chapter 6
I’ve never had a problem with sleepwalking.
But ever since I slept in the master bedroom of this house last night, I inexplicably started sleepwalking.
And tonight, when I slept here with Meng Yifan, not only did I sleepwalk, but even Meng Yifan started sleepwalking too.
Even though I’m not superstitious, I have to admit this house is seriously strange.
And with the reappearance of the vanished Concrete Shoe Print, my first reaction was to get out of here!
There’s something wrong with this house!
But Meng Yifan was still sleepwalking, and he didn’t seem to have woken up at all.
I mustered up my courage and called out to him twice.
But I didn’t dare to shout too loudly, because I’ve heard that if you startle someone awake while they’re sleepwalking, it can make them lose their mind.
Luckily, even though I called softly, Meng Yifan still woke up.
He opened his eyes in confusion, and the remote control in his hand fell to the floor with a ‘clack’.
After taking in his surroundings, he shivered violently, his gaze landing on the floor at the entrance to the master bedroom.
He seemed to see those shocking Concrete Shoe Prints too.
“Damn! Damn!”
He cried out twice, and without caring about me, scrambled out of the house in a panic.
“Meng Yifan! Wait for me!”
I was scared stiff too, grabbed my phone, and dashed out of the living room.
The two of us bolted down the stairs, not daring to stop for a second. We didn’t stop running until we’d left the neighborhood, and I noticed Meng Yifan had even lost his slippers.
On the deserted street, the only sound was a distant cleaner sweeping the ground.
Meng Yifan and I crouched under a tree, hugging our knees and shivering.
“How is this possible… How is this possible…”
“I was sleeping just fine… perfectly fine…”
Meng Yifan’s reaction was even stronger than mine.
He’s usually a pretty brave guy, but who wouldn’t break down after something like this?
“Boss Meng, that house… could something really have happened there…?” I finally managed to ask him after a long pause.
He looked at me too, his expression extremely grim: “You’re the one who sold the house, what’s the point of asking me? I should be asking you!”
I said I really couldn’t guarantee now that nothing had happened in that house.
Anyway, I’d asked the seller before, and they said nothing had happened.
Even the police had investigated, and surely the police wouldn’t help the seller lie, right?
Suddenly, I remembered something the Old Woman in the neighborhood had told me: she said the house had been sold once before, and the buyer was the current seller.
But after buying the house, the seller never lived in it, leaving it empty for over ten years before listing it with our agency.
If there’s nothing wrong with the house, why would the seller leave it vacant for so long?
Even if he’d rented it out, he could have made back a lot of money over those ten years.
At this moment, Meng Yifan and I both tacitly understood: if we said nothing had happened in that house, neither of us would believe it.
“This is seriously unlucky. This is going to be hard to deal with now.” Meng Yifan’s face was extremely grim.
I understood what he meant-the house was definitely going to be returned.
Because we’d installed surveillance cameras in the house, we had to show the footage to the buyers.
If we didn’t, it would look suspicious. But if we did, the footage would show us running out twice, and both Meng Yifan and I sleepwalking-how could we possibly explain that?
There’s no way to hide this.
And now, returning the house is the least of our problems. At worst, we’d just refund the agency fee, but if the buyers decided to sue us, we’d not only have to return the money, but also face a lawsuit and pay damages!
“There’s definitely something wrong with that house.”
I said, “You saw those Concrete Shoe Prints too, right?”
At the mention of ‘shoe print,’ Meng Yifan’s face instantly turned pale again.
“I’ve never had a problem with sleepwalking before. How could I suddenly start sleepwalking? And when I woke up, I saw…”
He trailed off, unable to continue.
Seeing how terrified he was, I didn’t dare say anything else.
For example, the sound of high heels walking, or the sound of someone painting the walls.
What frightened me even more was that the Concrete Shoe Print I saw just now was a bit different from the one yesterday.
Yesterday’s shoe print had the pointed toe facing forward and the heel marked behind, and it disappeared right at the master bedroom door. This meant that the owner of those high heels was heading into the master bedroom.
But today, the shoe prints I saw had the heel in front and the pointed toe behind, and they stretched from the master bedroom door all the way to the living room entrance.
This meant… the owner of those high heels had left the room.
Meng Yifan and I stayed outside the apartment complex until dawn. Meng Yifan asked me to call two people to come over so we could go back to the house together and check it out again.
Honestly, neither of us wanted to go back, but we had no choice. If we didn’t deal with that house properly, we might really end up in legal trouble.
I took out my phone and called two clerks from our agency.
These two clerks were recent college graduates, one named Xie Peng and the other Li Xingyang. Both were obedient young men.
When they received my call, they were a bit confused. I didn’t say much over the phone, just told them to hurry over by taxi, and Meng Yifan would reimburse their fare.
About half an hour later, the two arrived one after another, thoughtfully bringing breakfast for Meng Yifan and me.
“Bosses, what are we doing here? Showing a house to clients?” Xie Peng thought we had a business opportunity.
Meng Yifan, pale-faced, said, “We’re not showing it to clients. We’re going to look ourselves. The house Second-in-Command sold six months ago… there’s really something wrong with it. It’s not clean inside.”
Xie Peng and Li Xingyang, both well-educated young men, were stunned, staring at us with wide eyes.
“Not clean… Maybe we should call a cleaning company to tidy up.”
“Tidy up my ass! That place is haunted!”
We couldn’t explain it clearly, so we just took Xie Peng and Li Xingyang back to the house with us.
Naturally, they didn’t believe us, thinking we were just messing with them.
After all, if you haven’t personally experienced something strange, it’s really hard to believe such things exist in this world.
We quickly returned to the house and checked every room first.
But just looking around in broad daylight, there was nothing unusual at all.
And just like yesterday, after Meng Yifan and I left and came back, the Concrete Shoe Print had already disappeared.
In the end, we could only check the surveillance footage again.
The four of us sat around the computer and started watching from eleven o’clock last night.
When the video reached midnight, the surveillance suddenly picked up the sound of knocking-this was the girl who came looking for Li Xiumei, knocking on the door for the second time.
Meng Yifan and I didn’t pay much attention to the knocking, and kept the video playing at over ten times speed.
But soon, when the footage reached the moment Meng Yifan opened the door, I hurriedly hit pause, feeling as if I’d been struck by lightning.
Meng Yifan and I stared at each other, both sweating profusely.
On the video, after Meng Yifan opened the door, outside… there was no one!
On the surveillance footage, only Meng Yifan and I stood dumbly inside the door, and outside the door…
No one!
Not a single person!