"Turn over and let me see."
I stood at Bed 3, speaking to the figure huddled facing the wall with blankets pulled over their head. When I said those words, the corridor of the inpatient ward at 2:07 AM was silent as a coffin. I know how stupid it sounds—talking to a patient buried under blankets, like some rookie on their first day. But I said it anyway, because before this I'd called out his name three times already. Li Guohua. Li Guohua. Li Guohua. Each time louder than the last, loud enough that the old lady in Bed 4 even rolled over, but this Li Guohua character didn't budge.
Later I thought: if I'd just reached out and pulled back that blanket, maybe none of what happened next would have occurred. But that's how it is with hindsight—you always figure out what you should've done differently, smarter or stupider.
My name's Lin Yuan, twenty-six years old. I've been working the night shift as an inpatient caregiver at City Hospital's Second Branch for exactly four months today. This job came through a distant cousin of mine. He worked in the hemodialysis unit for two years before quitting, and before he left, he told me one thing: the night shift caregiver gig—it's tiring work, sure, but as long as you remember three rules, you can make it through safe and sound. First, don't stick your nose where it doesn't belong. Second, don't talk too much. Third—he paused right there, looking at me with an expression I still remember—he said: when you're doing your 2 AM rounds, if you see a patient sleeping face-down against the wall with blankets over their head, don't touch, don't call out.
I asked him why right then.
He said don't ask, just remember.
I told him that sounds like something out of a horror movie.
He laughed. That laugh, thinking back on it now, never felt quite right—like there was something he wanted to say but swallowed it back down. He said just think of it as hospital rules. Every hospital's got its own rules, right?
I didn't think much of it at the time. It's a hospital, after all. A place of life and death, people coming and going—there'll always be things that can't be explained. I'd read plenty of urban legends online. Like how the elevator in the morgue moves by itself every midnight. Or how you can hear footsteps at the end of the corridor. Just scary stories to freak out the newbies. I'm not what you'd call brave, but I'm not a coward either. The type who covers their eyes during horror movies but never actually turns them off.
The Second Branch's inpatient ward is an old building, six floors, no elevator—they say they'll install one when they renovate next year. I cover the fifth floor's internal medicine ward, twelve rooms total, about twenty beds. Night shift runs from 8 PM to 8 AM. The work isn't complicated: change IVs for patients who need them on schedule, turn over patients who can't move themselves easily, check the bell if someone calls, and do room checks at 2 AM and 6 AM.
The 2 AM check-in is important, and also not important. Important because some critical patients' conditions can flare up at night—you need to lay eyes on them to rest easy. Not important because most of the time you walk through and everyone's sleeping fine, nothing happening. In my four months here, the only incident was an old grandpa who got up to use the bathroom in the middle of the night, slipped, and cracked his brow bone. I patched him up, the next day he went to surgery for a couple stitches, nothing else.
So my cousin's rule—yeah, I remembered it, but I didn't take it too seriously. Until last night.
Last night wasn't supposed to be my shift. Lao Zhou and I usually alternated—he took Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, I took Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays, and Sundays we split. But Lao Zhou called the day before, said something came up at home and he needed to go back, asked if I could cover for him a couple days. I figured, I'm free anyway, the overtime pay's good, so I said yes. So this week, Monday through Friday, it was all me.
When I took over last night, the day shift's Liu Jie gave me a quick rundown. She said the fifth floor got two new admissions today. One in Bed 3, Li Guohua, sixty-seven, acute COPD exacerbation, finished his exams in the afternoon, condition relatively stable. The other in Bed 11, an elderly lady with diabetic foot, came in for dressing changes. Nothing else special.
I flipped through the handover book, glanced at the entry for Bed 3. Li Guohua, male, sixty-seven, diagnosis acute COPD exacerbation, care level two. Looking at that name, I don't know why, but his sentence popped into my head—the one about patients sleeping face-down against the wall. Then I laughed at myself, thinking I was being paranoid. An ordinary name. COPD patients pulling blankets over their heads is common enough—people with breathing difficulties sometimes think pulling covers over their heads keeps them warmer, even though it's actually bad for their breathing. But old folks, you know, can't break old habits.
