Thriller Night Talk

…I was so scared! ”

“I was also scared, I didn’t expect that man to actually jump off!”

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It was nearly 12 a.m, Bei Quan and Wei Fuyuan were eating at a barbecue  stand while listening to the other diners nearby.

Sitting at the table next to them was a man and a woman who were both in their  early twenties and seemed to be a couple. 

These two people were the bystanders who had yelled at Mr. A to just jump and not  to waste time.

And even though they had witnessed a person jumping to their death, they did not  look like they had suffered any trauma; on the contrary, the pair blatantly expressed  their excitement at witnessing such an accident.

Bei Quan and Wei Fuyuan had followed them all the way from the scene of the  accident and discovered that the conversation between the two seemed to revolve  around Mr. A leaping from the building.

In the beginning, the woman showed some pity and would say a few words such as  “how terrible” when recalling the cracked open head and broken body.

It was simply in some people’s nature to repeatedly bring up and discuss happenings  that catch their attention. When a subject can be used as a hot topic, it would  undoubtedly be chewed back and forth, and then shared with others until the initial  fear disappears, and becomes something that could be lightly talked about and even  becomes amusing to discuss.

“Wait a moment, I’ll share it with a circle of friends.”

The man grabbed the skewers with one hand and held his mobile phone in the other.  His mouth was clearly very busy, and yet, he didn’t forget to post the photos of the  man who jumped from a building on his social platform.

“Say, was there something wrong with the man?” His girlfriend said, “I saw him  crying and screaming when he jumped off the building. He seemed to have been  unwilling to do it, but he jumped down anyway! He must have schizophrenia, right?” 

“Look at him, he was probably a psycho!”

The man took two sips of beer.

“Anyhow, he’s the one who wanted to jump; he enjoyed dancing with death and that  has nothing to do with us!”

The two chatted about Mr. A over wine and food, before naturally diverting from the  subject and moving on to other things. 

——————

After midnight, the couple got up to gather their things and check out. 

Bei Quan and Wei Fuyuan exchanged glances and followed them silently.

The couple had a clear goal in mind and headed straight to the love hotel at the  intersection. It looked like they were planning to spend a good night together.

“Will it actually be of any use to follow them?”

Wei Fuyuan was afraid of being suspicious and didn’t dare to get too close. He just  snuck glances through the glass door, at the two people who were checking in at the  front desk. Just like a spy. 

“Are you sure the Hui Gui will come to find them both?”

Bei Quan stood beside Young Master Wei, spreading his hands, “50% sure.”

“Right now, it’s the only clue we have, isn’t it?”

Wei Fuyuan pointed towards the glass door. 

“They are going in, what shall we do now?”

Dfl Hejc, “Rbatlcu.”

Qlat atja, tf milmxfv tlr olcufgr, jcv Ve Tlcu, ktb tjv yffc lc atf aeyf, pewqfv bea.

Ktf ilaaif obz atja mbeiv yf rffc bcis ys atf akb bo atfw, gjc jmgbrr atf ragffa ilxf j  uera bo klcv. Pa kfca ragjluta atgbeut atf mibrfv rfcrbg uijrr vbbg, jcv obiibkfv atf  mbeqif eqrajlgr, delfais ilxf j rtjvbk. 

Bei Quan turned his head, and said to his assistant:

“We just have to wait.”

—————— 

The couple opened the door with the room card, clung to each other, and got into the  bathroom. After a bit of washing in the narrow shower, they rushed to the double bed.

In the corner of the room, where they had never noticed, was a snow-white fox  squatting, licking its paws out of boredom and acting as if the two busy people on the  bed didn’t exist.

After the passion, the man and woman hugged each other and quickly fell asleep. 

The electronic clock on the bedside table ticked silently.

One minute, ten minutes, half an hour, an hour……

……

At 3 in the morning, the woman was having a good sleep when she heard something strange. 

“Squeak–‘

“Squeak– Squeak–”

“Squeak–”

It was not particularly loud, but it was quite sharp. It was a sound that felt like a  needle pricking the eardrum; It made people grind their teeth and feel a painful discomfort. 

The woman frowned and buried her head in the pillow, trying to shun the unpleasant  noise.

“Screech—Screech—”

“Screech—”

The new sound was that of someone’s fingernails scratching a chalkboard  persistently. 

The woman mumbled vaguely and opened her eyes, half-awake.

They were sleeping in a room on the third floor, facing the road. The room’s curtains  were thin. Even at night, neon lights and street lights would glare into the room  through the thin cloth.

Too lazy to turn on the light, the woman looked around using the light coming  through the window to find the source of the sound.

She followed the sound and suddenly began to quiver. 

There was a person’s shadow behind the thin curtains.

——Yes, that was indeed a person.

