Tales of Aegiceras: Cave in

19. The Fire (7)

Translator: Superbomb

Suddenly, Lu Xia moved excitedly, trying to stand up.

“What’s wrong?” Sun Zheng asked as he helped him up.

“How did Liu Qunfang push the door open? How did you get out of the room just now?” Lu Xia’s voice trembled from excitement.

“What? How did she push the door open?”

“Yes! At that moment, what she saw was the reoccurrence of what had happened on the night of the fire. The door must have been locked, and that was why we couldn’t open it before and after a certain time. So it was impossible that the door could be pushed open from outside!”

“Then…” Sun Zheng was a little confused.

“She heard Chen Juan’s voice and seemed to have seen what had happened that night. Previously, we assumed that she hadn’t entered the cavern, so it was normal that she could open the door. However, if she was already in the cavern at that moment, how did she open the door?”

As if he suddenly thought of something, Sun Zheng clasped his hand. “You mean, she, she…”

“That’s right! She’s the only one who broke the rule. How did she make it? If we can find the answer… “Lu Xia couldn’t help but feel excited. “Perhaps we can find the key to breaking through the cavern, and then we can get out!”

Looking at Lu Xia’s excited expression, Sun Zheng was a little worried.

“Can you still walk?” Sun Zheng felt that Lu Xia had about his entire weight on him, so he couldn’t help but ask him.

Lu Xia tried to move his legs with his face twisted with pain. “Yes, I can.”

In the darkness, Lu Xia put one hand on Sun Zheng’s shoulder while propping on the wall with the other. He rose to his feet slowly but suddenly felt his feet go numb and almost collapse onto the floor. Thankfully, Sun Zhen reached out and helped him up in time.

“Haha!” Lu Xia didn’t give up. Instead, he chuckled and asked, “Am I so heavy?”

Gritting his teeth, Sun Zheng shot a glare at him. “We have to find a place to deal with the wound in your leg.”

Lu Xia grabbed his hand to stop him. “No rush! I should be able to walk. Let’s go to Liu Qunfang’s office first.”

“Where’s Liu Qunfang’s office?”

“I don’t know which office she was working in. We have to look it up.” Lu Xia managed to keep his balance while moving forward.

As he spoke, he reached out and ran his fingers along with Sun Zheng’s clothes.

“Pah!” Sun Zheng slapped his hand off him. Though Lu Xia couldn’t see his expression in the darkness, he could tell he was a little annoyed. “What are you doing?!”

“Hey, what’s the big deal? You’re not a woman!” Lu Xia was amused. He patted Sun Zheng with what he had just taken out from the latter’s pocket. “I just want to find the record. Why are you so sensitive?”

Sun Zheng was rendered speechless at once. After a while, a small cluster of lights flickered in the darkness, and then gradually became a wide circle of light. Sun Zheng ended up turning on the torch obediently.

Lu Xia turned the pages of the notebook with difficulty. He withdrew his hand propping on the wall and threw all his weight on Sun Zheng, which immediately caused the latter to almost lose his balance.

“You frail scholar!” he mumbled and then stuffed the notebook into Sun Zheng’s hands. Taking the torch from him, he rested his chin on Sun Zheng’s shoulder. “I’m holding the torch for you. Hurry up! Flip through it and see if there is any relative record.”

Feeling itchy, Sun Zheng moved his shoulder slightly and started turning the pages.

The dim torchlight shone on the corner of the wall and created a small circle of light on the opposite wall in the narrow corridor. Their shadows on the wall snuggle together, adding a touch of warmth to the dark space.

“Wait!” When Sun Zheng was about to turn a new page, Lu Xia suddenly stopped him. “Oh, I remember!”

“What?” The two of them were so close to each other that when Sun Zheng turned his head in confusion, he suddenly saw Lu Xia’s zooming face with a thin layer of sweat on it. He hurriedly lowered his head.

Without noticing his embarrassment, Lu Xia continued, “I remember that when my uncle asked me to investigate, he said if I had any questions about the record, I could go to the archives room on the 3rd floor where there was a lot of information left behind.”

“So there must be information left behind by Liu Qunfang?” Sun Zheng immediately cheered up. “Let’s go!”

”I’m afraid you have to help me go downstairs,” Lu Xia said helplessly. Though they were in darkness, Sun Zheng seemed to have seen the bitter smile on his face.