At ten PM, I did my usual rounds through the rooms. Li Guohua in Bed 3 was half-reclined on his bed watching TV. A skinny old man, cheeks sunken, cheekbones prominent, but his eyes were quite sharp. When I came in he actually nodded at me. I asked how he was feeling. He said not bad, just a bit short of breath. I checked the bedside cardiac monitor—oxygen saturation ninety-three, heart rate slightly elevated but within acceptable range. I told him to press the call button if he needed anything. He said okay.
I noticed on his bedside table was a crumpled old book, cover torn off, couldn't tell what it was. Next to it a red plastic lighter. On impulse I picked it up and said, Uncle Li, no smoking in the hospital room. He waved his hand and said I know, I know, that's from when I still smoked. Don't smoke anymore now, just keeping it as a memento. I glanced at him, put the lighter back.
At eleven, I went back to the nurses' station, fixed myself a cup of instant noodles. Across from the desk on the wall hung a monitor display split into nine small screens, covering various corridors and key patient rooms. Habitually I scanned them—no abnormalities, empty corridors, most patients asleep.
Finished eating by almost 11:30. I slumped on the desk for a light nap. I say nap, but I wasn't really asleep—just that half-conscious state between waking and dreaming. I had a very short dream. In it I stood at Bed 3 in the patient room. Li Guohua was lying on his side facing the wall, blanket pulled over his head. I wanted to call out to him, but my throat felt blocked by something, couldn't make a sound. Then I woke up on my own, heart beating faster than it should. Looked at my phone—1:58 AM.
One minute to two. Time for rounds.
I stood up, stretched, took a sip of water, grabbed my small flashlight, and left the nurses' station. The motion-sensor lights in the corridor flickered on in a row as I walked out, those sickly white fluorescent tubes humming with that low-frequency drone that, if you listen long enough, sounds like some kind of tinnitus.
I started my rounds from Room 1, planning to check all twelve rooms down to Room 12, then head back to the desk.
Rooms 1 and 2 were on the left side of the corridor, both four-bed rooms with seven patients total, all sleeping soundly, snores coming and going. I swept through with my flashlight, confirmed nothing unusual, closed the doors and moved on. Room 3 was on the right side—a three-bed room, but only two patients occupied, Beds 3 and 4.
When I pushed open the door to Room 3, the door hinges gave out a tiny creak.
The light in Room 3 was off, curtains half-drawn, streetlight from outside filtering in, casting a vague orange glow on the floor. The old lady in Bed 4 was lying on her side facing the door, breathing steadily, fast asleep.下意识地 I turned my flashlight toward Bed 3.
And then I froze.
Li Guohua was lying on his side facing the wall, blanket pulled over his head, the whole person wrapped up tight, only a sliver of graying hair visible at the pillow's edge.
I remember my first thought wasn't fear—it was this strange sensation, like when you dream something提前 and then it actually happens. Your first reaction isn't terror, it's disorientation, like the boundary between reality and dreams suddenly got blurry.
I stood there for maybe ten seconds, didn't speak, didn't move. My cousin's words automatically replayed in my head: when you're doing your 2 AM rounds, if you see a patient sleeping face-down against the wall with blankets over their head, don't touch, don't call out.
I took a deep breath, then made a decision that later seemed perhaps unnecessary—I didn't bother with Bed 3, turned around to check on the old lady in Bed 4, confirmed she was fine, then exited. When I closed the door I specifically looked back. Bed 3's blanket hadn't changed at all.
Fine. Just a coincidence. That's what I told myself, continuing forward.
