chapter 7
“How come we heard knocking at the door, but there was no one outside…”
Li Xingyang looked at the footage on the monitor, his face full of confusion.
Xie Peng said, “Are you stupid? It must have been someone playing a prank, knocking and then running away. There are often kids doing that in my building.”
But if only that were really the case.
Last night, Meng Yifan and I both clearly saw a girl standing outside the door.
The camera I installed in the living room was pointed right at the front door. If the door was open, it could even capture the area outside, including the elevator entrance.
But why did the surveillance footage capture both Meng Yifan and me, but not the girl?
At that moment, both Meng Yifan and I turned pale with fear, our minds going blank, not daring to think any further.
In the next part of the footage, it should have shown Meng Yifan scolding the girl and talking to her, but the footage didn’t show the girl at all. It just looked like Meng Yifan was talking to himself, like a lunatic, losing his temper at thin air.
And I looked even more foolish, watching him lose his temper at nothing.
At this point, Xie Peng and Li Xingyang also realized something was wrong.
They looked at the now-stunned Meng Yifan. “Boss, who were you talking to…”
Meng Yifan was trembling all over. He opened his mouth, but couldn’t say a single word.
I figured he was scared out of his wits.
I said, my voice shaking, “Someone knocked on the door last night, it was a girl. That girl also came the day before, saying she was looking for a woman named Li Xiumei. Both Old Meng and I saw her, but why didn’t the surveillance show her…”
Xie Peng and Li Xingyang jumped to their feet, staring at us in terror.
Li Xingyang hurried over to pull open the living room curtains, trying to let the sunlight in.
But the lighting in this apartment was poor. Even with the curtains open, the whole living room still felt dim.
“How… how could this be!”
“The surveillance caught both of you, so how could it not catch the girl who knocked on the door?”
The two of them couldn’t figure it out. Maybe they already understood something, but didn’t dare to say it out loud.
And how was I supposed to explain it?
I couldn’t even say that word, especially not in the very room where it happened.
What I couldn’t figure out was, if someone really died in this apartment, and that girl was a ghost… could she be the one who died here?
Could she be Li Xiumei? But why would she be looking for me?
If she wasn’t Li Xiumei, then who exactly was Li Xiumei?
Thinking about the changes in the footprints, what puzzled me even more was, if this apartment really was haunted, then this ghost-did it come in, or did it go out…
We continued to check the surveillance footage.
Just as I thought, both Meng Yifan and I were sleepwalking. Before I went to bed, I had locked the master bedroom door, but the footage showed that, while sleepwalking, I first unlocked the door and then opened it.
And Meng Yifan and I were sleepwalking at the same time, just like the night before, coming out of the master bedroom right at two o’clock.
The two of us, one after the other, eyes closed, walked to the sofa in the living room and sat down. Then Meng Yifan picked up the remote and turned on the TV.
At this point, Meng Yifan had already collapsed onto the floor.
The word “fear” didn’t seem enough to describe how he felt at that moment.
Xie Peng and Li Xingyang were also badly frightened by what they saw of us on the surveillance.
The atmosphere in the living room instantly became heavy and silent, a strange, indescribable feeling seemed to fill every corner of the apartment.
I got up and walked straight into the master bedroom, lying down on the bed in a starfish position.
Meng Yifan and the others followed me in. Seeing me like this, they were puzzled and asked what I was doing.
“If something really happened in this house, why isn’t there any record in the police’s internal files?”
I looked up at the ceiling and said, “And the police even sent people to visit the neighborhood, but they didn’t find anything. That leaves only one explanation: someone died in here, but nobody knows about it.”
After hearing my analysis, Meng Yifan and the others turned even paler.
If we follow this line of reasoning, it means that a murder once happened in this house, and no one knows the killer committed it here.
“The buyers always say there’s a pair of eyes watching them, and they only feel it in the master bedroom. I suspect the room where something happened is probably the master bedroom.”
The Concrete Shoe Print from the first night led straight to the master bedroom.
And last night, the girl who came looking for Li Xiumei also pointed to the master bedroom with her left hand.
All these strange things add up, making me suspect that the problem lies in the master bedroom.
“Second-in-Command, don’t scare us…”
Xie Peng and Li Xingyang, the two young guys, were already hugging each other in fear.
Honestly, even I was about to wet myself after watching the surveillance footage.
Getting involved in something like this is just bad luck.
Meng Yifan walked over and said, “But the two of us don’t seem to feel like anyone is watching us…”
I nodded. Meng Yifan had only stayed one night, while I’d been here for two. I really hadn’t felt the peeping sensation the couple described.
“But they haven’t experienced what the two of us have, right?”
If that couple had sleepwalked every night, and every night had the girl come knocking, they would’ve told us long ago to get out of the lease.
“I also heard the sound of cement being plastered on the walls.”
At this point, I had nothing to hide, so I told Meng Yifan about it.
After hearing it, Meng Yifan was completely stunned.
I said, “If there really are those eyes in this room, where do you think they’re hiding?”
After hearing me, Meng Yifan and the others started searching all around, trying to find where those eyes could be hidden.
The reason I was lying on the ** was to simulate the feeling the couple described of being watched, and then try to find those eyes.
Ceiling?
Not likely.
The wall behind the nightstand?
Also unlikely, because the other side of that wall is the outside of the house, and the wall isn’t thick.
The window wall is even less likely, and the wall directly facing the bed is the living room outside, the TV wall, which is too thin to hide anything.
That only leaves the wall with the wardrobe.
“Have you noticed that the master bedroom’s space is odd? The area is actually the same as the second bedroom.”
I quickly noticed something was off and hurried to discuss it with Meng Yifan and the others.
People in our line of work may not have studied architecture, but we all know a thing or two about house structure and design.
Normally, no matter the size of the house, the master bedroom should be bigger than the second bedroom-otherwise, how do you distinguish between them?
But in this house, the second bedroom is already small, so the master bedroom should logically be larger, yet it’s ridiculously small.
No designer in the world would design it this way, especially since this is a large flat over a hundred square meters.
Unless… the master bedroom originally had more space.
It’s just that part of the space has been deliberately hidden away.