Glancing at the guy leaning against his shoulder, Sun Zheng wrapped around the latter’s waist with his arm and walked into the darkness with him.

‘This is not bad! At least we are going downstairs floor by floor.’ Sun Zheng comforted himself.

Lu Xia limped along, leaning against Sun Zheng. When they were about to reach the foot of the staircase, he asked, “Are you afraid of Zhang going upstairs?”

Sun Zheng’s shoulder was obviously trembling slightly. He paused for a moment and suddenly tightened his grip around Lu Xia’s waist. “Did you sense anything different? I felt… something was wrong!”

Lu Xia scanned around, but he didn’t find anything different: They were still in this dead silent hospital, surrounded by darkness. Everything was lifeless and they couldn’t find a way to get out, as if they were in a place abandoned by the world. If it weren’t for that beam of dim torchlight, there was no way he could tell that they were in a corner of a rundown hospital.

“What’s the difference?” Lu Xia didn’t understand what Sun Zheng meant.

“It seemed quieter and darker in here to me…” Sun Zheng said. His voice trailed off as if he had realized what he said didn’t make sense.

Lu Xia was still confused.

“The difference is like the difference between the darkness of the night and the darkness in the graveyard…” Sun Zheng couldn’t describe it clearly, so he had to give up. “Well, forget it! I’m overthinking.”

With that, he couldn’t help but laugh at himself for being too suspicious.

However, Lu Xia didn’t feel relieved. He reminded Sun Zheng to be alert. “The fire in 2000 broke out at midnight, so now it should be after midnight. Most of the dark occurrences happened between midnight and 3 a.m. when some things were most active.”

Although so many strange things had happened, Sun Zheng still did not believe there were ghosts in the world. He frowned when Lu Xia talked about this again.

Lu Xia did not notice Sun Zheng’s subtle reaction, and he continued, “But if those things are very active at this moment, you should be restless, feeling as if something lurking in the darkness, but not feeling as if the whole world suddenly quieted down…”

“You’re not writing a novel… Why are you so serious?” Sun Zheng interrupted Lu Xia who was talking about something even more absurd. “It’s just an illusion. Let’s keep going!”

In the dim torchlight, Sun Zheng was about to step down the stairs leading to the 3rd floor when he suddenly felt a piercing pain in his heart. He felt a little dizzy and the staircase in the torchlight seemed to have turned grey, like something out of a black and white movie.

For a moment, he felt as if someone deep in his memory was whispering out of the torchlight’s reach.

It was indeed a little… strange…

He didn’t tell Lu Xia about it. Managing to calm himself down, he took the first step towards the 3rd floor of Aegiceras Hospital.

Their footsteps sounded both slow and heavy. Sun Zheng felt that he was approaching something step by step, but he didn’t dare to think further.

Helping each other, the two of them finally reached the 3rd floor after quite a while. The echo of their footsteps disappeared like a bit of dust after they walked down the last step.

Neither of them made a sound, and one could not even hear them breathing!

Sun Zheng finally knew what kind of feeling it was.

It was so quiet that he felt as if the whole world were dead.

His lips trembled slightly but he couldn’t utter a word.

“Let’s go! The first room around the corner is the archives room.” Lu Xia’s voice pulled him back to reality, making him feel that there was still a trace of vitality in the world.

Propping one hand on the wall and resting the other on Sun Zheng’s shoulder, Lu Xia continued to limp along. However, when they had just taken a few steps, the two of them stopped at the same time.

It seemed like they were stepping on something sticky and wet!

But what could it be like this in the corridor on the 3rd floor?

At the same time, the two of them lowered their heads. When they saw what was under their feet, they both froze on the spot.

Bl… Blood?

There was a huge pool of purulent blood on the floor which looked like it had just been left behind. In the torchlight, it looked particularly terrifying.

Who was bleeding? Why would they suddenly saw blood here?

Sun Zheng had just started accepting that abnormal outlook of the world, but the sudden appearance of the blood seemed to have brought him back to reality. Wrestling with himself for a while, he eventually reacted in the way that normal people would react. “Who’s injured?! There’s still someone around. Let’s go and help him!”

As he said this, he supported Lu Xia and was about to walk forward.

