Corpse raising

Chapter 4

As I was thinking this, the lock clicked open.

Cheng Rui almost dropped the keys in his hand. As soon as he entered, he saw a shadow standing straight in the doorway. The man was thin and bony, with deep-set eyes, making him look three parts human and seven parts ghost in the dark ward.

"What...what are you doing standing here? Xu Yao, come back quickly..." Cheng Rui shook himself up and decided to coax his friend back to the hospital bed. Unexpectedly, he was suddenly pulled and felt a heavy, dull pain in his wrist. Cheng Rui realized that Xu Yao wanted to kick him out of the house.

"Hey! It's Cheng Rui! Haven't you had enough?" Grabbing Xu Yao's arm through the pain, Cheng Rui suddenly felt a needle-like pain on the back of his hand. Damn it! That guy actually used the IV needle to prick himself!

"Are you crazy?!"

He snatched the needle from Xu Yao's hand. Xu Yao was still very weak and lacked strength. After a while, Cheng Rui finally managed to subdue Xu Yao. He wiped his face and looked at his friend, who he had subdued, panting heavily.

He was even more miserable than himself; while stabbing others, he also stabbed himself, blood dripping down his face.

The pain in his hand made Cheng Rui almost want to punch someone, but seeing Xu Yao's appearance as the perpetrator, Cheng Rui took a few deep breaths and finally decided to give up.

Xu Yao used the IV drip that was already attached to him to prick himself. It seemed that he had forcibly pulled the needle out, and it was unclear where else he had pricked himself. Blood was flowing continuously from Xu Yao's hand.

"Wait a minute, I'll go get the new IV drip." Having regained his composure, Cheng Rui was about to leave when he suddenly felt a sharp pain in his forehead! Looking up, he realized that the door had been slammed shut.

It's Xu Yao again! Gritting his teeth, Cheng Rui turned around and looked at Xu Yao behind him, but he couldn't say anything.

That same expression again... utterly terrified, eyes wide open...

Looking at Xu Yao like this, Cheng Rui suddenly felt a little cold himself.

"Never mind, there should be some gauze here. Let me bandage your wound first." Turning around and turning on the light, Cheng Rui rummaged through the first-aid kit in the cabinet. "Found it... Ah! Why are you hiding behind me? That's scary!"

Startled by Xu Yao's sudden appearance behind him, Cheng Rui turned around, patting his chest, feeling both annoyed and amused.

Startled? When did I start going crazy like him?

While bandaging Xu Yao's wounds, Xu Yao remained quiet. Sensing that Xu Yao seemed to have calmed down, Cheng Rui decided that now might be a good time to ask him. So, pretending to be nonchalant, Cheng Rui slowly began, "Ah Yao, tell me, what happened to you?"

Xu Yao remained silent for a long time, and even after Cheng Rui finished bandaging his hands, he still didn't speak. Cheng Rui looked up in surprise and saw Xu Yao staring at the door.

Xu Yao stared intently at the door without even blinking.

"Ah Yao, I'm asking you, what happened...?"

"Shh..." Xu Yao made her first sound of the night. The sound seemed thin and pale in the quiet single room, and Cheng Rui subconsciously shrugged.

Xu Yao straightened up and stood up, then quickly stopped and remained motionless.

"Did you hear anything?"

"A sound?" Cheng Rui asked, puzzled. But after Xu Yao's words, Cheng Rui finally consciously quieted down and pricked up his ears to listen outside the door. Quiet and still…

"No." Cheng Rui shook his head.

"Really not?" Xu Yao's voice rose another octave.

Seeing his friend's expression, Cheng Rui finally realized that he really wanted his answer, so he stood up and walked towards the door. "I didn't hear anything. How about we open the door and take a look?" Cheng Rui put his hand on the armrest and pretended to open the door.

"No! Don't open the door! Keep it closed! Just keep it closed!" Xu Yao's almost hysterical scream finally stopped Cheng Rui's actions. Cheng Rui lowered his hand and turned around.

Fortunately, there weren't many patients on this floor right now. To allow Xu Yao some peace and quiet, the doting hospital director chose a room for his son at the very top, where there were no neighbors. Otherwise, Xu Yao's shout just now would have surely woken up the surrounding patients, and someone with a heart condition might have even died…

Thinking of this, Cheng Rui even had a slight smile on his lips.

"What are you laughing at? I'm not joking with you." Xu Yao's expression was serious as he looked at Cheng Rui's face, and Cheng Rui's lips straightened again.

