Tales of Aegiceras: Cave in

17. The Fire (5)

Translator: Superbomb

I had no idea what I had just experienced. Maybe I was overthinking. I didn’t know!

Sister Qunfang confirmed again that this wasn’t an illusion.

“Is someone else here?” I asked with lingering fear.

“You… what makes you think that it’s human? I mean, did you hear it breathing, or sense its body temperature or something else? It was so close to us just now…”

“No, I didn’t, but it’s possible that I just didn’t notice it…” I quickly wiped my tears off, feeling ashamed of my timidity.

“Should we go there to take a look, or wait for Ma Yu to come out?” Sister Qunfang asked.

‘Could the one who walked past us just now be Ma Yu?’ I wondered.

But I didn’t ask Sister Qunfang.

Only then did I realize that Ma Yu had been in the restroom for a long time. If she didn’t make the crash sound of the water, then who could have made it? If it wasn’t her who had just walked past us, who could it be?

But the baby… I didn’t dare to think about it.

I stood by the door in a trance, trembling with fear. But after waiting for quite a while, we still didn’t see Ma Yu come out.

“What’s this?” Sister Qunfang said in confusion and squatted down.

“Pah!”

Suddenly, the surroundings were lit up with a beam of light from a torch.

Sister Qunfang held the torch she had just picked up from the floor, looking pale.

What she was holding was Ma Yu’s torch. We had no idea when it had rolled out of the restroom.

“Where’s Ma, Ma Yu?”

“Shh! Listen!” Sister Qunfang gestured me to keep quiet while pointing at the corridor again.

There seemed to be someone going upstairs on the other end of the corridor!

Did someone from the nurse station come to look for us or some security guards come for routine checks?

Great! We could get into restroom with them to see what Ma Yu was doing. Thinking of this, I let out a sigh of relief.

The sound of footsteps was getting louder. It seemed that person was about to reach the 4th floor.

“It’s Chen Juan!” Sister Qunfang cried out.

Chen Juan? Who was it?

I was a little confused. There was on the night shift today seemed to be named… Chen Juan.

Next second, I suddenly grew tense. “Sister Qunfang, you’re not talking about that Chen Juan, are you?” I revealed a flattering smile, thinking that she was joking.

However, without responding to me, Sister Qunfang walked in the direction of the footsteps with the torch in her hand.

“Wait a minute! You might hear it wrong! How could you know it was her just by the sound of footsteps? Besides, Ma Yu…” I didn’t dare to stay here alone, so I hurried after her.

My heart was racing for no reason.

I had a sinking feeling. Was there anything more terrible than what I had just experienced going to happen?

I was seized with an impulse to go back to the nurse station. However, as I had no torch and Sister Qunfang was away, I had no guts to walk through the corridor and rush to the first floor in the darkness. What’s more, I had to pass by the lady’s room if I wanted to get downstairs.

In the dim torch light, I could hear my heart beating with every step I took.

In spite of the silence around me, there seemed to be something moving!

I couldn’t be more regretful for having made such a decision this morning! What if I was trapped here and couldn’t return home? I didn’t dare think about it further.

After a few more steps, I would reach the TCM department.

The room where the fire started was very ominous.

Seeing the beam of the torchlight moving along the wall, I prayed that we could walk past the room asap. Come on…

When I turned my head and was about to walk past the TCM department, Sister Qunfang suddenly stopped.

“She’s here,” Sister Qunfang spat out the words one by one.

“What?” I froze for a moment before I came back to my senses. “Sister Qunfang, what’s wrong with you? That Chen Juan, she, she, has been missing for long time!”

“She’s crying! She’s crying…” Holding the torch, Sister Qunfang muttered to herself.

“Sister Qunfang! Sister Qunfang, don’t scare me…” I felt like my tears were springing to my eyes again. The darkness and chill around me almost suffocated me!

Suddenly, she lifted her hand and shone the torch on the glass above the door.

“Aaaaaah!!”

I didn’t know how I could I let out such a terrible cry.

The moment the light shone on the glass, I suddenly saw a zooming face of a baby pressing against it. The baby’s mouth was open and there were no teeth in it. It was charred all over. With its small hand resting on the glass, it seemed to be looking at me with its dark eyes…

My brain went blank in an instant.

I couldn’t tell what it was… Next second, I collapsed onto the floor…

“She’s here! She’s here!” Sister Qunfang shouted excitedly, “She’s crying, she’s crying…”

I couldn’t hear anything more. Only the face that suddenly appeared on the glass flashed before my eyes.

“Sister Qunfang…” I reached out, hoping her to help me up.

However, instead of looking at me, she started knocking frantically at the door.

“It’s her! It must be her. I know everything about her!”

