Chapter 32 Old House in the Video

I had brought back the VCRs we bought in Jilin and left them at home. I didn’t want A Ning to know my actual address—although, there was a good chance she already knew it—so I sent Wang Meng to my house to pick them up and bring them back to the shop. Once connected to the small TV at the back of the shop, we put one of the new tapes in and pressed play.

Just like the other two, the first tape was in black and white. After the initial bit of static, the inner room of an old-fashioned house appeared on the screen. I was shocked at first, but then I realized that the layout of the house wasn’t the same as the one we saw in the tape back in Jilin. It was obviously a different place, with a lot more space and different furnishings, but I didn’t know where it was.

When I watched the two tapes with Uncle Three back in Jilin, there was nothing but static at the end. I watched them both many times, but didn’t find any clues. Now that there were new tapes, I thought that they might hold some clues, so I knew I had to watch them very carefully.

After Wang Meng made tea for everyone, I sent him back out front to look after the shop. Fatty lay down on my couch without much ceremony, so I sat to the side, trying to keep my distance from A Ning as much as possible. But A Ning had suddenly become very serious, her blank face a far cry from the playful attitude she had shown in the restaurant just now. It was like looking at two completely different people.

The room in the video was very dark, with mottled light coming through on one side. It looked like it was coming through one of those lattice windows⁽¹⁾ that were used in old houses in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, but it was hard to tell since the image was in black and white. As we watched, I noted that there didn’t appear to be anyone in the room at this time.

Fatty gave me a look, silently asking if the contents of this tape were the same as the one Poker-Face had sent me. When I gave a slight shake of my head, his expression became surprised and he quickly turned his head to look at the screen more carefully.

But fifteen minutes later, the image on the screen still hadn’t changed. There was only the occasional bit of static or shaking, which made my heart skip a beat.

I had already experienced this before so I could endure it, but Fatty soon lost his patience and turned to A Ning, “I say, Miss Ning, did you bring us the wrong tape?”

A Ning ignored him and just looked at me, but I was watching the screen with bated breath—I knew that this tape must also be a surveillance tape, so it was very normal to see nothing but an empty room. Since A Ning wanted us to watch this tape, that meant something unusual was going to appear after a while.

Seeing that A Ning and I weren’t talking, Fatty immediately became bored. He took a sip of tea and made a move like he was going to leave, but I grabbed him and told him to wait. He sat back down, but he kept scratching and fidgeting, looking extremely impatient.

I felt a wave of anger surge up in my heart, but I knew this wasn’t the time to snap at him, so I concentrated on calming myself down. As I continued to stare at the screen, I started to grow a little impatient myself, and had to fight the urge to fast forward a little bit.

But at this time, A Ning suddenly straightened and motioned for us to pay attention. Fatty and I immediately sat up straight and looked at the screen carefully.

On the screen, a gray shadow appeared in the inner hall. It stepped out of the darkness, its movements very strange and slow, as if it were drunk.

I swallowed around the lump in my throat, suddenly feeling nervous—I had a few guesses as to what this might be, but I didn’t know if any of them were right.

The shadow soon became clearer, and when it moved towards the window, I suddenly realized why its movements were so strange—it wasn’t walking, but crawling on the ground.

I didn’t know whether it was a man or a woman, but its hair was messy and it looked very dirty. It was wearing the kind of clothes usually put on dead bodies before burial, and crawling on the ground with a lot of difficultly.

But the strangest thing was the way this figure was crawling—either it was disabled or it had been severely abused. I recently saw in the news that in some remote village, a man had locked his mentally ill wife in the cellar. When the wife was finally released, she could no longer walk normally, and had to move in a perpetual squat. This was what this thing’s movements reminded me of.

We all remained silent as we watched it soundlessly crawl across the screen and disappear on the other side. Then that calm, still image of the room appeared in front of us again.

The whole process lasted a little more than seven minutes, but what really frustrated me was the lack of sound. It was really uncomfortable sitting there and watching that thing silently crawl across the screen.

A Ning grabbed the remote, rewound the tape, played it again, and then paused it before saying to us, “There’s no point in watching the rest—that was the important part.”

“What’s the meaning of this?” Fatty, unable to make heads or tails of what he just saw, turned and asked me, “Mr. Naïve, Comrade Wu Xie, who is this person?”

“How should I know?” I shot back, feeling depressed. I thought I’d see Huo Ling again, not whatever this was. Now I only felt even more confused. Looking at that hunched figure…if this really was sent by the same person, then the video should have been recorded by Huo Ling. Did that mean that the Huo Ling in the video was too old to even stand?

“What the hell is going on? What’s with this tape?” Fatty asked A Ning again.

“What do you guys think you saw?” A Ning asked us.

“It’s pretty obvious—isn’t this a person crawling across the floor of a house?” Fatty replied.

A Ning ignored him and gave me a meaningful look before asking, “What about you?” It almost seemed like she was searching for some kind of reaction from me.

Seeing the look on her face left me feeling confused. “Isn’t that what you saw?” I asked.

She narrowed her eyes, looking both surprised and confused, “You… don’t have any other impressions?”

I looked at Fatty, completely baffled, but he just hummed in thought as he stared at the image on the screen. Then I shook my head and said, “No.”

A Ning stared at me for a long time, then sighed and said, “Well then, let’s watch the second tape. I hope you’re mentally prepared.”

With that said, she put the second tape into the VCR. This time, A Ning didn’t let us watch it from the beginning, but instead fast-forwarded through the first fifteen minutes. Then she looked at me and said, “You… you’d better take a deep breath.”

I was really starting to panic now, but Fatty was clearly fed up with her and said, “Don’t underestimate this guy. Don’t you know who you’re talking to? Young Comrade Wu has experienced it all—he’s climbed up snowy mountains and swam deep beneath the angry sea. I don’t believe there’s anything out there that can scare him, so stop trying to stir up feminine emotions in him. Tell her, Young Wu—I’m right, aren’t I?”

I didn’t bother responding and just told A Ning to hit play. Sitting in the back room of my shop, I felt like nothing could scare me.

A Ning glared at Fatty and then pressed play. The scene was still in that same inner room, but the camera lens seemed to shake a little bit, as if someone was adjusting it. It shook for about two minutes before the camera suddenly became still, and then a face popped up at the bottom of the screen.

At first, I couldn’t see clearly since the face was too close for the camera to focus, but I already knew that it wasn’t Huo Ling. Then, the face moved back, and I saw a man dressed in a gray burial shroud appear on the screen. He was sitting on the ground, trembling, and his disheveled hair was covering his face, but when he turned, I was finally able to see his face.

Fatty saw it the same time I did and let out a surprised shout before suddenly turning to look at me. I felt a chill run up my spine as my mouth fell open, trying to get air into lungs that suddenly felt like they were suffocating.

On the screen, the face of the man who kept turning his head like a lunatic was very familiar, but it still took me a few seconds to recognize it—it was my face!

<Chapter 31><Table of Contents><Chapter 33>

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TN Notes:

(1) It directly translates as “flower window” but it can look something like this: