Tales of Aegiceras: Cave in

13. The Fire (1)

Translator: Superbomb

Record of Dark Occurrences in Aegiceras Hospital 1999~2002 (II)

Recorder: Liu Qunfang (one of the staff members on duty from 1999 to 2002)
Nov 5th, 2000

Xiaohui told me that there was something wrong with the lady’s room on the 4th floor, but I never took her words seriously.
What could be wrong with it? I have been in the hospital for a long time and I’ve heard of a lot about how the morgue is haunted. But no one has ever seen any ghost in person, so I don’t buy it!
Word of mouth often makes these things even more mysterious. For example, I don’t think there’s anything mysterious about what I’m writing now, but they asked me to record everything in detail, including the conversation. I think it just makes people more suspicious and more afraid!
Xiaohui and the other young nurses had never focused on their works. They always gathered to talk about dressing up or tell stories about ghosts. They looked very serious when they were telling such stories, and those from the countryside, like Chen Juan, did believe in this. She worked here as a cleaner on the recommendation of an acquaintance. It was said that her home was in the distant mountains, and she had to walk a few days to Wuze Town, the farthest town to our county in this region. Therefore, she believed in these superstitious stories more than anyone else.
However, for fear that other people might look down upon her, Chen Juan had never mentioned anything about her family. When she first came to the hospital, she was wearing a ragged shirt. Her pants were too short to cover her legs completely. She had no socks and her white casual shoes were covered with mud. When she saw the elevator, she jumped in fright. As she was afraid of elevators, she had never taken them. Those young nurses always made fun of her, saying that she was a bumpkin. If they met her in the corridor, they would deliberately cover their noses and say something like, “OMG, what smells so terrible! Someone hasn’t bathed in half a month?”
Needless to say, Chen Juan felt depressed being laughed at by the others in the hospital. Even her accent became the butt of jokes. Xiaohui once said that Chen Juan was totally different from others—she talked like an alien, dressed like an alien, and didn’t look like a woman from the earth!
Women tend to be vain creatures. After less than a year, she started to learn how to make herself look fashionable. She tied her hair up into a bun, changed her clothes more often, and even started wearing high heels! She took the initiative to talk to the young nurses and whenever she heard about something fashion, she would try to be in the swim. Later, she was becoming more and more like a city girl. Maybe she felt inferior because of her rural origin, she had never talked about her hometown, nor had she ever gone back. If someone who was not familiar with her asked her about her family, she would insist that she had grown up in the city, and her parents were both teachers. We had never put her lies to her face, but we would burst into laughter whenever we talked about her.
However, when she heard of the stories about ghosts, she would behave like a rural girl. As soon as a story was finished, she would say, “I’ve heard of it, too! So you must take it seriously! Something happened to XXX when he was reaping the wheat a year ago!” Those from intellectual families would never speak like that!
The day before yesterday, I happened to see them talking about the occurrences in the lady’s room on the 4th floor.
“You know what? There were babies crying at night in the restroom on the 4th floor,” Xiaohui said with a mysterious look.
The others grew tense in an instant. They picked their ears and listened carefully.
“I was on duty that night. The lady’s room on the 2nd floor was out of order, but I couldn’t hold it anymore, so I had to go upstairs to the 4th floor. I felt chill the moment I reached the foot of the staircase on the 4th floor. The door of the lady’s room was half open. When I pushed it open and was about to walk in, I suddenly heard a crash of water coming from inside…”
The young nurses were both curious and scared. They shivered, but couldn’t stop listening. In broad daylight, they didn’t have to be so scared!
“It was almost 12:00 at midnight, and there couldn’t be anyone on the 4th floor. I was freaked out, so I stopped by the door. Suddenly, I heard the cries of a baby coming from the pitch-dark lady’s room. The crying grew louder, so although I almost wet myself, I ran back in haste. The baby kept crying and it seemed like it was chasing me from afar. I was so scared that I felt as if I could still hear it crying as I lay in bed getting ready to sleep for the next few nights…” Xiaohui described so vividly that even she herself turned livid with fear.
Liu Xin was scared out of her wits. She shivered for quite a while with tears in her eyes before asking cautiously, “Is it the child of the pregnant woman in bed 31?”
Everyone was trembling with fear. Someone covered her mouth at once to stop her. “Don’t say it anymore! Please!”
Xiaohui immediately waved her hand and said, “Come on, let’s get to work!”
Those girls dispersed, looking pale. Chen Juan was freaked out as well. Holding the mop with one hand, she kept wiping the cold sweat off her forehead with the other. Moreover, she kept her mouth shut and did not say what she usually said when she had just heard of a thrilling story.
Needless to say, I knew something about the pregnant woman in bed 31.
That 20-year-old pregnant woman was one of the patients in Liu Xin’s charge. She looked miserable, as except for the woman (probably her mother) who had brought her to the hospital in rage, nobody, not even the baby’s dad, had ever come to visit her.
Out of pity, we took special care of her. But we also gossiped about her. She was young and pretty, so we assumed that she was most likely pregnant before marriage, and the baby’s dad was hiding from her when he learned about her pregnancy.
She didn’t speak much, nor did she eat much. Most women would plump up after pregnancy by constantly shoving nutritious food into their mouths. On the contrary, she was growing thinner and listless. With her pale face and messy long hair, she looked like a ghost!
Liu Xin finally got some information out of her. She got pregnant during the military training in university. The boys’ and girls’ dormitories were next to each other. She fell in love with a boy and ended up to be pregnant…
However, to our surprise, a week before she was due to give birth, the young woman suddenly disappeared!

