"What you think about during the day, you dream about at night — that's perfectly normal." Li Zheng knew Chen Ge well enough, and in his view, someone with Chen Ge's temperament would never do something as deranged as hiding under a bed to commit murder.
"I know you don't believe me, but it really wasn't a dream." Jia Ming's voice dropped low, his tone taking on a strange edge. "Have you ever wondered what the version of you in the mirror is doing when you stand in front of it washing your face? Does it lower its head to wash along with you, or does it just stand there inside the mirror, looking down at you from above? Have you ever had someone in a bathroom stall ask to borrow something from you, only to step outside and realize you were the only one in the restroom the whole time? Have you noticed that whenever you call someone closest to you, they always say there's noise on your end — like a bunch of things standing right beside you?"
Jia Ming gripped the bed with both hands, tighter and tighter. "I've experienced every single one of those things."
"I think I should call the doctor in." Li Zheng was an atheist. He had studied basic criminal psychology and abnormal psychology at the police academy, and in his view, if Jia Ming wasn't lying, then something had to be wrong with his head — most likely some kind of delusional disorder.
"Before the doctor comes in, could you just listen to a few stories?" Jia Ming turned his head toward Chen Ge. "Stories about him and me."
"You two seem awfully close?" Li Zheng nodded his agreement.
"After I left Jiang Long's place, I panicked and ran blindly for half an hour before circling all the way back home."
"I was renting at the time. The landlady was an old woman — she lived on the first floor, I lived on the second, and the third floor was a storage room."
"It was very late when I got back. As soon as I entered the stairwell, the old woman's cat started yowling — not the playful meowing it usually made. The sounds were short, shrill, and deeply unsettling."
"Maybe the cat woke her up, because after a while the old woman opened her inner door and looked at me. She said one sentence."
"'Keep it down, would you? It's the middle of the night — what are you doing running around out there?'" Even now, Jia Ming couldn't forget the old woman's expression. He mimicked it rather well.
"I hurried to apologize, but when I reached the second floor, something felt wrong. I looked back — the stairwell behind me was pitch black and clearly I was the only person there. So why had the old woman said 'you' — plural?"
"A chill surged from my spine straight to the top of my head. I scrambled to my front door and fumbled for my keys, but the more frantic I got, the harder they were to find. That was when something else strange happened."
"From the third-floor storage room came a thudding sound — like something round rolling across the floor."
"When I first moved in, the old woman had told me the third floor was unoccupied, used only for storage. I'd asked her why, and she said her son's family used to live up there, but all three of them — the whole family — had died in a car accident. The third floor had been vacated since then, but the old woman refused to rent it out. She wanted to keep it as a memento."
"Now, from the floor that had never been lived in, there was a noise. I didn't dare linger in the stairwell. I dug my keys out of my jacket's outer pocket — but the moment I found them, the sound stopped."
"Curious, I glanced upstairs. At the corner of the third-floor landing, there was a pair of gray feet. Because of the angle, I could only see the feet."
"I was terrified. I threw open my door at full speed."
"Inside, I still couldn't settle my nerves. I shut the outer security door, and as I was about to close the inner one, curiosity got the better of me — I wanted to see who those gray feet belonged to."
"I crouched down at the crack of the door, adjusting my angle, slowly lowering my body. My line of sight crept upward, and there — a pair of gray legs. Just as I was about to look higher, a child's head suddenly swung into view!"
"The posture was utterly grotesque. Its legs were perfectly straight, yet its head was tilted so far to the side it was nearly touching its feet — no normal human body could contort into that position.