“Ah—”
The icy cold touch on his feet scared Wang Han so much that he fell flat on his backside. At that moment, he didn’t care about saving face. He scrambled toward the door on all fours, not even daring to look back under the bed to see if the “old man’s” ghostly face was really there.
After Wang Han rushed out of the hospital room, the little boy lying on the bed didn’t move at all, as if he had fallen into a deep sleep.
Wang Han screamed and rolled as he scrambled toward the front desk and pressed the alarm bell. The nurse at the front desk was startled by him and asked him what was wrong in a grumbling tone.
Wang Han’s face had turned white with fear. He stammered for a long time without being able to say a complete sentence, just repeating over and over, “Ghost, there’s a ghost.”
The nurse at the front desk wasn’t new to night shifts. Although she was scared inside, she still looked down on Wang Han for being a grown man so terrified like that. She kindly poured him a glass of water.
After waiting about ten minutes, a few security guards and the doctor on duty showed up. Since Dr. Chen and Ma Chao, who were in charge of the little boy, were on vacation, it would probably take a long time from notifying them to their arrival at the hospital.
The doctor on duty knew how important the little boy was, so he asked Wang Han to explain exactly what had happened. But after hearing Wang Han’s vivid description of the events, everyone’s expressions turned a bit strange.
A ghost?
Seeing a ghost in the hospital didn’t seem like anything new, but come on, it’s the twenty-first century. Aren’t you afraid of being laughed at for talking about “ghosts” all the time?
Still, Wang Han’s description was just too realistic. Even listening to it as just a ghost story, it made several of the nurses so scared that they didn’t want to go to the hospital room with him.
In the end, Wang Han went back to the hospital room with the doctor on duty and a few security guards. On one hand, he was a bit concerned about the little boy’s condition. On the other hand… he really wanted to know whether what he had seen was just an illusion or if he had actually run into something evil.
The group arrived at the hospital room door, opened it, and took a look. The little boy was lying motionless on the bed. The doctor on duty reached out and flipped the light switch, but only heard the click of the switch without seeing the light turn on.
“The light is broken. Remember to call someone to fix it tomorrow,” the doctor on duty said, turning on a flashlight. He gave Wang Han an instruction over his shoulder and walked in first.
Wang Han nodded, but stood at the door, afraid to go inside. He instinctively glanced under the bed, and when he didn’t see the old man’s face, he breathed a sigh of relief.
The doctor on duty used the flashlight to give the little boy a quick checkup. After coming back out, he said, “Didn’t find anything. He’s sleeping quite peacefully. Wang Han, don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re a grown man, over thirty years old. How can you still believe in ‘ghosts’?”
“…” Wang Han had nothing to say. He didn’t used to believe in ghosts either, but what he had just seen was just too real.
The group left the hospital room and went back to the front desk to get on with their respective work. Wang Han, still scared, decided to stay at the front desk and keep the nurse company. But in his hurry, he forgot that while leaving the hospital room, he had been so focused on talking to the doctor on duty that he forgot to lock the door.
Wang Han chatted with the nurse at the front desk for a while, then leaned back in a chair, ready to get some sleep. Just then, the nurse heard a faint sound coming from the dimly lit hallway.
The nurse nudged the drowsy Wang Han awake and whispered, “Captain Wang, do you hear something in the hallway?”
“What sound?” Wang Han jolted awake. It wasn’t because he was so diligent that any noise put him on high alert, but because his mind immediately flashed back to the evil thing he had seen in the hospital room, startling him fully awake.
Wang Han listened carefully and indeed heard a rustling sound, like someone dragging something against the wall.
Wang Han and the nurse exchanged glances. Both swallowed hard, clearly seeing the fear in each other’s eyes. The nurse instinctively reached for the alarm bell, but Wang Han stopped her. He had already been laughed at once because of this. This time, he had to be sure before calling for help.
“Turn on the lights,” Wang Han said to the nurse.
The nurse nodded and quickly used the control panel at the front desk to turn on all the lights in the hallway. The dim corridor suddenly lit up.
There, on the hallway leading to the special care unit, was the little boy. He was holding a spittoon in one hand and a piece of bread from his “late-night snack” in the other. He was slowly scraping the bread against the wall as he walked forward with his eyes closed, mumbling something under his breath.
“From the stairwell to here, there are six hospital rooms along the way, each about five meters apart…” The little boy mumbled until he reached the stairwell and stopped.