This was really abnormal.
According to the patient in her neighboring bed, the pregnant woman cried that night because of abdominal cramps. She then went to the lady’s room alone with her big belly. No one had ever seen her come out of the restroom since then.
Liu Xin almost broke down. She searched every corner of the hospital but failed to find that young woman. She thought that she might have committed suicide by jumping off the building, but there was no corpse outside. She thought that she might have been taken away by her family, but her clothes and toiletries were still in the ward.
After this incident, every time the lady’s room on the 4th floor was mentioned, she would feel restless. Even though Xiaohui was talking about the 4th floor of the main building, it would remind her the pregnant woman missing on the 4th floor of the inpatient department.
After a few days, it was my turn to be on night shift. A few young nurses chatted and painted their nails in the nurse station while Chen Juan was cleaning up.
I probably had drunk too much water at night, and I needed to answer the call of nature in urgent. As I had just taken a few steps forward, the head nurse said, “The restroom on the 2nd floor is out of order. You can only go to the 4th floor.”
At the thought of how difficult it would be to climb upstairs to the 4th floor, I said, “How come it’s out of order again? I’ll just take a No.1, and I can make do with it…”
“No, no! They already locked the door in case anyone should go in,” the head nurse answered with a resolute look.
After hesitating for a while, I decided to go to the 4th floor. It was not a big deal! Seeing that I was in a dilemma, Chen Juan pointed at the clock on the wall and suggested, “Sister Qunfang, it’s almost 12 o’clock. You’d better hold it for a little longer and relieve yourself after going back home. Don’t go to the 4th floor!”
As soon as she finished her words, we heard the bell strike twelve.
I wouldn’t get off work until 12:30, so there was no way that I could hold it for so long. I waved to her and hurried upstairs.
As I walked up step by step, the midnight bell behind me gradually faded away. “Thump! Thump!” In the dark night, all that seemed left was my torch light and the sound of my high heels striking onto each step of the staircase.
It was spookily quiet in the hospital!
Sooner or later, the hospital leaders had to get a few more restrooms built! The lady’s room was on the 2nd, 4th and 6th floors, while the men’s room was on the 1st, 3rd and 5th floors, so it was damned inconvenient!
As the building was quite and empty, every time I put down my foot on the step, I heard two footsteps (one of them should be an echo) as if a woman was quietly following me behind!
Standing at the corner of the staircase, I plucked up and shone my torch down from somewhere like a dark cavern. However, in the dim light, it was impossible to see the 1st floor, and I could only see the vague outline of the stairs below.
My heart skipped a beat for no reason.
‘What if I flash my torch at someone? Wait… What’s that?’
Alas, I couldn’t stabilize my wild state of mind either!
But I wasn’t sure if what happened next was an illusion.
When I was about to reach the 4th floor, I heard a faint noise.
The sound was indescribable. It felt like someone was walking in slippers in the corridor on the 4th floor. It also sounded like the hem of a woman’s skirt rustling against the ground as she walked.
I was freaked out, but at the thought that I might be overreacting because I had heard too many stories about ghosts, I summoned up courage and walked a few more steps upstairs.
Before I could reach the 4th floor, a burst of laugher from a baby suddenly rang in the darkness.
The silvery sound of giggling echoed through the empty staircase.
I was so scared that I almost threw the torch onto the floor.
How come a baby was laughing on the 4th floor at this late hour?
Before I could come back to my senses, the laughter suddenly stopped. It was so quiet that the short “giggling” sound had never appeared.
‘Could it be that someone abandoned his or her child in the restroom mercilessly?’ I wondered.
However, how come an abandoned baby suddenly chuckled in the restroom for no reason at midnight?
Thinking of this, I broke out in cold sweat. The image of a tightly wrapped baby with a fair and round face suddenly popped into my mind! Lying in a certain cubicle of the tattered lady’s room, it chuckled in the darkness…
Though my bladder was bursting, I hurried back the same way.
I felt a shiver down my spine.
I rushed downstairs back to the nurse station in the blink of an eye and when I saw the lights from afar, I felt a little relieved.
When Chen Juan saw me coming back, she put down the broom in her hand and ran over. “Gosh! Sister Qunfang, you look so pale! What’s wrong?” she shouted in surprise.
Not only did I look pale, but I began to stutter. Grabbing her hand, I said, “You know what? The baby in the lady’s room on the 4th floor is not crying… It’s… laughing!!”
Hearing that, she almost fell to the floor in horror. Staring at me blankly, she pattered her chest, trying to calm herself down.
In the end, we helped each other stumble back to the nurse station restlessly. “What should I do… What should I do…” she muttered all the way.
Obviously, she was freaked out as well!

Note: Three days later on Nov 8th, 2000, the fire broke out on the 3rd floor in the main building of Aegiceras Hospital at about 12 midnight and spread to four neighboring rooms soon. A woman was killed in the fire and her identity remains unknown. All the items in No. 3 Clinic of the Internal Medicine Dept. were burned down while the items of the other four rooms were partially destroyed in the fire. Since then, Chen Juan, the employee of the former hospital, went missing. The police concluded that the fire was caused by the aging of the circuit.