Long night dreams

Chapter 24 The Unknown Corpse in the Ice Coffin (2)
Apart from teaching, Du Yi's biggest hobby is reading novels, especially detective novels and thriller novels.His favorite author is American Edgar?Ellen?Poe, a literary master who is extremely weird.Ellen?Poe has a very famous short story called "The Black Cat".In that story, he introduced a method of murder in detail-after killing a person, he built the body into the wall.In the novel, if the murderer hadn’t accidentally built a black cat into the wall, and the meow of the cat attracted the police, no one would have known that there was a dead body hidden in the wall.

And on the wall in front of him, the human-shaped water stains, white and fat maggots, and the stench wafting out reminded Du Yi of Ellen?Poe's great The Black Cat.
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Is there a dead body in the wall?Are those wriggling maggots, like the black cat in the novel, foretelling the truth in the wall?

Du Yi's body trembled violently.

"Mr. Du, what's the matter with you?" Yang Mei asked with concern.

Du Yi didn't say anything, he turned around slowly, and saw a slender steel rod leaning against the emergency exit at the end of the corridor.He walked over silently, picked up the steel drill, and returned to the crack.

He raised the steel rod high, drawing a parabola with his arm, and the pointed end of the steel rod hit the gap of the crack heavily.

Fragments of masonry flew up in an instant, and under Yangmei's surprised gaze, Du Yi hit the wall again and again with a steel rod.

"Mr. Du, are you crazy? This is the wall of the hospital. If you cut through it, you will be compensated according to the price. Yang Mei reminded loudly. But Du Yi ignored it and continued to chisel the wall." With a "crash", several bricks were smashed When it was chiseled, a large black hole appeared in the wall.

"Hey! Just as I thought, this wall is really hollow!" Du Yi exclaimed excitedly.

"What..." Yang Mei kept shaking her head, "What is hollow? There is a room behind the wall. If you cut through the wall, the room behind the wall will naturally be exposed. There is no such thing as a hollow wall."
Du Yi was stunned for a moment, but the moment the wall was pierced, the stench became more intense.He was sure that the stench was coming from the hole in the wall.He turned around and said to Yang Mei: "The smell is coming from the room behind the wall, there must be something wrong in the room!"
Yang Mei said disapprovingly, "That's not surprising. The room behind the wall is the mortuary of the hospital, and there are corpses in it, so of course there will be a strange smell."
Du Yi said: "Well, even if there is a mortuary in the back, there are all corpses. But it's not hot now, and besides, the corpses in the mortuary are all placed in ice coffins, so how could there be such a strong smell? ?"
Yang Mei was a little aware of the seriousness of the problem, but she still said, "Maybe it's because of a power outage, and the ice coffin didn't have the effect of freezing, that's why there's such a smell..."
"Stop talking so much, I have to figure it out!" Du Yi insisted, "Quickly open the room behind the wall, I have to go and see!"
The entrance to the mortuary is not in the corridor, but on the side of the outer wall.After all, the Black Building is not only a place for mortuaries, it has also been turned into a temporary inpatient department. The mortuary and ward must not be at the same entrance.

Yang Mei took out the key from the duty room, led Du Yi through the corridor, and exited the dark building through the emergency gate.Walking around the wall, I finally came to a closed black iron door.The rusty mottled iron gate is covered with dark green creepers, the jagged leaves sway in the wind, and a bit of chilling air escapes from the cracks in the iron gate.Behind the iron gate is the eerie morgue!
After inserting the key into the keyhole, Yang Mei hesitated for a moment and asked, "Should I find a few more people to go in together?"
Du Yi shook his head, and replied: "No need, what is there to be afraid of the dead? Let's go in now!"
"But... I'm a little scared..." Yang Mei said timidly.

Du Yi glanced at Yangmei helplessly, and when he was about to say something, he suddenly heard a voice behind him: "Du Yi, why aren't you in the ward? What are you doing here?" Turning around, Du Yi saw Liu Chang Standing at the corner of the black building, he was looking at them curiously.

"Why are you here?" Du Yi asked.

"There was an earthquake just now. I'm afraid you haven't seen the frequent earthquakes in Liuxi Town, so I came to see you." Liu Chang said with a smile.But now that Du Yi is alive and kicking around with Yangmei outside the black building, nothing will happen.

