Chapter 3: The Nightmare's Grasp
658 Words
The ghostly figure hanging by a noose hadn’t pursued them. It seemed unable to leave the shroud of black fog that surrounded it.
Merlin had initially planned to guide the terrified woman downstairs to the first floor, but when he looked down from the second floor, he had to abandon that plan. The stairwell on the ground floor was blocked by thick webs, and the ground was littered with bulbous, egg-like growths. He caught a glimpse of a massive shadow darting by.
With the path below blocked, they had no choice but to move to the second floor.
Merlin pushed open the fire door on the second floor and noticed that the first room's security door was slightly ajar. He pushed it open and entered, finding it empty.
“Close the door, quickly,” the woman urged, her voice trembling with fear.
Merlin complied, closing the security door behind them, which provided a sense of safety.
He took a moment to check the rest of the apartment. It was a two-bedroom unit with no one else inside. The decor was distinctly vintage, reminiscent of styles from forty to fifty years ago. The furniture and appliances were similarly outdated: floral sofa covers, a bulky thermos, and old wooden photo frames.
Merlin examined one of the photos, which featured a family of three. Strangely, the faces were blank, devoid of any features.
He wasn’t surprised. In a dream, anything could happen, and these bizarre elements only confirmed his suspicion that this wasn’t his dream. He certainly wouldn’t have imagined such an old-fashioned decor.
To confirm his theory, Merlin approached the frightened woman, who was huddled on the sofa, hugging her knees and shaking uncontrollably.
She needed time to recover, so Merlin wasn’t in a hurry. He had already deduced that with the hanging ghost on the third floor, the killer who liked to disembowel people likely couldn’t come down, making the second floor relatively safe for now.
After a while, the woman’s trembling subsided, and Merlin decided it was time to talk.
“Let me introduce myself. I’m Merlin, from the seventh floor,” he said, breaking the silence.
The woman looked up, gathering her courage. “I know. We’ve met before in the neighborhood.”
It was good to communicate. Merlin learned that the woman’s name was Ying Liu, a music teacher from a training institute who lived on the third floor.
“The people hanging on the third-floor stairs, I recognized some of them. They’re our neighbors, but there are also some unfamiliar faces…”
“They were my friends. We were celebrating a birthday and had some drinks, so we decided to stay at my place. But after I fell asleep, I woke up to find…” Ying Liu’s expression was filled with terror.
It was clear she was reliving a horrifying memory.
“Are we dreaming?” Ying Liu suddenly asked.
It seemed she wasn’t the only one questioning this.
“Will everything return to normal when we wake up?” she continued.
“I don’t know,” Merlin replied.
Neither of them knew much more about the dream. The conversation fell into a silence.
Ying Liu’s condition seemed to improve, and she turned to Merlin with gratitude. “Thank you for earlier.”
Merlin had a question. “At that time, wasn’t it impossible to speak?”
Ying Liu nodded urgently. “My friends saw the ghost and screamed, and they were immediately hung by the noose. I was so scared that I couldn’t make a sound, which ended up saving me.”
She looked visibly shaken.
Merlin understood why she had made a gesture for silence earlier—she had sensed the ghost’s method of killing. If she hadn’t warned him, he might have fallen into the same trap.
“Weren’t you afraid earlier?” Ying Liu asked, noticing Merlin had faced the terrifying ghost directly. The distance between them had been dangerously close.
- Writer
