WHI – Chapter 19

Chapter 19

As Wen Lan spoke, each word carried an extremely gentle smile. A current, like a bone-dissolving liquid, flowed from Lin Ting’s earlobes, instantly spreading throughout his body. Lin Ting watched as Wen Lan straightened up, then half-crouched by the sofa, and extended a hand to tie one end of the red yarn to his own wrist, and the other end to Wen Lan’s.

Wen Lan looked at his handiwork with satisfaction and tugged his arm.

When Lin Ting’s wrist was pulled, he suddenly snapped back to reality. “Are we being childish?”

“Keep me company, it’s boring if you’re just watching like it’s a play.”

“It’s not watching a play, it’s leading a monkey,” Lin Ting said with a smile, tugging his wrist and standing up from the sofa.

“What monkey? Where’s the monkey?” Yu Zhile, having just tied on a red string with a gold pendant, poked his head out.

“Go play,” Wen Lan said.

“Brother Wen, do you guys need scissors?” Li Ziyao, looking at the red thread hanging between their wrists, asked, pulling a pair of scissors from his bag.

“It won’t be magical if we cut it,” Wen Lan waved his hand. “Where do we start?”

“Let’s start from the highest spire,” Lin Ting had been interested in this hexagonal spire from the beginning and had been studying the spiral staircase since entering.

“Alright, you guys go ahead, Fang Ran and I will take photos slowly from behind,” Qin Wan said, and took out a flash and some accessories she couldn’t name from her bag.

Wang Xingzhi looked around. “Can it be photographed clearly in this darkness?”

“That’s the effect we want, you wouldn’t understand,” Fang Ran tutted, then turned and laughed with Qin Wan.

It had to be said that Wen Lan was a good leader for a reason. Besides the three candles and the flashlight they’d just used to create a spooky atmosphere, no one else had thought of bringing a light.

“Doesn’t your phone have a flashlight?” Yu Zhile said.

“How much battery is left?” Lin Ting asked.

“30…”

“Heh.”

Wen Lan held the flashlight, walking at the front with Lin Ting, while the rest squeezed together behind him, holding onto each other as they stood at the bottom of the stairs. The two girls were the calmest at this moment, one taking photos and the other posing, leisurely trailing far behind the group.

“Do we really have to go up?” Yu Zhile hugged Lin Ting’s arm. Wen Lan had one hand occupied by the flashlight, and his other wrist was tied to Lin Ting’s. At this moment, the only reliable arm among them was this one.

“Hey, hey, hey! What are you doing? Don’t you know about the boundaries between men and women?” Wen Lan shone the flashlight in his hand at their entwined arms – or rather, Yu Zhile clinging to Lin Ting’s arm. “Take your arm away! This staircase is already narrow, it’s too crowded for three people. Go to the back.”

Yu Zhile looked at the elder brother he had admired for nearly three years with pitiful eyes. Before he could say anything to move his seemingly iron heart, Li Ziyao from behind grabbed him, staggering a few steps on the stairs and nearly falling.

“You’re really stupid if I call you stupid. Follow me,” Li Ziyao said to Yu Zhile.

The winding spiral staircase passed through the second-floor ceiling and continued to rise. Lin Ting glanced in the dim light of the flashlight. Standing at the bottom of the spire and looking up, it was even steeper than it looked from outside the villa. The mystery of not being able to see the top was indeed a bit…

“Soul-stirring,” Wen Lan finished.

“Do you have telepathy?” Lin Ting tugged his wrist.

“What?” Wen Lan turned back in confusion, smiled at him, and shone the flashlight towards the top of the spire again. “Don’t you think so?”

As the flashlight beam suddenly shone up, the details that had only been glimpsed in the peripheral vision became clearer and more vivid.

If there was one corner of the entire villa not covered in dust, it should be the spire’s summit, which was now a deep blue like a starry sky, as captivating as the deep sea or the universe.

Looking up, the intersecting rib vaults directly overhead still maintained their golden, heavy radiance, dividing the space into pieces that shimmered like deep blue ink poured into a summer stream.

“Starry sky…” someone murmured.

Everyone slowly ascended the stairs, step by step, along the railing. Wen Lan’s flashlight swept the surroundings. The oil paintings on the walls were already faded and stained. Although the colored glass in the Romanesque windows on the side was covered in a layer of dust, the traces of luxury could still be discerned.

“It’s a shame such a good house is wasted,” Lin Ting reached out and wiped a corner of the stained-glass window. The originally dim dark green became vibrant and lush. Lin Ting couldn’t reach the dark red glass higher up, but he imagined it was also bright and vibrant.

At some point, everyone had lost their initial fear and had instead quietly begun to appreciate the splendor left behind in this forgotten corner of the wilderness.

Bang! As the last person at the end of the line stepped onto the second-floor stairs, the flashlight suddenly went out.

“Ah—!”

Before they could snap out of their admiration, the light suddenly died, and everyone panicked. People grabbed onto arms, and others hugged thighs. Cries and curses to imaginary ghosts in the air mingled together.

Lin Ting was startled for a moment but quickly recovered and tugged the red string. “Why did your flashlight break at this moment?”

Wen Lan raised both hands and began fiddling with the flashlight. Lin Ting’s left wrist was involuntarily raised and dangled.

Lin Ting immediately regretted it. “Maybe we should… this rope…”

Before he could finish speaking, the red string snapped with a pat.

Wen Lan happened to tap the end of the flashlight. “It must be out of battery. I bought it online and forgot to charge it before I… Huh?”

“The rope broke.”

