Lonelytree

  Millman97

  The shadow walked out from the room on the third floor. He spotted a glass marble sliding down the steps. He followed it and came to the ground floor. There was no one around. The shadow carried on alone. He saw the marble enter the toilet and stop before the cubicle. The clock for midnight stopped chiming. The shadow moved to the cubicle. He bent down to pick up the marble but noticed that the door of the cubicle was not closed tightly.

  He leaned on the door and looked inside. Everything he saw was red. Holding the marble with both hands, the shadow entered the door. He walked among the redness. Perhaps because of some memory loss, the buildings were blurry. It looked like the mirage of a red city. The shadow lost his way. He wandered aimlessly with the marble until a hand fell on his shoulder. It was a child’s hand, and the fingers were dirtied with black blood. The shadow was jolted from the shock. He slowly turned around, but the image in Chen Ge’s mind ended then.

  “The door in the haunted house is connected to the red city? Does the door lead to the center of the red city itself?” Chen Ge was confused. At least now he could confirm that the shadow had entered the world behind the door, and the corruption had probably started after he entered that door. Based on this memory, at least before he entered the door, the shadow was normal. Even though he would leave his host and go play alone at night, it was within an acceptable range. “The shadow ran into a child with bloody hands behind the door. The child is the key to the change in the shadow.”


  To turn a normal shadow into a Demon God, just the thought of it was mind-boggling. “Thankfully, I didn’t enter the door when I found out about its problem, or else I’d probably be dead already.”


  Fang Yu’s world was collapsing. Chen Ge summoned his employees and picked up the largest fishbowl fragment from the ground.

  “Fang Yu?” Chen Ge looked at the red goldfish, and he frowned with consternation. This was his first time dealing with something like this. The world behind the door was a reflection of the door pusher’s memory. If the door pusher had forgotten all her memories and even herself, then what kind of form would she take behind the door? Hearing Chen Ge’s voice, the goldfish wagged its tail anxiously. Its body was covered with wounds.

  “I’ll bring you with me for now. If you are really Fang Yu, it can prove something else. There are not only human-shaped Specters behind the door, there are other things too that once might have been human beings.”


  With the aid from the Red Specters, Chen Ge held the broken fishbowl and pushed open the black iron door.

  “AH!” A scream shattered the peace of the night. As Chen Ge opened his eyes, he saw something flying at him, and he quickly moved to the side to avoid it. The table lamp knocked against the wall. The glass cover cracked into pieces. If that thing had landed on his head, Chen Ge would have been bleeding profusely.

  “Calm down!” Chen Ge switched on the light and then opened the bedroom door. The kind auntie had been leaning against the door, eavesdropping. The sudden opening of the door caused her to trip into the bedroom.

  “Both of you please calm down! The treatment is already over! The effect is great!” Chen Ge looked at the two confused faces in the room. He walked to Fang Yu’s bedside. “Did you dream about turning into a blood red goldish in a gray and white city? Did you see me there?”


  Fang Yu, who finally calmed down, looked Chen Ge up and down. She nodded rather blankly. “I think you appeared in my nightmare.”


  “That was the power of hypnosis,” Chen Ge said seriously. “This is the solution that I came up with after giving it much thought.”


  “Was it useful?”


  “We will find out now.” Chen Ge turned to Fang Yu. “Do you still remember the name Zhang Yi?”


  Fang Yu’s expression slowly froze. She grabbed his head with her hands and started to scream like she was going through serious mental trauma. Chen Ge did not expect this to happen. With the help from the auntie, they tried to console Fang Yu. After half an hour of comforting, Fang Yu collapsed on the bed and slept from extreme tiredness.

  “She used to suffer from memory loss, but now she has completely lost her mind.” The aunties did not look too happy about this.

  “She has managed to remember some details from the past, but she needs some time to readjust to what she has remembered. She needs to slowly accept her past.”


  Chen Ge looked at the clock on the wall. It was already 3:30 am. The time he had spent behind Fang Yu’s door was much longer than he had anticipated. It was too late to hurry to the Coffin Village that night. “Time moves much faster inside the door than it appears, it is hard to tell whether that is a good or bad thing.”


  After leaving the auntie’s place, Chen Ge quickly took out the black phone. As he expected, there was an unread message.

  “Completed 4/9 of the four-star Trial Mission, Ghost Fetus. The ghost fetus has lost an important part of his memory. Red Specters’ Favored, you do not have much time left!”


  “I wonder how important that piece of lost memory is to the ghost fetus. Is it possible for me to make use of this point to create some trouble for him? Like tricking him into entering a door again?”


  After reading the message, Chen Ge returned to the haunted house to rest.

  A new day had begun. Chen Ge put on the makeup for his employees and took his backpack to find the child with the heart problem. But the child was still not home, and more bizarrely, the child’s neighbors had all moved away. The whole apartment block was empty. With no other option, Chen Ge called a cab to head toward Huai Ai Hospital in Eastern Jiujiang. This was the clue that he had gotten from the old city, someone who appeared to be the ghost fetus’ ‘mother’ seemed to be employed there. It was only 9:30 in the morning, but Chen Ge had visited three locations already, moving from Western Jiujiang to Eastern Jiujiang.

  “I’m sorry, but is the Nurse Yu in?” Chen Ge stood at the registration counter. This was a private hospital, so there was not that many patients.

  “Please go and swipe your ID at the machine over there to get your number first.”


  “I am not here to see the doctor. There is some problem with Nurse Yu’s child, and I wish to have a chat with her.”


  “Sister Yu’s child?” The nurse on duty studied Chen Ge with half belief. Then she pulled up the phone and made a call. Then a female nurse about forty bustled over.

  “You are Madam Yu Jie, aren’t you?” Chen Ge walked over to meet her. He used Yin Yang Vision and did not notice anything too out of place on Yu Jie.

  “I am so sorry. What trouble has my son gotten into this time?” Nurse Yu did not inquire about the reason Chen Ge was there. The first thing that came out of her mouth was an apology as if this was something often that she had to do.

  “Do you mind if we go somewhere more private to talk? This place is not that suitable.” Chen Ge led Nurse Yu out of the private hospital. He did not beat about the bush and came out with the question directly. “Did your son run away from home several years ago? He was living on the second floor of an apartment building in the old city, right?”


  “How do you know that? At the time, he was still in school.” Nurse Yu was getting more confused by Chen Ge’s presence by the moment.

  “Let me first introduce myself. My name is Chen Ge. I often help the police with their cases. These are all news articles about me on the internet.” Chen Ge took out the news articles that he had searched about himself on the internet and showed them to Nurse Yu.

  “An aid to the law enforcement?” Nurse Yu’s expression changed immediately. “Then why are you looking for my son?”


  “Please calm down first. What I am going to tell you next is very important.” Chen Ge paused for a moment. “Your son might be related to a murder case. He is not the killer, but I need your cooperation.”


  “Impossible! My son would not get involved in a murder case! You must be mistaken!” Probably due to the shock and indignation, Nurse Yu shouted out her claim directly.

  “You can choose to not believe me, or you can call the police. However, I am telling you now, the only person who can help him is me.”