Lu Xia suddenly stopped him, which nearly caused him to lose his balance and fall backward.

“Wait! Take a closer look,” Lu Xia’s voice sounded extremely serious.

Sun Zheng bent over slightly. Leaning against him, Lu Xia shone the torch on the floor.

This wasn’t the only bloodstain in here.

A scarlet bloodstream wound its way forward into the depth of the corridor, leaving a trail of reddish marks on the floor.

What would they see at the end of this long blood trail?

When Lu Xia lifted the torch slowly and shone it into the distance, he saw more pools of blood on the floor. So much blood made him feel more and more uneasy.

 

Rustle… Rustle…

 

Some noise in the darkness was stirring their mind.

 

Rustle… Rustle…

 

Seeing the blood winding forward, the two of them felt their hearts sinking.

What was it?

 

Rustle… Rustle…

 

It was as if all the ghosts in the hospital had stayed away at this moment. The rustling sound and the bloodstains were like a sinister smile with a tail sound in the darkness, which stimulated the gradually stiffened nerves of the two.

The dim light finally came to an end.

In less than a second, Lu Xia turned off the torch. As if he had figured out what was on his mind, Sun Zhen immediately hoisted him on his shoulder with all his strength and rushed to the first room around the corner.

To their surprise, the door was still open!

The two of them rolled in instantly. Sun Zheng gasped heavily while locking the door from inside.

‘Run!!’ He wanted to cry it out just now, but the word stuck in his throat.

At the end of the blood was a mess of flesh!

It was slowly climbing forward.

 

Rustle… Rustle…

 

It was like a human body. However, no normal person could twist his body like that.

The long trail of blood was the trace left by ‘it’.

It crawled and squirmed on the floor unscrupulously as if everything in the hospital would disappear in its way.

 

Rustle… Rustle…

 

In a panic, the two of them gasped heavily and maintained silent for a long time.

What was it? Where was it going?

Would it… come back?

When they came back to their senses, a number of questions popped into their heads. As their brains just went on strike, they were now filled with questions.

The two of them looked at each other. Lu Xia was so scared that he didn’t even have the strength to turn on the torch.

He did not want to see that ‘thing’ again…

If it suddenly turned around just now, what would it look like?

They didn’t dare think about it anymore.

Though they hadn’t figured out what it was yet, their instincts had told them not to think about it and not to touch it.

Lu Xia gradually calmed down when he saw Sun Zheng was still gasping.

“Zheng, what’s wrong?” he asked in an extremely low voice, as if afraid that something outside the door might overhear what he said.

“My heart… ached… I can’t catch my breath.” Sun Zheng covered his chest with his hand, lying on the floor with his legs curling up.

Lu Xia hurriedly bent over to check. “It could be some kind of malaise… I’ve heard of this. ‘It’ has materialized.”

Sun Zheng turned his face with a painful look. Gritting his teeth, he asked, “…What do you mean? What was that thing we saw just now?”

Lu Xia shook his head. “I can’t explain it clearly. It’s said some ghosts will repeat what people were doing before death. If you insist that I explain it in a scientific way, I can only put it in this way: the waves emitted by such ghosts are very strong. Once these waves resonate with or conflict with that of living creatures, they may cause different reactions.”

Sun Zheng forced a smile and responded, “Really?”

It seemed that he only partially accepted this statement and still had doubts.

“Then tell me…” After a long pause, Sun Zheng continued with a frown, “Who in this hospital would be crawling in the corridor like this… and die?”

“Uh…” Lu Xia seemed to have been thinking about this for a while, but he had no clue. Who would die in such a peculiar manner in a public hospital with people coming and going? Shouldn’t the dead be in the morgue or on the operating table?

The long trail of blood kept flashing in his mind. He felt that there was something he hadn’t figured it out yet.

Sun Zheng seemed to have recovered a little. He heaved a sigh of relief and stood up slowly. When he was stroking his chest, which was still in pain, he felt Lu Xia poking his hand in the darkness, so he reached out and pulled him up helplessly.

“Alright, what should we do now?” asked Sun Zheng as he tugged at Lu Xia, who hadn’t quite on his feet yet.

“We need to find Liu Qunfang’s information first.” Lu Xia turned on the torch again, and the room was immediately lit up with a beam of dim light. “But we have to find another torch so we can search separately.”