At this point, no one cared how much battery their phones had left. They all turned on their flashlights. In the dim light, Lin Ting looked at Wen Lan and repeated, “The rope… broke.”

It took Wen Lan a while to come to his senses. He looked down and saw that the rope on Lin Ting’s wrist was just a loop, while the rope on his own wrist had a long tail dangling.

Lin Ting smiled. “This is fine too,” he said, reaching out and tugging the end of the rope tied to Wen Lan’s wrist. “See, it still pulls.”

Wen Lan tutted and pulled the rope in his hand higher. “Are you walking a dog!”

“You said it yourself.”

“Brother Wen, maybe we shouldn’t go up anymore,” Song Mi said, holding his phone flashlight closer to them. The beam was so bright Wen Lan couldn’t open his eyes.

“Put your phone down,” Wen Lan said, shielding his eyes from the harsh white light. “You’re already giving up?”

“No, we just feel that everything happens for a reason, like this flashlight breaking not too early and not too late, but precisely when we just got to the second floor,” Song Mi explained.

“It didn’t break, it ran out of battery,” Wen Lan said.

“And…” Song Mi swept his phone flashlight around. “It feels a bit eerie here.”

Wen Lan scanned the surroundings. Even with everyone’s phones on, the light was not as bright as his high-powered outdoor flashlight. At this moment, they could only vaguely make out the general shapes.

The spire tower was relatively small, and here, a thing that was either a sofa or a bed – a sofa bed – was squeezed in.

The small bed was against the wall, and a heavy, dark blue canopy hung from above, completely concealing it.

“Should we lift it?” Lin Ting looked over.

Based on movie logic, their best option would be to turn around and leave, not to lift it.

“Tsk, you’re scared?” Wen Lan asked.

“I’m not scared, I’m afraid someone is scared,” Lin Ting said, and reached out to lift it. “I’ll lift it.”

“Who are you calling scared?” Wen Lan grabbed Lin Ting’s half-raised wrist and moved it away. The red string on his wrist was pressing against his fingertips, causing a strange, itchy numbness. “I’ll lift it.”

Lin Ting’s smile spread behind him. Wen Lan took a deep breath, under the gaze of sixteen eyes and phone lights, grabbed the two corners of the canopy with both hands, and yanked it open to the left and right—

“Ah!”—

Before Wen Lan could even ask what was happening, in the next instant, he saw a face identical to his own rushing towards his eyes!

“…Ah!” Even though Wen Lan had seen a lot, he was so startled that he stumbled back several steps until a pair of hands landed on his shoulders, and he then sprang up and jumped. “There’s a ghost!”

“It’s me!” Lin Ting, likely the only one not scared, was doubled over with laughter at everyone’s reaction. “That’s a mirror!”

Wen Lan’s heart finally settled back into his chest from his teeth. Gathering his courage, he took the phone Song Mi offered and stepped forward to look. Indeed, a gilded mirror, half his height, hung in the center of the wall by the bed. The mirror surface was crudely written with the words “Look at me” in lipstick, and a section in the middle had been roughly smudged, with faint red wax seeping into the mirror’s surface.

“You… you guys look,” Qin Wan pointed to the small bed. Everyone’s gaze shifted from the mirror to below.

Four dolls were crammed onto the bed: two large and two small. The mouths of the two large dolls and the long-haired small doll in the middle, wearing a floral skirt, were painted with a large, upward-curving arc in bright red – presumably a smile.

On the short-haired small doll next to them, a large, bloody red cross was drawn, and it was pierced with hundreds of needles.

“I want to go back to the hotel…” Han Ziqiu’s voice trembled.

As soon as he said that, the remaining few expressed their desire to leave as well.

“Leave?” Lin Ting tilted his head and asked.

Wen Lan, lost in thought as he looked at the dolls, heard Lin Ting’s question and returned to his senses. “Are you scared?” he said, pushing the dolls aside and sitting down himself.

Lin Ting’s lips still held an irrepressible smile as he stared at Wen Lan. “I’m not. Are you scared?”

“What a coincidence, I haven’t had enough fun yet either.”

In just a few minutes, only two people remained in the villa.

To the side of the stairs leading to the third floor of the spire tower, the Romanesque stained-glass window lay shattered. The cold white moonlight, bypassing the elaborate colored glass, cast a pure white glow on the small, fragmented pieces of glass on the steps. The moonlight was soft, making the colors faint and the edges indistinct.

“It seems we don’t need a flashlight anymore,” Lin Ting pointed at the moon outside the window.

“Mmm, let’s go! Let’s see what else is up there creating a spooky atmosphere,” Wen Lan said with a smile.

The third floor was the ‘tip’ of the spire, so it was even narrower. The moonlight filtering through the broken window only illuminated them halfway before fading. Wen Lan stepped onto Lin Ting’s shadow as he reached the third floor, and it was almost completely dark in front of him.

“Let’s turn on a flashlight, wait a moment…” Lin Ting said.

“There seems to be a window over there? Don’t waste battery, we’ll need your phone for navigation back later,” Wen Lan said, walking inside by the faint light filtering through the dusty glass window. “I think the atmosphere here is quite good. Shall we take a photo later?”

“Is your phone out of battery?” Lin Ting asked.

“Only 10% left… This window is a bit tight…”

Creak— The sound of the wooden window frame, unheard for years.

Wen Lan watched as what he pushed open was not a window, but an entire wooden wall connected to the window frame! This was actually a door!

But he had no time to retreat. His entire weight was used to push open this ‘window’ whose gaps were sealed by years of accumulated grime. As the door swung open, the cold wind from the height blew through him, making him shiver.

“Help…!” Before he could utter the word “me,” he fell straight down.