"I won't laugh, don't worry. This is a VIP ward, not many people stay here. Your dad chose the quietest place for you. For your dad's sake, you have to get better." Cheng Rui scratched his head, noticing that Xu Yao seemed to have recovered, and resumed his usual conversation with Xu Yao.

"Really? There's no one around?" Xu Yao still looked unconvinced.

"If you don't believe me, go out and see for yourself. Didn't you say before that this is the best place to pick up girls in the hospital? The beds are comfortable and no one walks by. It's even more fucking comfortable than a hotel..." Cheng Rui loosened his tie and glanced at Xu Yao.

Cheng Rui knew perfectly well how cunning his friend was. Exhausted from a long day, and not wanting to put on an act in front of his friend, he pulled out a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, ignoring the "NO" sign on the door.

He saw the "SMOKING" sign, lit it, and started smoking.

"Give me...give me one." Xu Yao looked at Cheng Rui and stretched out her hand.

Looking at his friend's arm, which had been strong not long ago but was now muscular and bony, Cheng Rui handed Xu Yao the whole pack of cigarettes, along with a lighter.

"Don't let your father know I gave you a cigarette."

After saying this, the two quietly smoked in the ward. Amidst the swirling smoke, they seemed to have returned to their past selves.

Perhaps it was the effect of nicotine, but Xu Yao, who had never spoken of her fears before, suddenly opened her mouth.

"Cheng Rui, do you know?"

"Know what?"

"Why did I become like this...?"

"Tsk! You bastard, you fainted without saying a word, and today was another ordeal. No matter how much I ask, you won't say a word. Who knows!"

Listening to Cheng Rui's complaints, Xu Yao's eyes were deep and unfocused. Instead of looking at Cheng Rui, Xu Yao followed the smoke exhaled from his mouth and nose—

Without windows or ventilation equipment, the smoke they produced simply drifted out through the louvers under the door...

"Perhaps... you guessed right..."

"What?"

"The reason I became like this... only ghosts truly know..."

Seeing Xu Yao's expression through the smoke, Cheng Rui couldn't help but feel a jolt of surprise.

Chapter Three: Outside the Door...

If you dream for too long, you'll lose track of which is the dream and which is reality.

I started hearing children crying constantly.

"That day... I discovered that... you know, right?" Xu Yao said slowly.

"Hmm." Surely no one in City C doesn't know this, right? Cheng Rui didn't seem to care much.

"The newspaper said it was a stillborn baby, but... when I found it, it was still moving..."

As Xu Yao spoke, she couldn't help but touch her left hand. The feeling of those tiny, claw-like things gripping her fingers seemed to penetrate her skin and reach deep into her bones...

"Even though it was already dead, its body was rotting and stinking, but that thing was still moving... I couldn't help but use the hook I used to hook it... Anyway, it stopped moving."

Xu Yao's voice wasn't loud, but it was enough for Cheng Rui to hear clearly. Imagining that scene was indeed... disgusting. Although he might think Xu Yao's actions were a bit excessive, he figured he would have done the same, after all, watching something like that moving right in front of him...

Cheng Rui frowned, while Xu Yao continued speaking.

"The police are here, but of course they won't find anything. I have nothing to do with that thing. If I knew who put that thing in my pipes, I would kill them even if it cost me my life! Damn it..." Xu Yao said, frantically grabbing his hair and pulling it in a self-destructive way. However, Cheng Rui did not stop him. He knew that Xu Yao needed to vent.

"From that day on, I kept having the same dream, a series of increasingly real and gloomy dreams. If I didn't wake up in time, I would almost think it was real! In the dream, I was either sitting in an elevator that never reached the right floor, or I was constantly running."

My steps were unsteady, I didn't know where I was running... but I knew I had to run, or I would be caught. I didn't dare look back, my instincts told me that what I would see if I looked back wouldn't be something I could face... that... must be a nightmare.

"I felt safe only when I stayed at home. I locked the door tightly with the safety lock on, thinking that no one could come in unless I opened it. I thought that would make me safe, but..."

"I started hearing the sound of children crying, the cries of children that were very, very far away yet seemed very close. At first, I only heard it in my dreams, but after dreaming for a long time, I couldn't tell which was the dream and which was reality, and I started to hear the sound of children crying constantly."

"I heard it when I was asleep, and I heard it when I was awake. At first, I thought it was a hallucination, but the feeling... it was so real... you have no idea how real it was..."

Xu Yao gripped his head tighter and tighter, his shadow cast on the floor beneath his feet. As Cheng Rui listened to Xu Yao's narration, he found his heart also beginning to pound.

