A faint stench hung in the air, growing stronger the closer he got to Ward Three.
The corridor between Ward Two and Ward Three was locked shut — a single iron door separated the two buildings.
Through the gaps in the iron door, he could faintly make out the scene inside Ward Three. Tables and chairs lay overturned, and a heap of bedding had been dumped in the hallway. Strangest of all, the bedding bulged underneath, as if something was hidden beneath it.
Chen Ge stood beside the rusted iron door, his eyes fixed on the keyhole. He had been on the third floor of Ward Two for quite some time now.
"A double-sided lock cylinder?"
Corridor doors in psychiatric hospitals were mostly fitted with double-sided lock cylinders. In an emergency, the door could be locked from either side to seal off access, blocking passage in and out and cordoning off a section entirely.
It seemed like an insignificant detail, but it caught Chen Ge's attention.
He pulled Wang Haiming's key from an inside pocket and tried it against the keyhole.
Perhaps because it hadn't been maintained in ages, the cylinder had rusted shut. The key wouldn't go in at all.
"Looks like I was overthinking it. This key isn't for the corridor door." After comparing the tooth height and spacing of the key against the keyhole, Chen Ge tucked Wang Haiming's key away once more.
He had taken note when he first entered the rehabilitation centre — most of the ward doors had single-sided lock cylinders with very small keyholes, and that key couldn't possibly fit any of them.
"The key was brought out of Ward Three by Wang Haiming. The door it matches is probably somewhere inside Ward Three. And to make a bolder guess — Ward Three only has records for nine patients. Could that missing Room Three patient be Wang Haiming himself?"
Chen Ge couldn't be sure. If it were Wang Haiming, the hospital should have kept discharge records, but Dr. Gao had combed through every file and found nothing about Room Three.
"Just one Wang Haiming shouldn't be enough reason for the hospital to destroy all its records and documentation."
The waters here ran deep. Chen Ge wasn't particularly interested in what exactly had happened in this place five years ago. He just wanted to find the clues his parents had left behind, and the method to close the "door."
Stepping into the third-floor corridor, Chen Ge switched on his flashlight and made his way cautiously past one ward room after another.
"The person I saw in the middle of the hallway earlier — could they be hiding in one of these rooms?"
At the far end of the third-floor corridor, Chen Ge stopped in front of a room of unknown purpose.
A heavy mildew smell emanated from within. The door was also different from the other ward rooms — it had a brand-new padlock hanging on it.
"Not a speck of rust on the lock. It's the same as the one on the main gate of Ward One — freshly installed." Chen Ge took out Wang Haiming's key and tried it. Still no luck.
He glanced back down the pitch-black corridor, and after confirming no one was nearby, he raised the iron hammer and pried the padlock straight off the door panel.
"Good thing it's a wooden door. If it had been iron, I might not have been able to get in."
He pushed the door open, and a thick wave of mildew hit him in the face. Inside, patient gowns, bedsheets, and blankets were piled up like a small mountain.
"This must be Ward Two's laundry room." Chen Ge straightened up. The camera mounted on his chest was recording everything — including every word he spoke.
In the midst of danger, he didn't dare relax and chat with his viewers. Instead, he simply narrated from his own perspective — saying what he thought, describing what he saw — as if he were filming a real horror documentary.