Room 4, normal. Room 5, normal. Room 6 was at the end of the corridor around a corner—a double room, housing two unlucky fellows both with cirrhotic ascites coming in for fluid drainage. I'd chatted with both of them earlier in the day.
I pushed open the door to Room 6.
Both patients were there. But—one facing the left wall, one facing the right wall, both blankets pulled over their heads.
My heart clenched hard.
This posture was wrong. Extremely wrong. Cirrhotic ascites patients' bellies blow up like drums—they're uncomfortable enough lying flat, there's no way they'd voluntarily choose to lie on their sides, definitely not pull blankets over their heads, because ascites presses on the diaphragm and covering their heads would make breathing even harder. They know this themselves.
I stood in the doorway for a few seconds, then called out softly: "Master Wang?"
No response.
"Lao Zhang?"
No response either.
I felt my heartbeat quickening, palms starting to sweat. I took two steps forward, standing between the two beds, looking left and right. Two white blanket mounds, in the dim light looking like two small graves. I couldn't see their faces, couldn't see any part of their bodies, couldn't even detect the rise and fall of breathing. The blankets just sat there, quiet and still.
By this point I still hadn't lost my rational mind. My first反应 was to reach out and touch Lao Zhang's IV line, the small portion visible outside the blanket. The tube was warm, fluid still dripping inside. The monitor numbers were jumping. The person was alive—at least vital signs were normal.
I backed out of Room 6.
The corridor was still quiet, fluorescent tubes still humming. I stood in the middle of the hallway, looking at the七八 remaining rooms ahead, when suddenly I felt an extremely powerful urge to just stop the rounds and walk away. But a night-shift caregiver's duty didn't allow that—if a patient really had a problem and I missed it, the next day I'd be guilty of serious negligence.
I pressed on.
Room 7, two patients, faces toward wall, blankets over heads. Room 8, three patients, same. Rooms 9, 10, 11, 12—I was moving faster and faster, by the end practically running through each room. Every single door I pushed open showed the same scene: every single patient, every person, lying on their sides facing the wall, blankets over their heads, like someone had rehearsed it beforehand,整齐划一, quiet as the grave.
Twelve rooms, nineteen patients, nineteen blanket-covered figures facing the wall.
When I got back to the nurses' station, the back of my shirt was soaked through. I sat down, tried to calm myself down. I'm an educated person, I know this world is materialist, every phenomenon has a scientific explanation. Maybe just coincidence, maybe because it got colder tonight everyone's feeling chilly, maybe—
Then I looked up.
I saw the monitoring display on the wall opposite.
Nine small screens, the fifth floor's six patient room feeds appearing simultaneously. Due to angle and night-vision mode, the image was greenish and dark, but clear enough to make out the situation inside the rooms.
What I saw was—every single room, every single bed, those people who'd just been lying face-down against the wall under their blankets... were now all sitting up.
Sitting upright on the beds, blankets pooled at their waists, every face turned in the same direction.
Toward the nurses' station.
No. Not the nurses' station. They were looking at me.
Nineteen people, nineteen blurred faces, in the greenish night-vision monitor feed, all squarely facing the camera. I could even make out the expressions on the nearest few—if you could call them expressions. Their eyes were open, but the pupils weren't focused, like they were looking through the camera at something else. Mouths slightly downturning, couldn't say whether they were smiling or crying, just that awkward angle, frozen on every face.
My whole body felt pinned to the chair.
I stared at the screen for maybe half a minute, mind racing, trying to come up with a rational explanation. Nothing rational. Nineteen patients couldn't possibly do the same thing simultaneously, couldn't all sit up at once, couldn't all face the nurses' station at once—unless someone was directing them. But there was no one directing. Fifth floor had only me.
My hands were shaking badly, but I still picked up the phone on the desk. I dialed the fourth floor nurses' station number; after three rings someone picked up, it was Xiao Chen from fourth floor.
"Xiao Chen, I need to ask you something." I tried to keep my voice normal. "Did fourth floor have any abnormalities tonight?"
