One by one, they stared ahead with blank, hollow eyes, their faces devoid of life as they staggered forward like sleepwalkers, led step by step into the villa by the possessed man.
Faintly raucous music and blurred cries of revelry came from inside the villa. The light spilling from its windows was not the usual warm yellow or incandescent white, but an ominous dark red, like congealed blood, as though a dark party was underway within.
Eleanor clamped both hands over her mouth, her body shaking violently. Her eyes brimmed with fear and fury, and tears welled up once more. In a low voice choked with tears and hatred, she said to Wu Heng:
"Those people being tied up are Uncle Robert, Aunt Lilian... they're all neighbors! What did that demon do to them?!"
She pointed at the villa, which resembled a demon's lair, her voice breaking with fear:
"The sounds inside are wrong. The lights are wrong too—it was never like this before! What are they doing in my home?!"
Before Eleanor had finished speaking, another even more harrowing sight confirmed her fears.
Whoosh—!
A solid mass of black mist streaked in like a meteor from another part of the night sky. Within it were the faint outlines of two struggling women, screaming in despair.
Their pajamas had been torn to rags, their skin flushed pink from the wind, and they had even wet themselves, yellow stains soiling their legs.
The black mist slammed precisely into an ornate stained-glass window on the villa's second floor!
Crash!
The glass shattered instantly. At the very moment the window flew open, the sounds that had been sealed inside the villa burst out like floodwaters breaching a dam.
Amid deafening, twisted, frenzied rock music were cries of pleasure, human screams so shrill they