Though I was in a daze, I could tell that the “she” Sister Qunfang was talking about was Chen Juan. I wondered why she was so persistent on coming over today…

“Mommy, or the baby?” Sister Qunfang suddenly threw the torch away. “Chen Juan, Chen Juan…”

The door was suddenly pushed open and a wave of heat rushed out in an instant.

Was the room on fire?

In the dim light, I seemed to see Sister Qunfang rushing into the room.

Then I blacked out and lost consciousness.

 

Note: Li Ting, who was in a coma due to fright, was found and taken back by the security guards on duty who heard the scream. Ma Yu and Liu Qunfang have never appeared since then. After an examination of the lady’s room and the TCM Department, nothing unusual was found.

 

 

“I knew there would be a story to follow!” Lu Xia said with confidence. However, when he looked back, he saw Sun Zheng blush with choking.

“I feel as if the room were really on fire…” Sun Zheng stood up awkwardly, covering his mouth with his hand.

‘Looks like you still don’t want to face the reality!’ Lu Xia thought. He then covered his mouth and nose with his hand as well and said, “Have you ever thought that the baby Liu Qunfang heard was alive in the beginning?”

“What?” Sun Zheng cried out, but after a short pause, he continued, “Of course, it was alive. Otherwise, what else could it be?”

Holding back his laughter, Lu Xia turned the notebook a few pages back and pushed it to Sun Zheng who was still coughing. “At first, I was fooled by the stories those nurses told and made a simple thing complicated.”

Sun Zheng looked up at him as if waiting for his explanation.

As Lu Xia was speaking with his hand covering his mouth, his voice sounded muffled. “Let’s make an assumption: a country girl who had never seen the world came to the city for the first time and was dazzled by its prosperity. Being laughed at by people around her, she started hating her own origin. She then decided to hide her identity, and pretend to be a decent city girl.”

Sun Zheng nodded, gesturing him to continue.

“However, this girl had been married to a farmer in her hometown and she already had a child. She was determined to start a new life, so she left her hometown, leaving her baby to her mother. As she had never contacted her family since then, she didn’t even know when her husband died of illness. Having no choice, her mother, who was left high and dry, took her granddaughter to the city to find her daughter.”

Sun Zheng had figured out what he meant. “So, the middle-aged woman that Li Ting saw by the gate was the girl’s mother and her daughter?”

With a bitter smile, Lu Xia shook his head. “I’m afraid those two she saw were not living people… I don’t know what they were.”

Sun Zheng raised his eyebrow as if waiting for him to give a more reasonable explanation.

Lu Xia turned his head to avoid Sun Zheng’s gaze. He cleared his throat and continued, “In short, this girl was frightened by the sudden appearance of her mother and her daughter. Everyone would know that she came from a small village and she would become the laugh stick of her colleagues once again! Moreover, as she was just a cleaner in the hospital, she couldn’t afford to rent an apartment for her family. Thus, she secretly hid her mother and her daughter in the hospital.”

Sun Zheng widened his eyes as if he had suddenly wised up. “You mean she let her mother and daughter stay in the TCM Department on the 4th floor every night? No, it was still a general out-patient clinic of the Internal Medicine Department back then, so there were still beds for the diagnosis of patients.”

Lu Xia gave him an approving look. “Her mother and her daughter could not only sleep in the Internal Medicine Department but also take a shower in the lady’s room on the 4th floor every night. However, this young woman of vanity was on tenterhooks every day, because people in the hospital started spreading rumors about the cries of babies on the 4th floor at night.”

“So the previous sound of water in the lady’s room on the 4th floor might have been made while her mother was taking a shower with her granddaughter or washing clothes? In this case, it was normal to hear the baby crying in the lady’s restroom at night because her child was there,” Sun Zheng responded.

“At that night, Liu Qunfang happened to hear the baby crying when she was walking upstairs to the restroom on the 4th floor. She was scared out of her wits and immediately rushed back to the nurse station. Hearing what she said, another woman was freaked out too, and she seemed even more scared than Liu Qunfang was.”

“Wait!” Sun Zheng interrupted Lu Xia. “Is it possible that Liu Qunfang found out the truth that night but she didn’t write it in the record?”

“You mean she was protecting that woman?” Lu Xia looked at him and smiled again. “Such a woman was not worth anyone lying for her! That night, some electrical appliance her mother was not familiar with caused a fire because of the aging of the circuit. The vicious woman probably thought that all troubles would end with the death of her mother and her daughter, so she locked the door, leaving them burned alive!”

Sun Zheng frowned as he listened to the last part of the story. “Why are you so sure she locked her mother and the baby in the room? Where was her baby’s corpse?” Where did she go?” he questioned.

Lu Xia looked around and said with a resolute look, “The best evidence is that we are stuck here!”

“Do you really think that Chen Juan deliberately locked the door and left them burned inside?” Sun Zheng was still in disbelief.