"Abnormalities? What kind of abnormalities?" Xiao Chen's voice sounded groggy, clearly just woken from a doze.
"Like... patients' sleeping postures, anything that seemed off?"
Silence on the line for a couple seconds, then Xiao Chen said: "What are you talking about? The patients are all sleeping fine, I just finished rounds."
"All sleeping normally? No blanket-over-head stuff?"
"Lin Yuan, have you lost your mind staying up all night?" Xiao Chen laughed. "What are you on about in the middle of the night, look I've got a call light going off here, gotta go."
Click. Line went dead.
I put the receiver back, and when I looked at the monitoring screen again, I practically leapt out of my chair.
The image had changed.
The nineteen patients weren't sitting up anymore. They'd lain back down. Face toward the wall, blankets over their heads. Exactly the same posture I'd seen when I checked each room ten minutes ago.
But this time, there were two human shapes under each blanket.
I could see it clearly. Night-vision might be fuzzy, but the outline of a human body doesn't lie. The bumps under each blanket weren't the size one person's body could make. Every bed's blanket was bulging, like something was pressed against the patient's back, squeezed in with them on that narrow bed meant for only one person.
I stared at Room 3's monitor feed. Li Guohua's bed was on the far right, the blanket's outline particularly obvious—where the head should be, two slight bumps side by side, like two heads lying parallel on the pillow. The body area was a irregular mass, like two people overlapped in some unnatural position.
My thought at that moment was: I need to go check in person.
This thought, thinking back on it now, was absolutely insane. But in that situation, your thinking isn't normal. Without seeing it with your own eyes, you can't confirm whether the monitor footage is real or fake, can't even confirm if you're hallucinating. I needed a definitive answer, even if that answer would scare me even more.
I grabbed my flashlight, walked out of the nurses' station.
The corridor lights flickered on again as I stepped out, still that sickly white humming fluorescent. I walked to Room 3's door, hand on the doorknob, hesitated about three seconds.
Then I pushed it open.
The room looked exactly like it did ten minutes ago. The old lady in Bed 4 lying on her side facing the door, breathing steady. Bed 3's Li Guohua lying on his side facing the wall, blanket over his head.
But the shape under the blanket had changed.
When I shone my flashlight over, I saw it clearly—that thin white blanket had two human-shaped outlines beneath it. One was curled toward the wall, that should be Li Guohua himself. The other was pressed tight against his back, the build appearing smaller than Li Guohua—hard to say what it looked like. If I had to force a description, it was like someone was hugging him from behind, but that person had curled up extremely small, small enough to hide completely under the blanket undetected.
My flashlight beam swept over the blanket twice. That figure didn't move at all.
I wanted to pull back the blanket.
My hand was already reaching out, fingertips touching the blanket's edge, even feeling the coarse texture of the cotton. But at the last second, my cousin's words splashed over me like cold water—don't touch, don't call out.
I pulled my hand back.
I retreated from Room 3, closed the door, turned and headed toward the nurses' station. Halfway there I suddenly thought of something, something that made me stop dead in the middle of the corridor, every hair on my body standing on end.
The old lady in Bed 4.
She was lying on her side facing the door. She was the only patient on the entire floor not facing the wall.
But when I went in just now, her eyes were open.
She'd been staring at me the whole time.
I didn't go back to the nurses' station. I took the elevator straight down to the first floor lobby, sat in a chair in the emergency waiting area for the rest of the night. The emergency lobby had plenty of people at night—kids with fevers, drunk young people, family members dozing in chairs. All these voices, footsteps, the intercom calling numbers—it actually made me feel safe. I sat in the corner, back against the wall, eyes fixed on the elevator entrance, until dawn.
At 6:30 AM, Liu Jie from the day shift arrived. She saw me sitting in the emergency lobby,愣了一下, walked over and asked what was wrong, why did I look so terrible.
I said nothing, just didn't sleep well last night.