Wang Han and the nurse were stunned by this behavior. The nurse said instinctively, “Is he… sleepwalking?”
“I’ll go check it out,” Wang Han said, getting up and following him. To be safe, he grabbed the security baton and flashlight from the front desk.
Wang Han quickly walked up to the little boy and asked, “What are you doing out so late? Your body is already weak. Go back and rest.”
“Hey.”
“Shen Ge?”
Wang Han tried calling out a few times, but the little boy didn’t react at all. He just kept mumbling something unintelligible.
“Which floor was that operating room that San Zai took me to yesterday?”
“The third floor?”
“Or the fourth floor?”
Muttering to himself, the little boy started walking up the stairs. Even with his eyes closed, he accurately stepped on every stair, using the bread to feel his way along the wall.
Wang Han had no idea what the little boy was doing, but with the lights on now, he wasn’t as scared. He followed behind him.
The little boy counted the stairs as he climbed. He stopped at the corner of the second-floor landing, but after standing at the hallway entrance for a moment, he turned and continued upstairs.
When they reached the third floor, Wang Han turned on the light switch there. As the hallway lit up, the little boy slowly opened his eyes.
“Shen Ge, you’re awake?” Wang Han asked.
Seeing no reaction, he continued, “You were sleepwalking. Come back with me. Don’t walk around outside so late.”
The little boy still didn’t respond.
Then, he tossed the bread into a nearby trash can and walked left down the hallway, finally stopping in front of an operating room.
“?”
What is he doing here?
Wang Han was very confused, but he walked up behind the little boy and tried calling out to him a few times. Seeing no reaction, he decided to just pick him up and carry him downstairs.
“Zz, zzzz—”
But just as Wang Han’s hand touched the little boy’s body, the lights in the hallway began to flicker. Then, as if someone had switched them to power-saving mode, the entire corridor went dim.
“Click.”
Suddenly, a sound like a tripped circuit breaker came from somewhere. Several lights in the distance went out. He could faintly hear a “zzzz” electrical crackle. The surrounding lights flickered on and off, instantly creating a chilling, eerie atmosphere.
The red indicator light above the operating room in front of them lit up, making it look like an operation was in progress. What was even stranger was that the font for the words “Operating Room” was red, looking as if it were melting, like blood.
This sudden change stunned Wang Han. He was frozen in place with fear. The little boy, however, approached the door, listened carefully for any sound inside, and then carefully pried the door open just a crack.
“Wait—” Before Wang Han could finish the second word, the little boy had already slipped into the operating room. Wang Han thought about turning back and going downstairs, but he saw that the entire stairwell was shrouded in a strange, eerie black fog. Combined with the flickering lights on either side of the hallway, his fear drove him to almost instinctively push open the operating room door and follow the boy inside.
The operating room was very spacious. All sorts of old instruments and shelves were lined up against the walls. In the center was just a single hospital bed, on which lay a restrained person.
The terrifying part was that this person had no head, and both legs had been amputated. Thick ropes wrapped with iron chains still bound him to the bed.
“Ah—”
“Ah!!!”
Wang Han was so scared that he fell back onto the floor with a thud, his head hitting the door with a loud bang. He had worked in the hospital for several years. Although he had wandered around the hospital before becoming the little boy’s caretaker, he had never seen such a horrifying place—a hellish scene like a human slaughterhouse.
Even scarier was the headless, limbless corpse lying on the hospital bed. There was no way something like that should be in a hospital.
“Could it be a specimen?” That was the only answer Wang Han could think of.
Drip.
Drip.
Just then, droplets of liquid dripped onto Wang Han’s forehead. He instinctively wiped it off and saw that his hand was covered in bright red. The water dripping from the ceiling was actually blood.
Wang Han looked up and saw several bloody human legs hanging from the ceiling, looking like they had just been cut off. Blood was still dripping from them onto the floor.
Seeing this horrifying scene, Wang Han nearly fainted from fright. With what little sanity he had left, he scrambled forward a short distance.
Meanwhile, the little boy slowly walked toward the hospital bed, seemingly very interested in the “corpse” on it. He got close to examine it.
“Shen Ge!”
“Shen Ge!”
For some reason, Wang Han instinctively latched onto Shen Ge as his lifeline. He felt that his being pulled into this strange space was likely very connected to the little boy.
