"A person without a shadow?" Everyone should have a shadow, unless they weren't human to begin with, or they were someone else's shadow that had slipped away on its own.
Chen Ge confirmed with the old woman once more: "You're sure you saw clearly?"
"Mm." In the old woman's memory, that strange person had looked exactly like Chen Ge. She stared at the Chen Ge before her now, feeling a peculiar sensation: "He was standing right outside the door that day. I'd ask him questions, but he wouldn't answer. He just kept muttering someone's name under his breath."
"A name? Can you remember what it was?" To ease the old woman's suspicion, Chen Ge pulled out his phone, switched on the flashlight, and aimed it at himself. His shadow appeared behind him. "Grandma, I do have a shadow. The person you saw just happened to resemble me, that's all."
"I can't quite recall. I'll tell you once it comes back to me." The old woman and Chen Ge exchanged phone numbers.
"Grandma, besides the name, do you remember anything else about that person? How long did he stand at the door? After he left, did anything in this little building change?" Chen Ge was worried that the shadow had left some hidden trap behind. The enemy had laid plans across the entire Eastern Suburbs — the scope of his scheme was enormous. Anyone dealing with him had to be extremely cautious.
"After Jia Ming ran out, the person at the door vanished too. After he left, nothing was stolen from my building. But I kept feeling like something was missing. I can't explain it — it's as if something very important was taken away by that man." The old woman sighed, her hunched back trembling as she shuffled slowly through the room. "I searched every corner of the building. Nothing was gone, but that feeling never went away. It's been very uncomfortable."
"You felt like something was missing?"
"I've told you everything I know. When you leave, remember to close the door behind you." The old woman seemed to have been reminded of something painful. She stopped talking to Chen Ge and tottered out of the room.
Chen Ge was about to follow her out when something grabbed his clothes.
He looked back. Five crooked fingers were clutching at the hem of his shirt. A female ghost with a twisted, deformed body crawled out from beneath the coffee table.
"I wasn't trying to leave…" Chen Ge's gaze swept over the female ghost and the child. Something suddenly clicked — ever since he'd entered this room, he had only seen the female ghost and the child, but never the old woman's son. "A family of three was killed in a car accident. The wife and child are both here. There's no reason the husband wouldn't appear."
He connected this to what the old woman had just said. After the shadow left, she felt as though something vital had been taken from her.
Could the ghost her son had become have been taken away by the shadow?
Chen Ge decided to try. He pondered for a moment, then spoke: "A few years ago, you must have seen that evil spirit who looks like me. Can you tell me anything about him?"
The two ghosts lay in the distance, eyes fixed on Chen Ge. It was impossible to tell what they were thinking.
"If I don't kill him, sooner or later he'll kill me. If he's hurt you too, then he's our common enemy." Chen Ge bent down and extended his own hands, reaching for the female ghost's crooked, blood-stained fingers. "I can help you. I don't say that lightly."
The instant the female ghost sensed Chen Ge's intention to take her hand, she recoiled.
The room fell silent. After a moment, the little boy darted into the bedroom and fished out a tattered school bag from under the bed. He placed paper and a pen on the coffee table in the living room. The female ghost's tangled hair wound itself around the pen, and on that scrap of paper, crooked characters began to appear one by one.
"He's alive. He didn't fully die. The shadow is only a part of him. My husband stayed behind so the rest of us could escape. He devoured my husband. He's growing stronger." Chen Ge read the words aloud from the paper.
"Alive? What does that mean? The shadow's original body is still alive? He's human? But how could a human possibly devour a ghost?" Chen Ge didn't know what the female ghost's definition of death was — it was probably different from the medical definition. But even so, this was enough to shock him. "That shadow's original body can't be classified as a ghost — or rather, he's different from ordinary ghosts. This enemy really is impossible to figure out."