She gave me a suspicious look, didn't press further, grabbed her bag and went upstairs. I followed her into the elevator, mind racing over how to tell her what happened last night, but nothing felt right—say it and she wouldn't believe me anyway.
Elevator reached fifth floor, doors opened. The corridor's fluorescent lights were already off, morning light coming through the east-facing windows, lighting up the whole hallway bright and clear. During the night shift this corridor felt like it stretched on forever no matter how far you walked, but in daylight it's really just fifty meters or so—a ordinary hospital corridor.
Liu Jie went to the nurses' station to put away her bag. I stood at the corridor entrance, watching the janitor mopping from the other end. Everything normal, everything peaceful, last night's events felt like they happened in another world.
Then I heard Liu Jie's voice.
"Lin Yuan, come here a moment."
Her voice wasn't loud, but the tone was off. I walked over, saw her standing inside the nurses' station, holding the handover book, brow furrowed.
"Bed 3's Li Guohua," she said. "What time did you check on him?"
My heart sank. "2 AM, why?"
"He passed away a little after 3 AM." Liu Jie set the handover book on the desk. "The doctor on duty just left, death certificate's already made out."
I stood there frozen.
"3 AM... he died?" My voice came out a bit hoarse. "How?"
"Respiratory failure. The doctor on duty said acute COPD attack, couldn't save him." Liu Jie sighed. "Family's been notified, coming in the morning to handle paperwork. How was he when you checked at 2? Any abnormalities?"
I opened my mouth, didn't know what to say.
At 2 AM he was already face-down against the wall. At 2 AM there were already two human shapes under his blanket. I couldn't say any of this—couldn't say it and have anyone believe me.
"At 2 he was..." I chose my words carefully. "...asleep."
"Asleep is good." Liu Jie didn't notice my abnormality, picked up the blood pressure cuff to measure patients' vitals.
I stood there, watching the window grow brighter, mind a tangled mess. A patient dies at 3 AM, and at 2 AM I'd seen him face-down against the wall with two people's worth of shape under his blanket. I didn't dare think too hard about the connection, but one thought kept pushing itself to the surface—if I'd pulled back that blanket, what would have happened?
That thought kept me on edge the entire morning.
8 AM, shift change, I signed out, changed my clothes, got ready to leave. At the first floor I stopped, turned, and headed to the security office.
The Second Branch's security office is at the end of the first floor corridor, next to the morgue's side door. The security guard on duty was Old Wu, around fifty, been working at this hospital for over a decade, easygoing guy, I'd chatted with him a few times.
"Old Wu," I knocked on the door. "Need to ask you a favor."
Old Wu was holding a big thermos mug looking at his phone, looked up and saw me, smiled: "Xiao Lin, what's up?"
"I want to look at last night's fifth floor surveillance."
Old Wu put down his mug, gave me a look: "What's wrong? Something stolen?"
"No, just... want to confirm something."
Old Wu didn't press—probably seen enough weird stuff working at a hospital to know not to ask questions he shouldn't. He let me into the security office, pulled up last night's fifth floor footage on the computer.
"What time range?"
"2 AM to 2:30 AM."
Old Wu clicked around, and the fifth floor corridor and room feeds came up on screen. The view was split into multiple windows, timestamp in the upper left corner, accurate to the second.
"Take your time, I'll go outside for a smoke." Old Wu stood up and left, pulling the door shut behind him.
I sat at the computer, dragged the timeline to 1:58 AM. The screen showed the corridor empty, all room doors closed. 1:59, the nurses' station door opened, my figure appeared on screen, flashlight in hand, starting down the corridor toward the rooms.
I watched myself entering and exiting each room. My on-screen movements were normal, pace normal, nothing obviously wrong. But if you looked closely, you could see my feet pause noticeably before entering Room 6—stood there maybe three or four seconds before pushing through the door. After exiting, my pace quickened noticeably; subsequent rooms I was practically sticking my head in and backing out.
