I had this thought. I'd never planned to bring them back to life, and now I was even prepared to wipe them out outright and deal with the ghosts here.
I took a step forward.
Just then, the young male ghost appeared on the stairs again.
The souls of the big dog and the child flickered, turning into an ordinary child and dog. It was as if their memories had been altered, or as if they were merely images. They completely ignored our presence and ran upstairs, laughing.
The two ghosts passed through the young man's ghost and entered the room.
The young man remained on the stairs, looking down at us.
"What was that just now...?" Guo Yujie's mouth fell open.
The young man flickered twice, then disappeared.
"This place seems to be complicated," Wu Ling said. She didn't offer a final conclusion and simply stuck to the original plan: go to the backyard and find Han Yun.
We crossed the hallway and living room and came to a floor-to-ceiling glass door. There was a hole in it, and wind blew inside through the broken glass.
Outside lay a desolate, uncanny scene. Broken toys hung from dead branches and splintered trees. I heard a dog barking, its voice seeming to drift in on the wind. Something squirmed beneath the rotting leaves on the ground.
Han Yun floated in the air, looking up at the sky. After a while, he lowered his head and looked at the rotten soil beneath his feet.
Wu Ling pushed open the floor-to-ceiling glass door.
Clang!
The glass door fell straight onto the muddy ground.
Han Yun turned to look at us.
"What did you find?" Wu Ling asked.
"It got away." Han Yun shook his head. "Something's strange. There's something wrong with this place..."