Paintings of Terror

Chapter 51: The Anomaly in the Room

Translated by Eve

Edited by EB

Ke Xun was worried about Wei Dong so he went to check out Room 616. In the end, he had to be supported back by the other man on the way back to Room 411.

Ke Xun turned to look at Mu Yiran, head disoriented and sight fuzzy. Was that a sliver of concern in the other’s eyes?

“Ke er, I didn’t expect you to have such a strong reaction to the room. Luckily I’m the one living on the sixth floor. You’d have suffered a lot if you had to sleep on the sixth floor last night.” Wei Dong led Ke Xun to the sofa.

Ke Xun opened the little green bottle Old Man Li Taiyong had given him and poured out a few pills. He put them into his mouth. “I would have exploded if I had to stay there for two more minutes.”

Under Mu Yiran’s gaze, Ke Xun quickly amended himself: “My head, that is.”

“Perhaps this is a general discomfort directed towards the worlds inside paintings.” Mu Yiran put the book on mechanical theory down. He had been trying to find clues from that book just now. “Did you feel unwell throughout the sixth floor or only in Room 616?”

“The entire sixth floor.” Ke Xun’s mouth was filled with the bitter taste and cold feeling of the pills. However, both his heart and mood improved. “The gatekeeper uncle described it really accurately—the pressure up there really is crushing. My head felt so heavy, as if there was an aircraft carrier on top of my head. I couldn’t lift my head up at all.”

Wei Dong nodded along as he reported to the boss: “Same here. My condition was much the same. It felt like there was a propane tank balanced on my head.”

Mu Yiran ignored the ridiculous analogy. He poured Ke Xun a glass of water from the thermos and let it cool down. “Were there any changes to the room?”

Ke Xun smiled at the glass of water. He answered, “Sure enough. That Zhu Haowen even pulled out a ruler to prove it. The outer wall is slanted inwards. Meanwhile, the inner walls, that is, the wall where the door and small window are located, were completely unaffected.”

Ke Xun picked up the glass cup from the table. Although the water inside was still a little too hot, Ke Xun happily blew over the top. “Did you put tangerine powdered drink mix in here?”

Mu Yiran looked down. “It seems like the water here is naturally tinted orange.”

Wei Dong felt like he was being fed dog food. He straightforwardly stepped out of the room.

“Are you all in here?” Suddenly, Sha Liu appeared at the door.

Wei Dong didn’t know if he was being included or not.

Sha Liu walked straight in.

The three men looked at her. They didn’t know what grave matters would come out from her mouth this time.

Sha Liu leaned against the door. “Something horrifying happened in my room last night.”

Ke Xun took a sip of the piping hot water. “Why didn’t you mention it downstairs?”

“I was afraid of scaring Qiu Lu. She’s timid. I didn’t want her to do anything rash out of fear.” Sha Liu always had a reason behind everything she did.

Mu Yiran got straight to it: “What happened last night?”

Sha Liu’s gaze swept over the room, landing on the pair of red slippers on the shoe rack by the door. She subconsciously shifted further away. “In the middle of the night, when the girl had knocked on our door, I had been awake. But I didn’t dare to move or open the door. I just sat there in the darkness and stared out the small window that faced the corridor. There is no curtain over that window in our room.”

The men listened to her silently.

“The two girls had been panicking. They shone the light from their phones into my apartment, thereby illuminating the room….”

Wei Dong was the least brave amongst them. He sat down on the sofa and snuggled up to Ke Xun: “Fuck, what did you see?”

“A person sat on top of the chamber pot by the window.” Sha Liu’s voice was a bit low. “She wasn’t visible from the other side of the window.”

It wasn’t just Wei Dong, even Ke Xun was startled. “What kind of person was it?”

Wei Dong: “Fuck, you have chamber pots in your room?”

Mu Yiran: “….”

Sha Liu pushed her glasses up. She seemed to be adjusting her emotions. “I also found it strange. There’s a really big chamber pot in the room. It looks like a toilet. When the light from their phones shone in, I saw a woman sitting on the chamber pot. It was a…white-haired woman. She was pure white all over.”

Although Wei Dong had experienced two terrifying paintings already, he was still frightened by the white haired, pure white woman on the chamber pot. “Are you…sure you saw correctly?”

“I didn’t dare to look at her for too long. I was so scared I closed my eyes at once.” Sha Liu looked like she was still afraid, despite the event having already passed. “Nothing happened in the room even after the girls left. I waited a long time before I opened my eyes again. By that time, the pure white woman had already disappeared.”

Ke Xun took another two pills and cleared his voice. “Do you think that the woman had a physical body or was gaseous or something?”

“I don’t know. I only caught a glimpse.” Sha Liu bit down on her lips. “But what I am certain of is that that woman was a previous tenant of Room 410.”

Although Wei Dong was afraid, he still had the guts to think: then that chamber pot must belong to the pure white woman….

Sha Liu continued: “The first time I entered the apartment, I had noticed very long strands of white hair on the comb sitting on the vanity dresser. The hair likely belonged to her.”

“A vanity dresser?” Although Mu Yiran didn’t know a lot about occult stuff, he still asked a very typical question: “Did the woman have a reflection in the mirror?”

“No. Well, the vanity dresser didn’t have a mirror.” Sha Liu also found this extremely weird. “It was evident that its mirror had been removed. There were marks left over.”