"It's just right, Doctor Liu, you're here, let's go to the morgue together." Yang Mei said loudly to Liu Chang as if she saw a savior,
"The mortuary? Why do you have nothing to do here?" Liu Chang asked curiously.

"Don't ask so many questions! Come quickly." While speaking, Du Yi twisted the key and opened the iron door. With a "squeak", the iron door was slowly pushed open, and a coolness mixed with a rotten stench rushed over.

The morgue was pitch black, facing the darkness, Du Yi suddenly felt a trace of fear in his heart.Looking at the dark unknown space, his heart began to feel uneasy. He was a little afraid that strange monsters and ghosts would suddenly jump out of the dark corners.

Du Yi stood by the door, hesitating whether to go in right away.At this moment, a loud voice suddenly sounded not far outside the black building.Looking back, he saw several beams of flashlight flashing in the air from the inpatient department.The noise moved from far to near, and it seemed to move towards the dark building.

Who is here?
Du Yi couldn't help feeling suspicious, and moved half of his foot that had stepped into the mortuary, and opened his eyes to look in the direction of the noisy voices.

The light beam of the flashlight gradually moved closer, and after a while, several black shadows appeared in front of Du Yi, Liu Chang and Yang Mei.These are a few rural men in their prime. They all hold a flashlight in one hand and a sturdy stick in the other.

"Ah-" Yang Mei screamed, and then whispered to Du Yi, "These people are Zhou Di's family."
Zhou Di was the patient who mysteriously disappeared in the hospital last week. Du Yi had heard that Zhou Di's family members blocked the inpatient department of Liuxi Town Hospital because of dissatisfaction, preventing patients and doctors from entering and leaving.What are these guys doing in the dark building now?
Just when Du Yi was wondering, a man with tattoos on his arm had already rushed in front of him, waving a stick in his hand, and shouted sharply: "Don't go in! You are not allowed to go in.

"What are you doing?" Du Yi asked.

"Hmph. The tattooed man spat and said harshly, "Don't think we don't know, you secretly took patients and hid them in this iron gate.If you don't find my old Zhou, you don't even think about taking new patients.

Du Yi couldn't help but laugh. He coughed and said, "Brother, you must have made a mistake. This iron gate is a mortuary for the dead. There are no patients."
"The mortuary? The morgue?" The tattooed man showed suspicion in his eyes and said to himself, "Are you lying to me?"
"Why should I lie to you? If you don't believe me, go in with us and have a look." Du Yi said.In fact, he wished that these big men could go into the mortuary with him. To be honest, he was really a little afraid of going into this dark room.

"You mustn't try to lie to me. The tattooed man waved the stick in his hand, bluffing and shouting. He pushed Du Yi away, stepped in front of Du Yi and Yang Mei, and stepped into the mortuary first.

As soon as the tattooed man walked into the mortuary, he heard soft and squeaky sounds under his feet, as if he stepped on something greasy.He shone down with the flashlight, and suddenly let out a scream: "Ah--" The flashlight in his hand fell to the ground in response.

The ground was full of writhing white maggots, piled here and there, ugly but flamboyant.

"What's there to be afraid of? You're so big, why are you still afraid of maggots?" A middle-aged man who came with him chuckled, and his laughter was full of sarcasm.

The man with the tattoo got really angry immediately. He rolled his eyes and said, "Who said I'm afraid?" He raised his foot and stepped heavily on the fat maggots on the ground. The white pulp of the maggots splashed out, and they immediately turned pale. It became a piece of white skin.

He picked up the flashlight and shot it into the house.

The room was empty, except for a row of cold iron cabinets against the wall.There are drawers on the iron cabinet—needless to say, they must be ice coffins for refrigerating corpses, and the drawers are the corpse drawers for storing corpses.

"Ah, this is really a mortuary." The tattooed man said in shock.

"I've said it before, this is a mortuary, you don't believe it, you must come and see it?" Du Yi said angrily.These men exited the room resentfully, and the tattooed man said cursingly, "What's the matter, dead people are lying in ice coffins, why are there so many maggots?"
The speaker has no intention, but the listener has the heart.After hearing the words of the tattooed man, Du Yi couldn't help but carefully looked at the row of iron ice coffins leaning against the wall.

