I have a date with the devil

Chapter 27

Tick, tick, tick.

At 2:30 a.m., in the silence of the room, the air had a hint of wetness, a hint of coolness. The sound of broken water droplets falling to the ground is so clear it's creepy.

The wooden floor, which is in disrepair, creaks with a dry and dull sound. The white moonlight flickered on and off, and the lamp hanging from the roof hissed and flickered.

There was a closet on the wall directly opposite the end of the bed. The handle was painted snow-white and had dried and cracked off slightly. The doors of the closet cast a shadow of uneven edges under the horizontal blinds, and the doors were closed tightly.

This is a very old-fashioned Western-style closet, the narrow interior of only a few miscellaneous items, the smell of damp wood, a little sickening.

The skinny girl cowered in the closet, bending her legs, her bare|naked feet too late to put on socks, ten toes spasming with fear, gouging the opposite wooden panel. The hands that trembled nervously were folded together, covering their mouths and noses, suppressing all the sobs and violent heartbeats in their throats, not daring to make a single sound, lest the "people" wandering the room at the moment might discover her presence.

I can't tell if the wetness on my palms is snot and tears or cold sweat from being scared, and even the front of my nightgown is wet. Between her flexed thighs and her heart, a letter was crumpled and tucked away before it could be sent.

The lack of oxygen makes her a little dizzy, and she can't tell how fast the time is passing, only that the seconds feel like years.

It's been about half an hour since I hid in here, and it's almost the limit of my body ......

The sound of that ticking sound has disappeared, the thing that came at her, should have left her room, right?

The red and swollen eyelids were soaked with tears that they were cold and hot, the girl trembled and let out a faint breath of air into her palms, finally mustering up the courage to open her eyes a slit, and after some thought, her stiff body slumped down to see what was going on outside through the slit in the blinds.

Then she saw a pair of green and white eyes.

What was out there, with limbs that didn't look like real people, was sprawled on the wooden floor like noodles, in a position that almost broke its neck, peeking at her through the gap in the closet from below, in silence, looking straight up.

Her heart and lungs contracted sharply, pierced by the thorns of fear, shocked and hurried backward, but her windpipe seemed to be strangled.

......

"Madam, this lady, the plane is about to land, please straighten the seat back."

Ye Miao's eyelashes fluttered violently as she abruptly awoke from her lengthy nightmare, gasping for air, her eyes red and slightly damp after pulling down the light-blocking blindfold. She looked up, a little bewildered, and saw the blue-eyed flight attendant in the aisle.

When she finally woke up, the flight attendant patiently prompted her once again that the plane was about to land and asked her to straighten her seat back.

Ye Miao woke up as if from a dream and smiled apologetically, did as she was told and put away the small tabletop by the way.

Under the white light, the oriental girl's seal was faintly green. The stewardess asked her with concern if she was not feeling well, and only after receiving a negative answer did she leave in style.

The seat belt around her waist strangled her a bit, after a long flight of more than ten hours, and a moment of non-stop transit, it is inevitable that she would be tired. Ye Miao panted, unscrewed the mineral water bottle and even filled a few mouthfuls, only to find some calm.

A kind and curious voice came from beside her, speaking a familiar Chinese: "Little girl, are you also traveling to M?"

Ye Miao was stunned. This was a small plane, she boarded earlier, and as soon as she sat down, she put on a blackout mask to catch up on her sleep, not noticing that the passengers sitting in the same row with her were a mother and daughter.

During the bumps in the plane, Ye Miao smiled and explained, "It's not a tour, I'm going to study."

"Wow, very impressive!" The woman showed a "really is a compatriot" expression, quickly dropped her guard, and enthusiastically climbed into conversation with her: "Are you going to work in M in the future?"

"I'm an exchange student, I'll only stay in M for a year. It's still uncertain about the job."

Ye Miao was studying in the mathematics department of the top provincial university in China. From time to time, the provincial university would launch an exchange program with foreign universities. The other side is not some pheasant university, but a world-renowned university, the number of places is limited, the porridge is scarce, and has always been admitted on merit.

