Unlike Su Fan’s relaxed attitude, Teresa already had a shadow hanging over her heart.
Even from such a great distance, it could still project its evil power over here.
Bathsheba’s power was extremely rare, even within the files of the Vatican and the monasteries.
A distance of over twenty kilometers doesn’t take long to cover.
As the buildings on both sides of the street thinned out, the two of them gradually went deeper into this rural town, far from the city center.
Finally, at the end of the road, they saw the house.
Amidst the shadows of the dense forest, the building, radiating a sinister and ghostly aura, revealed its true face from between the leaves and tangled branches.
As they got closer, Teresa’s heart tightened.
“Something’s not right,” Teresa suddenly spoke up.
“Something is happening inside the house.”
Before Teresa could say much more, she heard Su Fan’s voice beside her.
“Get out of the car.”
Su Fan opened the car door, and Teresa quickly gathered up the many documents spread across her long legs.
Neither of them was slow. Before long, they were quickly approaching the front of the house.
As the distance shrank, they could hear bursts of screaming from inside.
But by the time they got inside, the place was already in complete disarray.
An ordinary housewife was shielding her children with her arms outstretched. In front of her, a burly man in a plaid shirt looked pale, clearly terrified as well.
In front of these people lay scattered camera equipment and the temporarily unconscious sheriff.
The cameraman, shouldering the equipment, had legs trembling violently, but he hadn’t put down his means of making a living.
They all seemed to have just gone through something terrifying, still shaken. It took a few seconds before they noticed Su Fan and Teresa entering the house.
——
The cluttered room was tidied up a bit.
Su Fan and Teresa sat across from the Perron couple, and an Asian journalist also joined the conversation.
As for the sheriff, since he had been attacked and fell into a brief unconsciousness, he was taken to a distant sofa to rest.
Su Fan observed the surrounding environment.
The house had a large footprint, so much better than the cramped houses in typical neighborhoods.
The floors and walls had simple renovations; not exactly brand new, but comfortable to look at.
Not far from the living room, a few little girls were peeking curiously at where Su Fan and the others were.
“You two must be the professionals who came to investigate in place of Ed and Lorraine.”
The journalist spoke first.
He had an Asian face, long hair, and looked a bit shorter than Su Fan.
“My name is Jack Lee, I’m a journalist for a TV station’s mystery-solving program.”
“The unconscious sheriff over there is named Daniel.”
“Both of us are companions originally contacted by the Warrens to document the events together.”
“May I ask how to address you two?”
“Su Fan.”
“My name is Teresa, hello.”
Across from the two of them sat the home’s owner, Carolyn.
After the introductions, Teresa began asking questions.
“May I ask what happened just now? Why did Sheriff Daniel faint?”
Hearing this, Roger sighed and started to explain.
That morning, Daniel and Jack Lee had come to their home, as previously arranged, to set up the equipment.
Everything was going smoothly, but then, for some reason, unusual things started happening in the house.
Light bulbs shattered, all the doors automatically opened and closed, a vase placed on the stair landing fell and hit Daniel right on the head, knocking him out cold.
Outside the house, there was a continuous sound of crows cawing. Then, a bird suddenly crashed through the window and fell right in front of everyone.
What was horrifying was that it was actually a pigeon whose head had been severed!
Why would a pigeon make a crow’s call?
They thought that was the end of it, but it turned out to be just the prelude to the horror.
The second daughter, Andrea’s hair, seemed to be grabbed by something invisible, and she was yanked up into the air and swung around!
She was constantly slammed against the surrounding walls.
Everyone tried their best, finally pulling her down while cutting off her long hair to prevent what just happened from recurring.
A woman’s terrifying laughter echoed throughout the house. Just as they were about to flee the place,
Su Fan and Teresa walked into the house.
With that, everything went quiet.
“If you don’t believe it, you can look at my camera. It recorded everything that happened,” Jack Lee said, his voice still carrying a hint of lingering fear.
“If we didn’t believe it, we wouldn’t have come here at all.
Can you show us other parts of the house a little later?”
Teresa had a specific reason for this suggestion.
Bathsheba had been deliberately hiding ever since they stepped inside.
Perhaps she was possessing some old item within the house.
But this action would have to wait a bit, as the parents, Carolyn and Roger, needed to comfort their frightened second daughter, Andrea.
“No problem.”
“Just wait a moment.”
Once they were done talking, Carolyn left her seat. Meanwhile, Jack Lee, the journalist, continued setting up new equipment.
The only ones free now were Su Fan and Teresa.
The two of them stepped outside together.
“Mr. Su Fan, did you sense anything?” Teresa asked.
Earlier, inside the house, Su Fan hadn’t said a word. She guessed there was something he couldn’t say openly.
“There are four ghosts in this house, but Bathsheba isn’t one of them,” Su Fan finally spoke.
The moment he entered this house, Su Fan had activated his spiritual sense, scanning the entire structure of the house and most of the furniture inside.
This house, including this land, all emitted a heavy, malevolent energy.
If others could see what Su Fan saw, they would see a dense, dark evil force that seemed capable of blotting out the sky.
Without a doubt, Bathsheba had been “enhanced” as well.
In the original Conjuring 1, she didn’t have such power.
Otherwise, she wouldn’t have been driven away by non-professional exorcists like Ed and Lorraine.
“This is an evil spirit that’s very good at hiding. We need to take the investigation slowly,” Su Fan said as he walked towards the river outside the front door.
Teresa, following behind him, suddenly felt a wave of dizziness.
Thick smoke rose before her eyes. She looked around in horror, finding herself suddenly standing in the middle of a raging inferno.
A maniacal laugh echoed overhead.
Teresa looked up and saw a woman in a white robe climbing up a thick tree like a wild animal.
Hanging from a branch extending sideways were four corpses of varying sizes and builds.
The smallest one was so tiny it looked like a doll…
Those were the children’s bodies…
An answer suddenly came to Teresa’s mind.
These bodies were wrapped in burlap, the cloth soaked through with blood dripping from the corpses, which had started to fall, drop by drop, to the ground below.
The woman in white had now climbed to the very top of the branch. She opened her mouth and let out a piercing, terrifying, loud laugh.
“I offer myself and the lives of my children as a sacrifice to the supreme Satan, so that your glory may be shown on earth.”
“I beg you to grant me your authority! I beg you to grant me your authority!”
She looked utterly insane, spreading her arms like withered branches and shouting towards the sky.
“I curse this land! Everyone who sets foot here will die… Heh heh ha ha ha…”
The white woman’s laughter stopped abruptly as she leaped off and hanged herself right there on that spot.
The bodies, including the one of the woman in white, swayed in the wind on the crooked tree.
The raging inferno that had engulfed the farmhouse seemed like demonic fire from hell, within which the hideous, grinning face of a demon could faintly be seen.