"I grew increasingly frightened, and suddenly I remembered the reason that had made me so afraid to leave the house... In my dream, there was someone chasing after me..."

"I started to feel like there was someone outside the door. I know I'm being neurotic, but... I just felt like there was someone outside the door, someone! He was watching me! He'd been watching me ever since I came in! I knew I couldn't go on like this, I'd break down sooner or later, so... that night, when that feeling came again, I stood in front of the door and looked out through the peephole..."

"I kept looking outside, and there was no one outside the door. I felt a little relieved. Seeing that there was no one outside the door made me feel safe. I could comfort myself that it was all just my imagination, that I was scaring myself. It was just that dead child I dug out of the water pipe that scared me."

"This kind of thing happens often. Don't many people start hallucinating after witnessing accidents like car crashes? Since I can't see it, I can tell myself it's all just a hallucination... but..."

Xu Yao suddenly froze, his expression turning pale again, that look of extreme fear returning.

Cheng Rui was somewhat frightened by Xu Yao's behavior. What Xu Yao had just said was exactly what everyone currently believed about him: that his current state was due to mental stress and hallucinations caused by a recent traumatic accident. Xu Yao himself also believed this, but…

Intuition told Cheng Rui that Xu Yao's next words would be a reversal of his own diagnosis, and that kind of thing...

With his heart racing, Cheng Rui saw Xu Yao sitting there blankly for a long time before finally speaking again.

That night, I saw someone walk past my house. Then a while later, someone else walked past my house, and then...

"It was the same person. I remember his footsteps, the same frequency, the same weight. There's a corridor outside my house, and the corridor is about 1.5 meters away from the fence, not very wide. And that person wasn't deliberately walking close to the fence. All I could see was... the top of that person's head..."

At this point, even Cheng Rui felt his hair stand on end. The top of his head? A normal person would see his whole body through a peephole, right? Unless that person outside is…

"It was a child," Xu Yao said heavily, her voice then turning shrill. "A child was passing by my house! And..."

"My house was clearly the last one! How could someone come back from a place with no way forward and pass by my house several times?! He didn't leave... He kept staring at me... I know that..."

"I kept my eyes on him. I knew that as soon as I opened the door, he would come in and take me away..."

"Oh no! I heard that voice again! That damn crying! He's coming after me! God! Oh God!"

Xu Yao jumped onto the hospital bed, clutching her head, and skillfully covered her head with the blanket. The speed with which she did so revealed to Cheng Rui the fear she had harbored for the past few days; the sheer ease with which she did it…

He must have been doing this every day for the past few days, covering himself with the blanket in an attempt to escape that sound.

The sound... Just as Cheng Rui's hand was about to pat Xu Yao's trembling shoulder as she covered herself with the blanket, suddenly... Cheng Rui's hand stopped in mid-air.

Was it just my imagination? I think I heard... faint, distant... cries of a child?

Cheng Rui's expression suddenly changed drastically. He realized that his hands were starting to tremble, no, not just his hands, but his entire body was shaking.

It wasn't my imagination... the sound was getting louder and louder, closer and closer...

With his heart pounding, Cheng Rui gripped his trembling hands tightly, forcing himself to calm down.

It's okay. You just had a bad influence from what Xu Yao said earlier. That kid has always been good at telling ghost stories... It's alright. This is a hospital. People die every day, and people are born every day. There are children or women with children in the wards. It's not unusual for children to cry in the middle of the night...

Forcing himself to remain calm, Cheng Rui forced a smile.

"This is a hospital. There might be a baby in the ward next to you, you know? Today alone, our hospital has delivered four babies..." Cheng Rui said, but his heartbeat did not lessen at all. Could he not even believe this reason himself?

"You heard it! You heard it too? You heard it, didn't you? It's a child crying!"

The sudden grab intensified Cheng Rui's fear. He resisted the urge to throw his friend's hand off his wrist, and his smile grew increasingly strained. Perhaps he should lie to Xu Yao and say he hadn't heard anything, but…

And then what? Could he fool Xu Yao, or even himself? He definitely heard it! Crying, and footsteps.

The rapid footsteps, unlike those of adults, were the characteristic rapid steps of a child… The crying and the footsteps grew closer and closer, and then… they stopped.

Xu Yao huddled under the covers, trembling uncontrollably.

Cheng Rui could easily hear the sound of Xu Yao's teeth chattering. A grown man behaving so cowardly should have been met with ridicule, but Cheng Rui couldn't laugh.

For a moment, Cheng Rui almost wanted to crawl under the covers, just to stop the sound from getting closer to him.