"Something's not right!"
Standing inside the well, Wang Wenlong felt a strange sensation—as though he'd plunged into the deep ocean and his body was sinking lower and lower.
His chest felt tight. He didn't dare linger and bent down to pick up the school badge on the ground.
His fingers touched the edge of the badge, and the instant he lifted it, he noticed something seemed to be buried beneath it.
About the size of a thumb, buried in the fine sand.
"A mechanism?" Wang Wenlong was very cautious. He didn't touch the protrusion directly, but instead brushed away the sand around it.
"What's hidden under the sand?" His fingers had already made contact with it. The texture was nothing like the grit of sand and pebbles—softer, colder.
As the sand grains slid away, a face quickly emerged. The protrusion had been the tip of its nose.
"Shit!" Wang Wenlong yanked his hands back. He'd carefully inspected the place before jumping in and hadn't noticed anything off—"This is insidious! Burying it under the sand!"
Had he known there was a "corpse" hidden beneath the sand, he never would have jumped into the well alone.
Panic seized him. He grabbed both school badges from the ground and tossed them out of the dry well. "Pei Hu, pull me up, hurry! There's a dummy in the well too!"
"There's a dummy in the well?" Pei Hu even shone his phone light down. There, half-buried in the sand, was a man's face staring up toward the well opening.
He shivered and reached his hand into the well. "Weird—when you went down earlier, it didn't seem this deep."
Wang Wenlong grabbed Pei Hu's hand, braced his feet against the grotesque claw marks gouged into the well wall, and was just about to push himself upward when he suddenly felt something ice-cold brush against his ankle.
His foot slipped. He plummeted back down into the well.
"Wenlong, what happened?"
"Something just touched me." Wang Wenlong looked down at his ankle, but there was clearly nothing there.
"Maybe a gecko or some little bug?"
"Don't know." Wang Wenlong looked around. He noticed that the sand on the "corpse" at the bottom of the well was sliding away on its own, even without anyone touching it. Soon most of the body was exposed—it looked as though it were about to sit up.
"It moves on its own? It can't be a haunted house actor! I jumped from that height just now—if it were a real person, stepping on him would've made him scream." Wang Wenlong's thoughts grew more and more tangled, his thinking turning murky. "Pei Hu, pull me out! Now!"
He shouted at the top of his lungs. Outside the dry well, Pei Hu heard Wang Wenlong's voice and quickly reached his hand in. "Grab on!"
This time Pei Hu was remarkably loyal. He held his phone up for light with one hand while extending the other deep into the well—his broad, sturdy shoulders made him look thoroughly dependable.
"Got it!" His teammate's voice gave Wang Wenlong a flicker of relief. He gripped Pei Hu's hand, braced his feet against the well wall, and shoved off hard, launching his body upward.
Just as his upper body was about to clear the opening, his dangling legs were suddenly seized by something and yanked downward with tremendous force!
"What the hell?!"
Halfway through the climb, he was dragged back down by sheer brute strength. Wang Wenlong twisted his head in disbelief to look—and the sight froze his blood.
The face in the sand had opened its eyes.