The dim light fell on the different human faces and the ticking of the clock ensured that everyone was privy to the passing of time. When the two needle hands met, times appeared to roll back to more than a decade ago. The dead had returned with their memories and pain, once again kick starting their journey which was already predestined. “Every single butterfly is the soul of a once brilliant flower, coming back to search for itself.” The reader closed the book. She leaned against the sofa and scanned the people around her weakly. She rarely attended parties like this, the only reason she came today was because her favorite author had invited her. Her eyes quietly travelled to the author who was sitting at the corner. Like usual, the man was silent and quiet.
“I don’t understand it. We’re here simply because of a letter?” The student crossed his arms. He pulled out the earphone from his ear. “I couldn’t care less about whether there are ghosts in this world or not. If you guys want to prove that, go ahead. I’m leaving.”
“There are definitely no ghosts in the world, but there are people who like to go around scaring others like ghosts.” The brute stood at the door. His wiry body leaned firmly against it. “Before that person is captured, no one is leaving this building.”
“The person’s target is me, so why are you guys panicking?” The doctor pinched off his cigarette. His eyes darkened with annoyance and caution. “I don’t know whether there are ghosts in this world or not but assuming if there aren’t, then the person who wants to kill me is currently standing inside this room.”
“But why would someone want to kill you?” Uncle Lee asked without raising his head. His eyes stayed on the medicine bottle he was holding, “Did you do something behind our backs recently?”
“I did what I did to help cure all of us.” The doctor stared at Uncle Lee as if scanning whether he was the killer or not.
“In any case, we better stay put. This building is too unsafe for us to wander about.” The teacher said gently but her gentleness was underpinned by traces of anxiety and well-hidden fear. “I’ve asked around, the neighbours all said that this place is haunted. There have been many inexplicable deaths. Non-local tenants also like to come to this place to commit suicide. They say this building is like a blackhole that only attracts those in despair.” She tried her best to persuade everyone to stay in the room, essentially away from danger. “I believe those deaths are more than mere accidents. I’ve heard many scary stories about this place, stories about monsters with a pig’s face, a stench in the corridor that wouldn’t go away no matter how hard you scrub, suicide victims who continue to crawl towards the rooftop despite their broken bodies and so on. In any case, we need to be extra careful.”
“Those have to be just rumours. After all, there are other tenants living just fine at this place, aren’t there?” The student walked to the door but the brute refused to move. The student was not afraid of ghosts, but he was afraid of the brute. With regards to the question whether ghosts existed in the world or not, the people inside the room each held their own opinion. Neither of them was able to convince the other. After a long fruitless argument, the doctor suddenly turned to the quiet author. “Author, you’re the one who first saw the letter and it was you who accepted the invitation. Do you think it was a ghost or a person who wrote to you?”
The doctor was a very clever person, his every question was laced with traps and hidden meaning. Even though he did not point it out directly, everyone present heard something from the doctor’s words, the doctor appeared to be suspecting the author. The lights in the room suddenly flickered as the electrical power fluctuated. Everyone turned to the author. Compared to everyone else, the author carried himself differently. There was something about him that was hard to describe with words. It was as if there was a noose made from rationality and madness strung around his neck. The noose dropped straight down from heaven. As it closed around the man’s neck, he was also getting closer to the ultimate truth.
Lifting his eyes, the author glanced at the doctor. The latter found himself unable to hold eye contact.
“If I intend to kill you, the 8 of us would be standing around a body discussing why you’ve committed suicide instead.” The implication was powerful and strong. It brooked no argument. “The reason I accepted the invitation was because it will help me complete the ending of my book.”
The lights in the room started to flicker again. As the author spoke, footsteps came from the outside corridor and a light stench wafted into the room. It was as if the moment the author spoke, something about the building had changed. The doctor stared at the author for a long time. His facial expression shifted a few times before it returned to normal again. Then pretending he had not challenged the author, he changed the subject, “I wish to share my experience as a warning for everyone, the killer knows how to make use of the scary rumours to kill people. After you leave this place, it’s best if you stay quietly inside your room, do not leave it until the sun rises…” Before the doctor finished, a strange sound came from the living room door. It sounded like someone scratching their nails against it. Then everyone heard the tingle of wind chime. The sound appeared to come from Room 401.