2:12 AM, on screen I hurried back to the nurses' station, sat in the chair, then looked up at the monitoring display. On screen I was completely rigid, shoulders tense, this posture held for about thirty seconds. Then I picked up the phone, dialed, said a few words, hung up. Then I looked at the monitoring screen again and practically jumped out of my chair.
My eyes weren't watching the me on screen. I was watching the patient room feeds.
At 2:14, Room 6's door opened on screen. My figure entered, flashlight beam visible sweeping across the room. I saw myself stop at the two beds, flashlight pointing at Bed 3. On the night-vision image I could see the blanket's surface being illuminated, and beneath it—two distinct bumps.
On screen, I reached out.
My hand stopped just before touching the blanket. Then slowly withdrew. I backed out of the room, closed the door, walked quickly back to the nurses' station.
I stared at that sequence for a full minute. The me on screen was definitely me. The room was definitely Room 3. The two bumps under the blanket were definitely there. But I didn't remember any of this happening. The last thing I remembered was walking back to the nurses' station after leaving Room 6, then nothing—then sitting in the emergency lobby watching the sunrise.
I checked the timeline again. 2:15, my on-screen figure sat in the nurses' station, head bowed, appeared to be resting. Then at 2:47, I stood up, left the nurses' station, walked toward the elevator. The elevator camera showed me pressing the button for the first floor.
But I didn't remember any of that. I had no memory of leaving the fifth floor, no memory of taking the elevator down. My next memory was opening my eyes in the emergency lobby at dawn.
I was definitely losing time.
"Got a smoke, feel better?" Old Wu came back in, tossed the cigarette butt in the trash.
"Old Wu," I looked up at him. "Let me ask you something. About the fifth floor."
He glanced at me, expression unreadable. "What about it?"
"Has anything... strange ever happened there?"
Old Wu didn't answer right away. He walked over, closed the door, then turned back to me.
"Been working here fifteen years," he said slowly. "Heard plenty of stories. Don't know if they're true, but..."
He paused, then continued: "The old security guard before me, he worked nights for twenty years. Said there's one room on the fifth floor—no one talks about it, but every few months, something happens. Patients in that room, they do the same thing. All at once. Face-down, blankets over heads."
My throat went dry. "Which room?"
Old Wu looked at me, his eyes very serious.
"You already know which room," he said. "But you haven't opened the door to the one at the end of the corridor, have you?"
My blood ran cold.
The room at the end of the corridor. The one I'd rushed past without checking. Room 6.
"What happens..." I swallowed. "What happens if you open it?"
Old Wu shook his head. "Don't know. The ones who opened it—" He stopped.
"The ones who opened it what?"
Old Wu was quiet for a long moment. Then he said:
"They're still working here."
He walked to the door, opened it, meaning明显地 our conversation was over. I sat there for another minute, mind reeling. Then I stood up, walked out of the security office.
In the corridor, the morning sun was bright. Through the window I could see the morgue's side door across the way, the word "停尸间" barely visible on the sign.
I suddenly remembered something.
When I took over last night, Liu Jie mentioned the fifth floor had two new patients. One was Li Guohua in Bed 3. The other was the old lady in Bed 11, diabetic foot, in for dressing changes.
But when I did my rounds, I checked Bed 11. The room was empty. No patients, no old lady. The bed was made, spotless, like no one had ever been there.
I never asked Liu Jie about it. I never asked anyone.
And now I didn't want to know.
I walked out of the hospital into the morning sunlight. It was warm, the city was waking up, cars and people everywhere. Normal. Everything seemed normal.
But as I walked, I couldn't shake the feeling that something was watching me from behind.
I turned around suddenly.
Nothing. Just the hospital building, the entrance, people coming and going.
I turned back and kept walking.
After about ten steps, I stopped again.
On the ground behind me—my shadow was wrong. The morning sun was coming from the east, so my shadow should have been stretched out toward the west.
