Chapter 206: Snake Marsh Ghost City (Mid): Tape's Old House - Total Chaos

The several video recorders I bought in Jilin, I had them shipped back and left at home. I didn't want A Ning to know my actual address—though she might have known it already—so I sent Wang Meng to fetch them from my place. After connecting them in the inner hall of the shop, we played that new tape on the small TV.

The tape was, as usual, black and white. After the snow, the inner hall of an old-fashioned house appeared. My heart jolted at first, but then I noticed that the arrangement of the house was no longer the same as the one we had watched in Jilin. It was clearly a different place, much larger in space and with different furnishings. I had no idea where it was.

Back in Jilin, after watching those two tapes with Third Uncle, the rest was all snow. We watched them many times and found no clues at all. Now with a new tape, I thought there might be some clues in it, so we could watch it again more carefully.

Wang Meng made tea for everyone. Fatty unceremoniously lay down on my recliner, so I had to sit to one side. Then I sent Wang Meng to watch the shop outside, while I cautiously tried to keep my distance from A Ning beside me. But by then A Ning had also turned serious, expressionless, a completely different person from the playful one just a moment ago.

The inner hall was very dark. On one side, mottled light shone in, and from the way it filtered through, it looked like the kind of wooden lattice window used in old mansions from the Ming and Qing dynasties, but in black and white it was hard to make out. It was clear that there was no one in the inner hall at the moment.

Fatty winked at me, asking if the contents were the same as the videotape Poker-face had given me. I shook my head slightly to indicate no, and he looked very surprised, then turned to watch carefully.

However, for about fifteen minutes afterward, the picture never changed. Only occasionally a burst of snow would make our hearts skip a beat.

I had experience and could tolerate it, but Fatty lost his patience. He turned to A Ning and said, "Hey, Miss Ning, did you pick up the wrong tape?"

A Ning ignored him and just glanced at me. But I held my breath, because I knew this tape should also be surveillance footage. Having a shot of an empty inner hall was completely normal. Since A Ning was playing this tape, there must be something unusual happening after a while.

Seeing that A Ning and I weren't talking, Fatty felt snubbed. He took a sip of tea and was about to leave. I pressed him down and told him not to go away. Only then did he sit back down, scratching here and there, looking extremely impatient.

I was a bit angry inside but couldn't show it, so I concentrated and calmed myself, continuing to watch. Looking at the inner hall on the screen, I also grew a little impatient and really wanted to fast-forward a bit.

Just then, A Ning suddenly straightened up and made a gesture. Fatty and I immediately sat up straight and stared at the screen.

On the screen, a gray figure appeared in the inner hall, moving out from the darkness. Its movements were very strange, and it walked very slowly, as if drunk.

I swallowed hard. I had a few guesses in my mind, but I didn't know if they were right, and I started to get nervous.

Soon the white figure became clearer. When it moved to the window, I realized why its movements were so strange: it wasn't walking at all, but crawling on the ground.

I couldn't tell if this person was male or female; all I knew was that he was disheveled and wore clothes like burial shrouds, crawling slowly and painfully on the ground.

What struck me as strange was that his crawling posture was extremely odd. Either he was disabled, or he had suffered extreme abuse. I once saw a news report about a remote village where a man locked his mentally ill wife in a cellar, and when she was finally released, she couldn't walk anymore and could only move in a crouch. That's the feeling this person's movements gave me.

None of us made a sound. We watched him crawl across the screen and silently disappear on the other side. Then, before us, the inner hall returned to stillness and silence.

The whole process was a little over seven minutes. What was maddening was the lack of sound; watching such a person crawl silently across was very unsettling.

A Ning pressed the remote, rewound the tape, then played it again. She froze the frame and said to us, "No need to watch the rest. The problem is here."

"What does this mean?" Fatty was baffled and asked me, "Comrade Innocent, who is this person?"

"How should I know!" I said in frustration. I had expected to see Huo Ling appear again, but she didn't. That only made me more confused. Looking at that hunched figure, if the same person had sent the tapes, the video should still have been recorded by Huo Ling. Could it be that by this tape, Huo Ling had become so old she couldn't even stand up?

Fatty turned to ask A Ning what was going on and what had been filmed. "What do you think you saw?" A Ning asked us.

"What's there to ask? That's just a person crawling across the floor of a house," Fatty said.

A Ning ignored him and looked at me meaningfully, asking, "What do you say?" as if trying to see something in me.

I looked at A Ning's expression and asked in surprise, "Isn't it?"

She squinted, a mix of confusion and surprise. "You... don't have any other special feeling?"

Confused, I glanced at Fatty. He was staring at the videotape, making "hmm hmm" sounds, and shook his head. "No."

A Ning stared at me for a long time, then sighed and said, "Alright, then let's watch the second tape. I hope you are mentally prepared."

As she spoke, she inserted the second tape. This time A Ning didn't let us watch from the beginning but started fast-forwarding. When it reached fifteen minutes, she looked at me and said, "You... better take a deep breath."

Her words really made me a bit panicked. Fatty, however, was impatient and said, "Underestimating us, are you? Go ask around—our Comrade Xiao Wu has been around, climbed snowy mountains, braved angry seas. I don't believe there's anything that can scare him. Don't stir up your little woman emotions here. Xiao Wu, say something—am I right or not?"

I ignored him and told A Ning to just start. In the inner room of my own shop, I didn't think I could be that scared either.

A Ning gave Fatty a glare, and the video started playing again. The scene was still that inner hall, but the camera lens seemed to be shaking a little, as if someone was adjusting it. It shook for about two minutes before the lens was straightened. Then, a face emerged from below the lens.

At first the focus was bad, too close to see clearly, but I could already tell it wasn't Huo Ling. Then the person's face moved back a bit, and a figure in gray burial clothes appeared in the frame. He sat trembling on the floor, hair disheveled, but after a few turns I could still see his face.

At the same time, Fatty yelled in shock and snapped his head to look at me. I also felt a chill shoot up from my spine to my scalp. My mouth fell open, and I almost couldn't breathe.

On the screen, the face of the person turning his head around, looking like a madman, was very familiar. It took me a few seconds to recognize it—it was me!