Shining the torch around, they saw rows of shelves full of books marked by different types, such as equipment, contract files, and so on, as well as some locked steel cabinets against three walls. In the dim torchlight, they could see the air was thick with dust.

On the right, there seemed to be an open door and it was dark inside.

“It should be a subordinate office over there. Let’s go and have a look.”

As if the two of them had temporarily forgotten the horrible scene outside and seen a glimmer of hope, they helped each other into the office behind the door.

As soon as they stepped in, the two were shocked by the mess of documents on the floor. Papers and documents scattered everywhere as if they had been blown to the floor by a gust of wind. There were also several empty file boxes lying on the floor in disorder, leaving them no room to pace about.

“Was someone sorting out the documents back then?” Sun Zheng asked as he carefully supported Lu Xia into the chair in front of the desk.

“It doesn’t look like…” Lu Xia answered while flashing the torch at the documents on the floor. “Look! The year indicated is 2000.”

“2000?” Sun Zheng squatted down and picked up a sheet of paper. Sure enough, the year 2000 was written at the bottom of it. It seemed to be an ordinary employee assessment card, nothing special.

Lu Xia couldn’t move his feet, so he had to open the drawers one by one to look for a torch that could be used for spare.

“Could it be that someone was rummaging around for some documents?” Sun Zheng flipped through a few more sheets of paper and found that they were full of employee information. As the files were out of order, it was hard to tell what they were used for.

“Oh! Great!” Lu Xia let out of a cheerful cry while handing Sun Zheng another torch. He also found a loaf of bread from somewhere. “Are you hungry?” Do you want to eat? He asked.

Sun Zheng took the torch and looked at the bread hesitantly. “Is it still edible?”

“Why not?” Lu Xia had already ripped off a piece of bread. “I’m hungry anyway.”

“I’ll eat later,” Sun Zheng seemed to have not recovered from the shock. Holding the torch, he flipped through the documents on the floor uneasily. “I think it’s a little strange. Do the people in the hospital collate the data regularly? Why are there so many employee profiles on the floor?”

“Mmm… I don’t know…” Lu Xia mumbled with the bread in his mouth. Just as he turned around, he was attracted by a sheet of paper on the table.

Sun Zheng seemed to be very interested in the pile of documents on the floor. He picked them up one by one and placed them on the table by number.

“Look, Lu Xia! Many of the employees in these documents are either retired or deceased. Could there be Liu Qunfang’s profile here?”

Waiting for quite a while, he didn’t hear from Lu Xia, so he raised his head in confusion.

Lu Xia was staring at the two thin sheets of paper in his hand with a solemn look. He was so dedicated that he had forgotten where he was.

Sun Zheng walked over and saw an envelope that had been opened under a dusty box.

It was a letter addressed to Liu Qunfang.

He shifted his gaze to the letter in Lu Xia’s hand in surprise.

As the letter was written years ago and had not been properly kept, the words on the paper had been soaked and blurred.

He walked behind Lu Xia and tried to read the contents of the letter. The first line of salutation made him even more surprised.

 

“Qunfang, my dear granddaughter,

I’m glad to receive your letter.

I’ve been out of this business for years, and I’m gradually getting away from those things, so I didn’t expect you to send a letter to ask such a question.

I remember that you didn’t like my job ever since you were a child, so you never wanted to be close to me. Probably like the others, you also thought that I was a swindler who always concocted some horror stories to cheat people. I had never tried to explain it to you, actually, I didn’t know how to explain it. For many things, people wouldn’t know anything about them or believe what I was saying unless they saw them. Sometimes, I would feel suspicious of myself. I knew this from the very beginning. Most of the time, we were fighting alone and always in danger. Some people died and some people’s lives were ruined. However, usually, they were thought to have died in an accident or gone missing. One of the two seniors who took me into this industry went missing in Luxi County of Jiangxi Province (do you still remember that I went to Jiangxi for a long time and didn’t come back for your 10th birthday party?), and the other was still in the mental asylum.