But the shadow on the ground beside me was facing the wrong direction.
It was facing the hospital.
And in that shadow, if you looked closely, you could see the faint outline of a hand—pressed flat against my back, as if someone was walking right behind me, just barely touching.
I didn't look back this time.
I walked faster, broke into a run, didn't stop until I'd put three blocks between me and the hospital.
When I finally stopped, gasping for breath, I reached into my pocket for my phone—to check the time, to see something normal, something real.
My hand touched something cold and hard.
I pulled it out.
It was Li Guohua's red plastic lighter.
The one I'd seen on his bedside table. The one he'd said was a memento from when he still smoked.
I stared at it in my palm, couldn't understand how it got there. I never touched it—I clearly remember putting it back on his table.
The lighter was cold, too cold, like it had been in a freezer.
In my hand, it slowly grew warmer.
Warmer.
Warmer still.
Then it started to vibrate.
I dropped it. It hit the pavement and rolled away, coming to rest against a storm drain.
I stood there, watching it.
The lighter sat there in the gutter, completely still.
I told myself it was just a trick of the light, just my imagination, just—
The lighter's flame caught.
By itself.
A small, dancing flame in broad daylight, flickering in a wind it shouldn't have been able to feel.
And as I watched, the flame burned not orange or yellow, but green.
The exact same green as the night-vision camera footage.
I didn't stay to watch any longer.
I turned and walked away, fast, didn't look back again.
I never went back to that hospital.
I found a new job, day shift at a grocery store, nothing special. I told myself the whole thing was stress, sleep deprivation, my mind playing tricks. I almost convinced myself it worked.
Almost.
That was three months ago.
Last night, I woke up at 2 AM. Don't know why—I haven't had trouble sleeping in years. But last night I woke up at exactly 2:07 AM.
Laid there in the dark, trying to go back to sleep, couldn't.
That's when I noticed it.
My bedroom door was open.
I always close it before bed. Always.
Through the gap, I could see the hallway.
The hallway light was off.
But there was something on the floor.
A shadow.
Stretching out from my doorway, across the living room, toward my bedroom.
A shadow of a person.
Standing just outside my door.
Not moving.
Not making a sound.
Just... waiting.
I didn't move.
Didn't breathe.
We stayed like that for I don't know how long.
Then the shadow moved.
It reached toward my door—stretching out like something pouring through—and then the light in the hallway clicked on.
Empty hallway.
I jumped out of bed, ran to the hallway.
Nothing. No shadow. No one.
Just the light, the empty hallway, my apartment door still locked from the inside.
I was about to convince myself it was nothing when I noticed something on the floor near my bedroom door.
A red plastic lighter.
The same lighter I'd thrown away three months ago.
I picked it up with shaking hands.
It was warm.
It vibrated slightly, like a heartbeat.
Then I noticed something else.
On the lighter's metal surface, there was an engraving. When I'd found it in Li Guohua's room, it hadn't been there.
The engraving read:
"You looked, didn't you?"
And below it, a room number.
Room 6.
The door at the end of the corridor.
I'm writing this at 2 AM.
My door is open.
The shadow is back.
But this time, it's not just one.
There are three of them.
Standing in my hallway.
Waiting for me to turn around.
I'm not going to turn around.
I'm going to keep writing until dawn.
If you're reading this, and you've ever worked a night shift at a hospital, or a morgue, or anywhere that deals with the dead—
If someone tells you a rule about what not to do at 2 AM—
Listen to them.
Some rules exist for a reason.
Some doors exist for a reason.
And some visitors...
They don't just come at night.
They're already inside.
They've always been inside.
Waiting for you to notice them.
Waiting for you to look.
Waiting for you to open the door.
I can hear them now.
Whispering.
In a voice that sounds like mine.
Saying the same thing, over and over:
"You looked, didn't you?"
"You looked, didn't you?"
"You looked..."