But the little boy acted as if he couldn’t hear Wang Han. He dragged a chair over, seeming to want to climb up and pull down one of the legs from the ceiling to examine it.
“…” Wang Han was speechless. He was so scared he was about to lose his mind, yet the little boy was acting like he was on an adventure game, curious about everything.
Just then, both Wang Han and the little boy heard a faint, strange noise coming from the direction of the operating bed. The headless corpse tied to the bed seemed to have moved slightly.
Wang Han swallowed hard. Although his heart was pounding with fear, he cautiously glanced toward the operating bed. He was shocked to discover that the “corpse” was still breathing—its chest was rising and falling faintly. This terrified him to no end.
The little boy, however, pushed the chair over, climbed onto the operating table, and leaned in to study the corpse. He touched it here and there, pinched it elsewhere, just like a professional doctor. Wang Han watched, dumbfounded.
“This kid hasn’t been possessed, has he?” Looking at the little boy’s astonishing behavior, Wang Han couldn’t believe this was still the same ten-year-old child.
What was even scarier was that after observing for a while, the little boy wasn’t satisfied. He grabbed a scalpel from nearby, cut the sutures on the corpse, and then, with a single slice, cut through the skin between two ribs and started dissecting downward.
“Ugh—”
Wang Han had just managed to stand up by bracing himself against the wall when he saw this bloody scene and the internal organs exposed as the corpse was cut open. He started dry heaving.
It took a lot of effort for the little boy to cut open the corpse. His small body was covered in blood, but he didn’t rest. Instead, he peeled back the cut skin completely.
Inside the corpse’s sturdy body, his “stomach” alone was the size of a basketball and was still throbbing, giving the illusion that it was the heart.
The little boy stared at the internal organs for a moment. Then, he slowly cut open the heart with the scalpel. Strangely, inside was a “human head”!
When Wang Han got a clear look at the head, he felt a strange sense of déjà vu. Then a terrifying face flashed through his mind.
“It’s that old man!” Wang Han was astonished, but he couldn’t figure out why the old man’s head was inside a corpse’s heart.
Meanwhile, the little boy continued dissecting the corpse. He cut open the stomach and intestines, and out crawled a bunch of dark, squirming things.
The little boy used his scalpel to pick out a centipede as long as a finger from the corpse’s belly. Seeing the dense mass of bugs inside the corpse’s abdomen, Wang Han’s nerves finally gave out. His eyes rolled back, his head tilted, and with a “thud,” he hit the floor and passed out.
Wang Han didn’t know how long he was unconscious. He vaguely felt someone shaking him, then heard someone calling his name.
“Ah! Ghost! Ghost! Monster! Human head! Heart! And bugs! So many bugs!” Wang Han opened his eyes, sat up, and scrambled backward into a corner.
Then a calm, steady voice spoke: “Wang Han, don’t be nervous. First, take a good look at who we are and where you are.”
Dr. Chen?
Hearing Dr. Chen’s voice, Wang Han was stunned. He steadied himself and looked toward the sound. Sure enough, Dr. Chen was standing under the light, staring at him. Next to him were Ma Chao, the doctor on duty, and others.
Wang Han swallowed. He instinctively looked around and realized that he was in the third-floor specimen room. Experimental equipment and anatomical models were scattered all over the floor, as if someone had deliberately wrecked the place. The entire specimen room was in chaos.
He was sitting right now next to a cabinet in the corner. Several broken bottles lay around him, and glass shards had cut the palm of his hand.
In the center of the specimen room, a headless, limbless “human anatomical model” consisting of just a torso had been chopped into pieces, exposing the hollow shell inside.
“What happened… to me?” Wang Han stared blankly at the red in his palm, suddenly unable to tell reality from illusion.
Could it be that everything he had seen before was fake?
All just hallucinations?
Just then, Dr. Chen asked, “Wang Han, the head nurse said you followed the patient after you noticed he was sleepwalking. Where is he now?”
Right!
Shen Ge!
It was only after I came across him that I started having these strange hallucinations…
“He was right here, and those things…” Wang Han started to say that the corpse in the middle had been destroyed by Shen Ge, but that wasn’t actually a corpse—it was an anatomical model.
Dr. Chen adjusted his glasses and said calmly, “Wang Han, according to the surveillance footage at the entrance to the specimen room, you were the only person who entered the specimen room.”
