Chen Ge hung up the phone and groped his way to the door.
He gripped the skull-crushing hammer in his right hand and pulled the door open just a crack with his left.
Light spilled into the pitch-black corridor. Inside and outside the room felt like two entirely different worlds.
"Who are you looking for?"
A tall, thin man stood in the doorway. His eye sockets were sunken, his skin rough — he looked thoroughly haggard.
"I'm just here to give you a heads-up." The man kept his distance from the door. "Whatever you do, don't spend the night here. Even if you absolutely have to stay in this building, never stay on this floor."
"Why?" Chen Ge wanted to hear what this strange person had to say.
"Never mind why — just don't spend the night here." He coughed twice, reaching his right hand out of his pocket to cover his mouth as though afraid of being overheard. Through gritted teeth, he squeezed out a sentence: "Someone disappeared from one of the rooms on this floor."
"Disappeared in a room?" Chen Ge remembered what the agent had said — the second tenant was an English teacher who had vanished from the apartment under bizarre circumstances.
"Hurry up and leave. If you don't go now, it'll be too late." The man seemed to be acting purely out of goodwill, wanting to come over and warn Chen Ge.
"How do you know all this? Are you a tenant here too?" Chen Ge kept half his body outside the door, the hand holding the skull-crushing hammer hidden inside.
"Yeah, I live upstairs. I heard you talking to yourself down here just now." The tall, thin man wore a worn-out jacket, both hands stuffed in his pockets. He didn't seem to be in good health — he walked very slowly. "I figured you'd take a look around and then leave, but instead you actually went inside. From the way you looked, it seemed like you were planning to spend the night, so I came down to warn you."
"Talking to myself?" Chen Ge swallowed. Anyone else in his shoes would probably have started panicking by now. "Has anything like this happened in this building before?"
"It has, but always during the daytime. You're the first I've seen come here in the dead of night."
"What happened to those people afterward?"
"Some went crazy. Some became tenants here. But those tenants fared worse than going crazy — they either killed themselves or disappeared."
"Some went crazy? Some disappeared? Different people met different fates?"
"Not exactly." The man extended his right hand, gesturing for Chen Ge to come closer, but Chen Ge didn't comply.
The tall, thin man had no choice but to take a step forward himself, lowering his voice. "I heard that the people who went crazy all came through legitimate agencies, while the ones who became tenants and eventually met with disaster had all called a number from a ghost agency."
"A ghost agency?" The memory of the girl on the phone surfaced in Chen Ge's mind — that voice, unchanging yet unfailingly polite. "What's a ghost agency?"
"It goes back a few years. The unit next to yours, 304 — a murder took place there. The victim was apparently a real estate agent, and the killer was never caught." The man took a breath and glanced up the stairs. Everywhere except around Chen Ge's unit was pitch black; it was impossible to tell what he was looking at.
After checking again, the tall, thin man spoke cautiously: "Ever since that incident, the unit's been sitting empty, but strange things kept happening. People would come here to view the apartment, and when asked where they'd seen the rental listing, their answers were all different — some said online, some said a roadside advertisement, and some tenants couldn't even remember where they'd seen it."
The tall, thin man paused at this point and looked at Chen Ge with a hint of suspicion. "Oh, by the way — where did you see the listing? And... how did you get the key to the unit across from 304?"
"It's a bit of a roundabout story." Chen Ge glanced toward the real 304. "I saw a phone number the agent had left on the door, so I called it. Then a man in a black shirt, about thirty-something, gave me the key."
"Thirty-something? Black shirt?" The tall, thin man repeated the words, then suddenly widened his eyes. "He's back!"