Do you remember that I tried to persuade you to resign? Your mother helped you find your current job. You were excited when you got your first paycheck, but I’m sorry, I put a damper on your fun that day. As there was an ominous aura about you, I suggested you quit your job asap. You were annoyed and didn’t even want to come to my house for New Year’s Eve dinner. When I heard your mother describe the hospital, I was sure that it was the place where I had always ‘worked’. Do you still remember that there was an abandoned brickyard in the south of the city? When you were young, you asked me where Aunty Zhang had gone. I pointed at the brickyard and said that she was there. After going home, you told your mother about that, and were beaten up by her. In every city, every place where people gather, there are sins. They gather in a corner of the city, nourishing ‘it’. People who accidentally barge into such a place will be swallowed by ‘it’ and struck there forever.

My job was to rescue those who had a chance to come out.

Stay calm! Don’t act rashly. I already sent a capable person to help you and he will be there in a few days. His name is Lu Xiaoyun, a tall, slim young man who is 25 years old. Please provide the necessary help when he arrives.

I had been fighting with it for so many years, but now I realized that I was wrong.

 

Liu Muran

April 10th, 2001

 

After reading the letter, Lu Xia seemed to have forgotten about Sun Zheng’s existence. He muttered, “…Brother… I finally got the news about you…”

 

“What?! What did you say?” Sun Zhen widened his eyes.

Only then did Lu Xia come back to his senses and notice the presence of him. He then folded the letter in his hand and explained, “That Lu Xiaoyun is my brother.”

“Your, your brother?” Sun Zheng was stunned. “How did your brother have something to do with Liu Qunfang’s grandpa?”

Lu Xia did not answer his question directly. Instead, he said with an expression of admiration, “My brother is professional in this area. I’m just messing around and don’t know anything… Now, I finally found some news about him.”

“Your brother does the same work… as her grandpa?”

“Kind of. One day in 2001, he suddenly told us that he was going to a place for something, and then he packed up and left. In the first few months, we received news from him from time to time, saying that he was safe and sound. However, we lost contact with him in the next year. As this had happened before, we didn’t take it seriously. However, after a long time, there was still no news from him. We didn’t know where he had gone and started looking for him anxiously. Until now, we haven’t found him yet…”

“But you told me that you came at the invitation of the owner of the hospital!” Sun Zheng suddenly widened his eyes. “You lied to me?! You’re not a relative of the director at all. You’re just here to find your brother?”

Lu Xia shrugged helplessly. “But I did inquired of the director about my brother. Look, I suddenly received this and the address here last month… I wonder who sent it…”

He said as he reached his hand into his pocket. “When I thought I was going to die in that room, I still wanted to give this to you…”

Sun Zheng interrupted him angrily. “Pah!” The key Lu Xia had just taken out fell to the floor. “So you have a purpose in the beginning? You tricked me into following the path you were looking for? Is it a part of your scheme to get us into such a damned place?”

Lu Xia smiled bitterly and bent over to pick up the key. “No! I didn’t expect this either.”

Sun Zheng stared at him grumpily without a word, folding his arms in front of his chest.

Lu Xia looked at him apologetically, without knowing what to say. After a long silence, he handed over half of the bread to him in a daze.

“Come on… You’d better eat something…”

Shooting him a glare, Sun Zheng turned to walk outside.

“Wait, Zheng! Where are you going?” Lu Xia grew tense instantly. However, he couldn’t stand up to stop Sun Zheng.

“I can’t follow your route. I have to find a way out on my own,” Sun Zheng said loudly as he walked towards the door.

As soon as he reached the door, Sun Zheng suddenly felt something sticky under his feet. He lowered his head and shone the torch on the floor…

“Wait! Have you forgotten the ‘thing’ outside?!” Lu Xia shouted anxiously, “You…”

Watching him from afar, Lu Xia felt like he was taking his breath away. He wanted to call out Sun Zheng’s name but couldn’t make a sound.

He saw a stream of blood slowly seeping in through the gap between the door and the floor.

 

Rustle… Rustle…

 

Sun Zheng lowered his head and fixed his gaze on the floor beneath his feet with his face turning pale. At this moment, the door in front of him opened slowly by itself, as if blown open by a gentle wind.

 

Rustle… rustle…

 

Sun Zheng looked at the pool of sticky blood spreading under his feet until he could see nothing except for blood in the beam of the torchlight.

Feeling a cool breeze blowing in, he lifted the torch little by little.

Then he suddenly saw a face! A pair of eyes were fixed on him!