The woman could distinctly see the silhouette of the other person’s head, neck, and  shoulders, as well as the outstretched, curled claw-like hands.

The shadow’s head was hanging down, as if a rope tied his feet and was hanging  him upside-down outside the window. 

“Screech—”

“Screech—”

The shadow was still scratching the glass as if trying to dig a hole in through the  window with his ten fingers.

——But this was the third floor!! 

The woman froze on the bed, her heart filled with fear. She was so frightened that  she couldn’t even make a single noise.

She clearly remembered the window on a wall, facing the road, with no balcony or other foothold. How could a living man be hanging upside-down outside their room to scratch at a window on the third floor!?

Her cries of fear and panic seemed to have been transformed into a ball of cotton  and lodged in her throat. She could only let out sobbing gasps.

She stretched out her hand to her side and patted her sleeping boyfriend with  trembling hands. 

The man grunted, and impatiently covered his head with the quilt.

The woman shook him harder.

As she did this, the sound of nails scratching the glass stopped.

The woman opened her eyes wide and stared at the upside-down figure outside the  window in fear. 

A deathly silence lasted for three seconds.

“Squeaky–”

There was another sound coming from the window.

Only this time, it wasn’t the sound of nails scratching on glass, it was the sound of  metal hinges sliding against each other. 

The woman’s pupils shrank.

She saw the thin curtain, pulled apart to reveal a palm-sized gap on the interior of  the window.

“Ah ah ah ah ah!”

At this point, the woman couldn’t keep her nerves calm and finally snapped. 

She let out a hoarse scream.

The man was suddenly awakened.

He turned over and sat up. He was still sleepy, but before he could speak, he saw  his girlfriend roll out of bed, crying, and frantically crawl towards the door.

“You ——” 

Just as the man was about to ask ‘What’s wrong with you? What are you doing in the  middle of the night,’ he heard the curtains rustle by the window.

He turned to look and was scared out of his wits.

A pale, thin hand slowly lifted the curtain.

The man was horrified as he watched a head peer into the room, upside down,  through the open window. 

It was a young man’s head.

The light in the room was too dim for the man to see the other clearly, but he saw a  large patch of black liquid smeared on the man’s face.

——No, not some black liquid, but blood!

The man finally realized what he saw. 

——That was a man with a bloody face!

——A man hanging upside down with blood on his face!

He let out a scream like the howl of a wild beast, rolled over and scrambled out of  bed, pushing his girlfriend away from the door before unscrewing the lock and  stumbling into the corridor.

“Ghost!!” 

The man cried as he ran away in a crazed state.

“There is a ghost! There is a ghost!”

He screamed so loud, it reverberated in the deserted hallway, but no waiter or fellow resident came out to have a look.

By this time, the woman had also managed to escape from the room, and was  following her boyfriend while looking back behind her, as she ran. 

The couple staggered into the elevator at the end of the corridor and began to  frantically press on the down button.

However, the elevator was stuck on the top floor and didn’t move, no matter how  desperately the button was pushed.

“This building has stairs!”

The man rushed to the fire door of the stairwell, “Let’s go down the stairs!” 

With that, he plunged into the stairwell with the woman at his heels.

——Unfortunately, they quickly realized that they had made a very wrong decision.

Their room was obviously on the third floor, even though the two of them rushed all  the way down, turning corner after corner, weary and panting, they couldn’t find the exit on the ground floor.

“The ghost is trapping us!” The woman cried in despair, “The ghost is creating barriers to stop us from escaping!” 

The man in front of her came to a halt as soon as she spoke, and his upper body leaned back into the wall as he slid down and sat on the stairs.

“Ahhhhhhh!!”

The man suddenly screamed, changed direction, and began to climb up with his  hands and feet.

His girlfriend peered down the stairs and immediately followed him. 

“It’s catching up! It’s catching up!”

In the eyes of the two, the ghost who should have been behind them unexpectedly  appeared at the bottom of the stairs.

The man, or the ghost, was wearing a bloodstained nightgown. He was lying on the steps. There was something unmistakably wrong with his cervical vertebrae– his head was hanging at an angle that could clearly not have been achieved by any living person.

——This was obviously not a living person. 

Although the ghost’s face was covered in blood, the couple recognized the other at a glance.

——It was the young man who had fallen and died in front of them just a few hours ago.

“It’s none of our business!” The man nearly collapsed on the ground and began to shout hysterically, “We didn’t kill you! Why are you haunting us!?”

But, Mr. A, who had become a fierce ghost, didn’t care about the man’s words at all. He only leaned his head back on his broken neck and crawled towards them with no expression. 

“Ah, ah, ah!”

The couple were on the verge of overwhelming terror.

In the moment of extreme panic, they were like cornered animals driven into desperation by hunters. Their minds were blank, unable to think at all. They could only react instinctively by fleeing in the opposite direction.