Horrorgeschichten, die in einer verlassenen Wohnung spielen

Kapitel 2

When I saw Huang Zhi give me a somewhat forced smile, I was stunned for a moment, unsure how to react. Then I realized that she wasn't looking at me.

"Qianqian, wait for me in the ward. Mom will be back soon." Huang Zhi's eyes were a little unfocused as she spoke. She must be exhausted, having just given birth and then having a heated argument with the doctors and nurses.

The little girl had been standing by the door, not following. Then, hearing her mother's words, she didn't say a word, but slipped into the ward with light, agile steps.

Huang Zhi lay back down. She saw me, her eyes filled with a strange look, but at that moment she didn't have the strength to figure out who the man following behind her was. All she could think about was seeing her newborn child.

In that brief pause, the doctors and nurses all noticed me. A nurse frowned, about to speak, when the doctor approached and whispered, "You're Lao Bai..."

I nodded. Lao Bai was the messenger who sent me the text message.

"Ah, but it's not convenient right now." He glanced at Huang Zhi on the cart. The blush on her face had faded, leaving her deathly pale.

"I know, let's talk about it later when it's convenient. I'll just follow along and see what's going on," I said.

Being a journalist isn't always about bombarding people with questions; sometimes, it's more important to carefully observe how things happen.

Not long after, Huang Zhi was wheeled back into the delivery room. I wanted to follow her in, but I thought it might not be convenient. Before I knew it, the door had closed in front of me.

"Can I go in and take a look?" I asked the nurse who was standing outside the door.

"you?"

"I am a reporter, a reporter from the Morning Star."

"That won't work either. Both the doctor and the patient need to agree." The nurse wouldn't budge.

"It was Lao Bai from the office who notified me to come for the interview. He said there was a strange case. Are you referring to the deformed baby that woman gave birth to earlier?" I asked.

The nurse pursed her lips, her expression suddenly becoming tense.

Judging from her expression, I felt that this matter was not simple. I was initially thinking, how could a deformed child make the newspapers? Could a person give birth to a fish? But seeing the argument just now, and the nurse's bewildered and somewhat shaken face, it seemed that Lao Bai might actually get the bonus this time.

"Why wasn't the baby shown to the mother immediately after birth?" I pressed.

"That's because what she has left is..." The nurse stopped abruptly halfway through her sentence, as if the other half was a taboo, stuck in her throat and she dared not say it.

The nurse took a deep breath, and I thought she was about to tell me the truth, but at that moment, a piercing scream suddenly rang out in the delivery room.

The sound seemed to emanate from the deepest abyss of hell, filled with extreme terror and despair. It was hoarse yet piercingly sharp, emanating like a chilling wind from the tightly closed delivery room door. In an instant, everyone outside paled, and those who had been moving suddenly stopped, falling into a deathly silence. Only the ear-piercing screams echoed in their minds.

A few seconds later, I asked the nurse, "What happened?"

I realized it was a stupid question; the horrific scream left me momentarily stunned.

While the nurses were still there, I tried to push open the delivery room door and rush in.

The door was locked from the inside. I tried turning the knob several times, but it wouldn't open.

"Hey, what are you doing?" The nurse pushed me aside, turned the doorknob to lock it, and shouted inside, "Dr. Zhang, Dr. Zhang!"

It sounded like someone inside replied, but I didn't hear what they said. The nurse immediately stopped calling out.

"What's wrong? Was that the sound just now from the patient being wheeled in?" I asked.

"It's alright, it's alright," the nurse said.

"Nothing wrong? Do you know what happened?" I was being sarcastic; I was getting angry. How could the nurse remain indifferent to such horrific screams just because of a single sentence from the doctor inside?

But as soon as the question was asked, the nurse hesitated, as if she had something difficult to say. Could it be that she really knew something?

"It must be...it must be that the patient saw her remaining child." After saying this, the nurse let out a relieved sigh.

"Her baby?" I remembered just minutes ago in the hallway, Huang Zhi had said without hesitation, "No matter what it looks like, it's my baby." And now she was screaming in terror at the thought of giving birth to her own child…

What did she see? Oh no, what did she give birth to?

As I was filled with doubt and uncertainty, the delivery room door opened. Huang Zhi was wheeled out on a trolley, her eyes tightly closed.

"What's wrong with the patient?" the nurse asked.

"She was so frightened that she fainted. I gave her another sedative injection." The doctor's face also looked terrible, with a layer of sweat on his forehead.

"Was she terrified by the baby she gave birth to? Can I see it?" I asked.

The doctor hesitated for a moment and said, "Okay, come in and take a look. But you can't take pictures."

"I didn't bring my camera," I said as I followed him into the delivery room.

"Click-click—" The doctor turned on the operating light. He took a rubber glove, put it on, bent down, picked something up from the ground, and held it up to me.

I thought I was well-informed, and that scream had given me a good idea of what to expect, but in that instant, the hairs on my body stood on end, and my upper body involuntarily leaned back.

What is this thing?!

I don't know how long it lasted, but I was unable to breathe, completely suffocated by fear. I couldn't see my own face, but I was sure it was ashen.

As soon as I could move, I immediately took a step back. Every joint felt rusty, especially my neck, which cracked with the slightest movement.

"Is this what she gave birth to?" I asked, only to find that my voice was half hoarse.

"Yes." The doctor's lips twitched slightly, though it was hard to tell if he was smiling. He must have been terrified; this sudden attack on me was probably an attempt to have someone share his fear.

This can no longer be considered a baby. It can't even be considered a deformed child.

