“No way, how can that be… I followed Shen Ge upstairs, and then the hallway lights suddenly went out. After that, the operating room, the corpse… the severed limbs. Right, the dissection. I even saw him take a scalpel and dissect that corpse, pulling out its heart. A heart this big, and inside it was an old man’s head!” Wang Han explained anxiously. He was so flustered that his words came out all jumbled.
But the more agitated Wang Han became, the stranger the expressions on the faces around him grew. Clearly, no one was willing to believe his story.
The doctor on duty stepped forward, helped Wang Han up, and said comfortingly, “Captain Wang, if you have some free time tomorrow, I think you should come upstairs for an examination.”
“I’m not sick. Everything I said is true!” Wang Han argued passionately.
Ma Chao, standing nearby, couldn’t help but mock him. “Yeah, yeah, you’re not sick. Just look at any patient in our hospital—which one of them will admit they’re sick? You’ve been working here a long time. Go ahead and apply for a routine checkup. In my opinion, you’re not fit to keep looking after patients anymore, Dr. Chen, I think…”
Dr. Chen seemed to know what Ma Chao was about to say. He waved his hand, signaling him not to continue. Then he looked at the doctor on duty and Wang Han and said, “Take him downstairs to rest. Ma Chao, take some people and go find the patient. Search thoroughly. That patient is very important. Don’t hurt him.”
“I understand.” Ma Chao nodded.
Wang Han was taken downstairs by the doctor on duty. The doctor had two people from the security department come over to take him and help send him home.
Although Wang Han couldn’t figure out what had happened tonight, and still had many questions about the “missing” Shen Ge, he decided to take the opportunity to get some good rest.
Outside, it was raining. The group grabbed a few raincoats from the front desk, put them on, left the inpatient department, walked through the eerie courtyard, and arrived at the hospital’s main gate.
Boom!
Just then, a bolt of lightning flashed across the sky, followed by a thunderclap. In that split second of lightning, the peeling sign by the iron gate, with its bloody red characters reading “Rongshan Psychiatric Hospital,” looked especially terrifying.
At the main gate, two black cars were parked. Two security guards walked toward the car on the left. One got into the driver’s seat, the other into the passenger seat.
Seeing Wang Han still standing there, the driver poked his head out and said, “Wang Ge, what are you standing there for? Get in the car!”
Wang Han was taken aback for a moment, then quickly stepped forward. As soon as his hand touched the door handle, he felt something was off. He had a strange feeling, as if many things were “out of place.” For example, walking from the inpatient department through the courtyard to the main gate only takes a few minutes. Why not just take an umbrella? Why put on raincoats?
Even stranger, his two colleagues got straight into the car wearing their raincoats. Weren’t they afraid of getting the car dirty with their wet raincoats? Besides, the car looked expensive and didn’t seem like their car.
“Um… aren’t you going to take off your raincoats?” Wang Han asked, voicing his confusion as he took off his own raincoat, opened the door, and sat inside.
The security guard in the driver’s seat laughed and said, “What’s there to worry about? It’s the hospital’s car. If it gets dirty, they can deal with it.”
“Aren’t you afraid of having your wages deducted for this, or even getting fired?” Wang Han asked.
The guard said dismissively, “Fire me? Ha, let them try. Then I’ll expose all their dirty money-making schemes.”
“Huh?” Wang Han wanted to ask more, but the security guard in the passenger seat urged the driver to hurry, cutting off the topic.
Driving along the narrow mountain road, fragments of memories about Rongshan Psychiatric Hospital suddenly flashed through Wang Han’s mind. Strangely, these work experiences were very different from his daily work. He even had a memory of putting on a white coat and going down to a strange basement.
Just as Wang Han tried to get a clearer look at those blurry memories, he heard the security guard in the driver’s seat mumbling something.
The gist of it was about how making this kind of money was bad for your health, doing such things for money, colluding with the police to use missing people for experiments, and so on.
Wang Han steadied himself and tried to listen carefully to what the guard was saying. But then, the security guard in the passenger seat suddenly leaned left, slamming the driver against the door, then opened his door and jumped out.
On a rainy day, cars are prone to skidding. This move immediately caused the car to go out of control. With a loud bang, the car went around a curve and crashed directly into a large tree by the roadside. It broke the tree and plunged off a cliff. Wang Han slammed into the back of the front seat and was knocked unconscious.
He didn’t know how long he had been out. Wang Han woke up inside the now twisted and deformed car. The intense pain throughout his body nearly made him pass out again. A sharp, twisted piece of the door panel had pierced his calf, the pain driving him almost to the brink of崩溃.
“Help! Hel… help me!”
“Help me!”