Following the wind chime came a horrid smell that oozed out from every room corner. No one knew where the smell originated from, it was as if they were standing inside a decomposing body. The student started to dry heave. The teacher and the reader frowned. The dreamer closed her mouth. Only the doctor, the author and Uncle Lee remained unfazed.
The discussion about ghost and killer reached no end, but the discomfort on their bodies continued to heighten. The student looked around trying to find the source of the smell. The Dreamer put down her pen and her face was red from holding her breath. Finally unable to stand it anymore, the student shoved the brute to the side, “Do anything you want but leave me out of it. I’m going back to my room.”
The student placed his hand on the door but when he tried to open the door, another hand fell on it to stop him. The student looked up the arm and saw the author who had magically materialized beside him. He was about to push the author away but when his hand was about to reach the author’s shoulder, he stopped. He saw the author’s face. Deep inside the serene eyes, there was a world disconnected from reality. A place where illusions, paranoia and dreams ran rampant. These were the most common symptoms in a schizophrenic patient. The author had already gotten used to them, they blurred his vision of the real world. “If you leave, you might die.”
Turning around to take in the faces of all the 8 living humans in the room, the author lightly pressed against his temples as different voices travelled into his ears. He tried his best to control himself, he worked his best to suppress the desire to howl, the ram against the door, to tear apart everything. However, each of his words made the room feel a bit more oppressive, his emotions appeared to have the ability to influence all of his sub personas.
The author reached his hands towards the student. According to the script, he was supposed to grab the student, to stop him from leaving. But reality was different from the script. The student subconsciously evaded the author’s grasp, pushed open the door and ran out! This was his body instinct kicking in. He had chosen flight between fight and flight. The lines tumbled out of the student’s mind, all he wanted to do then was to escape from the author’s penetrating gaze.
“Come back!” The moment the door was open, the stench dissipated a lot. The oppressive tension relieved as well. The other actors looked at Han Fei and some sighed in relief. Han Fei’s author was a side character but he was able to influence everyone’s emotion just like the actual main persona. His amazing ability to control the set and his aura impressed Bai Xian who played the doctor, “The young actors nowadays have surprisingly good acting skill.”
“It’s more than that.” Lee Huaiming who was unaffected by the stench and other strange events pulled out a medicine bottle from his shirt pocket. He tossed out two pills to swallow them. “His acting is like a sharp knife that can cut through superficiality and stab right into the audience’s heart. He can easily influence other people’s emotions and he has great mastery over his own. But I fear that he might submerge too deep into his current character, after all, the character that he plays is quite a dangerous person in real life.” Both senior actors approved of Han Fei greatly. While they stood up and planned to have a further chat with Han Fei, a shrill scream came from the corridor.
This was not something that was written in the script. It yanked all the actors back into reality. All of them ran out from Room 404. They saw Xiao Tong, who played the Student, splayed out on the stairs. The steps were scattered with avian dead bodies. Some of them were dead so long ago that their feathers and blood were matted together.
“What’s going on?” Hearing the scream, the doors on the 3rd floor flew open. Director Zhang and the crew rushed over. When they saw the dead bodies, Director Zhang screamed, “Who did this? Prop manager? Prop manager!”
“Director Zhang, this is not the doing of our team!” The Prop Manager hurried over to explain. “Didn’t you order all of us to leave the 4th floor for the actors to rehearse?”
“It’s not your team’s doing?” Director Zhang had the people clear away the dead bodies and then hurried to the 4th floor. “Is everyone alright?”
“We’re fine.” The actors were confused, “Wait, so no one has been on the 4th floor?”
“Yes! We’ve been watching the rehearsal through the livefeed on the 3rd floor. That scene earlier was amazing.”
“Then what about the stench and the nail scratching sound?” Bai Xian was startled, he thought that was arranged by the director.
“The stench?” Director Zhang sniffed about, there was no particular stench around him. But he did not correct Bai Xian. “It was probably the doing of some of the existing tenants. We’ve given them plenty of money as compensation to borrow this building for the shoot but there is still a small number of people who refused to the arrangement.”
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