Outside the ice coffin, besides swarms of maggots, there are also many ants.White ants, black ants, yellow ants, brown ants, big ants, small ants, densely covered the iron sheet, slowly crawling across.Where they crawled, rows of brown water stains would be left immediately. At first glance, it looked like a shroud of unknown origin had been laid on the ice coffin.

Du Yi noticed that almost all the ants and maggots crawled out of an ice coffin, and the ice coffin didn't seem to be completely closed, with a little gap exposed.No wonder, since the ice coffin cannot be closed, the ice will naturally leak out, and the absolute temperature inside the coffin cannot reach below zero, so the bones inside will also rot, producing foul-smelling gas, breeding maggots and attracting food size ants.It's just that the nameless corpse lying in the ice coffin is pitiful. It will not live in peace after death, and it will also be harassed by ants biting the bones.

But all of this has nothing to do with Du Yi, he is just a passerby who was curious because he smelled the stench. Pay a plasterer to repair cracks and holes in the walls.

Du Yi smiled at Liu Chang, walked to the ice coffin, pushed the ice coffin, trying to push it into the iron corpse drawer.But who would have thought that after he pushed it, his hands were covered with dense ants, but the ice coffin did not move at all, as if it was stuck there.

"Hey, what's going on here?" Du Yi scraped off the ants on his hand, and the yellow stain left on his palm made him feel disgusted.Looking at the frozen coffin, he couldn't help but doubt Dou.He lit the lighter, and leaned towards the handle of the ice coffin. Wherever the flames went, charred ant corpses fell down and fell all over the ground.The ants fled in panic, while Du Yi showed a smug smile.He firmly grasped the handle of the ice coffin and pulled it out fiercely, the ice coffin was suddenly completely exposed in front of the three of them.Liu Chang and Yang Mei raised their flashlights and surrounded them at the same time. The light beam of the flashlight happened to shine into the ice coffin, and the three of them clearly saw the contents of the ice coffin.

Then, the three of them bent down at the same time and vomited, almost even vomited out the green bitter bile! ——
In the ice coffin, there were actually two corpses stacked on top of each other. No wonder the ice coffin couldn't fit into the corpse drawer.The corpse below is covered, and it is not clear what kind of dead person it is. Judging from the frost formed on the surface of his body and the darkened skin, it can be deduced that he must have been lying in the ice coffin for a long time, perhaps The earliest owner of the ice coffin.

And lying on top of this corpse was a very fresh corpse.The reason why he is said to be fresh is because a blood hole was cut open in his chest.The stubble around the blood hole was a bloody mess, and the blood soaked all the hairs into a bright red.The blood near the wound has solidified into fine blood-red ice slag, which is blood-red, not black!This is enough to show that this corpse is indeed very fresh.Although it is not certain when he died, it was definitely not sent in at the same time as the next corpse.

The body was that of a male, who must have had Mediterranean baldness, as evidenced by remnants of curly hair.It was impossible to tell what he looked like. His face was hit by a blunt object, his eye sockets were sunken, the bridge of his nose collapsed, and his cheekbones were cracked.What was even more frightening was that his cheek was scratched by the sharp blade, not just a single cut, but many cuts in all directions, some deep and some shallow, just like terraced fields with criss-crossed fields.The blood flowed out from his wound, and then coagulated together again. After the suspected black dead blood dried up, it protruded from the muscles of the face, staining a face beyond human appearance.

The only thing about this dead man that made people feel more comfortable was his teeth.His mouth is slightly open, and you can see that he has a mouthful of white and neat teeth.This tooth is too white, even in the dim morgue, it still shines with white light, like the sharp teeth of a wild beast.The dirty face and clean teeth formed a great contrast, which made people feel unstoppably weird and creepy.

Du Yi almost vomited all his bile, he finally straightened up, and then saw Yang Mei also slumped on the ground with all four limbs limp, her body crushing countless ants and maggots to death.Du Yi helped Yangmei up, but saw Liu Chang standing numbly beside the ice coffin, looking at the ground with his eyes twitching, hesitant to speak.

"Liu Chang, what's the matter?" Du Yi asked feebly,

Liu Chang raised his head dejectedly, glanced at Du Yi and Yang Mei, then turned his head to look at the corpse lying in the ice coffin, and said slowly: "Maybe I know this dead person. To be precise, I know him." These neat and white teeth. His beautiful porcelain teeth were made for him by myself. If I remember correctly, he is the elementary school teacher named Zhou Di.

(End of this chapter)