Wei Dong had originally thought that he was the most unfortunate, having to live on the sixth floor. Now, he thought that the other rooms were more dangerous. “About that p-pure white woman…did you call her that because she was wearing white clothing?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t have the nerve to look at her too closely. In any case, everything about her was white. I think her face was white too—by white, I mean she was as white as a snowman.” Sha Liu suddenly felt like throwing up.

“Aside from this, did you notice any other abnormalities?” Mu Yiran asked.

Sha Liu resisted the urge to dry heave. “I didn’t sleep at all last night. During the latter half of the night, I heard my door open and close two times. Although it was really quiet, I could hear it in the silence of the night.”

“It opened and closed twice? You’re saying that someone went out and came back in?” Mu Yiran frowned.

“It could also be that someone came in and then went out.” Ke Xun took another sip of the hot water of non-optimal quality.

Sha Liu: “That’s not likely. The door is locked from the inside. People can’t get in from the outside.”

Wei Dong: “The issue is…someone that can enter and exit at their own will at night…is probably not an ordinary human.”

Sha Liu mulled over this before saying, “I tried to get some information from the old lady that lives next door. She said that someone named Yafen lived in the apartment I currently reside in for about a decade. But she moved downtown with her parents a while back.”

“So what you’re saying is that this Yafen is still alive?” Ke Xun knew his question sounded odd but he knew everyone would get what he meant.

“It sounded like the old lady was saying she moved away.” Sha Liu thought about the romance novels in the room. She didn’t know why Yafen hadn’t taken her books with her.

If that pure white woman wasn’t Yafen, who was it?

Sha Liu cleared her throat unnaturally. “Qiu Lu and I talked. We’ll be spending tonight on the sofa in the outer room. If anything happens, we’ll make a run for the corridor. If that happens, I hope you’ll help us.”

“Of course.” Ke Xun agreed.

Sha Liu sighed in relief. “It’s getting late. We should head downstairs and meet up with the others.”

The group left the suite and saw Qiu Li coming up from the third floor. She shouted at them: “Come eat!”

Qiu Lu had been with her two friends just now. Xin Miao was also with her.

Everyone gathered downstairs. Qin Ci was already with Old Man Li Taiyong, waiting at the entrance to the restaurant. Zhu Haowen was standing next to them as well, no expression on his face.

Mu Yiran looked at Qin Ci. Qin Ci nodded. “I already told the older gentleman the truth. He didn’t have a strong reaction.”

Old Man Li Taiyong wasn’t deaf. When he heard Qin Ci speak, he spoke up in a slow manner. “There is a reason for everything. Although this place seems otherworldly, it is not without reason.”

Everyone reacted differently to his words. Qiu Lu had wanted to rebuke him but decided to drop it considering the fact that this was a seventy something year old man.

Lunch consisted of common home-cooked dishes. Everyone decided to leave their discussion for after dinner, just in case they ended up hearing something that would make them lose their appetite.

After everyone placed down their chopsticks, Qin Ci said, “There’s no issue with the furnishing in Room 307. There were no changes like in Room 616 either. But I did hear strange noises last night. I don’t know if that counts.”

“What kind of noises?” Sha Liu asked.

Qin Ci thought back carefully. “It was kind of like someone was making noises with their lips puckered. Like the sound we sometimes make when we feed little animals.”

Xin Miao was the most timid of the group. She wrapped her arms around herself to force herself not to shake.

“I heard that sound too.” Old Man Li Taiyong, who stayed in the same room as Qin Ci chimed in, “It’s like the sound we make when we try to beckon kittens or puppies toward us.”

Everyone knew what sound they were describing but no one wanted to make it out loud. They were afraid that the sound would haunt them if they were to do it.

This kind of fear was hidden in the corner. It was different from the fear one would feel if a monster were to suddenly jump out. It was like if a ghost’s hand were to suddenly reach out and scratch you slightly. It wouldn’t hurt, but it was terrifying.

“What about the others?” Sha Liu looked at everyone.

Zhi Shao, who stayed in Room 309, shook his head. “We chatted until late in the night but nothing strange happened.”

Qiu Lu who was in 410 with Sha Liu said, “Nothing happened in our room either….”

Ke Xun, Sha Liu, Wei Dong and Mu Yiran exchanged glances but no one made a sound.

Soon after, Qiu Lu said, “But I did dream of a snow woman last night.”

Ke Xun and Wei Dong spoke up at the same time: “What snow woman?”

“Like a yuki-onna from Japanese legends. The yokai that appears on snowy mountains and freezes the men she likes before adding them to her collection in her cave to admire.” Qiu Lu described her dream, “The snow woman was dressed in all white and had pure white skin. She was beautiful.”

Wei Dong and Sha Liu’s expressions both turned ugly. The others also felt unwell after hearing about her dream. Only Sha Liu smiled. “Many Japanese legends are romantic.”

Qin Ci looked towards Mu Yiran and Ke Xun. “What about you two? Did anything happen in 411?”

Although Ke Xun didn’t sleep very well last night, he hadn’t heard anything strange. He turned to look at Mu Yiran. He thought that the other would mention something he hadn’t had time to tell him yet.

As expected, Mu Yiran calmly said, “I heard something last night. It sounded like it was coming from beneath the bed.”

“At the foot of the bed?” Everyone looked terror-stricken.

“It sounded like someone was searching for something.”