He tried shouting a few times, but no one answered.
With the car’s dome light on, Wang Han saw that the front of the car was completely crushed. The deployed airbags and twisted front seat had crushed the security guard’s body.
Wang Han couldn’t believe he had survived such a crash. Even he found it incredible.
Wang Han tried pushing against the door with his uninjured foot. It wouldn’t budge. Then he tried pulling the door handle from above.
Fortunately, the damage on this side wasn’t too severe. With a “crack,” it seemed to respond.
Wang Han struggled to climb upward. As he pulled his wounded leg out of the twisted door, the pain made him scream and shout, but no one could help him. He was on his own.
In the torrential rainy night sky, lightning split the darkness, followed by rolling thunder. The rain grew heavier, and the air filled with the smell of gasoline mixed with rain.
Wang Han’s face was full of terror, his hands trembling. The door was stuck. He could only ram it again and again with all his might. Finally, amidst the thunder, he heard the sound of the door loosening.
The rain mercilessly pelted his face. His clothes were soaked through and clinging to his body. He finally managed to crawl out of the car, completely drenched, unable to tell if it was from rain or blood.
Wang Han tore a strip of cloth from his clothes and bandaged his wound simply. Then he grabbed the raincoat from the car and put it on.
The rain fell faster and harder. Wang Han pulled the hood of the raincoat lower and, in the darkness, limped toward the main road, hoping to see a passing vehicle.
Thunder would crash occasionally, and lightning would split the sky, illuminating the woods on both sides of the mountain road, making them look especially terrifying.
After walking for dozens of minutes, Wang Han’s leg had gone numb from the pain. Then he noticed what looked like a few buildings in the distance. But strangely, they seemed to have been abandoned for a long time.
“Hello? Is anyone there?”
“Anyone there?”
“Help!”
Wang Han walked up to one of the buildings and pounded on the door. But there was no response from inside.
The rain was getting heavier. The unpaved roads in the village were muddy and difficult to walk on. The trees on either side were unplanned, with some weeds growing right into the middle of the road.
Wang Han knocked on several more doors without any reply. So, he steeled himself, found a rock, broke a window, and climbed inside.
Wang Han rummaged through the house, found a set of clean clothes to change into, and also found a flashlight and a first-aid kit. He gave his wounds some basic treatment.
Wang Han was injured and had dragged himself this far. He was exhausted. So, he lay down on a bed and fell asleep.
It rained all night. The next morning, Wang Han was startled awake by another thunderclap. The downpour was still going, and the sky was overcast with dark clouds. Clearly, the rain wasn’t finished yet.
Wang Han got up and took the first-aid kit to change his bandages. But when he tore off the blood-stained gauze, he was shocked to find that the wound on his leg had completely disappeared.
“How is this possible?” Wang Han stared at his completely healed calf and even reached out to touch it, unable to understand what was happening.
“Growl.”
“Growl.”
Just then, Wang Han suddenly felt very hungry. It was an intense hunger, as if he hadn’t eaten in days.
So, he got up and started searching through the room, trying to find something to eat.
He opened a cabinet. A foul stench immediately hit him. Inside was a large basin filled with something dark and shapeless. The smell was so bad it nearly choked Wang Han. He quickly shut the cabinet door, ran to the window, and took several deep breaths to suppress the nausea.
“Whew. What the hell is that stuff?” Wang Han grumbled. Then he walked over to the refrigerator in the corner. He opened the freezer door. Right in the middle was a frozen pig’s head. He slammed the door shut in fright.
“Geez, this family must be sick. Who keeps a whole pig’s head like that? It’s like something out of a crime scene.” Complaining, Wang Han opened a few drawers, but there was no food inside. Finally, on the top shelf of the fridge, he found a few thick sausages as big as his arm.
“Better than nothing,” Wang Han said, breaking one of the sausages open. But inside, it was dark, and something seemed to be moving within the blackened meat. He pried it open with a pair of chopsticks, and immediately, a centipede as long as a finger crawled out of the cut.
“Damn!”
Wang Han cursed loudly and quickly threw the sausage away.
“Don’t you like it?” Just then, a very familiar voice came from the doorway.
Wang Han turned around alertly. There stood Ma Chao at the door, still wearing his work white coat. The difference was that his face was pale and expressionless, giving him a gloomy look.
“Ma Chao? Why are you here?” Wang Han asked.
Ma Chao gave him a blank look. “I should be asking you that. This is my home. Why are you here?”
“Your home?” Wang Han was stunned. He had the impression that he and Ma Chao had a decent relationship, several years of friendship. But he couldn’t remember where Ma Chao’s home actually was.
