The elevator opened one last time on the twelfth floor — right in the middle of the building.
"The game is over, but the twenty-fourth floor still hasn't appeared."
The silver-grey elevator doors faced a pitch-black corridor. Chen Ge stood inside and took out the Ghost Story Association's flyer.
"The first floor corresponds to the twenty-third, the second floor to the twenty-second. The entire building has an odd number of floors, and the twelfth floor sits right in the center with no corresponding level."
After thinking about it for a long while, Chen Ge still couldn't tell whether he had succeeded: "Could it be because the old man saw me? Is that why I failed? Do I need to try all over again?"
It was already Wednesday. Night had deepened, and sitting alone in the elevator staring out at the black corridor made even Chen Ge feel uneasy.
"There's a number 24 on the elevator's display screen, but there's no corresponding button on the control panel. Is this an installer's mistake, or was it intentional?"
Chen Ge was unwilling to leave just like that. He decided to go check the top floor himself.
He pressed the button for the twenty-third floor, and the elevator began rising once more.
The numbers kept changing without stopping in between.
"20… 21… 22…"
Chen Ge watched the display. When the number changed from 22 to 23, he suddenly noticed that the elevator didn't slow down the way it normally did.
The color of the numbers deepened, as though blood were seeping from a wound. A cold wind picked up inside the sealed elevator car, and strange noises drifted in from outside at irregular intervals.
Chen Ge stood in the corner, his body half-crouched, his fingertips lightly touching the pig-butchering knife strapped to his calf.
After roughly two seconds, the elevator began to decelerate. When it came to a complete stop, the final number on the display screen lit up.
"24!"
The silver-grey elevator doors slid open to both sides. A few strands of blood were stuck between them, and a thick, foul stench surged in from outside.
Cupping his hand over his nose and mouth, Chen Ge recognized this smell all too well. He had encountered something similar in Wang Shenglong's room at Haiming Apartments and on the first floor of the Third Ward.
"This stench seems unique to the monsters on the other side of the door!"
The elevator doors opened fully. A cold wind swept through the empty car, and Chen Ge gazed out at the almost entirely black corridor. A flicker of hesitation crossed his eyes.
He didn't walk straight out. First, he set his phone's one-touch dial to Gu Feiyu's number. It took one more step than calling the police, but it effectively prevented the dispatch operator from exposing his existence.
After that was done, Chen Ge reached into an inner pocket and pulled something out. Before coming here, he had debated whether he should bring this item out of the haunted house.
"The flyer has a rule: all members of the Association must not disclose information to one another, so a mask is required."
Chen Ge had many masks in his haunted house, but only one was truly comfortable to wear — the stitched-together face of the Skull-Fracturing Doctor.
"Wearing it, I feel like I can blend into this bunch of lunatics more easily."
Wearing a human-skin mask outside the haunted house for the first time felt somewhat unnatural, but he couldn't afford to dwell on such minor details right now.
Stepping out of the elevator, Chen Ge glanced back. On the walls flanking the elevator doors were streaks of blood and partial bloody handprints, as though someone had struggled to crawl to the elevator only to be brutally dragged away again.
The silver-grey doors slowly slid shut. Once the elevator descended, it never came back up.
"Now how am I supposed to get out of here?"
Things would work out somehow — it was the only comfort Chen Ge could offer himself.
He checked his belongings once more, then walked into the corridor.