The specific country and city to which the university is randomly selected, the only thing that can be guaranteed is the same major.

After Ye Miao signed up, with his usual excellent performance, he successfully obtained a place, and will spend his sophomore year in St. Montanka, M. He will study in the mathematics department of the famous university A.

The only thing that she lacked was a little bit of luck, because there was only one place for her to go to the University of A. In other words, she had no companion for this trip. However, this is also an opportunity to exercise life skills.

While Ye Miao was talking to the chatty mother, the little girl sitting in the middle seat kept her eyes on Ye Miao's smile and suddenly blushed, tugged on her sleeve and said innocently, "Sister, you are so beautiful, are you a princess?"

Ye Miao was amused by the girl's imagination.

At 12:00 noon local time in Santa Montaña, the plane landed smoothly at the airport. Once out of the cabin door, the cold wind blew in the face, freezing the thin sleepy people awake.

The airport restrooms were empty, the quartz sink shining brightly. The water flowing from the pipes was creepier than ice, and the fingers froze red for a while. While washing her hands, Ye Miao raised her head and saw a face with little blood reflected in the mirror.

She is the type of person who has never lacked praise since childhood. The advantage of learning ballet for eight years is that she has a physique that people envy. Her legs are straight and slender, her back is straight and never hunched. Her elegance and graceful demeanor stand out among her peers. The face is also unforgettable, the eyes are as bright as a pearl, the end of the eyes often with flushed.

But now in the bright light, pale, haggard and faintly dark circles under the eyes are not hiding, it is a bit to the overflowing words of the next person.

Ye Miao lowered her eyes and tightened the faucet, and her fingers slipped a little.

The dream on the plane is not an unusual nightmare, nor a bad movie plot, nor her imagination, but a real existence in her memory of a frightening page.

Or rather, it was an insignificant page among countless frightening events.

When she was very young, she knew she was a little different from others. When she was in kindergarten, she would often see two blurry-faced strangers hunched over the last "chick" and tugging on its clothes. The child being pulled was oblivious.

When it was Ye Miao's turn to be the chick at the end of the line, the two "people" would hold hands and grin grimly at her.

Ye Miao was terrified, she could vaguely feel the unlike living breath emanating from the two "people" and cried out while shrinking into the teacher's arms. As a result, no one believed what she described, and the other children said she was lying. Only then did Ye Miao understand that there are things that only she can see.

Not long after, the two "people" dragged the clothes of the children, a high fever pneumonia, the other in front of their own neighborhood was hit by falling objects, serious injuries on the spot and died.

It was like the prelude to an unsettling dance. From that day on, she saw these things more and more often, at first only to see the pestering others, slowly, those things began to come at her.

The human-shaped water mist that seeps away from the ceiling when she sleeps, the voyeuristic feeling she feels when she closes her eyes to rinse the foam from her hair, the experience of being inexplicably locked in the utility room ......

No one took the child's words seriously, only her mother half believed it and took her to the temple to burn incense and worship Buddha. The mother is not a devout believer, there is nothing in this area and the guidance of high people, just follow the practice of the TV series, regardless of what the other side is to bless, are randomly worshiped.

She did not know that this practice is effective. After each kneeling worship, can be exchanged for a head of half a month of peace. But as time passed, the protection period also became shorter and shorter, Ye Miao was involved in a variety of strange murders increased dramatically.

At the age of eleven, her parents divorced and her mother remarried. She was condemned to her father, who was in a better financial position. Her father was a materialist to the core and was unhappy with his ex-wife for engaging in feudal superstition, believing that she had been brought to gods and goddesses by the rhetoric of children. Coupled with his busy schedule, he entrusted Ye Miao to his grandparents' home, so they could correct his granddaughter's bad habits.

As an older generation of comrades, the grandparents' ideas are not outdated at all. Both were educated teachers when they were young, deeply influenced by the core values of socialism, and never believed in ghosts and gods.