“Yes, this is my home. Why are you here?” Ma Chao’s voice was still flat, completely different from the way Wang Han remembered him behaving normally.
Although Wang Han felt something was off, he answered truthfully. “Last night, some people from the hospital were taking me home. Then, one of the security guards in the car went crazy, bumped into the driver, and jumped out. The car went out of control and fell off a cliff. After I woke up, I followed the mountain road and found this place.”
Ma Chao stared at Wang Han, still expressionless, but his tone carried disbelief. “Your car fell off a cliff without being destroyed and without you dying, and you managed to walk several kilometers to get here? Besides you, what about the security guard who was driving? Is he here too?”
“He… died.” Wang Han hesitated. Although the feeling of strangeness grew stronger, he still recounted last night’s events truthfully.
As he listened, Ma Chao walked to the refrigerator, opened it, took out the frozen pig’s head, and placed it on a cutting board. After hearing Wang Han’s story, he simply said, “You sure are lucky to be alive.”
He turned the pig’s head around. There was a hole in the back of the head, and something was stuffed inside. He pulled it out with force.
“What’s that?” Wang Han asked, looking at the frozen lump.
Ma Chao replied with one word: “Stomach.”
“Stomach?”
“Stomach.”
“…” Wang Han was speechless. Ma Chao seemed strange inside and out. He didn’t know what to do.
Ma Chao got a pot from somewhere, filled it with water, and put it on to boil. Then he put both the pig’s head and the stomach into the pot.
Wang Han warned him, “There’s a basin of black stuff in your cabinet. It seems to have gone bad. It stinks. As soon as you open the cabinet, the whole room smells like rot.”
“Stinks?” Ma Chao opened the cabinet expressionlessly and took out the basin of black goo. The rotten smell immediately spread through the room, making Wang Han dry heave.
Then, to Wang Han’s shock and horror, Ma Chao lifted the basin of foul-smelling goo and took a big gulp, wiping his mouth as if savoring it.
That was the last straw for Wang Han. If he hadn’t eaten anything, he probably would have thrown up everything, including his stomach acid by then.
“Ma Chao, have you lost your mind?” Wang Han shouted.
Ma Chao glanced at him blankly and said calmly, “Lost my mind? No, Wang Han. You just haven’t realized your own situation yet.”
As he spoke, Ma Chao picked up a spoon and stirred the pot. More and more rotting flesh and mucus gushed from the melting stomach, which seemed like a bottomless pit, overflowing with putrid flesh until it was overflowing. At the same time, the frozen pig’s head thawed.
When Ma Chao brought the pot to the table, Wang Han saw with horror that it wasn’t a pig’s head in the pot at all, but a swollen old man’s head, identical to the old man’s face he had seen before!
“Ah—”
Wang Han screamed and backed away. The iron pot on the table bubbled with a gurgling, rotting stench. Ma Chao, however, took the ladle, scooped up a big spoonful, and drank it down.
“Thud!”
Wang Han tripped over the threshold as he backed away and fell to the ground. His emotions were running wild, and a rush of blood to his head caused him to faint.
“…”
“Wang…”
“Wang Han…”
“Wang Han!”
Wang Han felt someone shaking his shoulder. The voice was familiar. He slowly opened his eyes and saw Ma Chao and several doctors and nurses gathered around his hospital bed.
“Hey, Wang Han, are you okay?” Ma Chao frowned and asked.
Wang Han saw Ma Chao’s face clearly and shouted, “Stay back! Don’t come near me!”
Ma Chao said irritably, “Wang Han, have you gone crazy? Look at who I am… You collapsed in the hallway outside the patient’s room you were guarding. They brought you to the observation room, and you’ve been unconscious for a whole day and night.”
“What?” Wang Han was stunned.
Ma Chao frowned, looking disgusted. “You didn’t really lose your mind, did you? I’m saying you collapsed outside the hospital room yesterday, and you’ve been out for a full day and night.”
“Me?”
“I fainted?”
Wang Han was taken aback, then quickly asked, “Where’s Shen Ge?”
Ma Chao said, “You have the nerve to ask? You fainted outside the hospital room yesterday, and Shen Ge was the one who found you and pressed the alarm bell. That’s how we discovered you were unconscious. Look, if you’re not feeling well, ask for leave and go home to rest. Not only are you not doing your job properly, you’re causing trouble for the rest of us.”
Shen Ge isn’t missing?
I fainted yesterday?
Was all of this just a “dream”?
No, I saw Shen Ge dissecting a corpse in my dream, then I was woken up by Dr. Chen, then I got into a car accident on the way home…
This… a dream within a dream within a dream?
“Ah—”
Wang Han raised his hand and slapped his own forehead. He could no longer tell the difference between reality and dreams.
