Genta took a deep breath, violently pushed open the ajar door, and shined both his DV and flashlight inside.
"Meow!"
With a sharp cat's cry, a black shadow suddenly darted out from behind a pile of discarded gauze, nimbly jumped onto the windowsill, looked back at them warily, then disappeared into the night outside the window.
It was a completely black wildcat, its eyes reflecting a green glow under the flashlight.
"What... it was just a cat..."
Ayumi let out a long sigh of relief, patting her chest, "You scared me to death..."
Mitsuhiko also wiped the cold sweat from his forehead. "It really seems to be a cat in heat, its cry does sound a bit like a baby crying."
Genta put down his DV, a little disappointed. "Tch, so it was just a cat. I thought we'd caught a paranormal phenomenon."
However, Haibara Ai, who had stood at the doorway and not gone in, subtly furrowed her brows.
Her gaze wasn't on the fleeing cat, but towards the depths of the corridor.
Her sixth sense told her that someone seemed to be observing them in the dark.
Haibara Ai pretended to follow them into the room, then suddenly turned around, sweeping the flashlight beam across the corridor behind her.
It was empty, with only bare walls and dilapidated doorframes.
"What's wrong, Haibara?" Conan noticed her unusual behavior and asked in a low voice.
Ayumi and Mitsuhiko also looked over nervously.
Haibara slowly withdrew her gaze and gently shook her head. "Nothing, I just felt like someone was watching us. I'm probably overthinking it, it might just be the wind."
This small interlude did not dampen Genta's enthusiasm for exploration, he waved his DV camera.
"It must be a delusion! Besides us and the wildcat, who else would be here? Let's go, let's go up to the second floor and see! Maybe there's something even more exciting!"
The children left the obstetrics and gynecology department and followed the dusty stairs to the second floor.
Compared to the first floor, the second floor was even quieter, with most of the ward doors on either side of the corridor open, revealing empty rooms with only some broken bed frames and discarded medical equipment.
They walked all the way to a ward at the end of the corridor.
"Huh? This room is locked?" Mitsuhiko tried to push the door of Ward 210, finding it wouldn't budge.
"Locked?" Genta immediately became interested, "All the other doors are open, but this one is locked. There must be something inside! Maybe even a ghost!"
He shoved the DV camera into Conan's hand. "Conan, you hold this and film me. Watch this!"
With that, he took a few steps back, took a deep breath, and charged at the door with his big belly.
There was a dull thud.
The old lock clearly couldn't withstand such an impact, the door burst open, and Genta himself stumbled in due to inertia.
The flashlight beam and DV lens immediately followed, illuminating the inside of the room.
In the center of the room, something sat silently in a wheelchair, facing the doorway.
"Ahhhhhh!!!" Ayumi's scream pierced the night.
Genta was also frozen in place, too scared to breathe.
On the wheelchair sat a mummy, its entire body tightly wrapped in dirty, yellowed bandages.
Most terrifyingly, the huge, vacant eyes peeking through the gaps in the bandages stared directly at them.
"A... a mummy?!" Mitsuhiko was so scared he plopped onto the floor.
Just then, Haibara Ai walked forward expressionlessly.
Without the slightest hesitation, she reached out, grabbed one end of the bandage, and pulled hard.
Whoosh—
The bandages scattered across the floor.
Beneath the bandages was no mummy at all, but a dirty medical anatomical model.
"What is... it was just a doll..." Ayumi patted her chest, breathing heavily, her legs weak.
Genta also let out a sigh of relief, but then was a bit disappointed. "Tch, a false alarm. I thought we'd encountered the real thing."
Mitsuhiko leaned in to look. "But it's quite realistic, it really scared me just now."
Conan, however, did not relax. He frowned, carefully examining the doll and the scattered bandages.
"Something's not right. Although this doll and the bandages look old, the dust on them is much less than on other things in the room. It's as if someone deliberately placed it here recently."
He held the DV and began to carefully inspect the room.
Soon, he found an old newspaper half-hidden under the dust on the floor next to the wheelchair.
He picked it up, blew off the dust, and read it by the flashlight's beam.
The newspaper's date was about three months ago, and its front-page headline reported a piece of news.
Robber and murderer Junji Maruo absconded after killing a woman, police have been searching extensively but have yet to find him. A photo of Maruo Junji with a fierce expression was also attached next to the report.
"Maruo Junji..." Conan murmured the name, put away the newspaper, feeling that this might not be a coincidence.
Genta wasn't interested in the newspaper, he was more concerned with the footage he'd captured. "Alright, alright, who cares who put it there! We filmed a mummy, the video is definitely going to go viral! Let's go, let's go up to the third floor and see!"
The group left Ward 210 and went up the stairs to the third floor.
The atmosphere on the third floor was even more oppressive than the second, with a musty smell mixed with disinfectant permeating the air.
As soon as they reached the third-floor corridor, Ayumi's flashlight beam hit the door of Ward 304.
"Ah! What... what is that?!" She shrieked again.
On that door, there were countless dense, gruesome dark red handprints.
Those handprints seemed to be struggling to break out of the door, appearing particularly stark in the dim light.
"Bloody handprints?!" Mitsuhiko's voice trembled.
Even Genta swallowed hard, a bit intimidated.
Just then, before they could go closer to examine it,
"Meowwwww!" A shrill cat's cry came from behind them.
The black cat from earlier had reappeared at some point, it darted out of the shadows and rushed straight towards the other end of the corridor.
The children instinctively followed the black cat's figure with their eyes—
At the edge of the flashlight beam, where the black cat had darted past, a black figure slowly, stiffly, straightened up from the floor.
It was a figure in a tattered nurse's uniform, with long hair cascading down, completely obscuring its face.
When the Detective Boys' flashlights shone on him, he suddenly twisted his head, picked up a scalpel, and lunged at the children.
"Ghost ahhhhhh!!!"
The Detective Boys screamed in terror.
Even the calm Conan and Haibara Ai turned pale.
Following the wailing Genta and Mitsuhiko, they tumbled down the stairs.
It wasn't until the group ran to the open space outside that they stopped.
Each of them collapsed onto the ground, gasping for breath.