The thing in front of me has hands and feet, all four limbs intact, and it sways gently with the doctor's hand.

That's right, it's swaying. Because it's just a skin!

Huang Zhi was left with only a baby's skin!

Of course, it's slightly thicker than a layer of skin, but it's definitely not more than a centimeter thick.

Her feet were tangled together, flattened like a fish tail. Her hands and upper body were pressed together, with only faint marks visible between her chest and abdomen.

And the face—

The nose on this face is flattened and twisted to the left; the mouth is slightly pursed; and where the eyes should be, the left eye is somewhat formed, while the right eye has become a slightly sunken hole with some tissue in the center that may be the eyeball.

Imagine a baby being slowly flattened by a massive hydraulic press, then having its blood washed away—it's somewhat similar to what I'm seeing now. But if a baby were actually crushed like that, it would be horrific. However, at this moment, I feel more of a chilling unease, a chilling unease that seeps into my very soul.

How could a person give birth to such a thing?

A thought suddenly popped into my head: This is a baby cursed by the devil!

Chapter Two: The Illusory Twins (Part 1)

The flying saucer landed on the grass, and the airflow ruffled my hair.

"This is just the beginning," Master Wang said proudly, standing beside his flying saucer.

This is Kunshan. Master Wang is a farmer, but it seems he's now switching careers to build flying saucers.

Master Wang has loved tinkering with things since he was a child. He says everyone around him calls him "Master." Starting with homemade radios, he has now expanded to making flying saucers, even selling his fields to buy various materials. The newspaper sent me to interview this extraordinary man and even provided a car. Although I didn't find it particularly remarkable, it was an assignment, so I had to muster my energy for this interview.

The flying saucer is gray, about three meters in diameter, and made of aluminum. It can currently fly more than ten meters high using jet propulsion. Master Wang's next research direction should be to make this thing move, instead of always going straight up and down.

"Soon it will be able to carry people in flight; this is just the beginning," Master Wang emphasized.

"Oh..." I really wanted to tell him that he should buy insurance before manned flights, but I held back. Anyway, he's still a long way from reaching that stage.

Is this more frivolous than a large remote-controlled model airplane? I wondered to myself.

Master Wang is very talkative. I'm actually quite afraid of encountering people like him during interviews because they often don't listen to your questions, they just say what they want to say, and they talk on and on, and you can't stop them no matter what.

"My ideal is to start the chicken coop early."

"Oh...ah? What chicken point engine? What is chicken point?" I asked.

"I came up with this name myself. In fact, American scientists are already conducting similar research. That is, to create an engine that can fold space to achieve faster-than-light travel."

"This... are you sure you didn't see it in some science fiction novel?"

"Of course not, I saw it in the news on Sina a while ago. It seems that a project team has been set up to conduct research on the switch."

"Then what does this have to do with chickens?" I asked, puzzled.

"It's not chicken, it's singularity, the 'odd' in odd and even numbers." Master Wang frowned, probably thinking that the reporter in front of him was quite unbearable, that he had actually thought of poultry when discussing serious scientific issues.

"According to Einstein's theory of general relativity, massive objects cause the surrounding space to curve. The greater the mass, the more the space curves. When the mass reaches a certain level, such as at the center of a black hole, a singularity is formed. At the singularity, space is folded. This is the principle of the singularity engine, which creates miniature black holes to traverse space."

Master Wang's words impressed me; at least they sounded quite profound.

"The US has a research team conducting the study, while you're all alone. How do you plan to begin?"

"Where there's a will, there's a way. I'm currently reading some cutting-edge physics books to prepare."

"What cutting-edge scientific works in physics do you read?" I asked curiously.

“Like Stephen Hawking’s ‘A Brief History of Time’,” Master Wang replied.

I was speechless for a moment.

After finishing the interview with Master Wang, I sat in the interview car, still feeling a bit amused and exasperated by Master Wang's wonderful vision of the singularity engine.

So "A Brief History of Time" is a scientific work on cutting-edge physics. Hawking wrote this popular science book many years ago, and when he came to China a few years ago, he said that his views on black holes had changed since he wrote the book.

The idea of space folding is truly captivating, drawing in both science fiction enthusiasts and experts like Wang Ji. However, as a novice, I tend to think of space folding simply as folding a piece of paper. This inevitably leads me to wonder: if space can be bent and folded like paper, what are the top, bottom, and sides of the paper?

Turn left at the next intersection and you'll reach the highway. The journey from Kunshan to Shanghai only takes about an hour, which is very convenient. While waiting at the red light, I glanced up and saw the road sign.

"Datang 23 kilometers," reads one of the signs.

A thought struck me.

“Master—” I said to the driver.

"how?"

The mouth moves faster than the brain; this is a perfect example of such a situation. I've already spoken, but I haven't actually made up my mind yet.

"Could you pull over for a moment?"

The driver didn't understand why, but he did it anyway.

I glanced at the sign again, and sure enough, Datang is not far from here.

"Can you take me to Datang Village?" I asked the driver without hesitation.

"The Tang Dynasty? The newspaper office needs a car later, I'm afraid it won't make it in time."

"It's okay, you don't need to wait for me after you drop me off there. I'll take a long-distance bus back to the city by myself."

"Alright." The interview vehicle got back on the road and drove straight ahead.

Huang Zhi lived in the Tang Dynasty.

I haven't seen her since the interview I did at the First Maternity and Infant Hospital three years ago. Our correspondence was also one-sided; I replied to her when I received her first letter, but after discovering that she suffered from something like mental illness, I never wrote back.