"Hitting his head against the wall? Something running around inside his head?"
It was possible that both of them had been possessed by something foul — only Zhang Peng had willingly partnered with it, while Wang Haiming had struggled and resisted.
Midnight was the time when yin energy peaked in a twenty-four-hour cycle, and also when foul things were most active. That explained why he always had his episodes in the dead of night.
Chen Ge decided to press further along this thread: "Brother, aside from going crazy at night, did Wang Haiming show any other abnormal behavior?"
"When he was first discharged from the psychiatric hospital, he actually seemed pretty normal — just didn't talk much. After living together for a while, we started noticing plenty of things off about him. During the day there wasn't much wrong; sometimes he'd even take the initiative to greet people. But once night fell, he was a completely different person. He'd smash his head against the wall, scream abuse at mirrors and walls, grab his own throat and squeeze until his face turned purple — and even then he wouldn't let go."
Through the middle-aged man's account, Chen Ge learned about Wang Haiming's past.
Wang Haiming's second wife had swindled him out of his money and had him committed to a psychiatric hospital. If this had been a premeditated scheme, then there was a very high chance Wang Haiming had been perfectly sane before entering the hospital.
A sane person goes into a psychiatric hospital, undergoes treatment for a period of time, and comes out with problems instead.
"The foul thing on him must have been something he brought out of that hospital." Chen Ge now had his answer. He asked another question: "Could you go into detail about how Wang Haiming died?"
The disheveled middle-aged man raised the bottle in his hand and took a long, hard swig: "I don't know why you're so curious about a dead man, but I'd advise you not to dig too deep. You might get yourself stuck in it. That apartment has something wrong with it."
"Appreciate the warning, but I know what I'm doing."
Only after Chen Ge's repeated insistence did the middle-aged man finally tell the truth: "Before, when Wang Haiming was carrying on in that apartment, we could all hear him screaming. Neighbors would go check on him, or call the police for help. But the day it happened, nobody in the whole building heard a sound from him. The next morning, when the landlord went to bring him food, they found his body had already gone cold."
"What did the scene look like?" Chen Ge asked — this detail was crucial to piecing together the chain of events.
The middle-aged man gave Chen Ge an odd look. He couldn't figure out why this young man was so interested in these things: "I was there at the time. Wang Haiming had bashed a huge hole in his head. The wall between 303 and 304 was covered in blood. His face was a bluish-purple, like he'd suffocated, and there were finger marks on his neck. But when the police compared them later, the prints turned out to be Wang Haiming's own."
"So you're saying he strangled himself?"
"He was the only one in the apartment. Doors and windows were all intact. Seems like that's the only possibility." The middle-aged man finished the last of his drink and casually shoved the empty bottle into the shoe cabinet: "Done asking? It's still early — I need to go downstairs and buy more booze."
"Still early?" Chen Ge glanced out the window at the pitch-black sky but didn't comment on the man's remark. "One last question — after Wang Haiming's incident, did anything strange happen around here?"
The moment the question left his lips, the disheveled middle-aged man's expression shifted subtly. He glanced at the hundred-yuan bill clutched in his hand and whispered to Chen Ge: "A lot of the old tenants in the building have seen it. Wang Haiming came back."
"Wang Haiming? But isn't he already—" Before Chen Ge could finish, the man pushed him out the door. "Hey! Spill it — what do you mean he came back?!"
He stood in the low, dark hallway, turning the middle-aged man's words over in his mind. "Wang Haiming came back…?"