“Yes! An uneducated woman of vanity like Chen Juan tends to lose herself. You can hardly imagine how vicious some women could be!” Lu Xia said, his face flushed as if he were surrounded by flames.

“How could someone be vicious enough to kill her own mother and child?” Sun Zheng was still arguing. “Even if she lost herself, people are good by nature! Don’t you think so?”

Lu Xia curved up his lips. “Even if she had never thought that way before, this evil thought might have occurred to her at some moment when the room was on fire.”

Sun Zheng didn’t continue to argue with him. He only glanced at Lu Xia as if asking, “Really?”

Lu Xia continued, “As for the baby and Chen Juan… I think they probably entered the cavern too. The body that was carried out was her mother who had been killed in the fire. Being trapped in this cavern forever and facing the eternal darkness is the best punishment for her.”

Sun Zheng trembled at his words. He suddenly realized that he might never be able to leave this hospital and remain trapped in this hot room all the time. At the thought of this, he felt his heart skip a beat. “Are the people trapped here the ones who deserve to be punished?” he looked at Lu Xia blankly and asked.

After pausing for a short moment, Lu Xia answered, “Of course not! Some people will stumble into the cavern by accident. The past is always repeated in the hospital, and actually, all the people who had disappeared are walking about in here every day. They repeat what they were doing before they disappeared, just like they were living in a world parallel to the real world. Most of the time, we won’t notice the existence of such a world, and only when the aura suddenly changes and it fits with yours at a certain moment, you will see something that happened in the past. However, even if someone already entered the cavern, it doesn’t mean that he will see everything that happened before. Just like Li Ting and Liu Qunfang, they saw the reappearance of the fire in the hospital only by accident.”

Sun Zheng seemed to be lost in thought, and the determined look in his eyes had faded away.

Lu Xia had noticed the change in his expression. When people were stuck in the darkness of despair, they tend to accept reality, struggle, and finally go desperate. This was the most common psychological reaction. However, if Sun Zhen had accepted it and lost confidence, they might never be able to leave the room. Lu Xia deliberately coughed loudly to attract Sun Zheng’s attention. Then he shifted into the highest-pitched voice he could muster, saying, “However, it’s because they entered the cavern by accident that we have the chance to escape today!”

When Sun Zheng looked up again, his face was flushed with heat. Seeing that, Lu Xia seemed to have seen his own discomfited appearance. However, he had to get himself together. “We still have a chance. Look at the record: After reaching the 4th floor, Ma Yu entered the lady’s room, but she never came out. The one who walked past Li Ting and Liu Qunfang was not Ma Yu. Actually, what they saw was what happened on the night of the fire.”

 

Tick… Tick…

 

It was as if someone whose hair was still dripping was walking towards us.

The baby was laughing.

In the darkness, there was not only the sound of water ticking but the sound of a baby’s laughter as well.

“Look, at this moment, the middle-aged woman had just taken a shower and was walking out of the restroom with the baby in her arms. Amused by her, the baby kept laughing.” With that, Lu Xia looked at Sun Zheng, trying to relieve his tension. “Does this make the story less scary to you?”

Sun Zheng glared at him. “Only you would find such stories terrifying!”

Lu Xia shrugged helplessly and continued to read the record.

After a while, the laugher gradually trailed off and the ticking sound seemed to fade away in the depths of the corridor.

“Bang!” It sounded as if a door was pushed open!

“At this time, she must have brought the baby into the No. 3 Clinic of the Internal Medicine Department, which was later known as the TCM Department.”

There seemed to be someone going upstairs on the other end of the corridor!

The sound of footsteps was getting louder. It seemed that the person was about to reach the 4th floor.

“It’s Chen Juan!” Sister Qunfang cried out.

“Chen Juan also went upstairs. Liu Qunfang seemed to be very sensitive, and she immediately recognized that it was Chen Juan who was walking upstairs. Though Chen Juan had been missing for a long time, she still remembered the sound of her footsteps!” Lu Xia analyzed with a solemn look.

“Then the room caught on fire, and next… Liu Qunfang said that she heard Chen Juan’s cries. Oh my… we have to get out asap! I feel like it’s burned under my feet, Lu Xia…” Sun Zheng shouted while gasping.

Lu Xia seemed to be choked on the heavy smoke as well. He coughed loudly as he moved his index finger on the record and stopped on the last few lines.

The baby’s face, dark eyes, small hand…

“She’s crying…”

She started knocking frantically at the door…

Mommy… the baby… Chen Juan…

The door was suddenly pushed open and a wave of heat rushed out in an instant.

Sun Zheng seemed to have seen the hope and his face suddenly lit up.

“Liu Qunfang! Although the door was locked on the night of the fire, Liu Qunfang pushed it open and got into the room the other night when the scene reappeared!”