so we couldn’t see her expression, save for a vague reflection in the mirror. But it seemed like her movements and pace were almost exactly the same as before. As I watched her, I couldn’t help but wonder if her head was made of steel—if I combed my hair like that, my head would have turned into a walnut long ago.

This kind of scene created a strange atmosphere, but I endured it. After another twenty minutes had passed, she pulled her hair into a ponytail again, stood up, and ran out of the frame.

The assistant and I both breathed a sigh of relief, thinking that it was finally over. If she started combing her hair again, I felt that even my head would start to hurt.

But before we could relax, she ran into the frame again, wearing yet another outfit. Then she leaned in front of the camera and began adjusting the angle for the third time.

I immediately felt confused, wondering what this Huo Ling was doing. No matter how much I thought about it, the whole thing was too ridiculous. Was this her hobby…? Or maybe she was going to commit suicide, so she went through the trouble of changing her clothes and adjusting the camera angle to make sure that things were just right? Was she going to comb her hair again? If she kept combing like this, her comb was going to turn into a brush.

As I continued staring at the screen, the video suddenly seemed to freeze. I glanced back and saw that Uncle Three had paused it, leaving the black-and-white screen frozen on the close-up image of her face.

Uncle Three’s face was ghostly pale, and his lips were trembling. He looked closely at the face on the screen and whispered, “My God, she hasn’t aged either!”

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