Grandparents live in a single-family Western-style mansion. The window of Ye Miao's room faces the courtyard, where there is a deep and ancient well, about one meter wide in diameter, with semi-dried mud underneath. To prevent people from falling, the well mouth has long been boarded up and nailed up.

Rather, because of an indescribable intuition, Ye Miao never dared to go near that well.

Half a month after moving into her grandparents' house, the time came to December 24, Christmas Eve. She lit the lamp, fell under the covers, bit off the cap of her pen, and wrote a letter in English to Santa Claus, pleading with him to protect her.

In fact, on the eve of her parents' divorce, during those last trips to the temple, she had sensed that the gods and Buddhas were not quite able to help her anymore.

The Chinese gods could not save her, and there was no way out of her sickness.

Just before she put the letter into the envelope, she vaguely heard a "clattering" sound of water coming from the courtyard.

Something was crawling out of the well and coming closer ......

The unprecedented throbbing seized her nerves, Ye Miao quickly turned off the lamp and jumped out of bed, horrified to twist the door handle, but found that it could not be opened.

The long, thin shadow was getting closer and closer, reflecting a ghastly shape on the curtains. Ye Miao had to shiver and get into the closet.

Legend has it that on Christmas Eve, Santa Claus comes on an elk sleigh and enters the room of a sleeping child through a pipe, leaving presents in the Christmas stocking hanging in front of the fireplace and under the green Christmas tree decorated with colored balls.

But it was clear that it was not Santa Claus who was prowling outside, but something that was asking for his life.

The crumpled envelope in her hand had not yet had time to write the name of the recipient, and she shuddered as she finished spelling the word Santa, when she heard a click and the window lock opened.

The last moment, the blue-white eyes that peered shadily at her through the gap, she could no longer remember whether it was a nightmare or her own imagination, and that was her last memory of that night.

The next day she woke up in the closet, smothered all night without incident, but also life.

I don't know what happened after that, the letter that was wet with tears also disappeared, and after not being able to find the pieces anywhere, Ye Miao already suspected that it was her own hallucination.

Everything seems to be as usual. But there is something that has changed implicitly.

The letter went up in smoke, meaning that it had been received by the other party.

At that moment, the chains had begun to turn in the golden eyes of Pandora's magic box.

The sad thing is that the girl who dared to write for protection thought that she had misremembered, and did not know that the letter was not only sent, but also by mistake invited the most terrible thing in the world for herself.

......

After putting on the down, and seeing that her lips were too pale, Ye Miao applied a lipstick to the mirror, pursed her lips, and let out a soft "boing" before pulling up her luggage and heading for the exit.

A lively voice sounded in front of her: "Ye Miao, here!"

A pretty girl of the same age was standing in front, waving enthusiastically at Ye Miao.

This was Ye Miao's high school best friend Wang Qi, who had left the country six months before the entrance exams because of her parents' job change and came to St. Montanka to study in college. Today, she drove here to pick her up and take her to buy a cell phone card and rent an apartment.

After living here for two years, Wang Qi is already a M-national. After catching up for a while in the car, Ye Miao changed her cell phone card and sent a message to her father to report her safety.

Outside the car window, the scenery flew by, the sky was as blue as a wash, high and bright. The sun was white, but it did not feel hot. St. Monica's is not the capital of M. The houses in the suburbs are very short and sparsely built. The highway is very smooth, until the car drove into the city, then gradually you can see the high-rise buildings and stores along the street, the buildings are very western country characteristics, but there are still not many pedestrians.

"Here we are, let's get off."

After Wang Qi turned off the engine and pulled out the car keys, he led Ye Miao into a rather large housing agency. Ye Miao had an impression of the name and remembered that it was an agency organization with a good reputation among the international student community.

University of A is equipped with student dormitories, but the number is limited and you need to start applying two months before the start of the school year. It is said that the quality of the rooms is very high, so even local students will go to grab them.

Ye Miao arrived in St. Montanka only a week before the new semester after the exchange student's procedures were completed, and she would definitely not be able to make it. It was the best choice to find a rental agent at this time.